18 ms·

Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

329 points by edd25 2y ago

bitwize 2y ago
Games aren't really things you can keep forever anymore. They're events, like concerts. Or like movies were before that piracy device, the VCR, was ruled legal in American courts -- something industry moguls still fulminate about (Jack Valenti saw it as the Boston Strangler for his industry until he died). Get used to this new reality. Enjoy your gaming experiences when you have them.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > Get used to this new reality. Enjoy your gaming experiences when you have them. Such a bizarre take, when most games I play are from a decade ago or more. I have very little interest in current gaming trends.
- Aachen 2y ago
  Games are as much like concerts as books are like a person reading it out live
yawnbox 2y ago
Please sign if you are an EU citizen. Please share with your EU citizen friends.
- rob74 2y ago
  Or rather, take a look at this page: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/find-initiative_en?CATEGORY%5B0%5D=any&STATUS%5B0%5D=ONGOING&SECTION=ALL https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/find-initiative_en?CAT... and consider signing all initiatives that you identify with. I know that preventing their favorite game(s) from being killed off is very important to some people, but in the grand scheme of things, there may be more important causes to support...
  - account42 2y ago
    There can always be more important issues but I would not frame this as being just about silly games either. It's not like other tools have been moving to being more and more dependent on online services and even if the initial change this petition achieves (if it does succeed, which is a slim chance) apply to just games this still provides a precedent for widening the legislation to other software in the future.
- kwhitefoot 2y ago
  I would have but Brexit put paid to that. :-(
surfingdino 2y ago
> Not interfere with any business practices while a game is still being supported. Needs better explanation.
- eesmith 2y ago
  Then read the petition itself or the FAQ?
- vasco 2y ago
  They just mean the companies can still do whatever they want while the game is being supported. It's an extremely poor way of writing that they are only interested in modifying the rules for end-of-life of games instead of regulate existing playable games. The whole thing is poorly written, but the idea is reasonable.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Define "supported"... This seems like a good goal but I'm not sure they've fully thought it through.
    - NekkoDroid 2y ago
      For DRM protected games that "phone home" for verification its when they are unable to reach "home" anymore (not just temporary outage). For online game its when the official servers are shut down. Are there any other cases where this initiative would apply that I didn't mention? https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en# https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/20... > This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. > Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.
      - 2y ago
keybored 2y ago
[flagged]
- withinboredom 2y ago
  I thought it was about squid game.
  - ogogmad 2y ago
    this would be so much easier in German
    - oblio 2y ago
      It would probably be much easier in a bunch of other languages (Romanian below): Opriți distrugerea jocurilor. versus, if you want to use the most similar words, for maximum confusion: Opriți jocurile distructive. as you see, they're still super visually distinct, despite using the most similar words possible.
oleganza 2y ago
People want to be hooked up on subscription because schools and parents do not preach long-term values (well, maybe only orthodox religious minorities do). We are in this situation because of a shrinking time horizon for the modern society (aka "high time preference"). People want instant gratification, buy-now-pay-later, pay attention to the packaging, not content. Most citizens are conditioned to live here and now. Even climate change activists frame the issue (that is supposed to be about long-term thinking) on a very short scale: do something hysterical right now, otherwise the world's gonna end tomorrow.
- Dban1 2y ago
  interesting seeing these terms here. I came from reading The Bitcoin Standard book
  - sph 2y ago
    The best part about this book is the first half, about the history of currency, economy and indeed, the concept of time preference. How inflationary or deflationary economies affect human psychology and spending patterns. I recommend it even if one is not really interested in cryptocurrencies. Or watch the author's (Saifedean Ammous) interview on Lex Friedman if you prefer.
    - irusensei 2y ago
      Good read but Saifedean is very opinionated and will be probably off putting to the average orange Redditor. I for one can't stand him for more than a few minutes. You always know he will start blabbering about carnivore diets within 5 minutes.
      - pjc50 2y ago
        You don't have to put cranks in your informational diet.
      - sph 2y ago
        I never heard him talk about carnivore, but then again I'm pro carnivore so you might conclude my opinion is worthless as well. The average orange Redditor likes an echo chamber, so one should not be concerned about their opinion. The pro-Bitcoin will adore him, the anti-Bitcoin will hate him, a priori and nothing will change their mind.
stavros 2y ago
I've signed this, and, as an aside, I was extremely impressed that the Europa.eu site localized the CAPTCHA to the Greek alphabet. That's some commitment to accessibility by the general public.
- heckerhut 2y ago
  Indeed that’s pretty cool.
- gschizas 2y ago
  True, never seen a CAPTCHA with Greek letters before! I refreshed it to make sure, I was so confused! Good job!
- MrGilbert 2y ago
  I'm also impressed. I used the "eID" functionality, and it just worked flawlessly. I signed it in under a minute.
  - diggan 2y ago
    I'm not as impressed, tried to use my Spanish digital certificate and got "the submitted certificate is not an electronic DNI".
    - oblio 2y ago
      Is it this thing: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f1437a21-de4e-11ed-a05c-01aa75ed71a1 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f14... (scroll down to Spain)?
      - elmimmo 2y ago
        No, it is not. In Spain, national and regional administrations support different methods for digital identification by their citizens. One is the certificate embedded into the chip in the national id card, arguably in everybody’s pocket, but, effectively so cumbersome to extract that virtually no one makes use of. That's the one this website claims to supports. Others methods are certificates issued by The Ministry of Treasury among others, downloadable after in-person identification, so used by far more people than the former, but, then again, complicated to use on mobile devices, and lastly specialized official TOTP apps which issue temporary codes for an authentication service that government web pages plug into. The latter, not supported by this webpage, is, I assume, by far the one used most commonly.
Quothling 2y ago
I know this is a little unrelated, but I was really disappointed to find that I couldn't use my Danish national digital ID (mitID) to sign this.
- Fethbita 2y ago
  It is because mitID is not a notified eID scheme in the EU. See https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f1437a21-de4e-11ed-a05c-01aa75ed71a1 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f14...
petterroea 2y ago
This is a great excuse to also ensure the legality of third party reverse-engineering as a legitimate and reasonable reaction to the unavailability of official support. I believe EU law already to a certain degree supports this. Just look at the situation Fisker Ocean Car owners are in at the moment - the company has gone bankrupt, and their fate is in the hands of whoever buys the assets. eSIMs may not be paid for, and there is no guarantee there will be an online service for the cars to phone home to in the future. Some features - like the sunroof - won't work without it.
- graeber_28927 2y ago
  The sunroof needs to phone home to work?
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    https://insideevs.com/news/725463/fisker-ocean-owners-bankruptcy-support/ https://insideevs.com/news/725463/fisker-ocean-owners-bankru... Apparently, isn't the future great?
    - robin_reala 2y ago
      But… what happens if you drive out of coverage? Someone must have said that at some point during the development?
      - usrnm 2y ago
        "Good enough for the MVP"
      - Sharlin 2y ago
        Probably was admonished for asking inconvenient questions.
      - moogly 2y ago
        Luckily it doesn't really matter. At that size, it's at most a 400 W panel, so the energy it produces is rather negligible. It was always a "just because we can" feature.
Yeul 2y ago
As I understand it copyright on a videogame is 50 years but the vast majority of games- or all entertainment really- stops making money after a few years. It gets worse if your game has licensed music in it! I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. Publishers just aren't going to spend a dime if it doesn't make a buck.
- worble 2y ago
  > I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. The problem is that piracy doesn't help for always online "games as a service" games where the game is killed after the server has shut down. You can't pirate the server because it was never available, and outside of being lucky enough that a few hackers dedicate a lot of spare time to reverse engineering it, that game is gone forever. The point of this initiative is to ensure that game companies have a legal obligation that at the point of shutting down game servers they must either release the server software, patch the game to work offline, or do whatever else to ensure that the game continues to function. It's worth noting that this would only count for games sold as goods i.e you paid a fixed fee at the time of sale with the expectation of owning a product indefinitely. Games with explicit subscriptions such as MMO's would not be subject to this since there was never an expectation of access to the product continuing after the subscription expired.
  - Sakos 2y ago
    There is a historical and cultural loss involved when online only games are shutdown. This isn't simply a problem of "oh there was never an expectation of eternal access". It's a problem of us losing historical artifacts because of financial incentives.
    - mapcars 2y ago
      > oh there was never an expectation of eternal access I would argue there kind of is such an expectation. Unless obviously stated in the game description before payment I would expect it to function similar to other games I purchased. And I can still play the offline games from early 2000s without any issues. I'm saying that because if an online game would be sold with a banner like "we plan to support this game for next 3 years but it might shutdown any time after that" this would absolutely affect my decision to purchase it or to purchase microtransactions inside the game.
voidUpdate 2y ago
sad english noises
irusensei 2y ago
Releasing source code or protocol specs for the server side software after the live service is put down would be a good PR bonus for any game corporation. Of course there might be third party IP involved but just publishing a document stating what the server should do is probably good enough to get some good guy points. Besides it might keep the game alive and even generate some residual revenue even though you aren't spending a dime with server infrastructure.
maccard 2y ago
Why does this only apply to video games? Why doesn't this apply to apps in general? I don't want to suggest that I'm in favour of sunsetting every game once a publisher or developer is done with it, but there's got to be a middle ground between "you must ensure that your game can have all online components replaced" and what we have right now. And I think the sheer amount of work involved in the former for every game combined with perverse incentives from a very small subset of users that cause a disproportionate amount of hassle makes this not a good idea. It's a great example of a change that greatly favours existing companies who could meet the legislation, and will negatively effect smaller games and studios.
- exe34 2y ago
  release the source and people will maintain it for you for free. you can't say it's not profitable anymore to keep maintaining something that people paid for and at the same time say it'd hurt your profit if you release it.
  - maccard 2y ago
    Again, why is this just for games? Why are Figma allowed to do this, but EA aren't?
    - NekkoDroid 2y ago
      This is intentionally kept to only games as expanding the scope would include software by a lot of big name businesses which would then try everything in their power to stop this from passing. If it's only limited to games it has less companies trying to shut this down and would set a precidence that this can be expanded or just straight up applied to other types of software.
    - exe34 2y ago
      you got to start somewhere. plus I don't actually use any proprietary software outside of Nvidia' drivers and cuda (and binary blobs in my phone and raspberry pi, and the minix in my cpus and a bunch of stuff I can't remember), so I don't know much about that.
jagermo 2y ago
Signed. I think this is an important initiative and could either get publishers to support the games longer or release the server-side parts, so that fans can keep them going. Just look at Freelancer, still going strong after 21 years thanks to fans.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tokai 2y ago
I rarely think the market is the answer to anything. But this is one of the times were letting the market solve the problem it the actual fix. In the end nothing of value is lost when the Nth ubisoft project is taken offline. And if people keep buying them it is what it is. Triple A slob are not competing actual good games out of the market.
- sbergot 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tokai 2y ago
    [flagged]
- NekkoDroid 2y ago
  When you stop thinking about games as just entertainment but also as an art form you realize that a lot of art has already been lost to time. It's shit to regret down the line when you could have just prevented the loss of art at an earlier point in time. As much as I don't play a lot of AAA games due to how they either play or monetize, it is important to me to preserve them for future times considering I still play a lot of older games and even some games from before I was born.
  - tokai 2y ago
    Not all art needs to be preserved. Everything will be lost eventually, and efforts should be withheld for the worthwhile. People that don't work with preservation usually have a kneejerk feeling that we have to save everything for all time, but it is not feasable nor is it commendable.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      If I buy something I should have the choice whether I want to preserve it or not. There are people that collect bread tabs, I toss them but I was still enriched learning from those that do.
worble 2y ago
For extra context, you can watch Ross Scott's videos about his campaign to stop games being killed. Original video with all the different avenues he's trying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE The one specifically about this initiative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkMe9MxxZiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkMe9MxxZiI He's done smaller update videos on how it's been progressing on his channel if you want additional info.
cchi_co 2y ago
Would it be challenging for small developers financially to design their games to meet these requirements? And for multiplayer online games to live without publisher support... Yet the proposal is a strong step towards protecting!
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  A source code dump would likely be 'reasonable' and not cost anything.
  - RHSeeger 2y ago
    It's not really as simple as that, though. What if your server code uses paid, 3rd party libraries?
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      Aren't these usually source/blob available but require a license to include in a product?
    - Nullabillity 2y ago
      Too bad, should have thought of that before taking on the dependency?
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        That's not how indies work. By using an engine like Unreal or Unity, you take on dozens of third party dependencies on top of whatever Epic's licenses are.
        Nullabillity 2y ago
        And Epic would have to sort that out unless they want to see their sales drop to 0 overnight…?
    - 2y ago
andres_diaz 2y ago
I have a resident permit in an EU country, I can't vote because I'm not a national. Damn it.
- account42 2y ago
  Okay? That is generally the difference between a resident and a citizen in a democracy - a citizen gets to have a say in how the country is run, a mere resident does not.
pjmlp 2y ago
Signed as well.
netcan 2y ago
Imo... even if they win this, they still lose. Requiring companies to do things they don't want to do... has limits. It's hard to prevent them from doing a crap job. The actual "solution" is radically reducing copyright duration. Most revenue is generated during the first N years.
- sebstefan 2y ago
  >Requiring companies to do things they don't want to do... has limits. It's hard to prevent them from doing a crap job. Not sure about that. It seems like Apple is having a pretty hard time skirting around the gatekeeper legislation right now, and I've asked for a copy of my data to a dozen different companies and all of them complied very closely to what gdpr is requiring.
- extraduder_ire 2y ago
  How is shorter copyright going to help with games being built with remote kill-switches? The server-side component isn't a thing you even posses. AIUI, reverse engineering or releasing patches to fix such games is already legal in the EU.
- account42 2y ago
  We should do both - reduce copyright duration to the absolute minimum required for it's goal (to encourage creation of useful science and art, and yes zero might be the optimal term here) while also making sure that benefiting from copyright means the author/company has to ensure that the creation is available to the public after the copyright period. Both things are needed for the copyright deal to be fair to the greater public.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I agree, but nit: >Most revenue is generated during the first N years. With the shift to GaaS models this is becoming less true. once you get a hit, you will easily have a steady income stream for 5,10+ years. WOW is well over 20 at this point.
dalmo3 2y ago
> Require video games sold Wouldn't this just incentivise companies to move to a F2P and/or subscription model? There's no expectation that, just because I've downloaded the client, I should be able to use a VPN service after the servers are discontinued. Or use AutoCAD after my licence has expired. You don't need to leave the gaming realm to imagine the unintended consequences of this petition - just look at the hellscape that is mobile gaming.
- Karliss 2y ago
  If some companies explicitly switched to subscription model that would also be an improvement. With proper subscriptions the company at least needs to clearly specify how long they will provide their service in exchange for your money, and there are laws for dealing with situations when they take money for x months but fail to deliver it. With many games you are currently paying money for unknown period of time. Maybe you will get 5 year, maybe 1 year, maybe 1 month or even just 3 days. It's not that much of exaggeration, there have been examples of companies continuing to sell a game without any warning that they will kill the servers making the product useless in a few months. Any fair trade whether it's a purchase, subscription or rental needs to clearly state what exactly and how much of it each party will get from the deal.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  well, we can ban subscription models too ;-)
- teroshan 2y ago
  As I understand, this would also apply to e.g. micro-transactions/cosmetics which would be categorized as 'possessions' if I follow the wording in this proposal. So this would include F2P games, requiring them to provide a way to enjoy those cosmetics. As for subscription-based games, Ross Scott put them in a separate category in a previous video of his [1], as you willingly pay for access to a service which has a known end date (end of the month). Although with the micro-transactions angle in mind, I'm not sure how this changes things. [1]: "Games as a service" is fraud, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw
- 2y ago
scanny 2y ago
This is a great initiative from Ross, fingers crossed it picks up momentum.
t0bia_s 2y ago
Another (beside DRM policy) reason, to buy games exclusively on GoG. I would never pay for game that need third party launcher for running it and keep updated. For same reason I'm unable to play (and pay for) online games because I don't have control over saved progression and future development of the game.
- account42 2y ago
  You probably already know this but GOG does sell games with online components, including ones tied to a license key (=DRM). So simply only buying from GOG is not enough to escape this madness.
  - t0bia_s 2y ago
    Which are not necessary to use for running single player game. I firewall all games and they run just fine, even for LAN coop.
    - thesnide 2y ago
      So do I. I simply boycott those that need an online server for multiplayer, unless an opensource version exists. LAN or nobuy. Sadely, it seems that simple LAN multiplayer is not fashionable anymore... Yet, I recently restarted some LAN parties and was amazing, even for youngs, when they experience the screams of other players...
      - t0bia_s 2y ago
        Yes, occasionally we do LAN parties as well. We try to beat a Titan Quest, because they add new datadiscs here and there so we did not finish it yet. Whats your choice for LAN games?
        thesnide 2y ago
        Mostly RTS oldies that I try to show the youngs. New ones aren't very LAN friendly. Some couch multiplayer also. But console based...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related from yesterday: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41121570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41121570
dguest 2y ago
I think people might miss how rules like this can be nice if you are a game developer. As someone who writes software, I'm honestly happy when someone is requiring that the source be open, that my results be reproducible, that my changes are reviewed, etc. Without that my boss is just asking why I waste my time on things with no profit margin but which are quite satisfying if you take any pride in your work. In a lot of cases, just requiring that something work without phoning home will cost developers almost nothing and insulate them from silly cost shaving from the higher ups.
XoXo2y0 2y ago
I believe the source files for the game, without specific branding and stuff, should be released so another company can essentially make the game if they want to. As for forcing companies to lose money with unprofitable games or renew expensive licensing deals, it doesn't seem like a great idea to me. Also, perhaps based on the time spent in the game, players should receive some kind of compensation such as credits for their next purchase.

329 points by edd25 2y ago

Games aren't really things you can keep forever anymore. They're events, like concerts. Or like movies were before that piracy device, the VCR, was ruled legal in American courts -- something industry moguls still fulminate about (Jack Valenti saw it as the Boston Strangler for his industry until he died). Get used to this new reality. Enjoy your gaming experiences when you have them.

surgical_fire 2y ago
> Get used to this new reality. Enjoy your gaming experiences when you have them. Such a bizarre take, when most games I play are from a decade ago or more. I have very little interest in current gaming trends.
Aachen 2y ago
Games are as much like concerts as books are like a person reading it out live

yawnbox 2y ago

Please sign if you are an EU citizen. Please share with your EU citizen friends.

rob74 2y ago
Or rather, take a look at this page: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/find-initiative_en?CATEGORY%5B0%5D=any&STATUS%5B0%5D=ONGOING&SECTION=ALL https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/find-initiative_en?CAT... and consider signing all initiatives that you identify with. I know that preventing their favorite game(s) from being killed off is very important to some people, but in the grand scheme of things, there may be more important causes to support...
- account42 2y ago
  There can always be more important issues but I would not frame this as being just about silly games either. It's not like other tools have been moving to being more and more dependent on online services and even if the initial change this petition achieves (if it does succeed, which is a slim chance) apply to just games this still provides a precedent for widening the legislation to other software in the future.
kwhitefoot 2y ago
I would have but Brexit put paid to that. :-(

surfingdino 2y ago

> Not interfere with any business practices while a game is still being supported. Needs better explanation.

eesmith 2y ago
Then read the petition itself or the FAQ?
vasco 2y ago
They just mean the companies can still do whatever they want while the game is being supported. It's an extremely poor way of writing that they are only interested in modifying the rules for end-of-life of games instead of regulate existing playable games. The whole thing is poorly written, but the idea is reasonable.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Define "supported"... This seems like a good goal but I'm not sure they've fully thought it through.
  - NekkoDroid 2y ago
    For DRM protected games that "phone home" for verification its when they are unable to reach "home" anymore (not just temporary outage). For online game its when the official servers are shut down. Are there any other cases where this initiative would apply that I didn't mention? https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en# https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/20... > This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. > Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.
    - 2y ago

keybored 2y ago

[flagged]

withinboredom 2y ago
I thought it was about squid game.
- ogogmad 2y ago
  this would be so much easier in German
  - oblio 2y ago
    It would probably be much easier in a bunch of other languages (Romanian below): Opriți distrugerea jocurilor. versus, if you want to use the most similar words, for maximum confusion: Opriți jocurile distructive. as you see, they're still super visually distinct, despite using the most similar words possible.

oleganza 2y ago

People want to be hooked up on subscription because schools and parents do not preach long-term values (well, maybe only orthodox religious minorities do). We are in this situation because of a shrinking time horizon for the modern society (aka "high time preference"). People want instant gratification, buy-now-pay-later, pay attention to the packaging, not content. Most citizens are conditioned to live here and now. Even climate change activists frame the issue (that is supposed to be about long-term thinking) on a very short scale: do something hysterical right now, otherwise the world's gonna end tomorrow.

Dban1 2y ago
interesting seeing these terms here. I came from reading The Bitcoin Standard book
- sph 2y ago
  The best part about this book is the first half, about the history of currency, economy and indeed, the concept of time preference. How inflationary or deflationary economies affect human psychology and spending patterns. I recommend it even if one is not really interested in cryptocurrencies. Or watch the author's (Saifedean Ammous) interview on Lex Friedman if you prefer.
  - irusensei 2y ago
    Good read but Saifedean is very opinionated and will be probably off putting to the average orange Redditor. I for one can't stand him for more than a few minutes. You always know he will start blabbering about carnivore diets within 5 minutes.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      You don't have to put cranks in your informational diet.
    - sph 2y ago
      I never heard him talk about carnivore, but then again I'm pro carnivore so you might conclude my opinion is worthless as well. The average orange Redditor likes an echo chamber, so one should not be concerned about their opinion. The pro-Bitcoin will adore him, the anti-Bitcoin will hate him, a priori and nothing will change their mind.

stavros 2y ago

I've signed this, and, as an aside, I was extremely impressed that the Europa.eu site localized the CAPTCHA to the Greek alphabet. That's some commitment to accessibility by the general public.

heckerhut 2y ago
Indeed that’s pretty cool.
gschizas 2y ago
True, never seen a CAPTCHA with Greek letters before! I refreshed it to make sure, I was so confused! Good job!
MrGilbert 2y ago
I'm also impressed. I used the "eID" functionality, and it just worked flawlessly. I signed it in under a minute.
- diggan 2y ago
  I'm not as impressed, tried to use my Spanish digital certificate and got "the submitted certificate is not an electronic DNI".
  - oblio 2y ago
    Is it this thing: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f1437a21-de4e-11ed-a05c-01aa75ed71a1 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f14... (scroll down to Spain)?
    - elmimmo 2y ago
      No, it is not. In Spain, national and regional administrations support different methods for digital identification by their citizens. One is the certificate embedded into the chip in the national id card, arguably in everybody’s pocket, but, effectively so cumbersome to extract that virtually no one makes use of. That's the one this website claims to supports. Others methods are certificates issued by The Ministry of Treasury among others, downloadable after in-person identification, so used by far more people than the former, but, then again, complicated to use on mobile devices, and lastly specialized official TOTP apps which issue temporary codes for an authentication service that government web pages plug into. The latter, not supported by this webpage, is, I assume, by far the one used most commonly.

Quothling 2y ago

I know this is a little unrelated, but I was really disappointed to find that I couldn't use my Danish national digital ID (mitID) to sign this.

Fethbita 2y ago
It is because mitID is not a notified eID scheme in the EU. See https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f1437a21-de4e-11ed-a05c-01aa75ed71a1 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f14...

petterroea 2y ago

This is a great excuse to also ensure the legality of third party reverse-engineering as a legitimate and reasonable reaction to the unavailability of official support. I believe EU law already to a certain degree supports this. Just look at the situation Fisker Ocean Car owners are in at the moment - the company has gone bankrupt, and their fate is in the hands of whoever buys the assets. eSIMs may not be paid for, and there is no guarantee there will be an online service for the cars to phone home to in the future. Some features - like the sunroof - won't work without it.

graeber_28927 2y ago
The sunroof needs to phone home to work?
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  https://insideevs.com/news/725463/fisker-ocean-owners-bankruptcy-support/ https://insideevs.com/news/725463/fisker-ocean-owners-bankru... Apparently, isn't the future great?
  - robin_reala 2y ago
    But… what happens if you drive out of coverage? Someone must have said that at some point during the development?
    - usrnm 2y ago
      "Good enough for the MVP"
    - Sharlin 2y ago
      Probably was admonished for asking inconvenient questions.
    - moogly 2y ago
      Luckily it doesn't really matter. At that size, it's at most a 400 W panel, so the energy it produces is rather negligible. It was always a "just because we can" feature.

Yeul 2y ago

As I understand it copyright on a videogame is 50 years but the vast majority of games- or all entertainment really- stops making money after a few years. It gets worse if your game has licensed music in it! I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. Publishers just aren't going to spend a dime if it doesn't make a buck.

worble 2y ago
> I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. The problem is that piracy doesn't help for always online "games as a service" games where the game is killed after the server has shut down. You can't pirate the server because it was never available, and outside of being lucky enough that a few hackers dedicate a lot of spare time to reverse engineering it, that game is gone forever. The point of this initiative is to ensure that game companies have a legal obligation that at the point of shutting down game servers they must either release the server software, patch the game to work offline, or do whatever else to ensure that the game continues to function. It's worth noting that this would only count for games sold as goods i.e you paid a fixed fee at the time of sale with the expectation of owning a product indefinitely. Games with explicit subscriptions such as MMO's would not be subject to this since there was never an expectation of access to the product continuing after the subscription expired.
- Sakos 2y ago
  There is a historical and cultural loss involved when online only games are shutdown. This isn't simply a problem of "oh there was never an expectation of eternal access". It's a problem of us losing historical artifacts because of financial incentives.
  - mapcars 2y ago
    > oh there was never an expectation of eternal access I would argue there kind of is such an expectation. Unless obviously stated in the game description before payment I would expect it to function similar to other games I purchased. And I can still play the offline games from early 2000s without any issues. I'm saying that because if an online game would be sold with a banner like "we plan to support this game for next 3 years but it might shutdown any time after that" this would absolutely affect my decision to purchase it or to purchase microtransactions inside the game.

voidUpdate 2y ago

sad english noises

irusensei 2y ago

Releasing source code or protocol specs for the server side software after the live service is put down would be a good PR bonus for any game corporation. Of course there might be third party IP involved but just publishing a document stating what the server should do is probably good enough to get some good guy points. Besides it might keep the game alive and even generate some residual revenue even though you aren't spending a dime with server infrastructure.

maccard 2y ago

Why does this only apply to video games? Why doesn't this apply to apps in general? I don't want to suggest that I'm in favour of sunsetting every game once a publisher or developer is done with it, but there's got to be a middle ground between "you must ensure that your game can have all online components replaced" and what we have right now. And I think the sheer amount of work involved in the former for every game combined with perverse incentives from a very small subset of users that cause a disproportionate amount of hassle makes this not a good idea. It's a great example of a change that greatly favours existing companies who could meet the legislation, and will negatively effect smaller games and studios.

exe34 2y ago
release the source and people will maintain it for you for free. you can't say it's not profitable anymore to keep maintaining something that people paid for and at the same time say it'd hurt your profit if you release it.
- maccard 2y ago
  Again, why is this just for games? Why are Figma allowed to do this, but EA aren't?
  - NekkoDroid 2y ago
    This is intentionally kept to only games as expanding the scope would include software by a lot of big name businesses which would then try everything in their power to stop this from passing. If it's only limited to games it has less companies trying to shut this down and would set a precidence that this can be expanded or just straight up applied to other types of software.
  - exe34 2y ago
    you got to start somewhere. plus I don't actually use any proprietary software outside of Nvidia' drivers and cuda (and binary blobs in my phone and raspberry pi, and the minix in my cpus and a bunch of stuff I can't remember), so I don't know much about that.

jagermo 2y ago

Signed. I think this is an important initiative and could either get publishers to support the games longer or release the server-side parts, so that fans can keep them going. Just look at Freelancer, still going strong after 21 years thanks to fans.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tokai 2y ago

I rarely think the market is the answer to anything. But this is one of the times were letting the market solve the problem it the actual fix. In the end nothing of value is lost when the Nth ubisoft project is taken offline. And if people keep buying them it is what it is. Triple A slob are not competing actual good games out of the market.

sbergot 2y ago
[flagged]
- tokai 2y ago
  [flagged]
NekkoDroid 2y ago
When you stop thinking about games as just entertainment but also as an art form you realize that a lot of art has already been lost to time. It's shit to regret down the line when you could have just prevented the loss of art at an earlier point in time. As much as I don't play a lot of AAA games due to how they either play or monetize, it is important to me to preserve them for future times considering I still play a lot of older games and even some games from before I was born.
- tokai 2y ago
  Not all art needs to be preserved. Everything will be lost eventually, and efforts should be withheld for the worthwhile. People that don't work with preservation usually have a kneejerk feeling that we have to save everything for all time, but it is not feasable nor is it commendable.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    If I buy something I should have the choice whether I want to preserve it or not. There are people that collect bread tabs, I toss them but I was still enriched learning from those that do.

worble 2y ago

For extra context, you can watch Ross Scott's videos about his campaign to stop games being killed. Original video with all the different avenues he's trying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE The one specifically about this initiative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkMe9MxxZiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkMe9MxxZiI He's done smaller update videos on how it's been progressing on his channel if you want additional info.

cchi_co 2y ago

Would it be challenging for small developers financially to design their games to meet these requirements? And for multiplayer online games to live without publisher support... Yet the proposal is a strong step towards protecting!

throwaway48476 2y ago
A source code dump would likely be 'reasonable' and not cost anything.
- RHSeeger 2y ago
  It's not really as simple as that, though. What if your server code uses paid, 3rd party libraries?
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Aren't these usually source/blob available but require a license to include in a product?
  - Nullabillity 2y ago
    Too bad, should have thought of that before taking on the dependency?
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      That's not how indies work. By using an engine like Unreal or Unity, you take on dozens of third party dependencies on top of whatever Epic's licenses are.
      - Nullabillity 2y ago
        And Epic would have to sort that out unless they want to see their sales drop to 0 overnight…?
  - 2y ago

andres_diaz 2y ago

I have a resident permit in an EU country, I can't vote because I'm not a national. Damn it.

account42 2y ago
Okay? That is generally the difference between a resident and a citizen in a democracy - a citizen gets to have a say in how the country is run, a mere resident does not.

pjmlp 2y ago

Signed as well.

netcan 2y ago

Imo... even if they win this, they still lose. Requiring companies to do things they don't want to do... has limits. It's hard to prevent them from doing a crap job. The actual "solution" is radically reducing copyright duration. Most revenue is generated during the first N years.

sebstefan 2y ago
>Requiring companies to do things they don't want to do... has limits. It's hard to prevent them from doing a crap job. Not sure about that. It seems like Apple is having a pretty hard time skirting around the gatekeeper legislation right now, and I've asked for a copy of my data to a dozen different companies and all of them complied very closely to what gdpr is requiring.
extraduder_ire 2y ago
How is shorter copyright going to help with games being built with remote kill-switches? The server-side component isn't a thing you even posses. AIUI, reverse engineering or releasing patches to fix such games is already legal in the EU.
account42 2y ago
We should do both - reduce copyright duration to the absolute minimum required for it's goal (to encourage creation of useful science and art, and yes zero might be the optimal term here) while also making sure that benefiting from copyright means the author/company has to ensure that the creation is available to the public after the copyright period. Both things are needed for the copyright deal to be fair to the greater public.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
I agree, but nit: >Most revenue is generated during the first N years. With the shift to GaaS models this is becoming less true. once you get a hit, you will easily have a steady income stream for 5,10+ years. WOW is well over 20 at this point.

dalmo3 2y ago

> Require video games sold Wouldn't this just incentivise companies to move to a F2P and/or subscription model? There's no expectation that, just because I've downloaded the client, I should be able to use a VPN service after the servers are discontinued. Or use AutoCAD after my licence has expired. You don't need to leave the gaming realm to imagine the unintended consequences of this petition - just look at the hellscape that is mobile gaming.

Karliss 2y ago
If some companies explicitly switched to subscription model that would also be an improvement. With proper subscriptions the company at least needs to clearly specify how long they will provide their service in exchange for your money, and there are laws for dealing with situations when they take money for x months but fail to deliver it. With many games you are currently paying money for unknown period of time. Maybe you will get 5 year, maybe 1 year, maybe 1 month or even just 3 days. It's not that much of exaggeration, there have been examples of companies continuing to sell a game without any warning that they will kill the servers making the product useless in a few months. Any fair trade whether it's a purchase, subscription or rental needs to clearly state what exactly and how much of it each party will get from the deal.
prmoustache 2y ago
well, we can ban subscription models too ;-)
teroshan 2y ago
As I understand, this would also apply to e.g. micro-transactions/cosmetics which would be categorized as 'possessions' if I follow the wording in this proposal. So this would include F2P games, requiring them to provide a way to enjoy those cosmetics. As for subscription-based games, Ross Scott put them in a separate category in a previous video of his [1], as you willingly pay for access to a service which has a known end date (end of the month). Although with the micro-transactions angle in mind, I'm not sure how this changes things. [1]: "Games as a service" is fraud, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw
2y ago

scanny 2y ago

This is a great initiative from Ross, fingers crossed it picks up momentum.

t0bia_s 2y ago

Another (beside DRM policy) reason, to buy games exclusively on GoG. I would never pay for game that need third party launcher for running it and keep updated. For same reason I'm unable to play (and pay for) online games because I don't have control over saved progression and future development of the game.

account42 2y ago
You probably already know this but GOG does sell games with online components, including ones tied to a license key (=DRM). So simply only buying from GOG is not enough to escape this madness.
- t0bia_s 2y ago
  Which are not necessary to use for running single player game. I firewall all games and they run just fine, even for LAN coop.
  - thesnide 2y ago
    So do I. I simply boycott those that need an online server for multiplayer, unless an opensource version exists. LAN or nobuy. Sadely, it seems that simple LAN multiplayer is not fashionable anymore... Yet, I recently restarted some LAN parties and was amazing, even for youngs, when they experience the screams of other players...
    - t0bia_s 2y ago
      Yes, occasionally we do LAN parties as well. We try to beat a Titan Quest, because they add new datadiscs here and there so we did not finish it yet. Whats your choice for LAN games?
      - thesnide 2y ago
        Mostly RTS oldies that I try to show the youngs. New ones aren't very LAN friendly. Some couch multiplayer also. But console based...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related from yesterday: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41121570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41121570

dguest 2y ago

I think people might miss how rules like this can be nice if you are a game developer. As someone who writes software, I'm honestly happy when someone is requiring that the source be open, that my results be reproducible, that my changes are reviewed, etc. Without that my boss is just asking why I waste my time on things with no profit margin but which are quite satisfying if you take any pride in your work. In a lot of cases, just requiring that something work without phoning home will cost developers almost nothing and insulate them from silly cost shaving from the higher ups.

XoXo2y0 2y ago

I believe the source files for the game, without specific branding and stuff, should be released so another company can essentially make the game if they want to. As for forcing companies to lose money with unprofitable games or renew expensive licensing deals, it doesn't seem like a great idea to me. Also, perhaps based on the time spent in the game, players should receive some kind of compensation such as credits for their next purchase.