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To all the comments who expressed doubts on how this would work in practice: please read the FAQ, it answers a lot of questions and gives concrete examples. ht

To all the comments who expressed doubts on how this would work in practice: please read the FAQ, it answers a lot of questions and gives concrete examples. https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq

acdha 2y ago
Looking at the most relevant questions of online games, I notice few answers and no concrete examples - it’s just “not at all” followed by what sounds like a teenager student trying to bluff their way through an assignment they didn’t read. The online gaming and licensing “answers” conspicuously read like they did not involve anyone with experience actually building or operating software applications. The critical flaw in this proposal is the attempt not to “interfere with any business practices while a game is still being supported”. I have some professional involvement in software preservation and would love to see more things preserved, but that’s going to require changes to how games are developed and sunsetted. As a simple example, the incorrect “not at all” assertion at the beginning of the multiplayer answer is directly contradicted by the acknowledgement buried in the middle admitting that this would require the game to be designed for preservation from the beginning. That’s actually correct because it’s rare for someone to develop a game from scratch, which involves reusing tools and content which are not licensed under the same terms as the original game. You could, and arguably should, require games to be developed in a more sustainable manner avoiding dependencies which can’t be easily removed or replaced at end of life but that absolutely is a change in business practice. Similarly, game developers license engines, content, etc. under terms which have limits or activation fees and that would need some sort of interference in existing business practice to change – again, arguably a good thing to do but it needs to be upfront about it similar to how we can’t just say people should stop using single-use plastic packaging without doing something about the economic factors which make it widespread. This is especially important when you remember that preservation is most useful when it’s easily accessible: if your game is preserved but that requires running a couple of nested emulators and some patches downloaded from one dude in Moldova, very few people are actually going to do so. What you really want is to keep the game buildable so it can run on normal operating systems and bugs & quality of life improvements can be made. For example, many multiplayer games in the past only supported IPv4 but there are a growing number of people in the world who only have IPv6 so it’d be good for long-term preservation to be able to add support but maintaining a build tool chain would really hammer the licensing issues.
- chias 2y ago
  Not to mention: 1. World of Warcraft in 2004 is very different from World of Warcraft in 2024. Do future versions "destroy" previous ones? How do you deal with this? 2. What even is the definition of a "video game"? Is Neopets a video game? Is Twitter?
  - acdha 2y ago
    I’d like a proposal which simply starts by saying that they have to use terms like “rent” or “subscribe” for anything which uses DRM or company servers, and expand from there since it definitely gets thorny fast on both fronts. (What do you do with a Facebook game when they break an API a decade later?) For things like Warcraft, I think that absolutely should be preserved for historians and other researchers if nothing else but it’s hard to imagine that being possible without some kind of active cooperation. I wonder whether there’d be an angle where you could get some kind of tax credit by depositing playable offline copies with a national library but simply the storage costs would be a burden there.
    - account42 2y ago
      > I wonder whether there’d be an angle where you could get some kind of tax credit by depositing playable offline copies with a national library but simply the storage costs would be a burden there. It should simply be a requirement for copyright protection in the first place - if it doesn't actually end up in the commons after the copyright term the deal makes no sense for society overall.
  - henriquecm8 2y ago
    > 1. World of Warcraft in 2004 is very different from World of Warcraft in 2024. Do future versions "destroy" previous ones? How do you deal with this? I think it's more about the right of the consumer to be able to play what they paid for than keep the original version intact.
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
beltsazar 2y ago
> The costs associated with implementing this requirement can be very small, if not trivial. This is too naive. While it may be the case for single player games that use online connection only as a DRM mechanism (Hitman 3, Gran Turismo 7), for some games it's not trivial at all. For example, The Division 2 servers do not only act as a "coordinator" between players like CS:GO servers, but also run logics for NPCs and environments. The server and the client are too tightly coupled.
- safety1st 2y ago
  I'd rather see some sort of provision where if the company disables the product they sold us, they're required to subsequently license the source code to us for personal use. First off, hobbyists have an amazing track record reverse engineering many online games and creating third party servers and mods for them, so not only does this solve the problem but the amount of creativity that would be unlocked would be incredible. Second, you better believe many many publishers will flip the fuck out if they're staring this possibility in the face, and as a result they will work way harder to support their games in the future.
- rbits 2y ago
  Right, but how hard would it be to make the server self-hostable? I feel like as long as the server address wasn't hardcoded into the game, it wouldn't be too hard
  - Chilinot 2y ago
    That depends entirely on the infrastructure necessary for hosting the multiplayer servers. Such as, does it require a database server for persistent storage of player information? It might be built for a k8s based environment. Split into many smaller services that all interact using a service mesh or message queue. You cant just take these things, press a button, and voila, a small bundled server platform anyone can run at home. The modern day software development experience is a massive and complex beast.
    - Wool2662 2y ago
xorcist 2y ago
That page is hard to understand. It is presented in my own language, but gives the impression of being translated by a drunk person with a dictionary, with plenty pages torn out. While I can get a general understanding of the points being raised by translating key words back to English and think about the context it is being used in, I'm not sure it's worth the bother. Here's another petition: If you want to be taken seriously, do not use translation tools. edit: Found the language dropdown in the top right corner. It was obscured by my web browser. If you have trouble understanding the text, select English there. It is a coherent text and therefore likely the intended language. ("Take action", I could never have guessed that one, no one was supposed to steal anything.)
- Flozzin 2y ago
  It's very wordy. I get the feeling ChatGPT wrote it. AI has the tendency to maximize word usage, like it's a highschooler trying to hit the 'word count minimum' in their paper.
- tannhaeuser 2y ago
  Agreed. Moreover, this appears to focus entirely on a consumerist perspective ie. the problem of online-activated games that get switched off after a couple years of sales which seems relevant to single-player games that don't need servers, but not MMORPGs/MMOx I guess, but the papmphlet wouldn't say. What's with web games? What about the inherent conflict of interest of selling vs preservation/piracy? What about the monopolistic tendencies of platforms such as Steam/consoles and their influence on game sujets (prude no-gore PC all-ages HD remakes) and that of payment providers?
- _chris_g 2y ago
  Hey, could you tell me which language do you mean in particular?
  - xorcist 2y ago
    Does it matter? It's the same with every language, expect for the three or four major languages it handles best. Automated translation is derogatory to the audience. It's an anti-feature. Just remove it. The target users will read the web page just like they read any other web page, in the language it is written. Should they find their own language skills lacking, they will click the translate button in their web browser. Just like they do on any other web page.
maccard 2y ago
Echoing what the others said, these arguments don't hold water. It ignores all of the practicalities of what would actually be involved in doing this, the impacts on licensing, business models, security (and saying "there's no security risk" doesn't mean there's no security risk - there's a reason we don't distribute game server binaries for many games), and lastly the sheer development effort involved.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

acdha 2y ago

Looking at the most relevant questions of online games, I notice few answers and no concrete examples - it’s just “not at all” followed by what sounds like a teenager student trying to bluff their way through an assignment they didn’t read. The online gaming and licensing “answers” conspicuously read like they did not involve anyone with experience actually building or operating software applications. The critical flaw in this proposal is the attempt not to “interfere with any business practices while a game is still being supported”. I have some professional involvement in software preservation and would love to see more things preserved, but that’s going to require changes to how games are developed and sunsetted. As a simple example, the incorrect “not at all” assertion at the beginning of the multiplayer answer is directly contradicted by the acknowledgement buried in the middle admitting that this would require the game to be designed for preservation from the beginning. That’s actually correct because it’s rare for someone to develop a game from scratch, which involves reusing tools and content which are not licensed under the same terms as the original game. You could, and arguably should, require games to be developed in a more sustainable manner avoiding dependencies which can’t be easily removed or replaced at end of life but that absolutely is a change in business practice. Similarly, game developers license engines, content, etc. under terms which have limits or activation fees and that would need some sort of interference in existing business practice to change – again, arguably a good thing to do but it needs to be upfront about it similar to how we can’t just say people should stop using single-use plastic packaging without doing something about the economic factors which make it widespread. This is especially important when you remember that preservation is most useful when it’s easily accessible: if your game is preserved but that requires running a couple of nested emulators and some patches downloaded from one dude in Moldova, very few people are actually going to do so. What you really want is to keep the game buildable so it can run on normal operating systems and bugs & quality of life improvements can be made. For example, many multiplayer games in the past only supported IPv4 but there are a growing number of people in the world who only have IPv6 so it’d be good for long-term preservation to be able to add support but maintaining a build tool chain would really hammer the licensing issues.

chias 2y ago
Not to mention: 1. World of Warcraft in 2004 is very different from World of Warcraft in 2024. Do future versions "destroy" previous ones? How do you deal with this? 2. What even is the definition of a "video game"? Is Neopets a video game? Is Twitter?
- acdha 2y ago
  I’d like a proposal which simply starts by saying that they have to use terms like “rent” or “subscribe” for anything which uses DRM or company servers, and expand from there since it definitely gets thorny fast on both fronts. (What do you do with a Facebook game when they break an API a decade later?) For things like Warcraft, I think that absolutely should be preserved for historians and other researchers if nothing else but it’s hard to imagine that being possible without some kind of active cooperation. I wonder whether there’d be an angle where you could get some kind of tax credit by depositing playable offline copies with a national library but simply the storage costs would be a burden there.
  - account42 2y ago
    > I wonder whether there’d be an angle where you could get some kind of tax credit by depositing playable offline copies with a national library but simply the storage costs would be a burden there. It should simply be a requirement for copyright protection in the first place - if it doesn't actually end up in the commons after the copyright term the deal makes no sense for society overall.
- henriquecm8 2y ago
  > 1. World of Warcraft in 2004 is very different from World of Warcraft in 2024. Do future versions "destroy" previous ones? How do you deal with this? I think it's more about the right of the consumer to be able to play what they paid for than keep the original version intact.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago

beltsazar 2y ago

> The costs associated with implementing this requirement can be very small, if not trivial. This is too naive. While it may be the case for single player games that use online connection only as a DRM mechanism (Hitman 3, Gran Turismo 7), for some games it's not trivial at all. For example, The Division 2 servers do not only act as a "coordinator" between players like CS:GO servers, but also run logics for NPCs and environments. The server and the client are too tightly coupled.

safety1st 2y ago
I'd rather see some sort of provision where if the company disables the product they sold us, they're required to subsequently license the source code to us for personal use. First off, hobbyists have an amazing track record reverse engineering many online games and creating third party servers and mods for them, so not only does this solve the problem but the amount of creativity that would be unlocked would be incredible. Second, you better believe many many publishers will flip the fuck out if they're staring this possibility in the face, and as a result they will work way harder to support their games in the future.
rbits 2y ago
Right, but how hard would it be to make the server self-hostable? I feel like as long as the server address wasn't hardcoded into the game, it wouldn't be too hard
- Chilinot 2y ago
  That depends entirely on the infrastructure necessary for hosting the multiplayer servers. Such as, does it require a database server for persistent storage of player information? It might be built for a k8s based environment. Split into many smaller services that all interact using a service mesh or message queue. You cant just take these things, press a button, and voila, a small bundled server platform anyone can run at home. The modern day software development experience is a massive and complex beast.
  - Wool2662 2y ago

xorcist 2y ago

That page is hard to understand. It is presented in my own language, but gives the impression of being translated by a drunk person with a dictionary, with plenty pages torn out. While I can get a general understanding of the points being raised by translating key words back to English and think about the context it is being used in, I'm not sure it's worth the bother. Here's another petition: If you want to be taken seriously, do not use translation tools. edit: Found the language dropdown in the top right corner. It was obscured by my web browser. If you have trouble understanding the text, select English there. It is a coherent text and therefore likely the intended language. ("Take action", I could never have guessed that one, no one was supposed to steal anything.)

Flozzin 2y ago
It's very wordy. I get the feeling ChatGPT wrote it. AI has the tendency to maximize word usage, like it's a highschooler trying to hit the 'word count minimum' in their paper.
tannhaeuser 2y ago
Agreed. Moreover, this appears to focus entirely on a consumerist perspective ie. the problem of online-activated games that get switched off after a couple years of sales which seems relevant to single-player games that don't need servers, but not MMORPGs/MMOx I guess, but the papmphlet wouldn't say. What's with web games? What about the inherent conflict of interest of selling vs preservation/piracy? What about the monopolistic tendencies of platforms such as Steam/consoles and their influence on game sujets (prude no-gore PC all-ages HD remakes) and that of payment providers?
_chris_g 2y ago
Hey, could you tell me which language do you mean in particular?
- xorcist 2y ago
  Does it matter? It's the same with every language, expect for the three or four major languages it handles best. Automated translation is derogatory to the audience. It's an anti-feature. Just remove it. The target users will read the web page just like they read any other web page, in the language it is written. Should they find their own language skills lacking, they will click the translate button in their web browser. Just like they do on any other web page.

maccard 2y ago

Echoing what the others said, these arguments don't hold water. It ignores all of the practicalities of what would actually be involved in doing this, the impacts on licensing, business models, security (and saying "there's no security risk" doesn't mean there's no security risk - there's a reason we don't distribute game server binaries for many games), and lastly the sheer development effort involved.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]