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The discussion around the EU's "Stop Killing Games" proposal is quite interesting and touches on broader issues of consumer "The 'Stop Killing Games' initiativ

by arizen 2y ago

The discussion around the EU's "Stop Killing Games" proposal is quite interesting and touches on broader issues of consumer "The 'Stop Killing Games' initiative highlights a fundamental tension between consumer rights and the current business models in the gaming industry. On one hand, the idea of preserving games for future access aligns with broader movements toward digital preservation, similar to efforts in other digital media industries like film and music. However, as some users have pointed out, implementing these requirements could significantly disrupt how games are developed, particularly when games rely on proprietary servers or content licensed under restrictive terms. A middle-ground approach might be to incentivize companies to create 'preservable' versions of their games, possibly through tax credits or other benefits for depositing source code or playable copies with national archives. This could foster a culture of preservation without forcing drastic changes to current business models. It's also worth considering how this policy could set a precedent for other digital services—shouldn't we be having similar conversations about software, apps, and even streaming content?

riskable 2y ago
> However, as some users have pointed out, implementing these requirements could significantly disrupt how games are developed, particularly when games rely on proprietary servers or content licensed under restrictive terms. "Yes." I believe is the universal answer here. Fill in your local custom version of, "I'm OK with that", "I'm failing to see the problem", etc.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  "Fully agree" It's as simple as "Ah, you plan to stop your proprietary server end-point? This enforces section #2 of the regulation, requiring you to provide the means for others to operate their own end-point and publish a transition-plan for affected customers" That's equally applicable to Games as well as any form of connected product.
krisoft 2y ago
> possibly through tax credits or other benefits for depositing source code or playable copies with national archives. How would that work in practice? You could play your game yesterday, but you can't play it tomorrow because the company shut off the servers. But fear not because your tax dollars paid for the executables to be deposited in an archive Ark of the Covenant style. That might be satisfying with an oil painting. But games are meant to be played with. Can one check it out and run it? Can one modify the game to keep it running on new hardware or operating system? Can one re-distribute those modifications to others? Can one pay for someone else to run the servers for them?
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  As much as I would like the outcome, I doubt that this is meaningful use of tax-money in general. I also wouldn't want taxes to be invested to preserve every oil-painting ever painted by someone, as it would inevitably create an industry that creates oil-paintings for the sole purpose of tax-benefits...
  - cryptonym 2y ago
    If we are going in the details, maybe tax credit should be over a small fraction of benefits for that game. You'd only get back a bit of what you paid.
    - rickdeckard 2y ago
      The problem is that you can barely reach consensus that tax-money is spent on elderly homes and child-care, as the a critical mass of your taxpayers are not yet old and don't have children. Once you try to establish that tax-payers money is being spent to preserve art, you inevitably cause a unsolvable political discussion on what art actually is. At best, the budget will be drained uncontrollably with the system being abused by players gaming the system, at worst the ruling political party will define what art is and only provide funding for the most boring forms of art. - To be a bit constructive: Instead of a dedicated credit/payout, it would make more sense to establish a mandate in a region (i.e. US, EU) that public funding or tax-credits for ANY company can only be made on the premise that the output created by the company becomes partially owned by the public (and the citizens of this region), which requires it to provide value even without the company's involvement. This would apply for any form of financial incentive given to company offices in a region, regardless whether it's hardware, software or services. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that ever being properly mandated/executed...
pmontra 2y ago
> particularly when games rely on proprietary servers or content licensed under restrictive terms. The software to run proprietary servers could be sold as part of the game. Content with too restrictive licenses won't be marketable anymore, that's a problem that will solve itself.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  Even more, for games it could create a market for a universal server-endpoint architecture: While the game is "live", the publisher operates his own servers with competitive f,eatures and performance, once he decides to stop this offer he needs to either open his whole proprietary server architecture or migrate his changes into an de-facto industry-standard architecture that provides such preservation to the market. In long-term, it could lead to the entire gaming-industry collaborating on an open-standard server-framework to save costs for such end-of-life compliance. A new game would have its disruptive online features developed on a fork of this standard architecture, with changes/additions being contributed back to it during the lifecycle, so when the game goes end-of-life all that is needed is to enable 3rd party servers...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gg2222 2y ago
> the idea of preserving games for future access aligns with broader movements toward digital preservation, similar to efforts in other digital media industries like film and music And from the FAQ: > If this practice is not stopped, it may be codified into law and spread to other products of more importance over time, such as agricultural equipment, educational products, medical devices, etc. So there is a notion of using games as a step to 'stop' companies from being able to discontinue services. If this passes for games, next would be software in general. Next thing you know if you develop and sell any software you will have to make sure it is usable forever. Any MacOS updates or Windows updates (or iOS/Android updates) breaking a software or app you once sold to a few people and discontinued? You will have to fix it until you die or face penalties. Do you have software with a cloud component sold under a lifetime license? Be prepared to maintain that service forever or release its complete source code if you don't. Additionally, you would need lifetime licenses for any critical proprietary third-party components your cloud service relies on or be prepared to cover their service fees indefinitely. While this perspective may seem exaggerated, there is always a double-edged nature to such regulations. The sword slices both ways. I think all games/software would then convert to a service/subscription based model, cause there would be no limit to future liabilities when selling any lifetime license. Pay monthly to play the game. Pay monthly to use any software (including downloadable software and apps.) Pay monthly to use the OS. EDIT: Actually thinking about it, it seems this proposal wants to cover mmorpgs which already are subscription based. In that case if the same rules applies to software in general, then any software that is subscription based would also have to be usable indefinitely even if you sold just 1 month subscription and went out of business. This kind of creates a bad incentive where users of software / players of games might want the company to die so they can use the software or play the game for free forever.
- _chris_g 2y ago
  > Next thing you know if you develop and sell any software you will have to make sure it is usable forever. Any MacOS updates or Windows updates (or iOS/Android updates) breaking a software or app you once sold to a few people and discontinued? You will have to fix it until you die or face penalties. The campaign is about the software that being made unusable specifically by choice of the entity responsible for it. MacOS/Windows updates breaking an existing app is completely out of scope of the initiative, and nobody will be penalized for that, it would be very unreasonable from any angle.

by arizen 2y ago

riskable 2y ago

> However, as some users have pointed out, implementing these requirements could significantly disrupt how games are developed, particularly when games rely on proprietary servers or content licensed under restrictive terms. "Yes." I believe is the universal answer here. Fill in your local custom version of, "I'm OK with that", "I'm failing to see the problem", etc.

rickdeckard 2y ago
"Fully agree" It's as simple as "Ah, you plan to stop your proprietary server end-point? This enforces section #2 of the regulation, requiring you to provide the means for others to operate their own end-point and publish a transition-plan for affected customers" That's equally applicable to Games as well as any form of connected product.

krisoft 2y ago

> possibly through tax credits or other benefits for depositing source code or playable copies with national archives. How would that work in practice? You could play your game yesterday, but you can't play it tomorrow because the company shut off the servers. But fear not because your tax dollars paid for the executables to be deposited in an archive Ark of the Covenant style. That might be satisfying with an oil painting. But games are meant to be played with. Can one check it out and run it? Can one modify the game to keep it running on new hardware or operating system? Can one re-distribute those modifications to others? Can one pay for someone else to run the servers for them?

rickdeckard 2y ago
As much as I would like the outcome, I doubt that this is meaningful use of tax-money in general. I also wouldn't want taxes to be invested to preserve every oil-painting ever painted by someone, as it would inevitably create an industry that creates oil-paintings for the sole purpose of tax-benefits...
- cryptonym 2y ago
  If we are going in the details, maybe tax credit should be over a small fraction of benefits for that game. You'd only get back a bit of what you paid.
  - rickdeckard 2y ago
    The problem is that you can barely reach consensus that tax-money is spent on elderly homes and child-care, as the a critical mass of your taxpayers are not yet old and don't have children. Once you try to establish that tax-payers money is being spent to preserve art, you inevitably cause a unsolvable political discussion on what art actually is. At best, the budget will be drained uncontrollably with the system being abused by players gaming the system, at worst the ruling political party will define what art is and only provide funding for the most boring forms of art. - To be a bit constructive: Instead of a dedicated credit/payout, it would make more sense to establish a mandate in a region (i.e. US, EU) that public funding or tax-credits for ANY company can only be made on the premise that the output created by the company becomes partially owned by the public (and the citizens of this region), which requires it to provide value even without the company's involvement. This would apply for any form of financial incentive given to company offices in a region, regardless whether it's hardware, software or services. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that ever being properly mandated/executed...

pmontra 2y ago

> particularly when games rely on proprietary servers or content licensed under restrictive terms. The software to run proprietary servers could be sold as part of the game. Content with too restrictive licenses won't be marketable anymore, that's a problem that will solve itself.

rickdeckard 2y ago
Even more, for games it could create a market for a universal server-endpoint architecture: While the game is "live", the publisher operates his own servers with competitive f,eatures and performance, once he decides to stop this offer he needs to either open his whole proprietary server architecture or migrate his changes into an de-facto industry-standard architecture that provides such preservation to the market. In long-term, it could lead to the entire gaming-industry collaborating on an open-standard server-framework to save costs for such end-of-life compliance. A new game would have its disruptive online features developed on a fork of this standard architecture, with changes/additions being contributed back to it during the lifecycle, so when the game goes end-of-life all that is needed is to enable 3rd party servers...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

gg2222 2y ago

> the idea of preserving games for future access aligns with broader movements toward digital preservation, similar to efforts in other digital media industries like film and music And from the FAQ: > If this practice is not stopped, it may be codified into law and spread to other products of more importance over time, such as agricultural equipment, educational products, medical devices, etc. So there is a notion of using games as a step to 'stop' companies from being able to discontinue services. If this passes for games, next would be software in general. Next thing you know if you develop and sell any software you will have to make sure it is usable forever. Any MacOS updates or Windows updates (or iOS/Android updates) breaking a software or app you once sold to a few people and discontinued? You will have to fix it until you die or face penalties. Do you have software with a cloud component sold under a lifetime license? Be prepared to maintain that service forever or release its complete source code if you don't. Additionally, you would need lifetime licenses for any critical proprietary third-party components your cloud service relies on or be prepared to cover their service fees indefinitely. While this perspective may seem exaggerated, there is always a double-edged nature to such regulations. The sword slices both ways. I think all games/software would then convert to a service/subscription based model, cause there would be no limit to future liabilities when selling any lifetime license. Pay monthly to play the game. Pay monthly to use any software (including downloadable software and apps.) Pay monthly to use the OS. EDIT: Actually thinking about it, it seems this proposal wants to cover mmorpgs which already are subscription based. In that case if the same rules applies to software in general, then any software that is subscription based would also have to be usable indefinitely even if you sold just 1 month subscription and went out of business. This kind of creates a bad incentive where users of software / players of games might want the company to die so they can use the software or play the game for free forever.

_chris_g 2y ago
> Next thing you know if you develop and sell any software you will have to make sure it is usable forever. Any MacOS updates or Windows updates (or iOS/Android updates) breaking a software or app you once sold to a few people and discontinued? You will have to fix it until you die or face penalties. The campaign is about the software that being made unusable specifically by choice of the entity responsible for it. MacOS/Windows updates breaking an existing app is completely out of scope of the initiative, and nobody will be penalized for that, it would be very unreasonable from any angle.