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Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

122 points by riffraff 1y ago

tareqak 1y ago
This movement seems similar to software licensing to me. proprietary -> BSD/MIT -> GPL -> AGPL
anothernewdude 1y ago
Oh no! Not developer choice! This is the weakest argument I've ever heard. Compare: "Stop burning coal? That curtails factory owner choice!" etc. etc. I'm sure the people behind the movement would love to point out that, yes, that is the entire point.
- eska 1y ago
  They claim to protect from illegal content and unsafe communities, but those sound like desperate grasps at straws that are easily disproven. They also misrepresent the basic demands of the petition, as online only games are still allowed.
  - slau 1y ago
    Just open CS2 and go to the community server tab. There’s a little notice telling you that you might be exposed to unmoderated and unsafe content. Apparently in 2025 corporate lawyers have forgotten how to write a disclaimer. It’s all BS to protect their short term games. I would spend way more money on games if they didn’t have a ~5 year life span.
  - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1y ago
    > illegal content and unsafe communities Those are two arguments which will win over europeans and euro politicians.
hmry 1y ago
> Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. No? How would the "rights holders" be in any way liable for someone posting illegal content on a community-hosted server after a game has gone end-of-life? Also, community servers not having to adhere to the publisher's standards of what community content is safe vs unsafe is clearly a positive in my humble opinion.
- jjani 1y ago
  Don't you know? If I cmd+S the HN front-end and throw my own backend behind it, host my own instance, and post something illegal on it, then YC is liable! Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!
  - dijit 1y ago
    It’s more complicated than that. I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way. The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying. Some won’t allow the car to get dirty, or to deform in a realistic way because it harms a copyright (did you know that the front lights of cars are part of their brand and trademark in most cases). I’m using a pretty obvious example, that by selling a product that contains these other brands, we are beholden to not represent them in a way they don’t like; it’s part of the transaction for having it. I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic. The most annoying ones are the little background things; Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate. It’s a quagmire. Honestly, I’m not even sure why we bother making anything, there seems to always be some random popping their head up seeking another slice.
aspaviento 1y ago
How would a policy for this only affect EU games? EU has other policies that affect Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. as far as I know, any company that wants to sell/offer a service in EU will need to comply with its policies.
- braiamp 1y ago
  The EU doesn't have to worry about what happens in the rest of the world. The rest of the world can benefit of this anyways.
- kergonath 1y ago
  That’s not how it works. The EU does not care about what Apple does in the US. It’s Apple’s choice to either tweak their products to adapt to the laws of their different markets or apply these changes across the board. We’ve seen that with recent iOS versions where EU regulations imposed changes, some of which were done only for devices in the EU. For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows. EULA sometimes differ depending on location because a lot of the bullshit software companies get away with in the US is illegal in other parts of the world. Another extreme example is the hoops companies have to jump through to sell in China. Again, this generally does not affect the same products in the rest of the world. It is a problem that we know how to solve.
  - chithanh 1y ago
    > The EU does not care about what Apple does in the US. Well, partially they do. For example when it comes to the Right to be forgotten, there were attempts to apply this also to data which is stored and displayed outside the EU. Only after ECJ ruling (C-507/17) such attempts were stopped. > For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows. Microsoft does have the N (formerly called "Reduced Media") editions of Windows created in response to legal demands from the EU, but these are available worldwide. Other than that it is the same version of Windows, which just behaves differently when it comes to browser choice etc. depending on your location.
    - 1y ago
gryn 1y ago
> many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control. seems like 'video games europe' is gearing up to lobby/influence the lawmakers to distort this initiative. the bare minimum would be to ban these kind of things from describing themselves as products instead of a service in their marketing. no "Buy" or "Purchase", instead "Rent" or "Lease" possibly with a stated minimum guaranteed time online / expiration date. EDIT: reminder, if you're from the EU and over the age of 18 it's still a good idea to sign the petition even though it passed the threshold since there could be invalid signatures (bots, underage people, etc ...) if the valid signatures are below the threshold after the verification is done this petition will get dropped.
- PaulKeeble 1y ago
  The game that kicked this particular petition off was The Crew, a game that you could happily play single player which Ubisoft made always online purely for DRM reasons its a prime example of the abuse of power that legislators should be doing something ab0out.
  - robertlagrant 1y ago
    This isn't exactly an abuse of power - you can just not buy it. UbiSoft has transformed itself into a terrible, bloated company and it probably die soon, but the better way to do this is to have industry standards similar to PEGI that describe the game's future support, not to hit them with EU-specific regulations.
    - blargey 1y ago
      "Let the problem fester until the negative externalities build up so much it overcomes the coordination problem and companies are subject to the same coercion (but through 'market forces' so it's good), one day, eventually, maybe" isn't a meaningful argument against legislation.
      - 1y ago
pjmlp 1y ago
Of course, was anyone expecting they would react otherwise, especially with the changes after 32bit gaming across consoles and desktop platforms. It is all about IP, and like Hollywood nowadays, how to repackaged it in remakes and emulation. A bit hard if we're allowed to just play the original versions.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Correct. The backends to these online games isn’t complicated, but it is protected. They want the ability to resell the entire service to another game studio to run. This has happened a lot in the past. EverQuest, Pirates, Lots of mmos have changed studios and with that, the backend services needed to run them. Now, that said, there are a few countries in the EU that you could reverse engineer the server and it’s totally legal. Some of the best fun I’ve had were on private WoW or Lineage 2 servers.
perching_aix 1y ago
> In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create. How? Can't wait to hear them substantiating this tidbit, because from a regular enterprise operations viewpoint this does NOT pass the smell test.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  When I found out that Booking[.]com of all companies is moving major traffic, I started to look at what companies are even buying or selling anymore. I clearly had no idea. In the following paper, CPs refer to content providers, as defined in the paper. https://estcarisimo.github.io/assets/pdf/papers/2019-comnets-cores.pdf https://estcarisimo.github.io/assets/pdf/papers/2019-comnets... [pdf] (more at https://estcarisimo.github.io/publications/ https://estcarisimo.github.io/publications/ ) canonical link for above paper, which is the lead researcher's GH from what I can tell: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140366418310090 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01403... ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2019.05.022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2019.05.022 ) > Studying the Evolution of Content Providers in IPv4 and IPv6 Internet Cores > Esteban Carisimo, Carlos Selmo, J. Ignacio Alvarez-Hamelin, Amogh Dhamdhere [I have edited out some hyphens that made this really hard to read but were helpful due to the layout of the original document as typeset. If that bothers you, I'm sorry in advance. Links are included above.] > Our goal is to investigate what role CPs now play in the Internet ecosystem, and in particular, if CPs are now a part of the “core” of the Internet. Specifically, we motivate this work with the following questions: How can we identify if a CP does or does not belong to the core of the Internet? If the core of the network does indeed include CPs, who are they?As the overall adoption of IPv6 has been slow, do we notice that delay on IPv4 and IPv6 core evolution? As the AS ecosystem has shown striking differences according to geographical regions [15], do we also see geographical differences in the role of CPs and their presence in the “core” of regional Internet structures? Finally, as more CPs deploy their private CDNs, can we detect “up and coming” CDNs that are not currently in the core of the network but are likely to be in the future? > We use the concept of k-cores to analyze the structure of the IPv4 AS-level internetwork over the last two decades. We first focus on seven large CPs, and confirm that they are all currently in the core of the Internet. We then dig deeper into the evolution of these large players to correlate observed topological characteristics with documented business practices which can explain when and why these networks entered the core. Next, we repeat the methodology but using IPv6 dataset to compare and contrast the evolution of CPs in both networks. Based on results, we investigate commercial and technical reasons why CPs started to roll out IPv6 connectivity. > We then take a broader view, characterizing the set of ASes in the core of the IPv4 Internet in terms of business type and geography. Our analysis reveals that an increasing number of CPs are now in the core of the Internet. Finally, we demonstrate that the k-core analysis has the potential to reveal the rise of “up and coming” CPs. To encourage reproducibility of our results, we make our datasets available via an interactive query system at https://cnet.fi.uba.ar/TMA2018/ https://cnet.fi.uba.ar/TMA2018/ […] > Finally, we study the core evolution of nine other remarkable CPs that belong to the TOPcore but were not included in the Big Seven. Seven of the nine selected ASes are the remaining ASes in Bottger et al.’s [47] TOP15 list, except Hurricane Electric (AS6939) which we do not consider as a CP since it is labeled as Transit/Access in CAIDA’s AS classification [80]. These seven ASes are OVH (AS16276), LimeLight (AS22822), Microsoft (AS8075), Twitter (AS13414), Twitch (AS46489), CloudFlare (AS13335) and EdgeCast (AS15133). The other two ASes are Booking.com (AS43996) and Spotify (AS8403). Interestingly, Booking.com or Spotify are not normally considered among the top CPs, however, they are in both TOPcores.
LocalH 1y ago
Of course it does. The whole idea of "Stop Killing Games" is that developers should not be able to summarily kill off a game that people have invested time and money into, just because it's not making them enough money going forward. Developers should absolutely not have that choice. It's fine if you want to run a live service game where the optimal experience happens during active support. However, unless you as a dev are willing to refund every single purchaser of the game, in full, when you discontinue a game, then you are stealing from purchasers. Moreover, even if you are willing to give a full refund to all players, it's really shitty to just rip an experience away from people, never to be experienced again (whether in a watered-down or limited form, or not). It's the same reason I don't agree with perpetual copyright, nor a copyright owner's right to suppress a work's availability. In almost all jurisdictions, copyright is intended to be a limited time right, with the rights eventually entering the public domain. If people can't access the work when it would become public domain, then that work is effectively stolen from the public in a way that mere non-commercial copyright infringement can never be theft.
- LocalH 1y ago
  Also, part of the issue is the death of private servers. Game publishers have chosen to revert to centralized servers, rather than allowing private servers. Thus they have also taken on the additional cost of running those servers. Older games can be easily played on private servers to this day, as the community of any moderately popular game will almost always step up to provide the service. Even games you might not expect would be that popular or games that never had private servers - for example, Rock Band 3 only ever supported connecting to Harmonix servers in an official capacity. This support is also discontinued (they still operate the Rock Central servers, but only for Rock Band 4). Yet right now, thanks to reverse engineering, there is a fan-operated server that you can connect to with a slightly modified game. You can even download the fan-created server software (written in Go) and stand up your own server for your friends or for whatever other reason (maybe you want to run a small tournament and use a private GoCentral server to record statistics and have a private leaderboard).
  - chithanh 1y ago
poisonborz 1y ago
These are weak arguments but there are valid ones why I would not think this has a footing, even if I support the attitude. What about games where the world is fully generative, tied to a licensed engine? You can't just rip/disable licensed items out, they may form a significant part of business code. Code and APIs would be needed to be documented. Why just games? What about abandoned Saas offerings? These restrictions might creep over. I hate live service games like the next guy but legal advisors can bend these to form powerful counter-arguments.
- mavamaarten 1y ago
  I also think many comments are a bit too eager in claiming "oh just publish the code" and "oh just let users host X". It's obviously not that simple. The biggest one for me is that single player games should still be playable offline after servers have been sunset. I'm sure that with current games, licenses were indeed acquired for a certain limited time. But if you start development and you know you'll have to sunset it according to the rules one day, I'm sure you'll come up with other licenses or just a way to strip out content like that.
  - dgfl 1y ago
    What’s the problem with releasing a server executable? As far as I can tell that would be enough to get around this legislation. And I can’t imagine that to be prohibitively expensive.
    - meheleventyone 1y ago
      What is a server executable? With a lot of modern games it could be a whole stacks worth of systems that neither the game client or server side game runtime will work without.
      - Mindwipe 1y ago
        And which are not owned by the developer or available to be perpetually licensed.
turtlebro 1y ago
If anything even comes out of this, the furthest a law could possibly go is to impose a 2 year window (after sale) in which a game needs to work as described.
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  A law can do much more. Just like the law don't just require that you can return you toxic ham within 2 years of purchase.
- 4hg4ufxhy 1y ago
  That would already be great progress. For context Ubisofts the Crew shutdown only after 3 months of stopping sales. It could also work as a deterrent on making dedicated servers only architecture. If you can disable dedicated servers instantly(instead of 2 years) but enable private servers that might be more cost efficient.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
surgical_fire 1y ago
> many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only No problem. Per "Stop Killing Games" initiative, you will only have to provide means for the users to still be able to play those games after you decide to pull the plug on it. You can, for example, release the server code so that players can keep playing the game somehow, if they so desire. No need to keep supporting your online rent-seeking scheme ad-eternum after it outlived its usefulness. We need to be frank about what those developers really want though. They want to be able to take away games they previously sold so that players move on to their shiny new online rent-seeking scheme. Allowing people to actually own the games they bought is bad for business. Fuck this noise and fuck those developers.
chithanh 1y ago
I don't buy these arguments. If game developers don't want to sell games that way then don't. Sell subscriptions instead. Like instead of $60 for a game, $60 one-time fee for a two-year subscription, which afterwards renews automatically in 3 months intervals at no cost until further notice. Same applies to all paid in-game content. That way the developers can continue offering both games and subscriptions where each type makes most sense. And everybody knows what they are signing up for. People who buy a game get a game which they can play indefinitely. People who buy a subscription know the earliest possible end date and everything beyond that is just bonus.
- dmurray 1y ago
  I don't think this would have any significant impact on the industry. Publishers would just advertise their games as coming with a 2-year subscription, or whatever. People would have the same expectations as now: the game will be supported for a couple of years, and it will be supported much longer if there's an obvious way that is profitable to the developer. No publisher would unilaterally want to start advertising games as subscriptions, but if everyone was forced to do it, nothing changes. Perhaps an extra layer of clicking through for the user, like when we mandated all websites must have annoying cookie popups.
  - anton-c 1y ago
    Most games won't need it. When every other offline game says "buy" but the games as a service one has to say "rent" for the same price, consumers will notice I think.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      I think what people are saying is the opposite would happen. If this initiative makes it into law, nearly every game company will overnight make their games say "Rent" instead of "Buy", so that they can continue with their shitty practice.
      - archievillain 1y ago
xg15 1y ago
I guess the (media) battle is on now. In some ways I think even this statement by the trade association is already a win - the initiative forced them to explicitly address topics such as private servers, which they'd rather not talk about at all. Their statement also made it easy to ask counter questions regarding offline single-player or actual player compensation on shutdown. (I love the "we understand it can be disappointing, but we give players fair notice" statement, as if players didn't pay money for this) I don't expect a lot of support from EU politicians for the initiative, as the current Parliament is even more conservative and corporate-friendly than usual. But well, hope dies last, and at least the will of the public seems to be there. (And also the appearance of being a tech regulator has become more popular in Brussels) So we'll see.
niemandhier 1y ago
An interesting side observation: The usual inter country struggles in the Eu might actually play out in favor of customers this time. Game development is stronger in smaller EU countries ( measured in percent of the gdp ) so big countries will not block any initiatives.
benoau 1y ago
Predictable response, they'd rather have complete autonomy to decide what they will do and be the sole arbiter of consumers' rights, while gaming history disintegrates thanks to the double-tap of online-dependency shutdowns and marketplaces that make it a TOS violation to leave your library to someone.
jt2190 1y ago
> Even the singleplayer components [of Ubisoft’s “The Crew (2014) were unusable when the servers were turned off]: [Y]ou just wanting to race around cars in a world with you and other NPCs in it, is no longer viable. Essentially, you didn't "buy" the game, but in a sense were "renting" it for an indeterminate amount of time, a lease that expired due to the publishers and developers no longer wanting to provide that service for you. Probably true! There is likely some additional revenue that the publisher gets from running servers, even for single-player mode. The question then is what will change in these games if that revenue is no longer there to fund them? Will the quality be lower? Will the price be higher? Will the publishers release new games less frequently? Maybe they just don’t make single-player games anymore?
- mtsr 1y ago
  Honestly? I think we can do without these predatory practices even at the cost of some games. And I somehow doubt there’s revenue to make off these single player games being online dependent, because the most probable ways simply wouldn’t fly in Europe due to consumer protections. Most likely it’s just “anti-piracy” or something like that.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  Maybe they just stop adding hard requirements for online connectivity to their single-players games, which is something which takes more effort to do in the first place?
  - jt2190 1y ago
    I worry that they just stop completely shipong single-player mode as that seems easiest.
    - pyrale 1y ago
      That is fine. Other companies will fill that void. There are plenty of small indy companies that make great single-player games, that could benefit from the attention.
    - 1y ago
umvi 1y ago
Vote with your wallet, there are thousands of games that don't do shady stuff.
- elitepleb 1y ago
  There's fewer games to vote on every year, as conglomerates like Microsoft out vote your wallet a billion times over every time they buy a game studio to embrace, extend and then extinguish.
  - ysavir 1y ago
    If looking at AAA publishers, maybe. The indie game scene continues to pump out games, some good, some bad, at half or less of cost of the AAA games. They won't be as polished, but many still deliver an exceptional experience.
  - mouse_ 1y ago
    there are more games than ever, it's just that microsoft, ubisoft, etc are spending billions on actual psychologists to ensure the populace remains apathetic towards them. I don't care how smart you are, how much self control you have, whatever, in the face of billions of dollars, voting with your wallet does not stand a chance. The house always wins.
    - throw10920 1y ago
      Huh, that's funny, I've never bought a Ubisoft game. I guess I'm the first person ever who's resistant to those psychologists.
      - thrance 1y ago
        Do you not understand that the people on HN, you and me included, are far from the average consumer? We care about things most people really don't.
        1y ago
qoez 1y ago
> the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers Nice way to make publishers stop making multiplayer services available to the EU in the first place because deactivating it is illegal when costs outweigh profits.
- phoronixrly 1y ago
  Sounds good to me! EU gamers will not be taken advantage of.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Great, maybe it will foster innovation among indie studios.
- pyrale 1y ago
  I'm fine with that. Others will come and fill the void.
- akimbostrawman 1y ago
  this has already been addressed but just for you. they won't leave the biggest global market with almost 500 million potential buyers because they can't rug pull anymore, even if they somehow suddenly don't like money anymore others will gladly take there place. the same "argument" has been thrown at GDPR which now every single corporation follows.
fidotron 1y ago
If this happened all multiplayer titles would turn F2P. People do not appreciate quite what a narrow path has to be walked by games from an IP standpoint. Code libraries, licensed property, per platform (and platform category) restrictions, general IP restrictions (not showing vehicles being damaged, or UI overlays on certain parts of licensed objects) and so on. This is why in the recent ROG Ally announcement Microsoft could not say all XBox games will run on it, because if it's a PC it's not a console, so various games will not be allowed to be sold on it as those contributing IP rights will have been split up separately. Simply pretending these very real concerns don't exist is nonsense land. You want games with real vehicles or licensed music? This is what you have to deal with. At least these days they have learned to license music for longer than used to be the case.
- tetris11 1y ago
  how did they do it in the past? If I can put my Tony Hawks cd from the PS2 into a cd player and enjoy all the DRM music, what changed between now and then? If music labels refuse to license out their songs like that, then if this law passes, they're going to have to suck it up and play nice again, else lose customers/publishers.
  - toast0 1y ago
    Most of that era consoles would load level data from the CD, and then play the music as cd-da audio. There was no DRM on the music, perhaps because nobody thought of it, but more likely because there wasn't quite enough computing power to do it. PS2 games could be on CD or DVD and could have had cd quality music as a data file reasonably, but PS1 probably not, and cross platform games likely would use cd audio because it's easy. The choice for licensors was to have the music in the game and available on the cd or not. For a modern release, DRM music tracks that only play in the game is an option. We've also learned that the licenses are (or were) often time limited... The publisher can't make new copies after some time, without getting a new license for the audio. Sometimes that's also related to a different format.
  - thunderfork 1y ago
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bellgrove 1y ago
Having worked there in the past, Ubisoft is awful. When I was there previously there was an aggressive push for UPlay (now Ubisoft Connect) integration into all products. Then there were the bullshots for promos/E3/etc. There were often clashes with leadership who would fight against creativity / novel ideas in favour of cookie-cutter mechanics that would not add anything to the experience - certainly there was a mentality of, let's just copy what was recently successful. I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink.
- bashinator 1y ago
  I'll never buy an Ubisoft game again. Instant dealbreaker to see that studio on the Steam store page; I've deleted a $3 sale game from my cart when I realized that it was Ubisoft. No game is worth giving money to a company that hates its customers so much.
  - valiant55 1y ago
    On the flip side ex-Ubisoft employees seem to be finding success after their departure. Highly recommend Clair Obsur: Expedition 33.
- DrillShopper 1y ago
  Not to mention the sexual assault
- zamalek 1y ago
  > I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink. They are like junk food. Everyone has the junk food that they enjoy. FarCry is certainly the McDonald's of games. I enjoy some junk food once in a while, problems arise if I make it my staple diet.
- techjamie 1y ago
  For Steam users, a reminder that you can go to a publisher's page and "Ignore" that publisher. The option is a little bit hidden, it's in the settings cog on the right-hand side of the page. It'll stop steam from recommending their games to you, and when one does show up, like in the Top Sellers list, it'll have a message on it saying that it's by a publisher that you ignored. I have Ubisoft, EA, and Sony marked as such, personally.
mopsi 1y ago
This goes beyond games and calls for regulation of anything sold as a product, but working more like a subscription service. Similar issues also affect an increasing number of appliances that rely on apps and connect through manufacturer-hosted services. If the manufacturer goes out of business or shuts down a service, fully working devices can lose some or all of their features. Manufacturers should be required to open up their devices and provide a documented local API, if for no other reason, then to reduce the huge amount of electronic waste created by making devices artificially obsolete. I think that approaching the problem from the perspective of a physical product, like a smart lightbulb that doesn't work anymore because the manufacturer shut down its servers, would be easier for non-technical people to understand and would likely have a better chance of success.
chickenzzzzu 1y ago
I work for a game company. I am ardently opposed to this idea. All you will end up with, in the best case scenario that isn't even guaranteed to happen, is extremely mediocre games for which you will have the server executable along with the client. Whether you like it or not, thanks to piracy and competition (and yes I've heard Gabe Newell's quote on piracy), server authoritative video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy, and not even just for games. And no, "just release your source code then" is not a valid rule to enforce either. If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own? It has never been easier to do so, and there are freely usable code and art assets on hundreds of different platforms for you to attempt.
- eddd-ddde 1y ago
  > If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own? This is such and odd thing to suggest. People want to play the games they paid for, _obviously_ they aren't going to make their own game.
  - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
    What you have paid for is not a physical copy of something that is guaranteed to work forever. All you will achieve with this initiative is that that will be clearly labeled now, instead of implied.
    - masfuerte 1y ago
      If that's all that will happen, why do you have a problem with it?
      - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
        If that was the end of the road, then I definitely don't have a problem with it. Like another poster said, it would be like labeling for cigarettes, and that is totally fine. What I do fear however, is that they will go a step further, requiring companies to release server builds, client and server sourde code, and then of course the ultimate dream, "well no you actually can't turn it off, we require you to maintain it forever even if it loses you money because gaming is a right".
layer8 1y ago
If any of this goes through in terms of legislation, it will mostly just have “buy” change into “lifetime subscription” (where as usual, “lifetime” means the lifetime of the service). I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done, and the article itself alludes to that outcome, but it also means that it won’t stop the killing of games.
- chickenzzzzu 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - happymellon 1y ago
    How is forcing manufacturers to state that they are planning to bork your game in the future "increasing the barrier of entry"?
    - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
      If the only thing that this initiative seeks to achieve is clear and fair labeling when purchasing something, I'm all for it. If in the future, if anyone (including this initiative) requires the release or maintenance of server builds or code, I am against it.
      - skotobaza 1y ago
        > if anyone (including this initiative) requires the release or maintenance of server builds or code, I am against it Why? What do you personally lose because of that?
        chickenzzzzu 1y ago
        There is a competitive advantage for being able to hold onto your code and builds. It currently requires quite a lot of effort and skill and persistence to resurrect live service games. This allows us to make money by re-releasing games and remastering them and so on. If you require us to release server builds and or code "while still respecting copyright", the result will be that countries like Russia and China will offer competing services against us and we will not be able to make nearly as much money anymore.
calibas 1y ago
Video games publishers don't want you to play the same game for too long without spending more money. They don't want to make games like Terraria where you have a $10 game you can play for a thousand hours. They'd much rather you buy multiple $60+ games, plus expansions, "micro"-transactions and subscriptions. They don't want games that last forever, they want to pressure you into constantly buying the next big thing.
- mystraline 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - DrillShopper 1y ago
    BG3 is quite possibly one of the most modable games of the last five years, and the multiplayer game is self hosted (peer to peer)
    - doctorpangloss 1y ago
      I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. There is a lot of confusion about this, almost certainly from people who have never played the game.
  - artemonster 1y ago
    Knowling Larian I dont think that will be the case. what are you basing your assumptions upon? there is already extensive modding for bg3
    - PoshBreeze 1y ago
      Larian are no longer involved with development of BG3: https://www.ign.com/articles/wizards-of-the-coast-not-to-blame-for-larian-leaving-baldurs-gate-3-and-dd-behind-swen-vincke-insists https://www.ign.com/articles/wizards-of-the-coast-not-to-bla... EDIT: Updated Link. It seems they've added free patches and won't be working on BG4.
donatj 1y ago
I feel... uneasy about the idea. Are games art? If so, are you comfortable telling artists what types of art they can create? I know not everyone is going to agree with me here but it feels like a slippery slope.
- artemonster 1y ago
  what a strawman. its not about "you cannot draw this" but its more like "please dont use dyes that offgas deadly fumes", a technical regulation not about substance
  - donatj 1y ago
    Talk about strawman, it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!" And you're comparing it to poison gas
    - jjulius 1y ago
      >... it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!" Is this entirely the fault of the customer, or is it that the studios have largely forced this model upon customers, leaving them with little choice?
    - artemonster 1y ago
      this was not a literal comparison, wtf, but an example of a technical limitation that will be imposed by law as a counter to your "art" stupidity. You can Use alternative formulation if you cant comprehend basic methaphors: „stop using dyes that decay in 2 months“
    - shminge 1y ago
      >... it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!" It's much more like "I paid for something, there should be a law so no one can take what I've paid for"
    - mainde 1y ago
      IMHO the incentives are disproportionately in favour of everyone doing something that hurts consumers (= "something that I don't like"), thus regulation in favour of consumer rights is appropriate. There isn't a scenario where, at scale, someone can offer a product that respects consumer rights and is successful, because it's too profitable to not respect consumer rights just like it wasn't in many other cases.
throw10920 1y ago
I think very few people (outside of the industry - important caveat) are opposed to the stated goals of the initiative: > This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union [...] to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. The concern that I have is that I have no idea what the actual text of the law is going to be. You can look at laws like the DMCA, that had a reasonable purpose (made adjustments to the copyright system for the age of the internet) and a royally screwed up implementation that basically everyone can find a problem with. It's easy to imagine that the laws that pass could be (1) completely neutered by corruption in the EU leading to regulatory capture (2) far too strong and written in a way that imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too) or (3) bad just because of technical incompetence of the authors. I know that there's not much I can do about those things, but that may explain the emotional reactions of some people like e.g. PirateSoftware - nobody actually knows what the resulting law will be like, and everyone familiar with the legislative system knows how bad the outputs can be.
- qznc 1y ago
  So don’t even try because it might be bad?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - throw10920 1y ago
    Nowhere did I say or imply that - did you respond to the wrong comment by accident?
    - conductr 1y ago
      It’s kind of implied by your argument. All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
      - 1y ago
PoshBreeze 1y ago
> Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. I find it really frustrating how they phrase things because there is so much BS in almost one sentence. The entire point of having a private server is so that they are no longer in control of these things. Moreover if I am running a private server: - It isn't their responsibility to secure players data. - it isn't their responsibility to remove illegal content. - it isn't their responsibility to remove "unsafe" (whatever that means) community content. So how could they be liable? > In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create. This is pretty much disingenuous argument that "PirateSoftware" was pushing. They are pretending that a single player mode would need to be created. This isn't what is being requested.
subjectsigma 1y ago
Seems pretty obvious to me that if this passes, big game companies will either re-label all new releases as “subscriptions” and/or just never make a single-player game again. And mostly nothing will change. If you don’t like companies like this, don’t buy their games. There’s literally thousands of indie game companies that don’t abuse their users.
- ycombinatrix 1y ago
  What you just described is a massive improvement over the status quo. Today, I have no idea when the game I just purchased is going to be disabled.
- skotobaza 1y ago
  > don’t buy their games Not a solution. Other people will buy them and outvote you with their wallets. This has already happened. People did buy The Crew, and I doubt that most of them realized that it will be closed 10 years later.
- lawlessone 1y ago
  >and/or just never make a single-player game again plenty of companies making single player games now would be fine.
SamuelAdams 1y ago
At a macro level, killed games are a good thing for gaming companies. It creates a shortage of playable games so that new games sell and continue to make money. The biggest competitor to the video game industry is movies (Netflix, Disney plus, etc) and past games. Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today? If players can play thousands of high quality games for free, why bother paying for a new game? I suppose the book industry has the same problem, maybe there are some parallels to study from that.
- pyrale 1y ago
  > Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today? This is something we can answer pretty easily by looking at the book industry. People do enjoy novelty. The pulp sci-fi/fantasy from the 60s-80s is long forgotten save for a few masterpieces, and there is a flow of recent books that people buy and read.
- cornstalks 1y ago
  > At a macro level, killed games are a good thing for gaming companies. But they aren’t good for consumers.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Who cares? This is capitalism, it's all about capital, not consumers. Good for capital == will happen.
- immibis 1y ago
  It would still be illegal to acquire a copy of a killed game. Their numbers would still dwindle, since they'd be limited to people who bought the game before it was killed.
  - SpaghettiCthulu 1y ago
    Until copyright runs out.
kmeisthax 1y ago
[dead]
dandersch 1y ago
Having followed this initiative quite extensively from the beginning, the most baffling thing has been the underwhelming support from developers themselves, both from studios and individual devs. You would think the very idea of years of your work being rendered unplayable in an instant would be enough incentive to signal boost any effort against this industry practice. Instead, developer discourse has revolved around just how hard it would be to do what this is petition is asking for. You are an engineer for crying out loud. If you solved a problem but a new constraint arrives in the form of a law, you figure out how to solve the problem under the new constraint. Just because something is hard, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. It's almost like flexing your skills and signalling your elite knowledge is more important to people than simply defending what's right.
- skotobaza 1y ago
  I think that most developers are just afraid to voice such anti-industry opinion. Gamedev is fairly small industry, so if you piss off wrong people, you might be left without job opportunities.
izzydata 1y ago
If game publishers could in clear writing at time of purchase commit to a set number of years that game will be live then I think that is a good start. For example when the next live service game is released and you go to purchase it there is a clear warning that the publisher has only guaranteed the game to be live for 2 years. Personally that would prevent me from buying the game, but perhaps not others. The idea that a publisher can sell a live service game and shut it down in 1 month with no legal repercussions is ridiculous to me.
- drwiggly 1y ago
  The publisher can't do that. No one can tell the future.
  - CaptainFever 1y ago
    They could be liable if they shut down the servers and make the purchase unusable before the end of the minimum contracted duration.
glimshe 1y ago
I agree with "Stop Killing Games"' vision of what games should be like. But I don't understand why people care to turn it into a movement... There is SO MUCH choice in games nowadays, including decades of classic games, that people should simply stop supporting player-hostile companies.
- valiant55 1y ago
  Vote with your wallet doesn't work when other people still fork over the cash anyway. Look at microtranactions, universally hated, yet developers/publishers make money hand over fist because enough people are willing to pay.
  - glimshe 1y ago
    So maybe it's because people are happy with renting games and don't care to keep playing them forever? I'm just wondering if the concern is shared by most consumers. Stop Killing Games could make games more expensive for the people who are happy with the sad status quo - and they could be the majority.
    - valiant55 1y ago
      If current events in America have taught us anything is that "most consumers" opinions is of no importance. I want to believe in democracy but when the public education system have been attacked for decades is hard to defer to the popular opion on most things. I think most people, given the time and unbiased information would arrive at the appropriate conclusion but time and access to unbiased information are both in short supply.
nottorp 1y ago
Nothing about "innovation"? Just "choice"? But as probably many other comments say, if you buy something from Ubisoft you deserve it.
ghusto 1y ago
I don't disagree, but this is just one symptom of what the video game industry has become. As someone who hadn't played video games since his youth back in the late 80s, 90s, I was astonished when I tried to get back into it a few years ago. Kernel-level DRM, online checks, €80+ price tags, incomplete games that require DLC, and all this for rushed unfinished broken games. You keep paying though, so the game companies keep pushing ("if they'll put up with this, what else can we get away with?").
jimmydddd 1y ago
---This seems like it's being overly complicated. Isn't one of their requested options just to say that it's a "subscription" or that it may be discontinued some day when you originally "purchase" the game? ---If that option is acceptable to the stop game killing folks, why all this talk about public/private servers, security, portability, etc. ---When you sell it, just say "you are really kinda buying a subscription and we might shut it off in the future, but we'll try to give you some warning.?" ---Why would the industry be against that?
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
> If you complained that it's too hard to hash the passwords entered by your users or to encrypt medical data, or that you don't feel like complying with GDPR, you'd get rightfully fined out of existence. Hear, hear.
lofaszvanitt 1y ago
To be honest... in the last 10 years, there were maybe 1 or 2 AAA games I revisited and played multiple times. The quality is getting worse and worse. Every game steals/implements well known, 20 year old mechanics from other games, the story is for 12 year olds, same old shit repeated again and again. Basically aggressive, spoiled children in adult body commandeer 100s of people and create these godawful monstrosities.
acureau 1y ago
I did some looking into this a few days ago, and I can understand the sentiment. I can't understand the proposed implementation. There is a lack of technical discourse and heavy criticism of any negative opinion. I don't want to defend big publishers, I have not bought a new AAA game in many years. I think they are user hostile. Stop Killing Games is just way too broad. Remove online DRM checks from my single player game? Sure, I have been on board with that for a very long time. Make sure my MMO stays playable forever? You're asking for a miracle. You as a consumer need to be informed about what you're paying for. It's your job. "Just release the server's source / binary" is a pipe-dream and I figured more people here would understand this. Modern software is super complex, distributed, entangled with external services and dependencies. Often it's not just isolated, should you be forced to release the backend serving all of your (still active) games? Has anyone considered the security implications? Should you be forced to use only libraries that you can distribute? Can you see how this may stifle creativity? "Just state when the game will go offline" is impossible. The game will go offline when it can't be responsibly funded it anymore. Whether that's 2 or 10 years from now. If a company has to declare when your game service will expire, expect most online games to transition to a subscription model going forward. If the consumer won't have that, expect less of them to exist. It's going to backfire spectacularly. A better idea would be to mandate a minimum support window, and refunds within that window. What constitutes a "playable state"? Is the anti-cheat in an online FPS integral to playability? Many would argue so, I'll let you think about that one. This movement is riddled with such ambiguities.
- s1gsegv 1y ago
  I believe if you have a financial incentive not to release source / binaries then that’s a good financial incentive to keep the servers up. If such a mandate doesn’t result in actually releasing anything but instead properly incentivizes the right behavior, I’d still say the movement had won.
hellisothers 1y ago
Regulation is not a good answer to bad actors when the problem is too vague. All this is going to do is create burdens the big players can skirt cat-and-mouse style while the small guys struggle beneath them (ie regulatory capture). I don’t have a good solution but this is not it, very open to the idea that this is a clear/tactical solution and I just haven’t thought enough about it though.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Rent-seeking, treaterlite publishers gonna bullshit. Not exactly a surprise they care about money most of all.
m-p-3 1y ago
It makes then accountable for their choices by forcing them to think of a phase-out strategy other than simply abandoning it.

122 points by riffraff 1y ago

This movement seems similar to software licensing to me. proprietary -> BSD/MIT -> GPL -> AGPL

Oh no! Not developer choice! This is the weakest argument I've ever heard. Compare: "Stop burning coal? That curtails factory owner choice!" etc. etc. I'm sure the people behind the movement would love to point out that, yes, that is the entire point.

eska 1y ago
They claim to protect from illegal content and unsafe communities, but those sound like desperate grasps at straws that are easily disproven. They also misrepresent the basic demands of the petition, as online only games are still allowed.
- slau 1y ago
  Just open CS2 and go to the community server tab. There’s a little notice telling you that you might be exposed to unmoderated and unsafe content. Apparently in 2025 corporate lawyers have forgotten how to write a disclaimer. It’s all BS to protect their short term games. I would spend way more money on games if they didn’t have a ~5 year life span.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1y ago
  > illegal content and unsafe communities Those are two arguments which will win over europeans and euro politicians.

hmry 1y ago

> Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. No? How would the "rights holders" be in any way liable for someone posting illegal content on a community-hosted server after a game has gone end-of-life? Also, community servers not having to adhere to the publisher's standards of what community content is safe vs unsafe is clearly a positive in my humble opinion.

jjani 1y ago
Don't you know? If I cmd+S the HN front-end and throw my own backend behind it, host my own instance, and post something illegal on it, then YC is liable! Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!
- dijit 1y ago
  It’s more complicated than that. I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way. The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying. Some won’t allow the car to get dirty, or to deform in a realistic way because it harms a copyright (did you know that the front lights of cars are part of their brand and trademark in most cases). I’m using a pretty obvious example, that by selling a product that contains these other brands, we are beholden to not represent them in a way they don’t like; it’s part of the transaction for having it. I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic. The most annoying ones are the little background things; Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate. It’s a quagmire. Honestly, I’m not even sure why we bother making anything, there seems to always be some random popping their head up seeking another slice.

aspaviento 1y ago

How would a policy for this only affect EU games? EU has other policies that affect Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. as far as I know, any company that wants to sell/offer a service in EU will need to comply with its policies.

braiamp 1y ago
The EU doesn't have to worry about what happens in the rest of the world. The rest of the world can benefit of this anyways.
kergonath 1y ago
That’s not how it works. The EU does not care about what Apple does in the US. It’s Apple’s choice to either tweak their products to adapt to the laws of their different markets or apply these changes across the board. We’ve seen that with recent iOS versions where EU regulations imposed changes, some of which were done only for devices in the EU. For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows. EULA sometimes differ depending on location because a lot of the bullshit software companies get away with in the US is illegal in other parts of the world. Another extreme example is the hoops companies have to jump through to sell in China. Again, this generally does not affect the same products in the rest of the world. It is a problem that we know how to solve.
- chithanh 1y ago
  > The EU does not care about what Apple does in the US. Well, partially they do. For example when it comes to the Right to be forgotten, there were attempts to apply this also to data which is stored and displayed outside the EU. Only after ECJ ruling (C-507/17) such attempts were stopped. > For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows. Microsoft does have the N (formerly called "Reduced Media") editions of Windows created in response to legal demands from the EU, but these are available worldwide. Other than that it is the same version of Windows, which just behaves differently when it comes to browser choice etc. depending on your location.
  - 1y ago

gryn 1y ago

> many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control. seems like 'video games europe' is gearing up to lobby/influence the lawmakers to distort this initiative. the bare minimum would be to ban these kind of things from describing themselves as products instead of a service in their marketing. no "Buy" or "Purchase", instead "Rent" or "Lease" possibly with a stated minimum guaranteed time online / expiration date. EDIT: reminder, if you're from the EU and over the age of 18 it's still a good idea to sign the petition even though it passed the threshold since there could be invalid signatures (bots, underage people, etc ...) if the valid signatures are below the threshold after the verification is done this petition will get dropped.

PaulKeeble 1y ago
The game that kicked this particular petition off was The Crew, a game that you could happily play single player which Ubisoft made always online purely for DRM reasons its a prime example of the abuse of power that legislators should be doing something ab0out.
- robertlagrant 1y ago
  This isn't exactly an abuse of power - you can just not buy it. UbiSoft has transformed itself into a terrible, bloated company and it probably die soon, but the better way to do this is to have industry standards similar to PEGI that describe the game's future support, not to hit them with EU-specific regulations.
  - blargey 1y ago
    "Let the problem fester until the negative externalities build up so much it overcomes the coordination problem and companies are subject to the same coercion (but through 'market forces' so it's good), one day, eventually, maybe" isn't a meaningful argument against legislation.
    - 1y ago

pjmlp 1y ago

Of course, was anyone expecting they would react otherwise, especially with the changes after 32bit gaming across consoles and desktop platforms. It is all about IP, and like Hollywood nowadays, how to repackaged it in remakes and emulation. A bit hard if we're allowed to just play the original versions.

reactordev 1y ago
Correct. The backends to these online games isn’t complicated, but it is protected. They want the ability to resell the entire service to another game studio to run. This has happened a lot in the past. EverQuest, Pirates, Lots of mmos have changed studios and with that, the backend services needed to run them. Now, that said, there are a few countries in the EU that you could reverse engineer the server and it’s totally legal. Some of the best fun I’ve had were on private WoW or Lineage 2 servers.

perching_aix 1y ago

> In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create. How? Can't wait to hear them substantiating this tidbit, because from a regular enterprise operations viewpoint this does NOT pass the smell test.

aspenmayer 1y ago
When I found out that Booking[.]com of all companies is moving major traffic, I started to look at what companies are even buying or selling anymore. I clearly had no idea. In the following paper, CPs refer to content providers, as defined in the paper. https://estcarisimo.github.io/assets/pdf/papers/2019-comnets-cores.pdf https://estcarisimo.github.io/assets/pdf/papers/2019-comnets... [pdf] (more at https://estcarisimo.github.io/publications/ https://estcarisimo.github.io/publications/ ) canonical link for above paper, which is the lead researcher's GH from what I can tell: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140366418310090 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01403... ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2019.05.022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2019.05.022 ) > Studying the Evolution of Content Providers in IPv4 and IPv6 Internet Cores > Esteban Carisimo, Carlos Selmo, J. Ignacio Alvarez-Hamelin, Amogh Dhamdhere [I have edited out some hyphens that made this really hard to read but were helpful due to the layout of the original document as typeset. If that bothers you, I'm sorry in advance. Links are included above.] > Our goal is to investigate what role CPs now play in the Internet ecosystem, and in particular, if CPs are now a part of the “core” of the Internet. Specifically, we motivate this work with the following questions: How can we identify if a CP does or does not belong to the core of the Internet? If the core of the network does indeed include CPs, who are they?As the overall adoption of IPv6 has been slow, do we notice that delay on IPv4 and IPv6 core evolution? As the AS ecosystem has shown striking differences according to geographical regions [15], do we also see geographical differences in the role of CPs and their presence in the “core” of regional Internet structures? Finally, as more CPs deploy their private CDNs, can we detect “up and coming” CDNs that are not currently in the core of the network but are likely to be in the future? > We use the concept of k-cores to analyze the structure of the IPv4 AS-level internetwork over the last two decades. We first focus on seven large CPs, and confirm that they are all currently in the core of the Internet. We then dig deeper into the evolution of these large players to correlate observed topological characteristics with documented business practices which can explain when and why these networks entered the core. Next, we repeat the methodology but using IPv6 dataset to compare and contrast the evolution of CPs in both networks. Based on results, we investigate commercial and technical reasons why CPs started to roll out IPv6 connectivity. > We then take a broader view, characterizing the set of ASes in the core of the IPv4 Internet in terms of business type and geography. Our analysis reveals that an increasing number of CPs are now in the core of the Internet. Finally, we demonstrate that the k-core analysis has the potential to reveal the rise of “up and coming” CPs. To encourage reproducibility of our results, we make our datasets available via an interactive query system at https://cnet.fi.uba.ar/TMA2018/ https://cnet.fi.uba.ar/TMA2018/ […] > Finally, we study the core evolution of nine other remarkable CPs that belong to the TOPcore but were not included in the Big Seven. Seven of the nine selected ASes are the remaining ASes in Bottger et al.’s [47] TOP15 list, except Hurricane Electric (AS6939) which we do not consider as a CP since it is labeled as Transit/Access in CAIDA’s AS classification [80]. These seven ASes are OVH (AS16276), LimeLight (AS22822), Microsoft (AS8075), Twitter (AS13414), Twitch (AS46489), CloudFlare (AS13335) and EdgeCast (AS15133). The other two ASes are Booking.com (AS43996) and Spotify (AS8403). Interestingly, Booking.com or Spotify are not normally considered among the top CPs, however, they are in both TOPcores.

LocalH 1y ago

Of course it does. The whole idea of "Stop Killing Games" is that developers should not be able to summarily kill off a game that people have invested time and money into, just because it's not making them enough money going forward. Developers should absolutely not have that choice. It's fine if you want to run a live service game where the optimal experience happens during active support. However, unless you as a dev are willing to refund every single purchaser of the game, in full, when you discontinue a game, then you are stealing from purchasers. Moreover, even if you are willing to give a full refund to all players, it's really shitty to just rip an experience away from people, never to be experienced again (whether in a watered-down or limited form, or not). It's the same reason I don't agree with perpetual copyright, nor a copyright owner's right to suppress a work's availability. In almost all jurisdictions, copyright is intended to be a limited time right, with the rights eventually entering the public domain. If people can't access the work when it would become public domain, then that work is effectively stolen from the public in a way that mere non-commercial copyright infringement can never be theft.

LocalH 1y ago
Also, part of the issue is the death of private servers. Game publishers have chosen to revert to centralized servers, rather than allowing private servers. Thus they have also taken on the additional cost of running those servers. Older games can be easily played on private servers to this day, as the community of any moderately popular game will almost always step up to provide the service. Even games you might not expect would be that popular or games that never had private servers - for example, Rock Band 3 only ever supported connecting to Harmonix servers in an official capacity. This support is also discontinued (they still operate the Rock Central servers, but only for Rock Band 4). Yet right now, thanks to reverse engineering, there is a fan-operated server that you can connect to with a slightly modified game. You can even download the fan-created server software (written in Go) and stand up your own server for your friends or for whatever other reason (maybe you want to run a small tournament and use a private GoCentral server to record statistics and have a private leaderboard).
- chithanh 1y ago

poisonborz 1y ago

These are weak arguments but there are valid ones why I would not think this has a footing, even if I support the attitude. What about games where the world is fully generative, tied to a licensed engine? You can't just rip/disable licensed items out, they may form a significant part of business code. Code and APIs would be needed to be documented. Why just games? What about abandoned Saas offerings? These restrictions might creep over. I hate live service games like the next guy but legal advisors can bend these to form powerful counter-arguments.

mavamaarten 1y ago
I also think many comments are a bit too eager in claiming "oh just publish the code" and "oh just let users host X". It's obviously not that simple. The biggest one for me is that single player games should still be playable offline after servers have been sunset. I'm sure that with current games, licenses were indeed acquired for a certain limited time. But if you start development and you know you'll have to sunset it according to the rules one day, I'm sure you'll come up with other licenses or just a way to strip out content like that.
- dgfl 1y ago
  What’s the problem with releasing a server executable? As far as I can tell that would be enough to get around this legislation. And I can’t imagine that to be prohibitively expensive.
  - meheleventyone 1y ago
    What is a server executable? With a lot of modern games it could be a whole stacks worth of systems that neither the game client or server side game runtime will work without.
    - Mindwipe 1y ago
      And which are not owned by the developer or available to be perpetually licensed.

turtlebro 1y ago

If anything even comes out of this, the furthest a law could possibly go is to impose a 2 year window (after sale) in which a game needs to work as described.

tossandthrow 1y ago
A law can do much more. Just like the law don't just require that you can return you toxic ham within 2 years of purchase.
4hg4ufxhy 1y ago
That would already be great progress. For context Ubisofts the Crew shutdown only after 3 months of stopping sales. It could also work as a deterrent on making dedicated servers only architecture. If you can disable dedicated servers instantly(instead of 2 years) but enable private servers that might be more cost efficient.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

surgical_fire 1y ago

> many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only No problem. Per "Stop Killing Games" initiative, you will only have to provide means for the users to still be able to play those games after you decide to pull the plug on it. You can, for example, release the server code so that players can keep playing the game somehow, if they so desire. No need to keep supporting your online rent-seeking scheme ad-eternum after it outlived its usefulness. We need to be frank about what those developers really want though. They want to be able to take away games they previously sold so that players move on to their shiny new online rent-seeking scheme. Allowing people to actually own the games they bought is bad for business. Fuck this noise and fuck those developers.

chithanh 1y ago

I don't buy these arguments. If game developers don't want to sell games that way then don't. Sell subscriptions instead. Like instead of $60 for a game, $60 one-time fee for a two-year subscription, which afterwards renews automatically in 3 months intervals at no cost until further notice. Same applies to all paid in-game content. That way the developers can continue offering both games and subscriptions where each type makes most sense. And everybody knows what they are signing up for. People who buy a game get a game which they can play indefinitely. People who buy a subscription know the earliest possible end date and everything beyond that is just bonus.

dmurray 1y ago
I don't think this would have any significant impact on the industry. Publishers would just advertise their games as coming with a 2-year subscription, or whatever. People would have the same expectations as now: the game will be supported for a couple of years, and it will be supported much longer if there's an obvious way that is profitable to the developer. No publisher would unilaterally want to start advertising games as subscriptions, but if everyone was forced to do it, nothing changes. Perhaps an extra layer of clicking through for the user, like when we mandated all websites must have annoying cookie popups.
- anton-c 1y ago
  Most games won't need it. When every other offline game says "buy" but the games as a service one has to say "rent" for the same price, consumers will notice I think.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    I think what people are saying is the opposite would happen. If this initiative makes it into law, nearly every game company will overnight make their games say "Rent" instead of "Buy", so that they can continue with their shitty practice.
    - archievillain 1y ago

xg15 1y ago

I guess the (media) battle is on now. In some ways I think even this statement by the trade association is already a win - the initiative forced them to explicitly address topics such as private servers, which they'd rather not talk about at all. Their statement also made it easy to ask counter questions regarding offline single-player or actual player compensation on shutdown. (I love the "we understand it can be disappointing, but we give players fair notice" statement, as if players didn't pay money for this) I don't expect a lot of support from EU politicians for the initiative, as the current Parliament is even more conservative and corporate-friendly than usual. But well, hope dies last, and at least the will of the public seems to be there. (And also the appearance of being a tech regulator has become more popular in Brussels) So we'll see.

niemandhier 1y ago

An interesting side observation: The usual inter country struggles in the Eu might actually play out in favor of customers this time. Game development is stronger in smaller EU countries ( measured in percent of the gdp ) so big countries will not block any initiatives.

benoau 1y ago

Predictable response, they'd rather have complete autonomy to decide what they will do and be the sole arbiter of consumers' rights, while gaming history disintegrates thanks to the double-tap of online-dependency shutdowns and marketplaces that make it a TOS violation to leave your library to someone.

jt2190 1y ago

> Even the singleplayer components [of Ubisoft’s “The Crew (2014) were unusable when the servers were turned off]: [Y]ou just wanting to race around cars in a world with you and other NPCs in it, is no longer viable. Essentially, you didn't "buy" the game, but in a sense were "renting" it for an indeterminate amount of time, a lease that expired due to the publishers and developers no longer wanting to provide that service for you. Probably true! There is likely some additional revenue that the publisher gets from running servers, even for single-player mode. The question then is what will change in these games if that revenue is no longer there to fund them? Will the quality be lower? Will the price be higher? Will the publishers release new games less frequently? Maybe they just don’t make single-player games anymore?

mtsr 1y ago
Honestly? I think we can do without these predatory practices even at the cost of some games. And I somehow doubt there’s revenue to make off these single player games being online dependent, because the most probable ways simply wouldn’t fly in Europe due to consumer protections. Most likely it’s just “anti-piracy” or something like that.
rcxdude 1y ago
Maybe they just stop adding hard requirements for online connectivity to their single-players games, which is something which takes more effort to do in the first place?
- jt2190 1y ago
  I worry that they just stop completely shipong single-player mode as that seems easiest.
  - pyrale 1y ago
    That is fine. Other companies will fill that void. There are plenty of small indy companies that make great single-player games, that could benefit from the attention.
  - 1y ago

umvi 1y ago

Vote with your wallet, there are thousands of games that don't do shady stuff.

elitepleb 1y ago
There's fewer games to vote on every year, as conglomerates like Microsoft out vote your wallet a billion times over every time they buy a game studio to embrace, extend and then extinguish.
- ysavir 1y ago
  If looking at AAA publishers, maybe. The indie game scene continues to pump out games, some good, some bad, at half or less of cost of the AAA games. They won't be as polished, but many still deliver an exceptional experience.
- mouse_ 1y ago
  there are more games than ever, it's just that microsoft, ubisoft, etc are spending billions on actual psychologists to ensure the populace remains apathetic towards them. I don't care how smart you are, how much self control you have, whatever, in the face of billions of dollars, voting with your wallet does not stand a chance. The house always wins.
  - throw10920 1y ago
    Huh, that's funny, I've never bought a Ubisoft game. I guess I'm the first person ever who's resistant to those psychologists.
    - thrance 1y ago
      Do you not understand that the people on HN, you and me included, are far from the average consumer? We care about things most people really don't.
      - 1y ago

qoez 1y ago

> the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers Nice way to make publishers stop making multiplayer services available to the EU in the first place because deactivating it is illegal when costs outweigh profits.

phoronixrly 1y ago
Sounds good to me! EU gamers will not be taken advantage of.
pjmlp 1y ago
Great, maybe it will foster innovation among indie studios.
pyrale 1y ago
I'm fine with that. Others will come and fill the void.
akimbostrawman 1y ago
this has already been addressed but just for you. they won't leave the biggest global market with almost 500 million potential buyers because they can't rug pull anymore, even if they somehow suddenly don't like money anymore others will gladly take there place. the same "argument" has been thrown at GDPR which now every single corporation follows.

fidotron 1y ago

If this happened all multiplayer titles would turn F2P. People do not appreciate quite what a narrow path has to be walked by games from an IP standpoint. Code libraries, licensed property, per platform (and platform category) restrictions, general IP restrictions (not showing vehicles being damaged, or UI overlays on certain parts of licensed objects) and so on. This is why in the recent ROG Ally announcement Microsoft could not say all XBox games will run on it, because if it's a PC it's not a console, so various games will not be allowed to be sold on it as those contributing IP rights will have been split up separately. Simply pretending these very real concerns don't exist is nonsense land. You want games with real vehicles or licensed music? This is what you have to deal with. At least these days they have learned to license music for longer than used to be the case.

tetris11 1y ago
how did they do it in the past? If I can put my Tony Hawks cd from the PS2 into a cd player and enjoy all the DRM music, what changed between now and then? If music labels refuse to license out their songs like that, then if this law passes, they're going to have to suck it up and play nice again, else lose customers/publishers.
- toast0 1y ago
  Most of that era consoles would load level data from the CD, and then play the music as cd-da audio. There was no DRM on the music, perhaps because nobody thought of it, but more likely because there wasn't quite enough computing power to do it. PS2 games could be on CD or DVD and could have had cd quality music as a data file reasonably, but PS1 probably not, and cross platform games likely would use cd audio because it's easy. The choice for licensors was to have the music in the game and available on the cd or not. For a modern release, DRM music tracks that only play in the game is an option. We've also learned that the licenses are (or were) often time limited... The publisher can't make new copies after some time, without getting a new license for the audio. Sometimes that's also related to a different format.
- thunderfork 1y ago
  [dead]

deleted 1y ago

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bellgrove 1y ago

Having worked there in the past, Ubisoft is awful. When I was there previously there was an aggressive push for UPlay (now Ubisoft Connect) integration into all products. Then there were the bullshots for promos/E3/etc. There were often clashes with leadership who would fight against creativity / novel ideas in favour of cookie-cutter mechanics that would not add anything to the experience - certainly there was a mentality of, let's just copy what was recently successful. I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink.

bashinator 1y ago
I'll never buy an Ubisoft game again. Instant dealbreaker to see that studio on the Steam store page; I've deleted a $3 sale game from my cart when I realized that it was Ubisoft. No game is worth giving money to a company that hates its customers so much.
- valiant55 1y ago
  On the flip side ex-Ubisoft employees seem to be finding success after their departure. Highly recommend Clair Obsur: Expedition 33.
DrillShopper 1y ago
Not to mention the sexual assault
zamalek 1y ago
> I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink. They are like junk food. Everyone has the junk food that they enjoy. FarCry is certainly the McDonald's of games. I enjoy some junk food once in a while, problems arise if I make it my staple diet.
techjamie 1y ago
For Steam users, a reminder that you can go to a publisher's page and "Ignore" that publisher. The option is a little bit hidden, it's in the settings cog on the right-hand side of the page. It'll stop steam from recommending their games to you, and when one does show up, like in the Top Sellers list, it'll have a message on it saying that it's by a publisher that you ignored. I have Ubisoft, EA, and Sony marked as such, personally.

mopsi 1y ago

This goes beyond games and calls for regulation of anything sold as a product, but working more like a subscription service. Similar issues also affect an increasing number of appliances that rely on apps and connect through manufacturer-hosted services. If the manufacturer goes out of business or shuts down a service, fully working devices can lose some or all of their features. Manufacturers should be required to open up their devices and provide a documented local API, if for no other reason, then to reduce the huge amount of electronic waste created by making devices artificially obsolete. I think that approaching the problem from the perspective of a physical product, like a smart lightbulb that doesn't work anymore because the manufacturer shut down its servers, would be easier for non-technical people to understand and would likely have a better chance of success.

chickenzzzzu 1y ago

I work for a game company. I am ardently opposed to this idea. All you will end up with, in the best case scenario that isn't even guaranteed to happen, is extremely mediocre games for which you will have the server executable along with the client. Whether you like it or not, thanks to piracy and competition (and yes I've heard Gabe Newell's quote on piracy), server authoritative video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy, and not even just for games. And no, "just release your source code then" is not a valid rule to enforce either. If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own? It has never been easier to do so, and there are freely usable code and art assets on hundreds of different platforms for you to attempt.

eddd-ddde 1y ago
> If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own? This is such and odd thing to suggest. People want to play the games they paid for, _obviously_ they aren't going to make their own game.
- chickenzzzzu 1y ago
  What you have paid for is not a physical copy of something that is guaranteed to work forever. All you will achieve with this initiative is that that will be clearly labeled now, instead of implied.
  - masfuerte 1y ago
    If that's all that will happen, why do you have a problem with it?
    - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
      If that was the end of the road, then I definitely don't have a problem with it. Like another poster said, it would be like labeling for cigarettes, and that is totally fine. What I do fear however, is that they will go a step further, requiring companies to release server builds, client and server sourde code, and then of course the ultimate dream, "well no you actually can't turn it off, we require you to maintain it forever even if it loses you money because gaming is a right".

layer8 1y ago

If any of this goes through in terms of legislation, it will mostly just have “buy” change into “lifetime subscription” (where as usual, “lifetime” means the lifetime of the service). I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done, and the article itself alludes to that outcome, but it also means that it won’t stop the killing of games.

chickenzzzzu 1y ago
[flagged]
- happymellon 1y ago
  How is forcing manufacturers to state that they are planning to bork your game in the future "increasing the barrier of entry"?
  - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
    If the only thing that this initiative seeks to achieve is clear and fair labeling when purchasing something, I'm all for it. If in the future, if anyone (including this initiative) requires the release or maintenance of server builds or code, I am against it.
    - skotobaza 1y ago
      > if anyone (including this initiative) requires the release or maintenance of server builds or code, I am against it Why? What do you personally lose because of that?
      - chickenzzzzu 1y ago
        There is a competitive advantage for being able to hold onto your code and builds. It currently requires quite a lot of effort and skill and persistence to resurrect live service games. This allows us to make money by re-releasing games and remastering them and so on. If you require us to release server builds and or code "while still respecting copyright", the result will be that countries like Russia and China will offer competing services against us and we will not be able to make nearly as much money anymore.

calibas 1y ago

Video games publishers don't want you to play the same game for too long without spending more money. They don't want to make games like Terraria where you have a $10 game you can play for a thousand hours. They'd much rather you buy multiple $60+ games, plus expansions, "micro"-transactions and subscriptions. They don't want games that last forever, they want to pressure you into constantly buying the next big thing.

mystraline 1y ago
[flagged]
- DrillShopper 1y ago
  BG3 is quite possibly one of the most modable games of the last five years, and the multiplayer game is self hosted (peer to peer)
  - doctorpangloss 1y ago
    I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. There is a lot of confusion about this, almost certainly from people who have never played the game.
- artemonster 1y ago
  Knowling Larian I dont think that will be the case. what are you basing your assumptions upon? there is already extensive modding for bg3
  - PoshBreeze 1y ago
    Larian are no longer involved with development of BG3: https://www.ign.com/articles/wizards-of-the-coast-not-to-blame-for-larian-leaving-baldurs-gate-3-and-dd-behind-swen-vincke-insists https://www.ign.com/articles/wizards-of-the-coast-not-to-bla... EDIT: Updated Link. It seems they've added free patches and won't be working on BG4.

donatj 1y ago

I feel... uneasy about the idea. Are games art? If so, are you comfortable telling artists what types of art they can create? I know not everyone is going to agree with me here but it feels like a slippery slope.

artemonster 1y ago
what a strawman. its not about "you cannot draw this" but its more like "please dont use dyes that offgas deadly fumes", a technical regulation not about substance
- donatj 1y ago
  Talk about strawman, it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!" And you're comparing it to poison gas
  - jjulius 1y ago
    >... it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!" Is this entirely the fault of the customer, or is it that the studios have largely forced this model upon customers, leaving them with little choice?
  - artemonster 1y ago
    this was not a literal comparison, wtf, but an example of a technical limitation that will be imposed by law as a counter to your "art" stupidity. You can Use alternative formulation if you cant comprehend basic methaphors: „stop using dyes that decay in 2 months“
  - shminge 1y ago
    >... it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!" It's much more like "I paid for something, there should be a law so no one can take what I've paid for"
  - mainde 1y ago
    IMHO the incentives are disproportionately in favour of everyone doing something that hurts consumers (= "something that I don't like"), thus regulation in favour of consumer rights is appropriate. There isn't a scenario where, at scale, someone can offer a product that respects consumer rights and is successful, because it's too profitable to not respect consumer rights just like it wasn't in many other cases.

throw10920 1y ago

I think very few people (outside of the industry - important caveat) are opposed to the stated goals of the initiative: > This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union [...] to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. The concern that I have is that I have no idea what the actual text of the law is going to be. You can look at laws like the DMCA, that had a reasonable purpose (made adjustments to the copyright system for the age of the internet) and a royally screwed up implementation that basically everyone can find a problem with. It's easy to imagine that the laws that pass could be (1) completely neutered by corruption in the EU leading to regulatory capture (2) far too strong and written in a way that imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too) or (3) bad just because of technical incompetence of the authors. I know that there's not much I can do about those things, but that may explain the emotional reactions of some people like e.g. PirateSoftware - nobody actually knows what the resulting law will be like, and everyone familiar with the legislative system knows how bad the outputs can be.

qznc 1y ago
So don’t even try because it might be bad?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- throw10920 1y ago
  Nowhere did I say or imply that - did you respond to the wrong comment by accident?
  - conductr 1y ago
    It’s kind of implied by your argument. All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
    - 1y ago

PoshBreeze 1y ago

> Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. I find it really frustrating how they phrase things because there is so much BS in almost one sentence. The entire point of having a private server is so that they are no longer in control of these things. Moreover if I am running a private server: - It isn't their responsibility to secure players data. - it isn't their responsibility to remove illegal content. - it isn't their responsibility to remove "unsafe" (whatever that means) community content. So how could they be liable? > In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create. This is pretty much disingenuous argument that "PirateSoftware" was pushing. They are pretending that a single player mode would need to be created. This isn't what is being requested.

subjectsigma 1y ago

Seems pretty obvious to me that if this passes, big game companies will either re-label all new releases as “subscriptions” and/or just never make a single-player game again. And mostly nothing will change. If you don’t like companies like this, don’t buy their games. There’s literally thousands of indie game companies that don’t abuse their users.

ycombinatrix 1y ago
What you just described is a massive improvement over the status quo. Today, I have no idea when the game I just purchased is going to be disabled.
skotobaza 1y ago
> don’t buy their games Not a solution. Other people will buy them and outvote you with their wallets. This has already happened. People did buy The Crew, and I doubt that most of them realized that it will be closed 10 years later.
lawlessone 1y ago
>and/or just never make a single-player game again plenty of companies making single player games now would be fine.

SamuelAdams 1y ago

At a macro level, killed games are a good thing for gaming companies. It creates a shortage of playable games so that new games sell and continue to make money. The biggest competitor to the video game industry is movies (Netflix, Disney plus, etc) and past games. Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today? If players can play thousands of high quality games for free, why bother paying for a new game? I suppose the book industry has the same problem, maybe there are some parallels to study from that.

pyrale 1y ago
> Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today? This is something we can answer pretty easily by looking at the book industry. People do enjoy novelty. The pulp sci-fi/fantasy from the 60s-80s is long forgotten save for a few masterpieces, and there is a flow of recent books that people buy and read.
cornstalks 1y ago
> At a macro level, killed games are a good thing for gaming companies. But they aren’t good for consumers.
- immibis 1y ago
  Who cares? This is capitalism, it's all about capital, not consumers. Good for capital == will happen.
immibis 1y ago
It would still be illegal to acquire a copy of a killed game. Their numbers would still dwindle, since they'd be limited to people who bought the game before it was killed.
- SpaghettiCthulu 1y ago
  Until copyright runs out.

kmeisthax 1y ago

[dead]

dandersch 1y ago

Having followed this initiative quite extensively from the beginning, the most baffling thing has been the underwhelming support from developers themselves, both from studios and individual devs. You would think the very idea of years of your work being rendered unplayable in an instant would be enough incentive to signal boost any effort against this industry practice. Instead, developer discourse has revolved around just how hard it would be to do what this is petition is asking for. You are an engineer for crying out loud. If you solved a problem but a new constraint arrives in the form of a law, you figure out how to solve the problem under the new constraint. Just because something is hard, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. It's almost like flexing your skills and signalling your elite knowledge is more important to people than simply defending what's right.

skotobaza 1y ago
I think that most developers are just afraid to voice such anti-industry opinion. Gamedev is fairly small industry, so if you piss off wrong people, you might be left without job opportunities.

izzydata 1y ago

If game publishers could in clear writing at time of purchase commit to a set number of years that game will be live then I think that is a good start. For example when the next live service game is released and you go to purchase it there is a clear warning that the publisher has only guaranteed the game to be live for 2 years. Personally that would prevent me from buying the game, but perhaps not others. The idea that a publisher can sell a live service game and shut it down in 1 month with no legal repercussions is ridiculous to me.

drwiggly 1y ago
The publisher can't do that. No one can tell the future.
- CaptainFever 1y ago
  They could be liable if they shut down the servers and make the purchase unusable before the end of the minimum contracted duration.

glimshe 1y ago

I agree with "Stop Killing Games"' vision of what games should be like. But I don't understand why people care to turn it into a movement... There is SO MUCH choice in games nowadays, including decades of classic games, that people should simply stop supporting player-hostile companies.

valiant55 1y ago
Vote with your wallet doesn't work when other people still fork over the cash anyway. Look at microtranactions, universally hated, yet developers/publishers make money hand over fist because enough people are willing to pay.
- glimshe 1y ago
  So maybe it's because people are happy with renting games and don't care to keep playing them forever? I'm just wondering if the concern is shared by most consumers. Stop Killing Games could make games more expensive for the people who are happy with the sad status quo - and they could be the majority.
  - valiant55 1y ago
    If current events in America have taught us anything is that "most consumers" opinions is of no importance. I want to believe in democracy but when the public education system have been attacked for decades is hard to defer to the popular opion on most things. I think most people, given the time and unbiased information would arrive at the appropriate conclusion but time and access to unbiased information are both in short supply.

nottorp 1y ago

Nothing about "innovation"? Just "choice"? But as probably many other comments say, if you buy something from Ubisoft you deserve it.

ghusto 1y ago

I don't disagree, but this is just one symptom of what the video game industry has become. As someone who hadn't played video games since his youth back in the late 80s, 90s, I was astonished when I tried to get back into it a few years ago. Kernel-level DRM, online checks, €80+ price tags, incomplete games that require DLC, and all this for rushed unfinished broken games. You keep paying though, so the game companies keep pushing ("if they'll put up with this, what else can we get away with?").

jimmydddd 1y ago

---This seems like it's being overly complicated. Isn't one of their requested options just to say that it's a "subscription" or that it may be discontinued some day when you originally "purchase" the game? ---If that option is acceptable to the stop game killing folks, why all this talk about public/private servers, security, portability, etc. ---When you sell it, just say "you are really kinda buying a subscription and we might shut it off in the future, but we'll try to give you some warning.?" ---Why would the industry be against that?

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

> If you complained that it's too hard to hash the passwords entered by your users or to encrypt medical data, or that you don't feel like complying with GDPR, you'd get rightfully fined out of existence. Hear, hear.

lofaszvanitt 1y ago

To be honest... in the last 10 years, there were maybe 1 or 2 AAA games I revisited and played multiple times. The quality is getting worse and worse. Every game steals/implements well known, 20 year old mechanics from other games, the story is for 12 year olds, same old shit repeated again and again. Basically aggressive, spoiled children in adult body commandeer 100s of people and create these godawful monstrosities.

acureau 1y ago

I did some looking into this a few days ago, and I can understand the sentiment. I can't understand the proposed implementation. There is a lack of technical discourse and heavy criticism of any negative opinion. I don't want to defend big publishers, I have not bought a new AAA game in many years. I think they are user hostile. Stop Killing Games is just way too broad. Remove online DRM checks from my single player game? Sure, I have been on board with that for a very long time. Make sure my MMO stays playable forever? You're asking for a miracle. You as a consumer need to be informed about what you're paying for. It's your job. "Just release the server's source / binary" is a pipe-dream and I figured more people here would understand this. Modern software is super complex, distributed, entangled with external services and dependencies. Often it's not just isolated, should you be forced to release the backend serving all of your (still active) games? Has anyone considered the security implications? Should you be forced to use only libraries that you can distribute? Can you see how this may stifle creativity? "Just state when the game will go offline" is impossible. The game will go offline when it can't be responsibly funded it anymore. Whether that's 2 or 10 years from now. If a company has to declare when your game service will expire, expect most online games to transition to a subscription model going forward. If the consumer won't have that, expect less of them to exist. It's going to backfire spectacularly. A better idea would be to mandate a minimum support window, and refunds within that window. What constitutes a "playable state"? Is the anti-cheat in an online FPS integral to playability? Many would argue so, I'll let you think about that one. This movement is riddled with such ambiguities.

s1gsegv 1y ago
I believe if you have a financial incentive not to release source / binaries then that’s a good financial incentive to keep the servers up. If such a mandate doesn’t result in actually releasing anything but instead properly incentivizes the right behavior, I’d still say the movement had won.

hellisothers 1y ago

Regulation is not a good answer to bad actors when the problem is too vague. All this is going to do is create burdens the big players can skirt cat-and-mouse style while the small guys struggle beneath them (ie regulatory capture). I don’t have a good solution but this is not it, very open to the idea that this is a clear/tactical solution and I just haven’t thought enough about it though.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Rent-seeking, treaterlite publishers gonna bullshit. Not exactly a surprise they care about money most of all.

m-p-3 1y ago

It makes then accountable for their choices by forcing them to think of a phase-out strategy other than simply abandoning it.