5 ms·

Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

117 points by LorenDB 8mo ago

cadamsdotcom 8mo ago
Is democracy working? Don’t want to get my hopes up, but I think this might be.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  >Is democracy working? If only it would actually work that easy for democracy(people's will) to control the actual important things of society that fuck us, like housing, money printing, immigration, tax % and where that money goes to, healthcare, foreign aid, jailing epstein clients, etc. Imagine if democracy actually worked.
- jacinabox 8mo ago
  Could be, if you can set up a millions of dollars regulatory apparatus to keep online some really old MMOs for the 100 people worldwide who want to play them, there's really nothing you can't regulate.
  - prartichoke 8mo ago
    This is a common mischaracterization of stop killing games. It does not propose publishers keep games online indefinitely, but to provide the bare minimum to the community to host them if they decide to shut the servers down for good. If the 16-year-old Unturned dev could do it, so can AAA studios
    - 1123581321 8mo ago
      What is the bare minimum they are seeking? It seems like advocates would give varying answers depending on their technical ability.
      - OkayPhysicist 8mo ago
        They're pretty up front about the fact that the final result is going to have be some sort of compromise. Based on the words of the most involved proponents of the movement have said, the absolute least they could be forced into accepting would be "Developers can't sue people hosting reverse engineered servers after the main game has gone offline". Which is trivial to comply with (just don't sue someone), but probably insufficient for living up to the main messaging of the movement (since there's a lot more games that people care about preserving than games people care enough about preserving to completely re-implement servers for). Slightly more reasonably, there's the pitch of "release your server binaries". As the market stands at the moment, that'd be difficult, because in large studios it's common to have all sorts of licensed software involved in hosting your backend, but it's the kind of thing that's pretty trivially responded to on new projects: companies selling software for game service backends would have to adjust their licenses in response to their customers' legal requirements, but that's far from impossible given all the licensed code that's running on client machines already. In the best possible world, consumers would get access to the source code of the entire project after the company is done making money on it, but everyone involved seems to think that's a pipe dream.
- lyu07282 8mo ago
  As long as people are sufficiently misinformed and politically uneducated, they believe in democracy working. So it's possible yeah!
krige 8mo ago
Thanks, "Thor".
- intothemild 8mo ago
  I would hope that he has either changed his tune (unlikely) or is fuming (likely)
preommr 8mo ago
Advances to round 2/7 to be able to do a powerpoint presentation so that companies will, at best, be forced to put some pointless label as a legal loophole, that consumers will promptly ignore because everyone will have it and it'll be meaningless.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
HiPhish 8mo ago
I think Stop Killing Games is more important than just "oh noes, they took my toys away". Looking back, video games have been the gateway to computing in more than one one way. Before home computers people had game consoles (which were cheaper than computers) or arcades. Before iTunes and app stores there was Steam. Before the modern smartphone apps there were Wii channels. Maybe in some cases the games came technically later, but they were the initial contact for the broad masses. What I'm getting at is that it has usually been through games that practices in general computing have been established. If Stop Killing Games is successful it will have much bigger effects on general computing. And I believe that this is why you keep the same false accusations getting repeated over and over again (e.g. saying that SKG would require publishers to keep supporting a game forever). I know it's said not to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but at some point the pattern becomes too clear not to notice. All of big tech stands to lose eventually if SKG succeeds.
- gchamonlive 8mo ago
  Have you played The Talos Principle 2? Yep, games are toys! It's nothing more than that. What we fail to realise in our industrial society is that toys are a fundamental piece of our culture, they enable learning lots of different skills that wouldn't be possible in the "real world", they foster creativity, problem solving, bonding and cooperation... Toys are just toys, and yet they are the most important things we have. I honestly think the technological progress catalyzed by games is a byproduct, a huge one, but not central to the industry. We only think technology is the most important thing because we live in a world in which overvalues technical prowess in lieu of culture.
  - imiric 8mo ago
    I agree with most of what you said, but describing video games as nothing more than toys does a disservice to the medium. Yes, video games can be educational and entertaining, just like real world toys, but they can also be artistic and communicate stories. They're the most expressive and engaging storytelling device we have ever invented. Not all games are all of these things, and there's nothing wrong with games that only focus on entertainment, but those that combine all of these aspects successfully are far more impactful and memorable than any other piece of media.
AuthAuth 8mo ago
This really is the white pill young people need to not hate democracy and its probably the worst most unlikely one to pass through.
- petcat 8mo ago
  Gamer Rage has always been the worst political hill to die on.
- zamadatix 8mo ago
  I really need to get pill-pilled so I can keep up with what people are saying these days. From Urban Dictionary: > 1: being aware of a difficult situation or position and having a fighting "can do" attitude and not giving up, plus accomplishing said thing(s) within the difficult situation. 2: being optimistic, not merely through gut feelings but via having thought about a situation enough to understand how to get through it successfully > Tom: How'd you get to the top of this business in just a few months of work? > Jim: Working hard, working correctly, and taking the white pill.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
lopatin 8mo ago
Can someone please ELI5? I've heard much about it but still, with all the drama, I still don't get it. SKG is an initiative that will force game publishers to keep a game online, provided that people have paid for it, and the publisher is not bankrupt? Is that right? What does it have to do with democracy?
- lyu07282 8mo ago
  > Is that right? That's the lie being told to stop stop killing games, so no.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- TimFogarty 8mo ago
  No, they do not want to force publishers to keep a game online. The initiative just wants developers to provide a way for users to keep using a game after it has gone EOL by allowing users to run their own servers or by no longer requiring internet access. See the FAQ[1]: > Aren't you asking companies to support games forever? Isn't that unrealistic? > A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree that it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. Additionally, there are already real-world examples of publishers ending support for online-only games in a responsible way, such as: > 'Gran Turismo Sport' published by Sony > 'Knockout City' published by Velan Studios > 'Mega Man X DiVE' published by Capcom > 'Scrolls / Caller's Bane' published by Mojang AB > 'Duelyst' published by Bandai Namco Entertainment I'm not sure what the question "What does it have to do with democracy?" is referring to. Some people find that no longer having access to video games they paid for isn't fair so are petitioning their governments for consumer protection against that. [1] https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
  - 8mo ago
TimFogarty 8mo ago
An interesting question about Stop Killing Games is if this should apply to software more broadly. If a company shuts down should they open source their product so people can continue using it? There isn't as strong an argument for this since most software is structured like a SaaS rather than a one time purchase. But it's considerate when companies do this, e.g. Facebook open sourcing Parse Server was better than outright discontinuing it.
- petcat 8mo ago
  > If a company shuts down should they open source their product so people can continue using it? The question is who is now responsible for the software? Who can the government compel to open source it? There is no more legal entity behind the software. Maybe the last employee just takes the source code home on their laptop and that's it. How is a government forcing a private entity (especially a defunkt one) to release their source code?
  - OkayPhysicist 8mo ago
    When a company shuts down, somebody becomes the new owner of their stuff, including their intellectual property. Most of the time it's whoever the company was in debt to. Now that company can choose to either host the software, or release it.
    - OneMorePerson 8mo ago
      This just feels like one of those things that can be completely loopholed. There's plenty of reasons why a company might find a specific software not profitable but also not want to open source it, so under this rule they will just host it on the most basic server possible (only concurrently supports like 50 users) and never update it again. Effectively still dead.
- Ekaros 8mo ago
  Maybe not open source it. But at least allow it to operate in offline manner where for one time purchases you do not have any license checks that stop it from operating. I do not expect things like cloud sync to continue. But at least I should be able to run it on my local machine.
SunshineTheCat 8mo ago
I in no way mean this to be rude, but I think a big part of why the EU isn't in the same galaxy as the US in the realm of business in general, is in some part, the knee jerk reaction to turn to the government to make products and services better. Governments cannot make you an alternative, they can only make something that already exists, different (usually worse). I have zero interest in creating in the gaming space, however, my gut reaction would be to start down the path of how I could create competition to companies that rug pulled their games. And yes, I get that "just make a competitor" is easier said than done. But at least by going down that road, you end up with more games, better games, and people learning skills throughout the process. And who knows, maybe one is a mega success. Sure, you can stand there pounding your chest for "democracy," but I contend that those who are building their own things are practicing it far more than those who are demanding others make things for them.
- cousin_it 8mo ago
  It's not "demanding others make things for you". It's demanding they don't remotely disable the thing you already bought. Imagine you buy a car, then a few years later the company remotely disables it because they're selling a newer model. Without giving you the money back of course. That's what's happening with games. And not just multiplayer: tons of single player games have been killed this way. The whole SKG thing started with The Crew, whose single player campaign (a massive thing with tons of content) got remotely yanked by the publisher.
  - maccard 8mo ago
    Why is this only targeted at games and not mobile apps, app subscriptions or websites. This pretty much removes the ability to use _any_ commercial software without a custom license which is just insanity. No using any AWS services in case the pull the rug on you. You might argue “but you can X and you can Y”, and that’s true, but again why is this only a problem for games?
    - OkayPhysicist 8mo ago
      The short answer is someone cared enough about the specific example in gaming to actually go through all the work to demand change. The longer answer is that games are one of the only pieces of software your average consumer actually buys these days, and they have a few particularly egregious examples that make it much easier to argue in front of a bunch of politicians without a firm grasp on the digital world, like "Game is completely client side except it checks with a server every 5 minutes to make sure you have a valid license, so when the company goes belly up you're left with a brick"
imiric 8mo ago
I'm not sure how I feel about SKG. On one hand: sure, a product you buy should be expected to work for more than a couple of years. This gets fuzzy with modern service subscription models, licensing terms, etc., but in general, planned obsolescence shouldn't exist in digital products any more than in physical ones. On the other, though, the companies that produce games that stop working are not worth supporting. Their games are often not great to begin with, and rewarding this behavior simply gives them a reason to keep abusing consumers. There are so many studios that produce games worth playing, and make them accessible without DRM on platforms like GOG and itch.io. A one-time payment can get you many hours of enjoyment for as long as you have a compatible system to run it on. This is getting more difficult on Windows, but thankfully Linux is a solid gaming platform now, and there are many well supported virtualization options for older games. So my point is: stop supporting scummy companies, and start supporting passionate game developers. There is a practically infinite catalog of great experiences beyond the yearly rehashed EA, Activision, or Ubisoft title.
- wvenable 8mo ago
  > On the other, though, the companies that produce games that stop working are not worth supporting. But how can you make an informed purchasing decision based on something that hasn't happened yet? What about new studios?
  - imiric 8mo ago
    You don't pre-order, and you wait for reviews. But usually this is a problem of repeat offenders. Fool me once... Nowadays with shovelware and AI slop, new studios can also release garbage, but you don't have to play on day 1. At some point you start trusting certain studios and publishers, which makes things a bit easier. Trust is difficult to earn, but easy to lose. The problem is that many people keep trusting consumer-hostile companies even after they screw them over.
    - wvenable 8mo ago
      > You don't pre-order, and you wait for reviews. ...you wait several years for them to not shut down the servers? In the end, without government intervention, is there any hope that any game beign developed right now will be able to be played in 20 years? I don't think so.
vivzkestrel 8mo ago
- Absolutely insane that this movement may have caused an entire sub to exist now. - Imagine having a sub r/fuckubisoft and it has even more people than r/ubisoft - Lots of disgruntled fans have stemmed up from industry practices it seems
lofaszvanitt 8mo ago
Well, I don't think this is a good idea, since people need to get off their daily dose of heroin sooner or later. But, if people want to live their lives inside an online world, well, who am I to stop them.

117 points by LorenDB 8mo ago

cadamsdotcom 8mo ago

Is democracy working? Don’t want to get my hopes up, but I think this might be.

joe_mamba 8mo ago
>Is democracy working? If only it would actually work that easy for democracy(people's will) to control the actual important things of society that fuck us, like housing, money printing, immigration, tax % and where that money goes to, healthcare, foreign aid, jailing epstein clients, etc. Imagine if democracy actually worked.
jacinabox 8mo ago
Could be, if you can set up a millions of dollars regulatory apparatus to keep online some really old MMOs for the 100 people worldwide who want to play them, there's really nothing you can't regulate.
- prartichoke 8mo ago
  This is a common mischaracterization of stop killing games. It does not propose publishers keep games online indefinitely, but to provide the bare minimum to the community to host them if they decide to shut the servers down for good. If the 16-year-old Unturned dev could do it, so can AAA studios
  - 1123581321 8mo ago
    What is the bare minimum they are seeking? It seems like advocates would give varying answers depending on their technical ability.
    - OkayPhysicist 8mo ago
      They're pretty up front about the fact that the final result is going to have be some sort of compromise. Based on the words of the most involved proponents of the movement have said, the absolute least they could be forced into accepting would be "Developers can't sue people hosting reverse engineered servers after the main game has gone offline". Which is trivial to comply with (just don't sue someone), but probably insufficient for living up to the main messaging of the movement (since there's a lot more games that people care about preserving than games people care enough about preserving to completely re-implement servers for). Slightly more reasonably, there's the pitch of "release your server binaries". As the market stands at the moment, that'd be difficult, because in large studios it's common to have all sorts of licensed software involved in hosting your backend, but it's the kind of thing that's pretty trivially responded to on new projects: companies selling software for game service backends would have to adjust their licenses in response to their customers' legal requirements, but that's far from impossible given all the licensed code that's running on client machines already. In the best possible world, consumers would get access to the source code of the entire project after the company is done making money on it, but everyone involved seems to think that's a pipe dream.
lyu07282 8mo ago
As long as people are sufficiently misinformed and politically uneducated, they believe in democracy working. So it's possible yeah!

krige 8mo ago

Thanks, "Thor".

intothemild 8mo ago
I would hope that he has either changed his tune (unlikely) or is fuming (likely)

preommr 8mo ago

Advances to round 2/7 to be able to do a powerpoint presentation so that companies will, at best, be forced to put some pointless label as a legal loophole, that consumers will promptly ignore because everyone will have it and it'll be meaningless.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

HiPhish 8mo ago

I think Stop Killing Games is more important than just "oh noes, they took my toys away". Looking back, video games have been the gateway to computing in more than one one way. Before home computers people had game consoles (which were cheaper than computers) or arcades. Before iTunes and app stores there was Steam. Before the modern smartphone apps there were Wii channels. Maybe in some cases the games came technically later, but they were the initial contact for the broad masses. What I'm getting at is that it has usually been through games that practices in general computing have been established. If Stop Killing Games is successful it will have much bigger effects on general computing. And I believe that this is why you keep the same false accusations getting repeated over and over again (e.g. saying that SKG would require publishers to keep supporting a game forever). I know it's said not to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but at some point the pattern becomes too clear not to notice. All of big tech stands to lose eventually if SKG succeeds.

gchamonlive 8mo ago
Have you played The Talos Principle 2? Yep, games are toys! It's nothing more than that. What we fail to realise in our industrial society is that toys are a fundamental piece of our culture, they enable learning lots of different skills that wouldn't be possible in the "real world", they foster creativity, problem solving, bonding and cooperation... Toys are just toys, and yet they are the most important things we have. I honestly think the technological progress catalyzed by games is a byproduct, a huge one, but not central to the industry. We only think technology is the most important thing because we live in a world in which overvalues technical prowess in lieu of culture.
- imiric 8mo ago
  I agree with most of what you said, but describing video games as nothing more than toys does a disservice to the medium. Yes, video games can be educational and entertaining, just like real world toys, but they can also be artistic and communicate stories. They're the most expressive and engaging storytelling device we have ever invented. Not all games are all of these things, and there's nothing wrong with games that only focus on entertainment, but those that combine all of these aspects successfully are far more impactful and memorable than any other piece of media.

AuthAuth 8mo ago

This really is the white pill young people need to not hate democracy and its probably the worst most unlikely one to pass through.

petcat 8mo ago
Gamer Rage has always been the worst political hill to die on.
zamadatix 8mo ago
I really need to get pill-pilled so I can keep up with what people are saying these days. From Urban Dictionary: > 1: being aware of a difficult situation or position and having a fighting "can do" attitude and not giving up, plus accomplishing said thing(s) within the difficult situation. 2: being optimistic, not merely through gut feelings but via having thought about a situation enough to understand how to get through it successfully > Tom: How'd you get to the top of this business in just a few months of work? > Jim: Working hard, working correctly, and taking the white pill.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

lopatin 8mo ago

Can someone please ELI5? I've heard much about it but still, with all the drama, I still don't get it. SKG is an initiative that will force game publishers to keep a game online, provided that people have paid for it, and the publisher is not bankrupt? Is that right? What does it have to do with democracy?

lyu07282 8mo ago
> Is that right? That's the lie being told to stop stop killing games, so no.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
TimFogarty 8mo ago
No, they do not want to force publishers to keep a game online. The initiative just wants developers to provide a way for users to keep using a game after it has gone EOL by allowing users to run their own servers or by no longer requiring internet access. See the FAQ[1]: > Aren't you asking companies to support games forever? Isn't that unrealistic? > A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree that it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. Additionally, there are already real-world examples of publishers ending support for online-only games in a responsible way, such as: > 'Gran Turismo Sport' published by Sony > 'Knockout City' published by Velan Studios > 'Mega Man X DiVE' published by Capcom > 'Scrolls / Caller's Bane' published by Mojang AB > 'Duelyst' published by Bandai Namco Entertainment I'm not sure what the question "What does it have to do with democracy?" is referring to. Some people find that no longer having access to video games they paid for isn't fair so are petitioning their governments for consumer protection against that. [1] https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
- 8mo ago

TimFogarty 8mo ago

An interesting question about Stop Killing Games is if this should apply to software more broadly. If a company shuts down should they open source their product so people can continue using it? There isn't as strong an argument for this since most software is structured like a SaaS rather than a one time purchase. But it's considerate when companies do this, e.g. Facebook open sourcing Parse Server was better than outright discontinuing it.

petcat 8mo ago
> If a company shuts down should they open source their product so people can continue using it? The question is who is now responsible for the software? Who can the government compel to open source it? There is no more legal entity behind the software. Maybe the last employee just takes the source code home on their laptop and that's it. How is a government forcing a private entity (especially a defunkt one) to release their source code?
- OkayPhysicist 8mo ago
  When a company shuts down, somebody becomes the new owner of their stuff, including their intellectual property. Most of the time it's whoever the company was in debt to. Now that company can choose to either host the software, or release it.
  - OneMorePerson 8mo ago
    This just feels like one of those things that can be completely loopholed. There's plenty of reasons why a company might find a specific software not profitable but also not want to open source it, so under this rule they will just host it on the most basic server possible (only concurrently supports like 50 users) and never update it again. Effectively still dead.
Ekaros 8mo ago
Maybe not open source it. But at least allow it to operate in offline manner where for one time purchases you do not have any license checks that stop it from operating. I do not expect things like cloud sync to continue. But at least I should be able to run it on my local machine.

SunshineTheCat 8mo ago

I in no way mean this to be rude, but I think a big part of why the EU isn't in the same galaxy as the US in the realm of business in general, is in some part, the knee jerk reaction to turn to the government to make products and services better. Governments cannot make you an alternative, they can only make something that already exists, different (usually worse). I have zero interest in creating in the gaming space, however, my gut reaction would be to start down the path of how I could create competition to companies that rug pulled their games. And yes, I get that "just make a competitor" is easier said than done. But at least by going down that road, you end up with more games, better games, and people learning skills throughout the process. And who knows, maybe one is a mega success. Sure, you can stand there pounding your chest for "democracy," but I contend that those who are building their own things are practicing it far more than those who are demanding others make things for them.

cousin_it 8mo ago
It's not "demanding others make things for you". It's demanding they don't remotely disable the thing you already bought. Imagine you buy a car, then a few years later the company remotely disables it because they're selling a newer model. Without giving you the money back of course. That's what's happening with games. And not just multiplayer: tons of single player games have been killed this way. The whole SKG thing started with The Crew, whose single player campaign (a massive thing with tons of content) got remotely yanked by the publisher.
- maccard 8mo ago
  Why is this only targeted at games and not mobile apps, app subscriptions or websites. This pretty much removes the ability to use _any_ commercial software without a custom license which is just insanity. No using any AWS services in case the pull the rug on you. You might argue “but you can X and you can Y”, and that’s true, but again why is this only a problem for games?
  - OkayPhysicist 8mo ago
    The short answer is someone cared enough about the specific example in gaming to actually go through all the work to demand change. The longer answer is that games are one of the only pieces of software your average consumer actually buys these days, and they have a few particularly egregious examples that make it much easier to argue in front of a bunch of politicians without a firm grasp on the digital world, like "Game is completely client side except it checks with a server every 5 minutes to make sure you have a valid license, so when the company goes belly up you're left with a brick"

imiric 8mo ago

I'm not sure how I feel about SKG. On one hand: sure, a product you buy should be expected to work for more than a couple of years. This gets fuzzy with modern service subscription models, licensing terms, etc., but in general, planned obsolescence shouldn't exist in digital products any more than in physical ones. On the other, though, the companies that produce games that stop working are not worth supporting. Their games are often not great to begin with, and rewarding this behavior simply gives them a reason to keep abusing consumers. There are so many studios that produce games worth playing, and make them accessible without DRM on platforms like GOG and itch.io. A one-time payment can get you many hours of enjoyment for as long as you have a compatible system to run it on. This is getting more difficult on Windows, but thankfully Linux is a solid gaming platform now, and there are many well supported virtualization options for older games. So my point is: stop supporting scummy companies, and start supporting passionate game developers. There is a practically infinite catalog of great experiences beyond the yearly rehashed EA, Activision, or Ubisoft title.

wvenable 8mo ago
> On the other, though, the companies that produce games that stop working are not worth supporting. But how can you make an informed purchasing decision based on something that hasn't happened yet? What about new studios?
- imiric 8mo ago
  You don't pre-order, and you wait for reviews. But usually this is a problem of repeat offenders. Fool me once... Nowadays with shovelware and AI slop, new studios can also release garbage, but you don't have to play on day 1. At some point you start trusting certain studios and publishers, which makes things a bit easier. Trust is difficult to earn, but easy to lose. The problem is that many people keep trusting consumer-hostile companies even after they screw them over.
  - wvenable 8mo ago
    > You don't pre-order, and you wait for reviews. ...you wait several years for them to not shut down the servers? In the end, without government intervention, is there any hope that any game beign developed right now will be able to be played in 20 years? I don't think so.

vivzkestrel 8mo ago

- Absolutely insane that this movement may have caused an entire sub to exist now. - Imagine having a sub r/fuckubisoft and it has even more people than r/ubisoft - Lots of disgruntled fans have stemmed up from industry practices it seems

lofaszvanitt 8mo ago

Well, I don't think this is a good idea, since people need to get off their daily dose of heroin sooner or later. But, if people want to live their lives inside an online world, well, who am I to stop them.