It’s amazing what a difference a little bit of time can make: Two years after kicking off what looked to be a long-shot campaign to push back on the practice of shutting down server-dependent videogames once they’re no longer profitable, Stop Killing Games founder Ross Scott and organizer Moritz Katzner appeared in front of the European Parliament to present their case—and it seemed to go very well.
Digital Fairness Act: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act/F33096034_en
Games should be required to have reproducible source for all components (client and server) sent to whatever the European equivalent of the Library of Congress is, to be made available in the Public Domain whenever the publisher stops publishing them.
Not only games. Goes for all electronics as well.
Sick of supporting your ‘old phones’? You’re required by law to disclose all binary blobs as source code to let somebody else pick it up the slack.
Feeling like bricking old Kindles? Fine, but users must be able to install alternative OS on your old device.
Not providing software updates for your TV anymore after you removed features? That’s your right, but so is the right of the effing device owner to install something else on it.
And it’s not just consumer electronics. (caugh John Deere caugh).
And the private encryption keys they use for DRM and bootloader locking too. I doubt that would go over well, but it needs to fucking happen. It is the only way to truly have right to repair and digital device ownership.
Not to be pro-corporate/anti-repair…but I feel I have to play devils-advocate here…
That sounds like a legal and security nightmare.
If you just give binary blobs and no sources, there’s no way to maintain the code/device long term. As exploits continue to be found in upstream dependencies, the hardware continues to become increasingly insecure.
But if the source needs to be released…I imagine that there are heaps of proprietary code that is still in use on “active” devices even after another model goes EoL…so if that code is released, there’s instantly thousands of nefarious eyes on it.
On top of the regular zero-days that are found out when a popular product reaches EoL.
I think that’s potentially a lot to ask of users. Will your technically-challenged great-Aunt switch to post-support build when her phone hits EoL, or will hackers be able to remote control her banking app and take away your inheritance before the community can even patch it (assuming there’s enough community support out there for an 8-year-old Galaxy A-series…)
Then there could also be licensed code that would need to be released as well…hence the legal nightmare.
Not saying it’s impossible…in fact, I greatly agree with your stance and stated position. Just saying that there are some blockers on this epic.
Security is constantly used as a guise for removing consumer rights and as someone who has been in the security industry for about 9 years I’m so sick of it.
First and foremost, everyone please understand: the user should be allowed to opt into your concept of insecurity: you do not know their threat model and you do not know their risk tolerance.
Using exploits in low level drivers in the wild is approaching APT level, and even if there were a simple one to use it’d likely be useless without some sort or local access to the device (bar some horror show bug in a Bluetooth or WiFi firmware). The risk is incredibly low for the average person. I’d put it pretty close to 0.
Wire transfers aren’t instant and for large sums (your inheritance) the banks will likely require more than just a request from your app. If the bank cares about that then they can also use the attestation APIs which would be more than sufficient, as much as I hate them.
This boogey man of the APT going after my technologically illiterate <family member> with nation state level exploits needs to die. Long ago we entered a new era of security where it just isn’t worth it to waste exploits. Especially when you can just text people and ask for their money and that works plenty well.
Security is not a valid reason to soft brick consumer devices at some arbitrary end of life date.
Agreed, but I think a framing or two is missing here, and it only applies to a subset, is that the people of the world shouldn’t have to deal with more/larger bot nets because these things haven’t been considered.
Another is just that the average great aunt isn’t opting into a concept of insecurity they’re simply ignorant to what threats there are. If it’s possible to distinguish between the two sets of people, or to maybe even bucket devices by potential threat, it might go a long away. I probably a lot wrong here, I just woke up.
But yeah, agreed security is an argument that’s hidden behind
Yes I’m not going to take some “survival of the fittest” nonsense approach to security: consumers need securely built devices and software. This is the first line of defense always: we need to make things secure and then have secure defaults according to whatever we decide “secure” means in the context of our widget or software. Then we need to provide “advanced” (or even just “ignorant but risk tolerant”) users with the ability to change the device or software to match their definition of “secure”.
The easiest example is secure boot. Your laptop likely has a key provided by your OEM and likely Microsoft’s key preinstalled. This is a valid “secure boot” path for the average user, provided your OEM and Microsoft don’t get compromised, which is APT territory. However you are provided with the ability to use a different key if you know how to do that. You have thus opted in to protecting your own private key but now you have more control over your device. This design is notably absent in phones, which is absolutely bananas and actually less secure in some threat models
You could extend examples like this if you wanted. One could easily imagine a device that does soft brick itself after the EOL date to simply protect people that are ignorant of the potential risks, but also provides an advanced user with the ability to revive it in a “less secure” state. The less advanced user will then have to either learn something new or buy a new device.
Security by obscurity is a myth
Technically, I’d say its a stalling tactic, but yeah, by no means is it a sound, comprehensive strategy.
No. It’s a valid tactic but needs to be part of a much broader strategy.
Absolute security is unachievable, but it is much harder to probe a black box to understand how it works than reading its entire manual.
That implies any and all FOSS project should be getting exploited constantly, especially those being run by a community of hobbiests, and that is simply not the case.
There’s been a notable uptick in supply chain attacks coming from the odd FOSS dependency.
Fortunately the FOSS environment as a whole, ironically, reflects the best aspects of a “free market” in the capitalist sense. If a package is no longer maintained, or poorly maintained, or the maintainer is a douche/Russian asset, it forks and many users jump ship to the newer package.
Users have full transparency into how the sausage is made. Everybody does.
So if exploitable code is discovered, it can just as well be discovered first by a defensive researcher (non-inclusive term: white-hat) or offensive researcher (black-hat).
And if an offensive researcher discovers it first, they have a choice:
- Use it and risk being spotted. Once discovered in the wild, patching is only a matter of time.
- Sit on it and hope a defensive researcher doesn’t find it.
Submitting bad code to a project in itself though. Some new user with no reputation is going to be heavily scrutinized putting a PR on a large/popular project. And even with a good reputation, you’re still putting the exploit code out there in the open and hoping none of the reviewers or maintainers catch it.
They are exploited constantly. And fixed constantly.
security nightmare
That is not a corporations problem who’s given away the rights to his product. That is my problem as an informed user, deciding that I know well enough about what I’m doing.
Security can’t be the constant reason for EoLs. Especially when there’s no real reason beyond the company needing the next cash cow.
Will your technically-challenged great-Aunt switch to post-support build when her phone hits EoL
This isn’t for the average user. My grandma isn’t gonna learn how to flash a custom firmware on her old phone. But an informed user can.
Right now, if your device has no more support, you can use it until something else changes and it becomes incompatible. Then you have a dead box that doesn’t do anything anymore, and simply because the company decided to no longer support it.
It’s about having the OPTION to use it in the future so the community can at least try to fix it.
I like it. If the publisher no longer sells/supports the full game as purchased, then they no longer to get to complain about people pirating it.
I don’t like instantly throwing it public domain, that’s the wrong license to use. I think Creative Common CC BY-NC-SA would be more appropriate. (Credit the original, no commercial use, and any modified/redistributed version must follow same license).
This will prevent xbox from taking all the old PlayStation games, stealing an emulator, and selling them under game pass to people that don’t know those games are freely available.
I’d also add the game must be available as an individual 1-time purchase. If it’s only available as a bundle or subscription service (like game pass), that doesn’t count.
The Public Domain isn’t a “license.” It’s simply the default state of a work when copyright is no longer being enforced for it. I’m saying that copyright should immediately expire for any published work that is no longer being made available by some entity with the right to do so (phrased carefully so as not to break copyleft licenses, BTW) and that anyone should be able to get it directly from a government archive of all Public Domain works.
As for selling Public Domain works, that’s always been allowed and I don’t see any particular reason to change it, provided that regulatory capture doesn’t result in the public archive being the digital equivalent of hidden away in a disused lavatory in a locked basement with a sign saying “beware of the leopard.” If the free option is prominent and well-known but you want to pay money for some reason anyway (in theory, because the person selling it added value in some way), that’s your business.
I’m going to hard disagree on NC.
If the original publisher decided to dump their IP, and someone else has a good enough idea to make money off of it, they absolutely should.
BY-SA gets you the same vibe and encourages the new IP to keep making new content and allows others to do the same.
I agree, if an IP is abandoned then someone else should be allowed to do something with it.
For this post I was talking about the game that was already made and distributed, not just the idea or characters.
I’ll use Mario Kart 1 for example, if Nintendo doesn’t sell that game anymore, then the game is made publicly available.
If the IP is still in use that A) doesn’t exclude Mario Kart 1 form becoming available, B) doesn’t allow competitors to sell modern Mario Kart games (trademark) and C) prevents someone from taking a 30 year old game and just reselling it on their store.
IPs are much more messy to handle, as it’s less a final product and more of a concept. Creative rights should stay with the creative people not a publisher.
If Nintendo decides to drop Mario, but the actual creator of Mario still wants to work with a different publisher, they should be able to do that before the IP becomes freely available for anyone to take over.
This is one of the points that a French MEP brought up during the meeting. If this is pursued it could as a side effect open up space for digital “orphaned works” which would be fantastic.
It’s not even an issue of “orphaned works.” Every work becomes Public Domain eventually; that’s the point of it.
In fact (according to originalist American sensibilities, at least) the entire point of copyright law is “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts” (i.e., to enrich the Public Domain) to begin with! Allowing works to be copyrighted (essentially, borrowed back from the Public Domain temporarily so the creator can profit, thus incentivizing the creation of works) is merely a means to that end, not some sort of moral entitlement.
Copyright and patent are a compromise.
Society is iterative. Every work of art or technology is significantly based on prior work. So if you go to the extremes, where “I intented it, it is mine forever and passed to my children” society stalls as technoligarchs never license their patents. If you go full blyatski and outlaw personal ownership, you get Soviet Russia, a nation whose contribution to global culture has been a few ballets, some long depressing books and precisely one video game, because nobody is given incentive or even opportunity to create anything, so they don’t.
Give us a full copy of your work, enough information to make a full copy of it. This will be held in trust by the government. We will give you full, exclusive right to monetize your invention for a couple decades, and the copy stored with the government is the stake in your claim, the proof you need to win your lawsuit. After those couple decades are over, the idea becomes public property. Our inventors get to make a living, society gets to progress.
Copyright has gone cancerous, with terms lengthened far beyond a human lifetime to benefit major corporations and not individual creators. We need to fix that.
If you go full blyatski and outlaw personal ownership, you get Soviet Russia, a nation whose contribution to global culture has been a few ballets, some long depressing books and precisely one video game, because nobody is given incentive or even opportunity to create anything, so they don’t.
To be fair, Soviet Russia probably has a bunch more stuff than that; we just don’t know about it because it didn’t get translated and distributed to the West. The “Dr. Livesey Walk” meme is from a Soviet cartoon, for example.
I can only assume artists got funded by government grants or something, IDK. It probably did result in a lot less of it being created than in the West, though.
(Also, I think the ballets and books you’re alluding to might’ve been pre-Soviet?)
Anyway, I completely agree that copyright and patents are a compromise, and that the pendulum has swung way too far to the side of rights-holders at the moment.
(I was thinking of the likes of Shostakovich, born 1906 died 1975, but he did symphonies, not ballets? I think of Soviet performance art and I smell orchestra pit.)
whatever the European equivalent of the Library of Congress is
Yeah! Um… what is that again?
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
If no such thing exists, they should create it.
Nah, if the publisher stop selling a game, just make him to release a docker image for the server and the game patched to use such docker image. No source code needed (even if it would be nice).
Pardon my French but would you please kindly fuck off with “container solutions”? Cheers.
Yes! I hate Docker and containers. Just let me install the fucking app on my machine!
Oh yes, You can.
Then your game server will stop to work at the next os update and you will not have any chance to fix it thanks to some incompatible change in some part of the OS or libraries.
Not sure about public domain. Perhaps a non-commercial license would be best - this way fans can carry on the work, but others wouldn’t be tempted to profit off of the IP.
The original duration of copyright was 14 years. Why should we legally stop anyone else from making a knockoff?
If a studio is using the same base architecture for online services as a game that is currently active, you want developers to share their current live architecture and code?
Yes.
If they don’t like it, they can keep supporting their older stuff. Or better yet, rethink their decision to impose a “live service” business model now that they’d actually be held accountable for it, and consider going back to giving users the means to run their own servers.
(Also, by the way, “security by obscurity” is bullshit. If disclosing their server-side code leads to exploits, that just means they’re fucking incompetent. I have no sympathy at all.)
Set the launch arguments of any Unreal game to “-log” and get back to me on how many lines of log types LogEOS* it spits out before the main menu loads. That usually interfaces SteamOSS, so if there are a low amount of EOS logs they will show up as LogSteamOSS. That is the best hint I can give.
It sounds like you’re trying to “hint” at the idea that a bunch of games are using Epic Online Services and/or the Online Subsystem Steam API associated with it, but beyond that I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
If you’re trying to obliquely cite that as some kind of counterexample where it’s reasonable for a game’s source code to remain secret just because part of it is that library, then no, it fucking isn’t. I can’t tell whether EOS has the source code available along with the rest of the Unreal engine or not, but if not, it ought to be and IDGAF about any excuses Epic might have for not making it so.
If you are so hell bent on being right or knowing the answer. You could sign all of the Steam, Epic, and SDK NDAs to get access to all of the documentation.
LOL, what? You’re the one trying to make a point here, not me. Spit it out. I’m not gonna do your fucking work for you!
Yes.
If they don’t like it, they can keep supporting their older stuff. Or better yet, rethink their decision to impose a “live service” business model now that they’d actually be held accountable for it, and consider going back to giving users the means to run their own servers.
Nobody can be forced to keep supporting their older stuff forever, assuming it is even possible.
There are solutions to keep a server online or to give ways to run a local server (a docker image comes to mind), but you cannot think a company will keep a server active after years to just make few dozens happy with all the implications.I agree on the spirit of the initiative, but I cannot really see how it can carried out: my fear is that some types of game will not be sold anymore in EU: no legally sold copies, no legal obligation to keep the server online forever. And in this case we all lose something.
(Also, by the way, “security by obscurity” is bullshit. If disclosing their server-side code leads to exploits, that just means they’re fucking incompetent. I have no sympathy at all.)
Disclosing server-side code can leads to exploits, true, but I would not call them incompetent: they are not foolproof or omniscent.
Nobody can be forced to keep supporting their older stuff forever, assuming it is even possible.
There are solutions to keep a server online or to give ways to run a local server (a docker image comes to mind), but you cannot think a company will keep a server active after years to just make few dozens happy with all the implications.No shit, Sherlock. That’s why the tenable and preferred option is for them to give it up once they’re done profiting so that the public can do it themselves instead.
I agree on the spirit of the initiative, but I cannot really see how it can carried out: my fear is that some types of game will not be sold anymore in EU: no legally sold copies, no legal obligation to keep the server online forever. And in this case we all lose something.
LOL, nothing but FUD. Game publishers made plenty of profit before they came up with this “live service” bullshit, and they’ll continue to make plenty of profit even after we stop allowing them to screw over everyone too.
In case you weren’t aware of it, the only reason we grant copyright to creative works in the first place is to encourage more works to be created and eventually enrich the Public Domain. If the works never reach it (because the publisher is using technological means to destroy it before copyright expires) then they have broken that social contract and don’t deserve to be protected by it in the first place.
These live service game publishers are trying to eat their cake and have it too, and they simply aren’t entitled to that. The fact that they’ve been getting away with this theft from the Public Domain is unjust and must stop.
If you aren’t supporting it anymore, then you aren’t allowed to maintain exclusive access to it anymore. When you stop supporting it, then you now need to free the code and let other people run their own servers. That does not cost you money.
If you don’t want to do that, then you have to keep supporting it. It’s that simple. Your right to maintain exclusive access to the source code of the software you are providing to people for money, is contingent upon you keeping the software in an operable state. If you are no longer capable of or no longer want to keep the software in an operable state, then you no longer get to keep the software private. This is not rocket science.
If there are third-party libraries you are not allowed to release by contract, that’s fine don’t release them. Nobody is saying the source code you release has to be fully functional and have an easy-to-use build system, people will figure out ways to disable those functions or replace them with alternatives. Cleaning up that kind of legal mess before hand or not getting into it in the first place would be kind of you to do, and polite, but I don’t expect it from a greedy miserable corporation. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be that bothered if they didn’t have to release source code at all. What I particularly care about is them losing the right to send copyright-takedowns when people try to share ways to make their own fucking game work. That’s the bare minimum acceptable standard required here. If you are not selling the game or supporting the game, then you do not have the right to shut down the people voluntarily doing it for you.
This would be the only type creative work that would be burdened like this.
I find it paradoxical that we’re trying to save the gaming industry by burdening (mostly) small developers. Larger studio will no longer be able to abuse the system, but complying will be easy for them.
For indies and small to medium studios though? They struggle enough as it is. Adding the burden of compliance on top is not a great idea.
If we could legally categorize studios in a meaningful way, and therefore target the big ones and leave indies alone, I would support such an idea.
This would be the only type creative work that would be burdened like this.
It’s the only type of creative work that needs to be burdened like this, as all other types of works have always been “self-contained” (for lack of a better term) with no continued reliance on the publisher after the purchase.
Ditto with older games, BTW: you’ll notice that this “Stop Killing Games” movement didn’t start until the game industry started using tactics like DRM and “live service” architectures to forcibly wrest control away from the gamers. Before that, people could just keep playing their cartridges and CDs and even digital downloads, and hosting multiplayer themselves using the dedicated server program included with the game, in perpetuity and everything was just fine.
The industry got fucking greedy and control-freakish, and this is the inevitable and just attempt for society to hold it accountable.
I find it paradoxical that we’re trying to save the gaming industry by burdening (mostly) small developers. Larger studio will no longer be able to abuse the system, but complying will be easy for them.
I find it weird that you’re making what seems to me to be a strawman argument about “burdening (mostly) small developers,” as I’d say they are mostly not the ones trying to do this bullshit where they try to retroactively destroy art and culture because it stops being profitable enough. Indie studios typically don’t design their games to use publisher-operated servers with ongoing costs attached in the first place, let alone to self-destruct when they shut off!
I find it weird that you’re making what seems to me to be a strawman argument about “burdening (mostly) small developers,” as I’d say they are mostly not the ones trying to do this bullshit where they try to retroactively destroy art and culture because it stops being profitable enough. Indie studios typically don’t design their games to use publisher-operated servers with ongoing costs attached in the first place, let alone to self-destruct when they shut off!
Releasing source code isn’t without extra work. My point is, unless you make sure to specifically target the companies abusing gamers, you’re going to mainly hurt the part of the industry that is not the problem.
It’s not “extra” if it’s a legal requirement.
More to the point, I’m not saying it has to be licensed as Free Software or that it has to be made immediately public. I’m saying that a copy needs to be sent to a government archive, regardless of how messy it is, so that the government can make it public later when the company doesn’t care anymore.
There’s no need to release any source code if your game doesn’t require an internet connection to your server to run in the first place.
Don’t try being reasonable, the SKG people don’t understand reason.
Removed by mod
Why are you lying about what I wrote? I never claimed the publisher should be forced to maintain it forever.
What part of sending the source to the government archive did you not understand?
And then what? Why are we storing these old games. Move on with your lives. Art doesnt last forever, its not supposed to. But you want publishers to put in extra effort to preserve them, and then have governments put in effort to preserve them, apparently forever.
Its funny how its the people playing the games who want them preserved forever rather than the people making the games, isn’t it. The people making them have pointed out multiple problems with this idea, but who cards about them right?
The people who make the games dont give a fuck about you. Why the fuck do you think we would care about what they want?
Presumably because you want what they can provide you. Its not rocket science my guy.
Oh I see, you’re just a troll who keeps lying and spreading FUD. Reported.
Have you ever listened to a song older than 10 years? Ever watched a movie older than 15? Why should we try to preserve art? Just destroy everything and move on with your lives, great take you have there.
I didnt say to destroy it, let it have its natural life cycle. Live service games very clearly have a life cycle that ends. You can debate whether companies are deceptive or not, and we should fix that issue if it exists, but preserving art for arts sake is quickly a fools errand and driven by ego. If you don’t see the obvious pitfalls of curating such a collection then you simply feel bad about things dieing.
Things in life don’t last forever, accept that. Some live service games last upwards of 10 years, like the original The Crew did. Some last decades and have multiple snapshots of the games development, like WoW or Runescape. Most offline games are sold with perpetual ownership, so that’s already solved there. Save a copy of it yourself if its so important.
Sure companies should communicate this reality better but that doesnt change the fact that games will die.
To think all of this happened because one person really liked The Crew of all things.
Entire Linux gaming happened because one guy wanted to play Nier Automata on it. Don’t underestimate some one guys.
Source?*
*In a “I’m interested in the story” sense rather than a “PROVE IT” sense.
DXVK was the last (IMO) major key in enabling proper Linux gaming.
Here’s a short interview with the creator of DXVK.
Prior to this Wine was able to run some simple Windows applications, but games (which heavily rely on GPU acceleration) lagged quite a bit behind since DirectX is a Windows exclusive graphics API. Instead, on Linux we have Vulkan which is similarly feature rich, but an open standard. DXVK translates DirectX API calls to Vulkan, which GPUs on Linux can understand, similar to how Wine translates Windows syscalls to the Linux alternatives. Even though Wine existed for a long time, DXVK’s development started quite a bit later.
What a thoughtful and concise overview of the situation. Thank you.
To be absolutely clear, wine could run many games just fine, I was playing WOW, Starcraft 2, and many others perfectly. However, Directx 11 was new, and wine had a harder time with itml. DXVK Was created specificially to run DX11 Games in WINE, and is amazing, but it wasn’t just “some simple applications” at the time
According to this source the guy is called Philip Rebohle and he wrote a translation layer called DXVK that lets you run DirectX stuff on Vulkan.
Wine doesn’t seem to be related to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
Edit: it is, see comments below
It is.
Very roughly, think of DXVK as a plugin for WINE, that dramatically enhances its capabilities with 3D rendering.
Then Proton is essentially a further refinement of WINE, DXVK, other things.
However Proton is a refinement just for gaming. Other kinds of applications may run worse on Proton than on Wine.
True!
And technically, there many many variants of Proton, some bleeding edge, some more stable, some highly specified to work with particular games.
Theres also uh, soda, used by Bottles… which is… kind of a hybrid between standard WINE and Proton…
And then if we get into all the specific possible dependency packages, other more specific sort of modules… it gets very complicated very fast.
Wine makes Windows applications work in Linux. Wine solved a lot of issues with translation, but most Windows games use DirectX for their graphics, which is proprietary to Windows.
DXVK translates DirectX to Vulcan (Open Source graphics API used in Linux), allowing GPUs on Linux to run DirectX games.
Even crazier, he doesn’t even particularly like it. He just didn’t think it should become vaporware.
Some people actually have principles, actually stand on business… apparently this is quite a rarity these days.
But what does Pirate Software think of the situation? That’s what I really need to know.
His dad worked at Blizzard, y’know.
I saw a random youtuber actually figure this out.
Get banned from Prirate Software’s chat speed run, Any%.
He made an account, joined, and just politely asked what Thor thought of the recent SKG EU Parliament hearings.
Total Elapsed Time to Ban: Approximately 9 seconds.
Thor then muttered about not wanting to hear anything from any SKG assholes.
Dude is a literally terminal stage narcissist.
The first second generation Blizzard employee!
I have no clue what Pirate Software is (from context it could be a game developer?), but it sounds like they already hint at an alternative solution in the name.
Hopefully we wont see bad actors just pivot to f2p and have a few microtransactions to actually unlock the games.
Some mobile games already work that way where they claim to be f2p but it‘s just a demo of the actual game with ingame purchases for the other levels. However annoying, it‘s not flat out scamming customers like shutting down servers months after release is. Perhaps devs should still be required to label it as a demo just in case though.
Helpful tip. Don’t buy trash games that do that.
I played and enjoyed a game based on this principle (Dreadnought). I ran out of bullshit I wanted to buy to keep the game going. Also the whole community was probably a few hundred people at the end. It eventually shut down. Not that there would be much to do solo but fan-run servers would’ve been cool.
I absolutely loved that game. I was really bummed when they shut it down but like you said there was maybe a handful of people that played it. Reminded me of EVE Online without all the bullshit.
Dreadnought was awesome, unfortunate that it wasn’t populare …
As long as it’s still a one time purchase, with no clear mention of an end of life timeline, that is just buying a game with extra steps. They mention microtransactions and things like paid DLC in their plans too.
I don’t think that would work. They could lock their games behind a monthly subscription. At that point you’re paying for temporary access with clearly defined end date and thus the game getting shut down later is no longer fraudulend. At that point you just have to not be a dumbass and rent a game instead of buying one.
Netflix has already experimented with putting original games behind a monthly subscription and then killing the games.
I can see other companies trying this too.
Even subscription games should be made playable/hostable after they are shutdown. No game should be immune.
To elaborate a bit on the “unlocking” of the game: It could be that you get “1000% more exp gain permanently” or “gain a crucial resource from every mission permanently, which is usually locked behind a daily mission”, a one off microtransaction that makes the game playable in a sense – but it’s not “purchasing” the game, its just an account feature. I hope these arguments won’t hold, but I always feel that bad actors find ways to bypass rules …
Wouldn’t work. If SKG succeeds, it would be illegal shut down the game and thus invalidate all these permanent transactions (no matter how “micro” they are) people paid for.
🤞
I’d be very okay with that. Scammer scumbags should leave the gaming industry. We deserve the right to refund regardless of purchase date.
To think that the guy that wrote Freeman’s Mind would go on to such heights. Proud of you, Ross.
He says in his videos “I’m just some guy who wants to play video games, I don’t know how to lead a movement. But uh, here we are I guess!” He’s spent a massive amount of time and effort on it, when he just happened to end up the spokesperson. Incredibly cool guy.
i think he tried to bail once and then realized he isn’t allowed to
I believe he said if this fails, he’s done since it’s just been too much work. Then he managed to get a million signatures to be seen in front of eu parliament, so he’s back in it.
I’m pretty sure he wanted the Stop Destroying Games crew to take over after signatures passed, but someone must have told him he’s the face of the campaign now :p
I found where he talks about it https://youtu.be/HIfRLujXtUo?t=52m44s
He essentially says “ya there are no next steps, so if this fails, I’m done, not because I don’t care anymore but because there’s nothing left to do!” I don’t think he wanted to be the one in charge in the first place xD
Ironically, those are the correct people to be in charge. Anyone else is usually a narcissist, or at least has narcissistic tendencies getting in the way of actual progress.
Who will win?
One million angry gamers, or one little bribey boy?
We shall see.
Yeah, if you think they’re reacting positively to this wait til you see how they react to EA cracking open their checkbook. Oh, wait, that one will happen behind closed doors.
I don’t think that will happen especially if you consider the current political climate and how many European countries specifically want to move away from American tech.
Ubisoft is French. Embracer Group is Swedish. Plenty of money even if they ignore the Americans or Saudis or whichever shady group owns EA now.
The full hearing has some gems such as Catarina Vieira drowning the EU Parliament in gamer memes
At 20 minutes if you’re having a hard time. Finding it.
I admit, it was Densely packed xD
That was such a cool way to demonstrate how these iconic games became a part of our culture. They should be able to be archived and preserved like any art.
Wow! Absolute gold.
This is a masterclass in “pick your one thing in life and focus on that.”
I’m highly pessimistic that the spirit of this legislation, which I wholly support, can ever be enshrined in law with enough specificity that it works the way we want it to in the cases where we need it to, without becoming a truly undue burden on small developers or forcing all publishers to just work around it in some way: like taking everything to a subscription model going forward.
undue burden on small developers
Uuh, more often than not, the small devs already make their games indefinitely playable and preservable, just out of a love for the medium.
No actual artist wants their work to have an expiry date.
Legal enforcement is only needed for the passionless big publishers that shutter games just to funnel players into purchasing their latest releases.
It’s mentioned in the parliament presentation. Only a small minority of game publishers engage in this BS, but it’s ALL the big ones, meaning the problem is experienced by the vast majority of consumers.
All they have to do is give up the rights. If they can’t afford it, I guarantee I’m there is a web somewhere that will do it for free.
We’ve had the technology since stone ages, quit lying about this so called burden. All it takes is to not be greedy.
Spoken like someone who’s never had to implement regulatory measures in software.
The regulatory measure in this case is solved by “don’t make it require the player to be online”. That removes a complication, it doesn’t add one.
For multiplayer games it is solved by “make them like we already did in the fucking 90s, where players could run their own servers”.
I’d only be repeating myself.
You haven’t really adressed my points in any way. It’s of course up to you, but as long as you haven’t, there’s no reason to be smug.
I don’t see how this would put any additional burden on smaller devs. Small teams usually don’t make always-online type games because they’re very complex and expensive
Take Among Us. It is not some huge bullshit live service game, but it makes use of the internet. It was created by a small developer.
The game includes local network play which is a good thing because I assume it would have to under this law, so it can play “offline.”
Do we think that local network play was zero effort to include? Would it really have no effect on small developers if they all had to include this always?
I know what you mean about small indie games being simple but the reality is a little more complex than that image. Small developers do also create online games. They aren’t big shit shows like Fortnite but that doesn’t mean they don’t use the internet.
No one ever wants to hear that it’s more complicated than they think it is, but that’s the truth virtually all the time.
I understand the core case that this man wants to stop. But laws have to be written for all, with precise language, and can’t just say “you know the kind of game we’re talking about.”
And that’s where this gets difficult.
If you can make a multiplayer game over the internet, you can make a multiplayer LAN mode or even share the server implementation or give API specifications to allow the community to make their server software
Yeah I think there’s some promise in “open the source” as a remedy here. Because that doesn’t really put any onus on the game maker. They can keep making games exactly as they do now, but if they want to utterly walk away from a title, they have to open the source.
I think the complications with this would come from IP and copyright law, licensing, etc. for example, if the developer licensed any other software (or music or whatever) in order to make the game, do they actually have the rights to open source all of that? Perhaps not.
It’s kind of like accelerating the public domain thing. Very interesting remedy for this situation, but extremely complex legally, I would guess.
The music/artwork thing is usually not a problem since the license can just not cover art like many open source licenses already do
But then how could anyone use it? If it’s to download and run at home, you can get away with it. But in many of these cases they’re saying open source it so volunteer group XYZ can host a server and keep the game alive. Wouldn’t group XYZ be vulnerable to copyright action?
The artwork and music is usually on the client side (and if it’s not, the programmers need to get good lmao) so it’s really not a problem
But in many of these cases they’re saying open source it so volunteer group XYZ can host a server and keep the game alive
open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for usage, modification from its original design, and publication of their version (fork) back to the community
(copied 1:1 from wikipedia, i was too lazy to write it myself)So no, open source don’t mean that a specific group keeps the server game alive by hosting a server but that the server code is aviable to the public to do whatever they want;
Another solution is making the code Source-available (like some companies already do: eg Mojang) or just distributing a copy of the server for people to use, without being open sourc
what is that weird fake blizzard grifter with the hair doing now is he alive still
I’m not totally sure, but I watched one vid about him a year ago and now yt slams me with recs for vid about him. If titles are to be believed he’s completely crashed out and not doing well at all which makes me very happy, but I’m not cursing my algo for another year by clicking.
Tl;Dr is that the SKG drama made drama farmers on YouTube look closer at him and discover that he’s an egotistical piece of shit that lies to make himself look better, and he’s basically the new yandere dev with his game heartbound (making little to no progress over 10ish years while blaming the community for not being grateful/recognizing his genius/etc.).
I saw some vid thumbnails a day or two ago that were talking about his mods eating him alive or something, so I’m not sure what all that more recent drama is about. I am current on his shitty dev abilities and his stupid self insert game unfortunately.
Sort of but it’s also because these things take forever. If you want to put something forward to the European parliament you best submit the petition while you’re still in the womb.
I still think the petition was a bit hamstrung by being sort of vaguely defined. I think it initially got rejected because it did sort of sound like it was trying to force developers to continue support for servers indefinitely. Now that the clarification has been made that they were simply need to open source project I think the politicians more open to the idea.
The initiative was very clear that there is no expectation of support from the developers after support has ended. There was nothing vague about it except for the disinformation PirateSoftware was putting out.
Hamstrung by being vague? Vague is EXACTLY what you want for these types of things, theres less specificity to get hung up on and reject, while the general idea can be expanded upon and legislated in detail once they agree with the core concept. Please dont listen to that pirate guy, he’s terminally brain damaged.
I know he is, but did you know he also worked in blizzard?
did sort of sound like it was trying to force developers to continue support for servers indefinitely.
Y’know, except the part where he very explicitly said that wasn’t what SKG was asking for.
Yes that was the second time it was raised the first time they just dismissed it with some generic response saying to refer to the current protection laws.
Maybe that’d be an excuse for the first reaction, but pirate also literally watched the second video then claimed exactly the opposite of what the video actually said.
Man fuck Axel Voss! Damn copyright shill. Guess we can take solace in the fact that he seemed to be the only one clearly taking the publishers side here.
And if I’m not mistaken, the European Commission representative argued in his reply to Voss (around 12:20) that “collective management organisations” or “cultural heritage institutions” might well be allowed to preserve games that are not commercially available anymore already under the current framework.
Wup, there’s management. Let me guess what they’re talking about.
“You, sir, are mad! Dinosaurs are reptiles! They must be cold-blooded!”
“Now, you listen and you listen good: Birds are one of the closest living relatives to dinosaurs we have. And I don’t need to tell you they’re all warm-blooded.”
“Do you know how difficult it is to maintain thermostasis for an animal so large? They’re cold-blooded, I tell you!”
“Let me tell you something. There’s evidence to suggest that Velociraptors had feathers. Feathers! What does that tell you?”
It’s amazing that Ross Scott has gone from delivering the funnies to absolute morale boosting for the gaming media.
Hi5 for also being a Ross fan since waaaaaaaay before all this Stop Killing Games stuff happened.
The man needs a trophy of a hand gripping a crowbar -> ‘For meritorious service in the defense and preservation of video gaming’.
He’ll always be what Freeman sounds like to me.
This is what a honest lobby looks like
Right? They represent a few million people instead of like five large companies.
I’m about to cry
I really hope this goes through for obvious reasons. But it would be a 2 fer because it exposed the Pirate Games A hole as a neoi baby narcissist.
Just create a voluntary certification that a game or developer does whatever it is you want them to do and boycott anyone that doesn’t.
This is like a law that says guac should be free at Chipotle.
This is more like a law that says libraries can preserve and lend games as well as books.
Which ought to be common sense, but here we are.
Lending library books is based on the doctrine of first sale, and the idea that you can resell and lend physical objects.
Running a service is not the same as selling a standalone physical good.
To extend that analogy, this would be like an obligation of the author to make their manuscripts available.
A lot of things seem like common sense of you have an overly simplistic view of the world.
I’m not going to play perfect analogies hunter with you.
The point is, it’s human to preserve interesting things, and it’s corporate to thoughtlessly destroy.
The whole purpose of laws is to keep corporations in check without physically cutting the heads off of the parasites that run them.
We keep forgetting that. (But it’s not my head, so maybe I shouldn’t keep bothering to talk about it.)
Anyway, disused game server code can (and should) be shared after it is no longer profitable, rather than being speculatively bought and sold in a phantom portfolio before being accidentally lost.
And companies that want to make a big deal about how their server code is sacred magic - can just keep running the servers, to prove they aren’t just bullshitting.
Go back to your pirate software streams
I use free and open source software and I understand that the license doesn’t entitle me to burden them to run and maintain a service for me indefinitely.
Pirates are the people who feel entitled to free stuff, even despite the wishes of the creator.
Stop Killing Games initiative doesn’t force developers to maintain the game; it only obliges them to release whatever tools necessary for people to self-host a game server.
This way, if anyone still cares about the game, they can start their own server and keep playing it.
And the stupidest part of this is the ‘omg my IP’ angle from a publisher.
You’ve destroyed this game because it’s not economically viable for you, and therefore the IP of how the server-side operates has no value; these are no longer secrets worth protecting.
If someone else is willing to host it at their cost then the only thing that can do is bolster the franchise. When a niche game has a devoted following that’s willing to build infrastructure to keep playing together, then you know it was a management fuck-up and not a game one that killed it.
There’s the sticking point (well, one of them): sometimes, servers are shut down because the developer wants players to buy a NEW game that they’ll make more money on. If gamers can just play the old game forever, they’re less likely to buy and play the new game whose servers have improved the rent seeking algorithms.
Thank you for clarifying but I still think this has the guac problem, which is the customer dictating “I think this is easy/cheap/free so you should just give it to me.” You don’t know what effort or cost is involved. There could be license entanglements. Running code that you don’t have the source for to be able to patch vulnerabilities in is a bad idea. This stuff should be negotiated voluntarily. I don’t see an arguments about market failure or externalities or monopolies to justify bringing in a regulation.
This is actually addressed as well. The initiative doesn’t oblige currently developed or already released games to have such features, as it recognizes all the financial/legal complications that may arise. It only concerns future games, and refers to the experience of many old games being initially designed with player servers in mind, rendering it possible to play them even now.
It is absolutely possible and normal to do this, and it’s really only the recent practice to act otherwise, which is why Stop Killing Games arose just now.
That being said, of course this decision would affect the developer’s bottom line. First, as another commenter mentioned, they won’t be able to push new games so aggressiely if players can stick to the old one, forcing them to focus on quality and originality of content, which are both more expensive. Second, publishing server code renders them unable to break licenses and steal server code, forcing to make in-house solutions or compromise with open-source. This is, by the way, why Microsoft only now opened the code of MS-DOS - it waited until all the potential lawsuits on IP infringement are expired.
Stop Killing Games will force more transparency, and developers hate that, because they don’t want to admit they manipulated players and broke the law to get here. But they should never have done either in the first place.
run and maintain a service for me indefinitely
This is specifically NOT what is being asked for. Having an end of life plan doesn’t mean running servers forever.
Pirate Software is a guy who has your same exact wrong idea about the Stop Killing Games movement. I’m sorry you independently arrived to the same misunderstanding
What about, and this may blow your mind, you host the servers yourself? If they release the means, anyone who cares can run the servers and allow players to continue to enjoy their games.
No, this is like a law that says once you paid for the guac they can’t come around to your table later and piss in it to make you buy a new pot of the new and improved guac they just released.
