I know this platform isn't extra active and doesn't have tons of people, especially not from EU, but I figured there might be people here that care about video games but might not be aware of the "stop killing games" initiative. Feel free to ignore this if this doesn't interest you

So the initiative just moved to the EU citizen incentive stage. And if do care about games and dislike companies pulling the rug from under legitimate customers, take some time to sign the EU incentive here: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/...

you can read more on this entire thing ok
https://www.stopkillinggames.com

I signed this yesterday.

as if anything would change even if every single gamer on the planet would sign.

vote with your wallet, stop giving ubishit your money.

@Lensflare

I always knew you're one of the good ones!

@tosensei

Yeah, but most people are retards. This allows us to petition the law on the EU scale with much less people that "most people". For example germany has well over 83 Million people, but we only need 67,680+ signatures...

You can kinda see how this is better than trying to convince like 40 mil gamers in germany to stop buying Call of Duty every year.

All the petition is about is that once you purchase a digital good, the company should have an end-of-life plan for it instead of just deleting it at random and keeping your money while you're left with nothing.

… and signing is super easy and takes a few seconds.

I don't understand what charges are going to be pressed here.

Ubisoft made a business decision to shutdown servers. My guess it is wasn't making them any money, or enough. It sucks that there was drm that makes it unplayable.

What laws are applicable?

Signed.

@Demolishun

In the EU there are regulations so that purchased goods must be kept operative even after the end of support. Say, for example, a microwave. After a certain number of years, the manufacturer is no longer obligated to keep providing parts or service faulty units.

What they *can't* do, however, is program the microwave to stop working after said time.

This is what cunt companies like Ubisoft are doing, since digital goods are in a kind of grey area, so the petition aims to apply the same regulations to digital as they apply to physical.

Don't know the exact form they could take, but it could include things like

- Forcing removal of DRM or other licensing checks if the servers providing those will be shut down

- Implementing LAN/P2P multiplayer on multiplayer games or provide/open source server implementations.

@CoreFusionX yes, essentially they would be required to stop the games being dependent on central servers and/or add the ability to host own servers, if necessary for the game.

I always thought that most here are EU.

Edit: heh, I thought it was against games wherein you can kill on first sight 😂

@CoreFusionX thanks for the explanation.

This would add additional risk, especially to small developers. So only big budget studios would be able to satisfy these requirements. This might cause companies to not want to add any online play if they think they can be sued at the end of product life. I would not want to sell games/software to the eu market if this goes into effect.

I read through their FAQ. It seems naive to think a game at end of life would be able to be patched to meet these requirements.

So WoW is online only. If they wanted to shut off their servers they would have to create either a server people can run privately or create a new single player mode? Who knows what the development cost of that would be.

How would this affect SaaS?

This seems problematic at best to me. I guess I have a hard time seeing digital goods being the same as physical goods. How long should a company support a product? The game in question is over a decade old.

@Hazarth ubisoft HAS an end of life plan.

it's to fuck the idiots who gave them money one last time, then laugh.

So, I bet game companies will just add a line to the EULA (that nobody reads) that says: "We reserve the right to shut this off at any time for any reason indefinitely." I would not be surprised if they have not already done that.

IMHO the "simple" solution here is that once the company EOL's a sold piece of software, it should become public domain and should subsequently be required to be open sourced. Yes, I realize there are other problems with that like if the company is using patented or proprietary technology, but those issues can be sorted out as well. Perhaps assets that the company can prove would be detrimental to release would still be required to released as a binary only library or something. I don't know; I'm just spitballin' here.

So the eula is interesting for this game under you shall not:

"d. create, supply or use alternative methods of using the Products, for

example server emulators;"

Then later:

"You and

UBISOFT (or its licensors) may terminate this EULA, at any time, for any

reason."

https://media.contentapi.ea.com/con...

So if the eula is enforceable then they can just terminate everyone's license to use the product. Also, the eula is filled with: "we are allowed to spy on you" type shit everywhere.

@Demolishun I don't see how it would mess with small developers

if you have to open source / remove DRM it would ruin the copyright of the codebase. companies would then feel obligated to run dead servers, providing shitty connectivity, to avoid releasing their software

but small devs generally aren't that gung-ho about their source code and many release the source if they no longer maintain the game all on their own, this then sometimes starts clone wars about the version of the game and becomes its own meta that sometimes props up the original game even so I don't see why small developers would necessarily care

if they add a line to the Eula that voids the purpose of the law I don't think the lawmakers are gonna buy that. there are some rights you can't legally give up because they were designed that way. otherwise for example warranties wouldn't exist, and non compete clauses would be far more enforced (they're not because the law makers don't deem it sensible, has limits)

@Demolishun wow had a server once you can run yourself. You could change player levels and stuff. No idea if it was official one.

I think maybe some expectation management is enough, like "we guarantee servers for at least five years" or so.

I wonder if call of duty 1 / uo servers are still online :) Epic game

@jestdotty I don't think it will ever be a reasonable expectation to open source your game.

@Demolishun open sourcing of devRant is the most unreasonable expectation

@retoor don't bulletin board frameworks have more features anyway?

On the open sourcing: by force of a third party is what I meant. If the company itself wants to that is on them.

@Demolishun this doesn’t intend to force the devs to support their game indefinitely. But when the support ends, the people who bought the game must be able to keep playing it.

Online games like wow are explicitly excluded from this, because it’s very clear that you pay regularly to be able to play and it’s clear when exactly your permission to play ends (when the subscription runs out).
Many normal games are sold without an "expiration date" and still make it impossible to play after end of support. That’s the target of this campaign.
Games which are killed without a good reason (useless online only requirement) and not telling you when.

@Lensflare I read the faq. I don't think it is reasonable for a decade old game to be modified for players to keep playing it past when the company shuts down its servers. They also notified people it would be shutdown on x date from what I read. If people want this then there needs to be a financial incentive.

Also, some games have a limited license to how long they can use the likeness of objects in the game. Especially car games. So if they may have to stop selling the game or discontinue micro-transactions. Which might require spending money to make these modifications.

I don't think entertainment companies are required to entertain people indefinitely.

@Lensflare maybe instead of trying to force game companies to do things after the sales die. It would be better to buy games from companies that are better at communicating the life cycle of their game if online is involved. This also makes services like Steam more appealing for the end user.

Maybe a company that specializes in reviving games would be a place to put money?

https://racinggames.gg/crew/...

Modders always do cool shit like this.

So for players who ordered recently (of this announcement) they offered a refund:

https://ubisoft.com/en-us/game/...

@Demolishun well, if it has licenses which run out like in a racing game, they should put an expiration date on the game.
But of course the publishers don’t do that, because it would hurt the sales.
The customers have a right to know about it.

lmao I can't do shit from Argie. But Ross is a funny guy, I like him.

@Demolishun

Yeah, in any and all cases is about transparency to the consumer.

And they can't enforce that shit through an EULA because European law supersedes any private contract, so essentially such clauses would be effectively null and void.

Also, as previously mentioned, I don't think it's so bad for small developers or large corporations.

Small developers can simply open source their servers. After all, it's likely they are just using UE/Unity's netcode anyway.

Large companies are only required to not bork the games. Say, a game like elden ring, that can be played offline no problem, should be kept playable offline after EoL, even if you can no longer play multiplayer.

A game like WoW, as @Lensflare said, is different because it is actually a service (for good reason) and they could in any case just open source or distribute the server builds, or just allow development of antrix again.

@CoreFusionX I wonder if the gaming industry would circle the wagons on this. Seems like a PR issue for companies. It would be interesting to hear from Ubisoft what the cost would be to accomplish this. Or if it can be accomplished (legally and technically).

@Demolishun

Oh. Companies like EA and Ubisoft will most definitely try to work circles around it, but it will be moot.

They can not afford to lose essentially half their customer base overnight.

And whatever cost this regulation would impose on them they would just forward to the consumer, and probably overcharge you for it since the real cost for such measure is negligible compared to the astronomical budgets of their self-called AAAA games that bust because they are directed by entrepreneurs and not game designers.

signed this the day it came out.

Fuck it.

If AAA game devs don't feel comfortable not screwing over their own customers, maybe they should not sell their games in the first place. Any half decent game dev makes sure regardless, that the game can be played after EOL, which this thing is about.

Sure, their propaganda mill will be turning for a while, and when (if) stuff changes, they will go back to doing business as usual.

It's time for change for the big boys.
Enough line go up.

@Demolishun "companies won't want to add online play if this goes through."

I disagree. Look at lost-sales due to no online play, vs liability risk.

When the simpliest solution is an open lobbies API/end of life open network option.

The choice is obvious from an executives perspective.

Of course they may go the route you're suggesting just to force the law. "EU says we have to offer non-centralized lobby options/online support or else? Fine, no online options for EU players." and hope it forces the EU's hand as a result.

Totally plausible, but law changes like this, especially when the solution is trivial cost-wise, I think will result in enough companies just deciding "fuck it, add an option to host lobbys."

Even if that option isn't activated or available for use until end-of-life kicks in.

@Wisecrack I know personally I would avoid online stuff for my software products in the EU.

Philosophically this seems like abuse of majority rule. Compelling a game company to spend money on a dead product without a financial incentive reeks of entitlement.

How many of those players would be willing to pay a service fee to keep servers running? So maybe this is the answer. Offer a paid service to replace the servers that will be shut down. If enough people sign up and are willing to keep the servers alive then it stays up. If not and there is no market then shut it down. It doesn't bankrupt or harm the game company and users vote with their wallet.

@Demolishun Honestly, we'd be fine if they just released the specs of the servers. They don't have to keep them alive. As long as there are legally obtainable tools to build our own servers it's ok. The idea of the law would be similar to Right to repair... If the company forcefully disables your product, you should at least be able to make it functional again yourself instead of it being lost forever.

And even then, this would only be required for online-only games. The incentive doesn't even require this from Live Services that actually require the online service to exist.

The big major problem are single player games tied to a "live service" so that they can disable your single player offline game on distance... And in those cases we literally just want them to patch the game to keep working after they brought down the service that literally doesn't matter.

If you keep looking for problems you gonna find them, but that doesn't help the situation

@Hazarth "If the company forcefully disables your product", you should be allowed to punch everybody who participated in this decision in the face.

@Hazarth I agree that cool companies do this. I mean ID software will release source code for whole games.

This petition makes zero sense. It won't solve anything. The only thing it'll do, if it passes, is to make publishers never officially proclaim a game reached "end of life". They'll pretend to support it and ignore the inbox. Worse, they'll enjoy profits when collectors buy a 20 years old game. Relevant laws would have to define what "support" means, and nobody will do that because it'd either kill the whole industry (if the definition is strict) or free it from some responsibilities (if it's loose).

To make real changes, people would have to demand for the source code to become public domain after e.g. 10 years. Releasing outdated codebase would be enough for enthusiasts to keep it alive w/o killing the actively supported software. It'd also mean publishers have to provide the source code to some agency upfront when they sell their 1st licence, because the publisher might not exist in 10 years. But we trust gov agencies and would love to pay for a new one with our taxes, right?