This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.
The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.
It means that the publisher needs to provide the player with the server executable, which is a one time expense for them to prepare, rather than continually paying for humans and machines to keep a server running on their end.
What the petition is strictly asking for is to leave the game playable. If that means the game requires multiplayer, then there should be some way to play multiplayer without the server on the other end. I’d certainly prefer that they just make the server executable available. I personally don’t care what the architecture is. People have gotten pirate MMO servers running. Even if it’s something the layman won’t know how to do, we need to have the option to run the server ourselves.
Many games have mixed experiences, some multiplayer, some single player. Take COD, for example, it has a SP campaign, but most people play it for the MP experience. if they disable the MP experience, the game is technically playable since the SP campaign still exists.
This petition seems to focus on “phoning home”:
An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or “phone home” to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.
This sounds very much like it’s focusing on preserving the SP experience and forcing publishers to remove any artificial limitations on that experience once they stop supporting the game. Nothing in the petition sounds like it’s talking about multiplayer functions.
Here’s the part about being “playable”:
The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.
So they’re explicitly not asking for the publishers to provide anything new (i.e. the game server), it’s only asking for limitations to be removed (i.e. phoning home).
This is still an important petition, but it doesn’t seem to say what you’re arguing it’s saying.
In a game like an MMO or most free to play games, multiplayer is all that exists. The game as it exists on your computer doesn’t even have everything that it needs to function. It’s asking for the game to continue functioning. As for CoD, the petition is not allowed to be prescriptive, so it would be to the government to determine specifically what must happen. In most cases, the shortest path to honoring what this petition asks for is to provide the server code, but I agree that plenty of games make that distinction very blurry.
Right, but the petition explicitly says it’s not expecting any additional resources.
neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it
If that was the intent, the petition should have been more clear, saying it expects any resources not part of the downloaded game but necessary for the full experience to be made available once the game is discontinued, perhaps specifically calling out server code.
If this turns into a bill, I fully expect online content to be excluded since that would require more than just removing the “phone home” bit of games.
Once they discontinue it, they dust their hands clean and their work here is done. That’s all that means. Releasing whatever they have to do to allow it to continue to operate is up to and including the moment that it’s supported. Discontinuing support and leaving people with something they can’t play is what the petition is asking to fix. If they did the work to make The Crew playable after the server was shut down, then they are still not providing any additional resources once they discontinue it; that work would have been done in advance. Once again, the petition can’t ask for how they’d like the problem to be legally solved or how the government should define the rules. In the video that typically comes attached to this with a more verbose problem statement and what we should expect as consumers, you can buy a digital horse, but turning the game off removes your ability to access the horse you paid for, so it’s asking to retain the ability to use everything you bought. That’s more than just a phone home if your game client doesn’t contain the multiplayer mode where you would use the horse (or CoD mulitplayer skin).
I’m not in the EU, so I’m really not familiar with this process, and I’m guessing a number of EU citizens also aren’t familiar. If there’s any related information, it would be good to link it.
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So anything that uses server resource is irrelevant?
It means that the publisher needs to provide the player with the server executable, which is a one time expense for them to prepare, rather than continually paying for humans and machines to keep a server running on their end.
I think that really depends on the server architecture.
What the petition is strictly asking for is to leave the game playable. If that means the game requires multiplayer, then there should be some way to play multiplayer without the server on the other end. I’d certainly prefer that they just make the server executable available. I personally don’t care what the architecture is. People have gotten pirate MMO servers running. Even if it’s something the layman won’t know how to do, we need to have the option to run the server ourselves.
Many games have mixed experiences, some multiplayer, some single player. Take COD, for example, it has a SP campaign, but most people play it for the MP experience. if they disable the MP experience, the game is technically playable since the SP campaign still exists.
This petition seems to focus on “phoning home”:
This sounds very much like it’s focusing on preserving the SP experience and forcing publishers to remove any artificial limitations on that experience once they stop supporting the game. Nothing in the petition sounds like it’s talking about multiplayer functions.
Here’s the part about being “playable”:
So they’re explicitly not asking for the publishers to provide anything new (i.e. the game server), it’s only asking for limitations to be removed (i.e. phoning home).
This is still an important petition, but it doesn’t seem to say what you’re arguing it’s saying.
In a game like an MMO or most free to play games, multiplayer is all that exists. The game as it exists on your computer doesn’t even have everything that it needs to function. It’s asking for the game to continue functioning. As for CoD, the petition is not allowed to be prescriptive, so it would be to the government to determine specifically what must happen. In most cases, the shortest path to honoring what this petition asks for is to provide the server code, but I agree that plenty of games make that distinction very blurry.
Right, but the petition explicitly says it’s not expecting any additional resources.
If that was the intent, the petition should have been more clear, saying it expects any resources not part of the downloaded game but necessary for the full experience to be made available once the game is discontinued, perhaps specifically calling out server code.
If this turns into a bill, I fully expect online content to be excluded since that would require more than just removing the “phone home” bit of games.
Once they discontinue it, they dust their hands clean and their work here is done. That’s all that means. Releasing whatever they have to do to allow it to continue to operate is up to and including the moment that it’s supported. Discontinuing support and leaving people with something they can’t play is what the petition is asking to fix. If they did the work to make The Crew playable after the server was shut down, then they are still not providing any additional resources once they discontinue it; that work would have been done in advance. Once again, the petition can’t ask for how they’d like the problem to be legally solved or how the government should define the rules. In the video that typically comes attached to this with a more verbose problem statement and what we should expect as consumers, you can buy a digital horse, but turning the game off removes your ability to access the horse you paid for, so it’s asking to retain the ability to use everything you bought. That’s more than just a phone home if your game client doesn’t contain the multiplayer mode where you would use the horse (or CoD mulitplayer skin).
Is there a video? I don’t see it in this post or in the linked initiative.
I’m not in the EU, so I’m really not familiar with this process, and I’m guessing a number of EU citizens also aren’t familiar. If there’s any related information, it would be good to link it.