(Text below written by @[email protected]. Hope you don’t mind me yoinking it for here!)
The European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Stop Destroying Videogames’ is nearing its deadline on July 31st and is still missing quite a lot of signatures. To be precise, at the time of writing this post, only 560.000 of the required 1.000.000 signatures have been reached.
Another requirement has already been fulfilled: The minimum signature threshold has been reached in 10 countries, 7 were required.
If this is the first time of you hearing about this initiative, here’s a short TL;DR for you (more detailed information can be found here):
Publishers that sell or license videogames should have to leave their videogames in a functional (playable) state.
This means: Remote disabling of video games (such as live service titles) without providing means of keeping the game functional without the involvement of the publisher should be illegal.
This does NOT mean that publishers should support their games forever, but rather that they provide tools (such as server binaries) to enable others to keep the game playable.
The initiative is slowly picking up speed again recently after its creator published a video explaining some of the background and why he doesn’t want to continue after the initiative is over. The video has been well-received by the community and some big influencers have reported on the topic.
If you are an EU citizen and have not signed yet, THIS IS THE TIME! The month until the deadline is met will pass quickly. Use two minutes of your time to influence something that may improve your life forever!
Also, if you are a UK citizen, you can sign a UK specific legal petition that also carries legal weight (forces parliament to investigate the issue). You can sign that here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/
I think this movement is based on feelings. It feels bad that a game died, so we should fix it. Unfortunately the real world is more complicated than that, and overly broad rules are goint to cause unintended consequences for small developers.
The art argument is nonsense, although the other extreme is too. Artists need protections so they can earn a living, but the protections currently last far too long.
Either way, nothing is stopping a company creating a game similar to any number of often referenced “dead” games, and there is nothing wrong with letting something run its course and die off, to allow room for new creativity.
I’m not aware of really any small developers pulling stunts like Ubisoft is doing. And there’s always the option to limit new laws to bigger publishers, like the EU is doing with the DMA.
The art argument is not nonsense, not sure where you get the idea. Games like Assassin’s Creed 2 have influenced many people in their design choices for their own games.
And of course there’s something wrong when a company takes away access to singleplayer games you bought, just because they use always-online DRM and don’t want to pay for the servers. These games don’t take away space from new games, it’s a ridiculous idea that them dying off is improving the situation for new games. It’s also ridiculous to think “hey, someone can just develop a game like the old one!”.
Because it’s a massive time and money investment, because the market and gaming landscape has changed, because mechanics and approaches can be patented, …
It’s a game with a story. You can’t just create a literal copy of that story since it connects to the story of the games before and after it. Come on, this isn’t hard to understand.
First, how the hell did you get that from what I wrote?
Second, do you really think art is this replaceable? “Oh, we don’t need old movies and music, we have better ones now, so let’s just take away the copies people have already bought”? What a sad way to look at art.
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I think this movement is based on feelings. It feels bad that a game died, so we should fix it. Unfortunately the real world is more complicated than that, and overly broad rules are goint to cause unintended consequences for small developers.
The art argument is nonsense, although the other extreme is too. Artists need protections so they can earn a living, but the protections currently last far too long.
Either way, nothing is stopping a company creating a game similar to any number of often referenced “dead” games, and there is nothing wrong with letting something run its course and die off, to allow room for new creativity.
I’m not aware of really any small developers pulling stunts like Ubisoft is doing. And there’s always the option to limit new laws to bigger publishers, like the EU is doing with the DMA.
The art argument is not nonsense, not sure where you get the idea. Games like Assassin’s Creed 2 have influenced many people in their design choices for their own games.
And of course there’s something wrong when a company takes away access to singleplayer games you bought, just because they use always-online DRM and don’t want to pay for the servers. These games don’t take away space from new games, it’s a ridiculous idea that them dying off is improving the situation for new games. It’s also ridiculous to think “hey, someone can just develop a game like the old one!”.
You can call it ridiculous but it doesnt make it less true.
Of course it’s ridiculous and untrue. You can’t “just” develop a game like Assassins Creed 2.
Why not?
Because it’s a massive time and money investment, because the market and gaming landscape has changed, because mechanics and approaches can be patented, …
It’s a game with a story. You can’t just create a literal copy of that story since it connects to the story of the games before and after it. Come on, this isn’t hard to understand.
Are you saying noone would play a better version of assassins creed?
First, how the hell did you get that from what I wrote?
Second, do you really think art is this replaceable? “Oh, we don’t need old movies and music, we have better ones now, so let’s just take away the copies people have already bought”? What a sad way to look at art.
I never said to take it from people. If a company makes their end of life shitty and thats impoetant to you don’t buy their shit.