Despite Stop Killing Games' efforts, publisher 2K is delisting Lego 2K Drive this week on PC and consoles, with the online services shutting down in 2027.
Indeed not really Stop Killing Games territory. You can’t really force a company to keep selling a game they don’t want to sell (or even contractually can’t sell) anymore.
It’s about preventing them from rendering sold copies inoperable.
Stop Killing Games absolutely uses partially disabled games (which this game will be after 2027) as part of their data/talking points to make their case to legislators. The delisting is a framing device of the article but not the main point, in my opinion. It draws attention to the delisting, but also the servers going offline and how that contrasts to the currently advancing Stop Killing Games movement. It does not at any point suggest that Stop Killing Games would apply to this specific game, but it’s still relevant because it’s two thinks happening concurrently in time that would affect each other. It’s a framing device.
I think it’s really important to highlight because it gets consumers asking, “what if it didn’t have to be this way?” What if this game wasn’t designed in such a way that 2K could partially disable it when they no longer found it profitable? What if 2K was forced by legislation to sunset their servers in a responsible way that allowed someone else to take over, such as by releasing server files? What if the game was designed in the first place to allow mods or direct peer-to-peer car sharing?
Stop Killing Games also uses the fact that game publishers often don’t disclose lengths or time before shut-downs and such as part of their case to legislators, which is a fairly large part of their argument in the European push especially. In this case, 2K has given around a year warning, but what if they were required by legislation to inform the consumer before purchase how long their game would have full functionality? Publishers don’t want to do that, and don’t do that, because they know it would negatively affect the value of their game, but it’s extremely consumer hostile. Imagine you bought the game and less than a month later, they announce they’re shutting down half the game’s functions in X days, and there’s no way for anyone else to be able to restore those functions.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that Stop Killing Games is advocating against. Even if their push wouldn’t apply to this game specifically, using it as another point of data helps their case, and the press shining more and more light on the games doing this and the SKG movement is good, imho.
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Indeed not really Stop Killing Games territory. You can’t really force a company to keep selling a game they don’t want to sell (or even contractually can’t sell) anymore.
It’s about preventing them from rendering sold copies inoperable.
Stop Killing Games absolutely uses partially disabled games (which this game will be after 2027) as part of their data/talking points to make their case to legislators. The delisting is a framing device of the article but not the main point, in my opinion. It draws attention to the delisting, but also the servers going offline and how that contrasts to the currently advancing Stop Killing Games movement. It does not at any point suggest that Stop Killing Games would apply to this specific game, but it’s still relevant because it’s two thinks happening concurrently in time that would affect each other. It’s a framing device.
I think it’s really important to highlight because it gets consumers asking, “what if it didn’t have to be this way?” What if this game wasn’t designed in such a way that 2K could partially disable it when they no longer found it profitable? What if 2K was forced by legislation to sunset their servers in a responsible way that allowed someone else to take over, such as by releasing server files? What if the game was designed in the first place to allow mods or direct peer-to-peer car sharing?
Stop Killing Games also uses the fact that game publishers often don’t disclose lengths or time before shut-downs and such as part of their case to legislators, which is a fairly large part of their argument in the European push especially. In this case, 2K has given around a year warning, but what if they were required by legislation to inform the consumer before purchase how long their game would have full functionality? Publishers don’t want to do that, and don’t do that, because they know it would negatively affect the value of their game, but it’s extremely consumer hostile. Imagine you bought the game and less than a month later, they announce they’re shutting down half the game’s functions in X days, and there’s no way for anyone else to be able to restore those functions.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that Stop Killing Games is advocating against. Even if their push wouldn’t apply to this game specifically, using it as another point of data helps their case, and the press shining more and more light on the games doing this and the SKG movement is good, imho.