Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

release the source and people will maintain it for you for free. you can't say it's not profitable anymore to keep maintaining something that people paid for and at the same time say it'd hurt your profit if you release it.

perverse incentives from a very small subset of users

This is to the benefit of everybody now and in the future. It doesn't matter if only an insignificant fraction of people recognize the importance.

I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive.

The problem is that piracy doesn't help for always online "games as a service" games where the game is killed after the server has shut down. You can't pirate the server because it was never available, and outside of being lucky enough that a few hackers dedicate a lot of spare time to reverse engineering it, that game is gone forever.

The point of this initiative is to ensure that game companies have a legal obligation that at the point of shutting down game servers they must either release the server software, patch the game to work offline, or do whatever else to ensure that the game continues to function.

It's worth noting that this would only count for games sold as goods i.e you paid a fixed fee at the time of sale with the expectation of owning a product indefinitely. Games with explicit subscriptions such as MMO's would not be subject to this since there was never an expectation of access to the product continuing after the subscription expired.

but the vast majority of games- or all entertainment really- stops making money after a few years

I don't think that's universally true. Paradox Interactive are a studio with grand strategy games, and even decades-old games still get new sales of the base game and the DLCs, with a strong user base.

Piracy undermines the creators' rights still. And I think that a legal framework should do its job

50 year copyright on video games is insane. A really good ten year old game could be considered a “classic”, certainly a twenty year old one. SNES games are like 28–33 years or something.

Now consider how many of the modern classic PC games are kept playable/relevant (a problem with some older games are things like terrible playing mechanics; graphics less so) by an enthusiast modding community.

The sunroof needs to phone home to work?

Ha, be glad its just a car. I know a true story about the first woman in my country to go through the process of getting a bionic eye. Long story short, she got it. Forward a few years, and the company that built it goes bust, leaving her without support for a technical implant that was experimental at best, meaning, had a lot of issues. Yes, a articular Lem short story comes to mind, although just tangentially related. We're entering a truely scary time.

Sounds like a good idea that can end the problem with discontinuation of official support

When you stop thinking about games as just entertainment but also as an art form you realize that a lot of art has already been lost to time. It's shit to regret down the line when you could have just prevented the loss of art at an earlier point in time.

As much as I don't play a lot of AAA games due to how they either play or monetize, it is important to me to preserve them for future times considering I still play a lot of older games and even some games from before I was born.

interesting seeing these terms here. I came from reading The Bitcoin Standard book

Customers generally do not want to be hooked on subscriptions, that's a choice that's forced on them by the "you will own nothing and be happy" rentier faction.

Even climate change activists frame the issue (that is supposed to be about long-term thinking) on a very short scale: do something hysterical

No need for "hysterical" in there. But the more and sooner action is taken the better the outcome.

Even climate change activists frame the issue (that is supposed to be about long-term thinking) on a very short scale: do something hysterical right now, otherwise the world's gonna end tomorrow.

This looks more like a consequence of the issue you described previously, than part of the issue itself. If everyone is concerned only with the next 5 minutes (and even if they are with the next 5 years), how would you possibly get them to care about the next 50 or 500 years? So you frame it in terms that align with the modern approach of "only here and now exist".

A source code dump would likely be 'reasonable' and not cost anything.

Would it be challenging for small developers financially to design their games to meet these requirements?

I would doubt it. Already the smaller developers are less likely to be part of the current problem, most of those games at least work offline if they aren't already entirely DRM free.

And the ones that require online access, when the game is designed to be self-hostable this is 0 problem. I'd almost wager it is more difficult and time consuming ensuring they are the only ones that the game can connect to if they'd publish the server binary.

And regarding licensing of server software: you'd need to take into account that you need to publish it down the line when sourcing your dependencies, so I wouldn't count licensing complications a valid excuse, as it's already done with the game software itself.

I'm also impressed. I used the "eID" functionality, and it just worked flawlessly. I signed it in under a minute.

Who is the captcha provider?

Indeed that’s pretty cool.

True, never seen a CAPTCHA with Greek letters before! I refreshed it to make sure, I was so confused!

Good job!

They just mean the companies can still do whatever they want while the game is being supported. It's an extremely poor way of writing that they are only interested in modifying the rules for end-of-life of games instead of regulate existing playable games. The whole thing is poorly written, but the idea is reasonable.

Then read the petition itself or the FAQ?

You probably already know this but GOG does sell games with online components, including ones tied to a license key (=DRM). So simply only buying from GOG is not enough to escape this madness.

Possibly, but it is an unmitigated good to incentivize companies to position their relationships with customers honestly. People approach free-to-play games and subscription based games with different attitudes than purchased games. A purchase carries a reasonable expectation of durability.

On the other hand, if you sell cosmetic items in your subscription based or free-to-play game, then you have sold something with a reasonable expectation of durability which is somewhat already enshrined in the digital goods laws. If you rent those items for a limited time then the relationship is again honest.

If it is reasonable to expect a limited time frame of usage from the software then it is reasonable for the company to state what guarantees they are willing to make for that time frame in a subscription contract. The presumption of durability should carry the weight of law (up to consumables and wear and tear).

As I understand, this would also apply to e.g. micro-transactions/cosmetics which would be categorized as 'possessions' if I follow the wording in this proposal. So this would include F2P games, requiring them to provide a way to enjoy those cosmetics.

As for subscription-based games, Ross Scott put them in a separate category in a previous video of his [1], as you willingly pay for access to a service which has a known end date (end of the month). Although with the micro-transactions angle in mind, I'm not sure how this changes things.

[1]: "Games as a service" is fraud, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw

well, we can ban subscription models too ;-)

I don't think this is a good argument - that is, to not hold companies accountable because doing so might get them to do other undesirable things. It's not like the mobile F2P dumpster fire doesn't exist already without the proposed changes and even PC games have moved significantly towards F2P, especially for online titles which are the main concern of the petition.

Also while this may not be the current public opinion, F2P generally still involves income via sales - not of the whole game but of tiny portions of it dangled in front of you. Any worthwile rule change would also require those to continue to be available to you when the company decides to shut the servers.

Or rather, take a look at this page: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/find-initiative_en?CAT... and consider signing all initiatives that you identify with. I know that preventing their favorite game(s) from being killed off is very important to some people, but in the grand scheme of things, there may be more important causes to support...

I would have but Brexit put paid to that. :-(

I agree, but nit:

Most revenue is generated during the first N years.

With the shift to GaaS models this is becoming less true. once you get a hit, you will easily have a steady income stream for 5,10+ years. WOW is well over 20 at this point.

How is shorter copyright going to help with games being built with remote kill-switches? The server-side component isn't a thing you even posses. AIUI, reverse engineering or releasing patches to fix such games is already legal in the EU.

We should do both - reduce copyright duration to the absolute minimum required for it's goal (to encourage creation of useful science and art, and yes zero might be the optimal term here) while also making sure that benefiting from copyright means the author/company has to ensure that the creation is available to the public after the copyright period. Both things are needed for the copyright deal to be fair to the greater public.

Okay? That is generally the difference between a resident and a citizen in a democracy - a citizen gets to have a say in how the country is run, a mere resident does not.

It is because mitID is not a notified eID scheme in the EU. See https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f14...