Common sense makes sense! I'd love to see something like this codified in to law. We need a complete rethinking of the actual terms, "buy", "own", "sell", and so on, so people can't use those terms incorrectly when they're technically just "renting".
How many times has Microsoft done it with music? How many times have companies that are still in business disabled older devices that are still perfectly functional in hopes to sell newer devices and/or get people to sign up for subscriptions, while not allowing end user access to their own devices?
California and Massachusetts have made some steps to correct this. I'd love to see more.
I think the real problem is platform holders like Microsoft, Apple and Google, that create a lot of rules (or APIs) it hard for software to continue working without constant updates. They will say it is to support new features or security, which is occasionally true. But mostly I believe it is because they like to have a lot of telemetry on users, want to keep apps sticky in their eco system and they like you go back to the store. The worst thing for them is an open source game with no online component that you download once and play forever.
The rest of it could be taken care of with consumer choice, but effectively you don't have a choice with the big platforms.
It should apply to all things period? If you buy an appliance (refrigerator, washing machine, Nest thermostat, TV), it feels like it should be required to function regardless of internet connection, availability of servers?
I get that it shouldn't be required to provide communication between the device and some app but it should at least be required to do it's basic function? (can't be remote shut off, can't stop working if no internet, can't stop working if it can't contact servers, ...)
I have gotten to the point where I assume everything with a CPU and a wireless connection is going to self-destruct at some point soon. When we were getting a new oven we paid extra for the lowest tech one we could find! Please no touch screens!
Example: My wife gave me a google mini that I use as a talking alarm clock. That's all: what time is it, please set an alarm. Period. Recently it told me it no longer works because I didn't install "Google Home" on my phone. Nothing changed on the device or its circumstances. Someone at Google decided to make a change that broke it.
You're lucky that you got it working from the store. You can't actually activate most IoT devices without a phone, a mobile number and an internet connection. All of which have to be supported by that brand, not just those physical items.
I noticed this with Nanoleaf Essential Smart LED bulbs, the ones sold by Apple. They come out of the box, requiring to you install the app and register an account before they will start going full brightness. They'll only go like 25% bright until you've installed the app. These are the bulbs Apple sells. So much for caring about privacy. If Apple cared, they wouldn't be carrying a brand that requires you to give up your privacy.
Well, I guess I can dust off my old RS232 interface dot-matrix printers and 10MB SCSI drives, then. Anyone got any paper for an old Alps dot-matrix printer?
To expand on this a little, the author of the petition felt that it HAD to be limited to just video games on its face, the idea being to sneak a toe in the door through innocuous legislation.
In reality, this would set a legal precedent for preserving everything from phone games to major enterprise software.
This was not the immediate goal though, because if it gained any traction it would get so much pushback from the major industry players that passing new regulation would be effectively impossible.
A TL;DR of the whole situation is, there are currently no laws that keep publishers from selling you software and intentionally breaking it, leaving you with nothing. Games are a unique version of this; you can't just download an open source clone because there almost never is one due to copyright issues.
(this does not apply to subscription-based software, the license terms are clear that your use expires with the subscription)
Only if the publisher has placed themselves into a position where labor is required to keep the game running...
The obvious and clearest response is simply this: If you as a publisher are so convinced that your game is obsolete... make the remote server source available under a permissive license to your existing license holders. Better yet - plan for releasing a copy of it at development time.
You don't even need to make the license permissive to everyone, or for everything (open source). You just need to make it possible for those who have purchased your product to continue to use the product, and there are MANY ways to do that which don't involve your consistent labor.
---
Basically - To directly address your point: If the alternative is that the publisher does crap like completely disable single player experiences because they've shut down remote licensing servers... fuck them.
That's not a company I think should be allowed to exist. If we can't limit them this way... them I'd be fully in favor of mandating they return the full purchase price of the item to every purchaser.
That purchase price represent your customer's labor.
You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????)
And again - there's no reason to allow commercial use by competitors...
> You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????)
Code doesn't get thrown away because a game isn't being used anymore. The networking code for one game will not be completely different for the next game.
Simple, they use that tech in their next game that they hope brings more steady revenue. if you think about it as opportunity cost instead of absolute valuee the logic lines up.
Get real. ID Software showed the way to do this in the 90s and early 00s when they released the source code to their early Doom and Quake games, sometimes only 3-5 years after they came out. They didn't give up rights to ip and they didn't give up trade secrets either. Not only have those games enjoyed a high level of support ever since, but it's also enabled new creative works to be created even to present day. (ie Selaco)
Just say you'd prefer it to be legal for these corporations to defraud customers as a regular business practice rather than it be mandated that they can't do that and move on.
Scapegoating is always how these laws are justified. It's always "billionaires this or that" but the laws always include small to medium sized businesses and high income professionals that are not billionaires or mega corporations.
These laws hurt mega corporations but they are fatal to everything smaller.
we're in 2024, not 1994. ID Soft made almost all the tech themselves. That doesn't really happen today with all the servies and 3rd party tools needed to keep up with consumer demand. If people were fine with Doom 1994 graphics, we'd still be playing Doom.
Shocker but most people don't want to give all their IP away. Most others literally cannot because most tool licenses don't give you permission to distribute.
>Just say you'd prefer it to be legal for these corporations to defraud customers as a regular business practice rather than it be mandated that they can't do that and move on.
rules:
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
This initiative is not asking for source code. It’s asking to leave games in a playable state by any means possible. Company can release closed source binary and that would perfectly suffice.
> Giving away the source does not protect the game creator and actively harms them since they are giving up trade secrets.
Then maybe they shouldn't have published the game in the first place. If you can't do the bare minimum that the market demands/requires by regulation then you can't engage with it. Simple as.
Is this not how most regulation (and law in general) works? You make a rule to stop someone from doing some undesirable thing, often without compensating them for whatever they've lost as part of doing it. These things are (ideally) done because we see the benefit outweighing the burden.
This law is not stopping anything, it's mandating something be done. And yes, many laws are like this and that's why Europe's startup ecosystem does not exist. Laws like this are a pain for large companies but they are fatal for small ones.
Stopping someone from doing something necessarily requires them to change their behavior. E.g. creating a rule saying you can't dispose of waste in a river forces people who were doing that to find another method of disposal.
Please stop with the analogies to life saving medical devices or polluting the planet with toxic chemicals. Not all situations are equivalent. It's obviously good to mandate that other people shouldn't be poisoned. That doesn't mean all mandates are good.
Okay, then consider implied warranty laws. If you buy an item and it breaks, there are laws concerning the implied warranty of merchantability, and the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose.
The government might require that certain classes of products, like a washing machine, or laptop, work for at least a given period of time.
If it fails, it must be fixed or replaced.
This is a legal mandate for the seller or manufacturer to provide labor, the cost of which is factored into the purchase price.
That sort of warranty mandate is close to the goal of this effort, and shows that the labor costs can be handled similarly.
That doesn't mean all mandates are good, just like how implied warranties are not unlimited.
Warranty laws are not fatal for small companies. They are fatal for companies that cut corners and abuse their customers.
here's the difference, if a game shuts down in 6 months clearly no one cares. If a game shuts down in 6 years (past most typical warranties), clearly you got more than enough enjoyment out of it.
Digital warranties don't make much sense since popularity is generally proportional to lifetime. If it was a good game it wouldn't shut down quick enough for people to complain.
My point isn't that this a "digital warranty", but to 1) provide another example of how the government has placed mandates on businesses (beyond "life saving medical devices or polluting the planet with toxic chemicals") , and 2) highlight a mandate which has clearly not been "fatal" for small businesses.
For a third example, consider right-to-repair laws which mandate that a company must provide usable manuals and parts at a reasonable cost.
The lifetime of the game depends on profitability to the company, which is only somewhat correlated with popularity. Companies even stop products which are profitable, but not profitable enough.
When does the timer start? Minecraft has been around for well over 6 years, yet it gets new players every year.
> here's the difference, if a game shuts down in 6 months clearly no one cares.
Plenty of games come out, don't do well overall and then get shutdown despite a loyal fanbase. Just because something didn't meet its sales forecast doesn't mean the people who bought it don't want to play it. A game being popular doesn't mean it's a good game, and a game being unpopular doesn't mean it's a bad game.
> If a game shuts down in 6 years (past most typical warranties), clearly you got more than enough enjoyment out of it.
First: that's not a given. Plenty of people buy games well past the launch date. If I buy a game five years, eleven months, and two weeks after launch and the auth servers are shut down two weeks later should I lose access to it?
> Digital warranties don't make much sense since popularity is generally proportional to lifetime. If it was a good game it wouldn't shut down quick enough for people to complain.
Studios close, and companies don't make decisions based on what's popular, they do it based on what makes them money. A game might have a long tail where people keep playing and buying it but substantial numbers of new customers aren't coming in anymore.
Your response was to me and yet I hadn't made any analogies to life saving medical devices.
I wasn't using the example of dumping waste in rivers to illustrate an equivalence in severity with the video game issue. I was trying to show that drawing a distinction between forcing someone to stop doing something and forcing someone to do something is nonsensical in this context.
> drawing a distinction between forcing someone to stop doing something and forcing someone to do something is nonsensical in this context
My interpretation of your argument is as follows:
"Because we already have laws to mandate people to do things, saying it's bad to mandate people to do things is nonsensical."
I disagree, I think it's bad we have to mandate people to do things ever but in certain situations we should do it because the alternative is terrible. ie like preventing people from polluting the entire environment. Also keep in mind, we are talking about video games
> "Because we already have laws to mandate people to do things, saying it's bad to mandate people to do things is nonsensical."
That's not my argument. My argument is that it's wrong to claim this law is different from any other type of law in that it requires people to do additional labor. Unless a law literally has no requirements (is that even a law?), it has to require some people to do additional work.
> I think it's bad we have to mandate people to do things ever but in certain situations we should do it because the alternative is terrible.
Many of us do think it's terrible for people to have a product they paid for become inoperable because a company decided they would take their authentication servers offline without releasing a patch first. This erodes consumer trust and can lead to a market of lemons.
> Also keep in mind, we are talking about video games
We're talking about laws, which are serious things and deserve serious discussions. The proposed legislation is likely a test balloon for other consumer protections, so reasoning through the effects is a good exercise.
No, it doesn't. Programs need to be designed to rely on specific servers, with specific DNS host names, checking valid TLS certificates. They can just as easily (and trivially, I should add) be designed to allow for configuration with other servers.
If that's not desirable for a product because of the desire to make money, then allowing end user configuration should be something that comes with a fixed date (this product will require our servers for the first five years, then it's open to any servers, for example) or with an update when the company decides to stop running their servers.
Saying it "mandates labor" is inaccurate insofar as requiring that software not be used to facilitate illegal harassment, DoS, distribution of child porn, et cetera isn't considered "mandating labor". It's the cost of doing business, and suggesting that the cost is high is wildly inaccurate.
It isn't? Who doesn't consider that mandating labor? It literally is mandating labor. Also, why do you use the word facilitate? Obviously that's illegal, what you mean to say is actively preventing the use of for that purpose, which btw is not mandated, companies do it to cover their own ass when they have the resources to.
We "mandate labor" all the time, that's how the countless laws & regulations work.
- Providing warranty service is mandated labor.
- Going through workplace safety inspections is mandated labor.
- Getting your product certified by the relevant authorities is mandated labor.
- Following cybersecurity compliance regulations is mandated labor.
- Following proper food safety guidelines in a professional kitchen is mandated labor.
- Ensuring that your premises are accessible to the disabled is mandated labor.
There's nothing special about this case of "mandated labor". You don't get compensated for being "nice enough" not to defraud your customers. That's just your half of the social contract that allows you to participate in society in the first place.
Imagine going to a car dealer, the entire transaction, the word "rent" or "lease" are never used. And you have to sign a 30 page agreement where hidden on page 18 there's a clause saying you're purchasing a license to use the car and it can be revoked at any time.
6 years later, the manufacturer decides they want to shut down the factories producing replacement parts, and won't license anyone else to make them, so they push an update out and now your car won't start anymore despite functioning just fine.
The entirety of this debate is whether companies should be allowed to treat game sales that way. Most people don't see buying a game like an artist licensing their song to a TV show. They see it like buying a toy.
They should probably allow companies to keep doing what they are doing now as long as they call it "rent" instead of "buy" in their marketing materials.
Normally this honesty would cost them money because their competitors would have better (more persuasive) marketing, but a law could force every company to be honest at the same time so that the relative ranking of each company does not change.
> 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.
Perhaps there is a disconnect between the policy intent and the understanding?
Who will pay devs to convert World of Warcraft into a single-player game?
This is probably covered by "reasonable means to continue functioning" and the answer will be "there are no reasonable means".. but the comment parent's point somewhat stands.
Even moving a DLC check can be complicated. When you game is done, do you disable all DLC since you can't verify someone purchased it, or do you make it freely available? Who will pay for that additional data streaming (assuming it's not on something like Steam) ?
I am not disagreeing with the wish of the initiative, just providing some food for thought on the potential costs to a company.
Cost of business that was previously avoided, to the detriment of consumers. Who pays for required warranty reserves? It is built into the cost of good sold model (EU requires warranties of no shorter than 2 years).
If you sell something, it should continue to be usable after you as a business are gone. A game producer can always not make games if you find the regulation to be overly burdensome, that is a choice. It is unlikely this stops games from being made. This policy encourages the feature as part of requirements gathering and roadmap planning.
warranty reserves are incremental and predictable. Development is unpredictable. I'd hope people on HN would understand not comparing tech to an assembly line.
It doesn't necessarily mean to turn WoW in a simgle player game. Just being able to setup servers in a reasonable way (i.e. not reverse engineering and emulating how they work, like people have done for WoW).
> Perhaps there is a disconnect between the policy intent and the understanding?
Yes, I don't think they understand that running these games isn't free, modifying the games to be self hostable is not free, and giving away the code for other people to run it is ip suicide.
> Yes, I don't think they understand that running these games isn't free, modifying the games to be self hostable is not free, and giving away the code for other people to run it is ip suicide.
And none of that would be an issue if not for the fact that so many companies are creating games that become paperweights when they shut down the servers.
It used to be very commonplace to include server binaries with multiplayer games, before dedicated servers for every game was the norm. Also before that, modding games, including multiplayer games, was also highly normalized. If anything, the era of live service titles that are completely 100% locked down and only work with the developer's servers, punish modding, what have you is the aberration, not the norm. And those games once the developers want to move on, become paperweights when they do. All the achievements made, all the items unlocked, all the currency invested, instantly becomes worthless.
So like, I dunno, if you as a developer are not in this for the long haul and don't want to have to comply with this regulation at great expense at the end tail of development, then develop it like it used to be done? Include server binaries for people to use at launch? Maybe plan on making your money back on purchases of the game, and not on long-tail monetization that demands more security and locked-down-ness in the software to be viable?
The oldest server binary I've used recently was for Freelancer, which was released in 2003. It required some elevated permissions but otherwise, both the server and the game itself ran fine on newer hardware and versions of Windows.
Failing that, there's always hardware emulation but to be honest, unless you're for whatever odd reason trying to run your server on AMD64, I don't think there's too much to be concerned about. And, if source code is released by the developer, the community that remains could see to continuing support.
Worth noting here that the self-hosting mod for Titanfall 2, called Northstar, already did all of that with nothing but reverse-engineering involved because Respawns servers were basically unusable for years.
I don't expect programs written today to run on the latest hardware and operating systems 100 years from now. But a machine from today, or its equivalent emulated in software, running the same OS should always be able to run the same programs.
That you own what you buy? Sounds reasonable. Perhaps they should rent the software instead of selling it if they don't want to support the owning part of buying while still supporting the getting paid part.
The core problem is government granting businesses copyright, which prevents players from doing what they want with the material they buy. This is for apparently reasonable reasons, but there is some downsides to it. So it is less that we are adding another right, but more that we are specifying the right given to the business to begin with to ensure they aren't being given something that shouldn't be a right.
Ending copyright would also solve this, but with many other side effects that we probably don't want to invoke.
I would say it's fairly well established concept that there is a doctrine of sale, and that the purchaser gains rights to the item in exchange for the sale price - notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner.
Publishers are playing with fire by trying to undermine that doctrine for digital goods.
So if your question is in good faith (and I very much doubt it is...) then at least this has a long history of established rights.
Thing is you don't have a physical product, you have a license to run this software or acces this server. There is no "item" to own. It's like asking to own a spot in an amusement park. you pay for the experience, not the literal land or coasters or slides.
> Thing is you don't have a physical product, you have a license to run this software or acces this server. There is no "item" to own. It's like asking to own a spot in an amusement park. you pay for the experience, not the literal land or coasters or slides.
Again, this is the literal thing that's being debated. Companies are currently allowed to treat game sales as such and this group is arguing the law should stop them from doing so.
If made into laws collectively agreed upon through a political process? Yes, of course. Participation in the marketplace is voluntary. If you don't like the rules, don't sell into the marketplace, it's as simple as that. Consumers are entitled to protections, businesses are not entitled to revenue nor profits. Policy implementation timelines allows time for business to adapt to the new landscape, but they can also opt out of this market if they don't believe they can pass this cost along to their customers.
Many people (myself included) argue that this is a part of consumer rights ...hence the legislation we're discussing. You might disagree with it, but you can't pretend that a lot of people don't believe a company shouldn't be able to disable a game they already "sold" to you.
A lot of people thinking something isn't a good argument. Unless stated by the law your rights are what you agreed to when signing the terms of service for the game. Stop acting like people were duped when servers were shut off for a game that doesn't get played.
Right now when you play games online you don't pay for dedicated servers (which are very expensive), with this law expect that to change. Expect to also have to pay for a team of software engineers to manage the games into eternity.
> A lot of people thinking something isn't a good argument.
I don't think you can get to a much more foundational definition of democracy than "decisions are made because a lot of people agree they should". You might disagree with the results, but it's an excellent argument for something becoming law.
> Unless stated by the law your rights are what you agreed to when signing the terms of service for the game.
Laws make contract provisions unenforceable all the time. This is not a new thing, and I have a hard time imagining the effect of laws if you couldn't invalidate agreements with them.
> Stop acting like people were duped when servers were shut off for a game that doesn't get played.
But people do feel like they got duped when that happens. That's why people get upset. You might disagree with it, but just saying "don't feel that way" isn't a good argument. Why shouldn't I feel that way? It's how games worked in the past. Games that have been shut down in the past and rendered unplayable have been made playable by fans before. Why shouldn't we expect companies the companies who made them to make an effort to do so as well?
> Right now when you play games online you don't pay for dedicated servers (which are very expensive), with this law expect that to change. Expect to also have to pay for a team of software engineers to manage the games into eternity.
I'm not entirely clear why you're taking this as a given, but I trust you'll elaborate. But humoring your (I suspect flawed) premise: personally I think it would be great if we went back to player-run dedicated servers. Some of the games I've played the most lately (Valheim, Minecraft, V Rising) are ones I've rented dedicated servers for. Hosting dedicated servers these days is extremely easy and quite cheap. Further on this tangent: I think we've lost a lot of online community because most games pour everyone into the same matchmaking buckets. This means you don't get as many small communities centered around specific servers popping up like you did back in the late 90s or early 2000s.
> Expect to also have to pay for a team of software engineers to manage the games into eternity.
Could you explain which part of the legislation requires this?
> Democracies literally function via consent of the people.
Do I really need explain why the majority thinking something is good does not make it good? Look-up tyranny of the majority.
Obviously the vast majority of people are consumers and create nothing so it's naturally good that we just leech off creators to the largest extent possible since they are a smaller group.
I am always biased in favor of people that create. They are a smaller group but vastly more important.
> Do I really need explain why the majority thinking something is good does not make it good? Look-up tyranny of the majority.
No, of course not, but if you look at what I wrote you'll note that I did not say that. Majority is obviously a terrible way to decide what's morally/ethically right. Within a democratic system though, it is the way we decide what rights to grant people.
> I am always biased in favor of people that create. They are a smaller group but vastly more important.
I'm glad you point out your bias. I don't know why people who "create" (this seems to have a specific meaning for you) would be more important than anyone else. How far does this bias lean? If Blizzard updates their user agreement and sneak a clause in there where I agree to give away my house if the other party asks for it, am I wrong to think that shouldn't be enforceable?
>Within a democratic system though, it is the way we decide what rights to grant people.
or take rights from people, which seems to be in vouge as of late.
I simply think this is a foolish direction. Preservation is important but you can't mandate entertainment to keep servers up and running. If this focused on actual single player cases there may be a point here, but I feel trying to fit in cases like WoW is just asking this bill to fail.
And to recognize my bias: I have also been in enough gamer circles to know that any talk of preservation is just wolf whistles for enabling piracy. I lot of people don't actually care about ownership (look at how they praise gamepass, a system that will actually end games ownership as we know it), they care about getting games they like for free.
> Preservation is important but you can't mandate entertainment to keep servers up and running.
Yes and that would indeed be an unrealistic thing to mandate, which is why this proposal doesn't do that. It requires companies make a "reasonable" effort to make the game continue to be playable afterward.
> And to recognize my bias: I have also been in enough gamer circles to know that any talk of preservation is just wolf whistles for enabling piracy.
We must run in very different circles. I care deeply about game preservation and haven't pirated a game in many many years.
Elsewhere in this conversation it sounded like you were implying that games which get shut down aren't worth much anymore anyway. I don't agree with this reasoning at all, but wouldn't that imply piracy wouldn't matter as much? I guess you might be giving people free alternatives at that point, but historically that hasn't had an effect on things like record sales.
> I lot of people don't actually care about ownership (look at how they praise gamepass, a system that will actually end games ownership as we know it), they care about getting games they like for free.
I'm not denying that what you're saying is true for a large number of people, but it's also false for a large number of people too. If you look at the comments on a gaming site you'll find plenty of people saying things like Game Pass are terrible because they don't give you access to games permanently.
The world will quickly go to shit if people stopped creating and building new things. Literally everything you own was built by someone's labor. Maybe stop mandating that these people do more for you?
> If Blizzard updates their user agreement and sneak a clause in there where I agree to give away my house
Where are you going with this argument? In what way does being biased mean I just agree with everything a group decides?
> The world will quickly go to shit if people stopped creating and building new things. Literally everything you own was built by someone's labor. Maybe stop mandating that these people do more for you?
People don't create things in a vacuum. They exist within a society. People did not stop creating things in the US when we decided workers had to be compensated for injuries. In this (much less severe) case, the proposed legislation says that companies have to make "reasonable" efforts. I don't know how you think a reasonable effort would be enough to stop people from "creating".
> Where are you going with this argument? In what way does being biased mean I just agree with everything a group decides?
I'm genuinely trying to find out what you feel is a reasonable thing to expect someone to agree to. I assume you think people agree to have games disabled after they've paid for them because it was in an agreement they signed. Most people don't read such agreements thoroughly though. Elsewhere in this thread you said: "A lot of people thinking something isn't a good argument. Unless stated by the law your rights are what you agreed to when signing the terms of service for the game. Stop acting like people were duped when servers were shut off for a game that doesn't get played."
If you don't think the company should be allowed to take the home in the hypothetical: why? Is it the monetary amount involved? The amount of disruption to the homeowner's life? Something else?
Why can't the single player functionality continue working indefinitely?
And maybe we can also mandate that companies release detailed server specifications when they turn down a game. Everything that might be needed for someone to rewrite the server. Then someone else might step into a breach - a different company, an open source project - and continue providing the service.
> we don't buy property when we buy a multiplayer game. Not unless you are fine going back to couch co-op.
Again, you're taking as a given one of the things which some people want to change. Why shouldn't the developers of the newest matchmaking-based shooter be required to release the binary for a dedicated server when they shut the game down? Obviously this won't be feasible for some games, but I can imagine plenty of games where it seems like it should be reasonable to factor it into development costs.
The way I'm reading it is regarding single player titles. I've seen many single player games with an online mechanic stop being playable in single player after the online servers are taken down.
This is a software architecture issue. It doesn't necessarily mean there's more work, just different goals when starting out.
Look at the case of Massive Entertainment and World in Conflict [1]. All reasons for not doing something similar boil down to decisions made early on in development.
I’m compensating you with my money to buy a game and you want to retain a kill switch to turn it off anytime you want? Imagine if I did that to your pacemaker.
You probably pay a lot more for a pacemaker. Also, these kinds of analogies are not good arguments, pacemakers and video games are not in any way comparable.
Pass this law, fine. Just expect to pay $100 for a game + a monthly fee to play it online
I am surprised this reply gets down voted because it is pretty accurate. Video game makers/publishers (I am one!) design and distribute games based on what they can make money on. People tend to be cheap about entertainment, particularly the biggest consumers who have more time than money. So they complain about free to play but probably download 20 free to play games for every premium one they pay for. It's their right to do so. But they do tend to pick whatever is cheapest to them up front.
It's being downvoted because it's baseless fearmongering.
We used to buy games and get a server.exe alongside it! In my experience, the tide started turning around 15 years ago, every big release started getting infested with in-game payments, always-online components, and most titles took away our ability to self-host servers.
With those changes, their profits skyrocketed - but greedy bastards running the show never seem to have enough, so they kill unprofitable games to get everyone to move to their new product.
Personally I don't buy AAA games anymore - partially due to these hostile practices, partially because their creators have lost any semblance of taste. Indie games and smaller studios are still pumping out real gems that don't implement any of these predatory practices at the cost of $20-50.
We seem to be falling to mob mentality. Someone upstream compared a video game to a pacemaker, this is a horrible analogy and frankly just shows how entitled the gaming audience is.
>We used to buy games and get a server.exe alongside it!
And you still can. If you want real change vote with your wallet instead of saying "but no, I want THIS game to be playable for free forever!". But clearly others have already voted. It's not going away.
Nothing is forever. I see a game I may want to play X years later, I don't play if if it looks like it'll shut down <X years later. I don't bother clinging to keep other games open, I just move on to what's new. Or you know, not worry because I play mostly single player games.
>Indie games and smaller studios are still pumping out real gems that don't implement any of these predatory practices at the cost of $20-50.
yup. And look what the most profitable games are. Again, wallets have voted. We are the niche, the minority. And that's okay, that's just my life as a nutshell.
It's being downvoted because there are plenty of DRM-free, no server-required games in existence today and they don't cost $100 + a monthly fee. AAA games back in the days when they were distributed by CD-ROM or disk didn't charge a monthly fee either.
OK as usual there's a ton of misunderstanding on this issue so I feel the need to summarize it:
The goal is to require publishers to leave the game in a working state when they end support.
For single player focused games, this means removing the phone-home verification or drm so it can function offline.
For multiplayer focused games, this means allowing users to run their own server. It DOES NOT mean keeping official servers running forever.
I'm sure there's going to be someone saying "NOOOOO they'll have to do more work to make sure the game is still playable!" Ok, and? You're saying they should legally be allowed to sell the game on a DVD that self-destructs after a year because it's "too much work" to sell non-destructing discs? This is why new regulations are needed, because this is a bad practice that only recently started, and it needs to be stopped before it gets worse.
And also it needs to be clear this DOES NOT APPLY to games that have a monthly subscription fee like WoW, or games that are completely free to play.
See this is why I made the comment I did, nothing that you just said is at all clear from the petition and as it is written it doesn't conform to what you are saying here.
> For single player focused games, this means removing the phone-home verification or drm so it can function offline.
I really doubt that anyone would dispute that. If we are only talking about that, its just fine.
> For multiplayer focused games, this means allowing users to run their own server. It DOES NOT mean keeping official servers running forever.
This is where it gets confusing, since then you say:
> And also it needs to be clear this DOES NOT APPLY to games that have a monthly subscription fee like WoW, or games that are completely free to play.
That should be clear from the petition but why are those 2 a distinction? You have to buy WoW, its expansions, and pay a subscription fee.
Why is that inherently different from buying an online only game, that you just don't have to pay a subscription for? For example, Guild Wars 2. For any reason that mattered it is identical to WoW when it comes to the server side of things. Except it doesn't have a subscription.
If we really are going to make that distinction, it should have been in the petition. I had the same problem with the website that was discussing the Crew, critical information about what exactly we were talking about was missing and actually what we were talking about only came up after discussing it here.
> Because this is a bad practice that only recently started, and it needs to be stopped before it gets worse.
This petition also really needs examples of this, because I struggled to find an example so so far the only ones presented as games that are unplayable because of phoning home is NFS Underground and The Crew. When the petition is making it out to be a much larger and wide spread problem than it currently is.
WoW only charges the base monthly subscription fee for 90% of the game, you don't actually buy the game+old expansions. The very newest expansion costs something, which could be tricky to fit into the law criteria, but everything else is included with the monthly bill.
For GW2, any new regulations would apply normally because you bought a product(the game), not a service(a subscription). So yeah, they'd have to let you host a sever when they shut official servers down.
Completely free games don't apply because... they're free. You have not entered into a legal contract with the publisher because no money was exchanged. They're not obligated to keep supporting a free product.
If you thought the wording on the petitions is confusing, you might want to tell the guy behind it directly. ( rosswscott at google's mail service). It was actually revised by... probably many people and some things may have been lost in repeated edits.
(I can find a list of games that have been killed off. I'll have to reply to this later because I saw it linked in a video and I can't remember which one it was)
> WoW only charges the base monthly subscription fee for 90% of the game, you don't actually buy the game+old expansions. The very newest expansion costs something, which could be tricky to fit into the law criteria, but everything else is included with the monthly bill.
> For GW2, any new regulations would apply normally because you bought a product(the game), not a service(a subscription). So yeah, they'd have to let you host a sever when they shut official servers down.
That distinction doesn't really make sense. If your argument is to stop killing games, why do games like WoW get an exception? You still are loosing access to something you paid for, before you ever put in your credit card for a subscription. It's irrelevant how they bundle expansions or make some free later, if you were subscribed from the beginning you bought a lot of expansions and the base game.
To be clear here, I think its fine that GW2, Wow, and any online only game could shut down and you loose access to it. As a consumer you should well understand that some things are online only, it is built to be online and if the servers shut down you should understand that. If somehow we can make an exception that WoW is fine, clearly consumers understand online only games regardless of how it was paid for.
Not talking about phoning home, but an actual online game.
I just don't understand how you justify the distinction of how some online games are somehow different from others. It weakens the entire argument to carve out exceptions that have no basis on the underlying technology on why something isn't realistic.
> If you thought the wording on the petitions is confusing, you might want to tell the guy behind it directly.
It is less that it is confusing, my point is that is conflating 2 very different things.
Phoning home, and truly online games.
The reason I responded to you is you started your first post seemingly from a place of authority or understanding of this:
> OK as usual there's a ton of misunderstanding on this issue so I feel the need to summarize it:
That implies that you know something that we don't, further enforced by you mentioning things in your original post that is nowhere to be found in this petition.
If that is not the case and your original post was your own understanding of what is written but not from a place of having any additional information than that makes this conversation very different.
>That implies that you know something that we don't, further enforced by you mentioning things in your original post that is nowhere to be found in this petition.
I "have additional information" in that I've watched the videos that have led up to the petition(s), and although the goals are stated within the petition page, it's more of a condensed semi-legalese which might be difficult for a random reader to extrapolate (and it may be too condensed).
>why do games like WoW get an exception?
Again, payed expansions for subscription games are a tricky area. If you bought additional content beyond a monthly fee, imo a good compromise might be issuing a refund within a certain time period. That's an issue for government to debate though.
If I ONLY signed up for Wow's base subscription and bought nothing else, it's pretty clear-cut that I'm only entitled to service for the payed period and nothing else.
>If somehow we can make an exception that WoW is fine, clearly consumers understand online only games...
Most consumers clearly understand how a subscription works, that you stop paying and stop getting service.
Most consumers also understand that if you buy something as a one-time payment only, it shouldn't be taken away arbitrarily, this is how most multiplayer games have worked for the last... 30 years or so? If Wow's payed expansions get a pass here, it's ONLY because running a server might require unreasonable hardware for an individual (believe me, I'd prefer not to give them a pass).
Anyway, here's a list of fully-dead games on pc. This includes a bunch of F2P games, which may or may not be a subject of this regulation depending on the game specifics
Anything that lists "no" under offline mode is pretty much going to die, anything with "download required" is potentially dead unless someone figures out a patch when the server shuts down.
> I "have additional information" in that I've watched the videos that have led up to the petition(s), and although the goals are stated within the petition page, it's more of a condensed semi-legalese which might be difficult for a random reader to extrapolate (and it may be too condensed).
Maybe this is my misunderstanding of how this system for the EU is supposed to work, but there is no indication anywhere here that there is supporting information about this anywhere else. I mean we can assume, but its not here. That also assumes that the videos that you are referring to are directly related to this petition.
> Again, payed expansions for subscription games are a tricky area. If you bought additional content beyond a monthly fee, imo a good compromise might be issuing a refund within a certain time period. That's an issue for government to debate though. If I ONLY signed up for Wow's base subscription and bought nothing else, it's pretty clear-cut that I'm only entitled to service for the payed period and nothing else.
But I don't understand how that is realistically any different than an expansion for GW2 for example. I understand what you are saying about a subscription, but realistically the difference is pretty minimal and implies that consumers don't understand what an online game is unless they put in a credit card? I don't buy that argument, the internet was not invented yesterday, online gaming was not invented yesterday.
> Most consumers also understand that if you buy something as a one-time payment only, it shouldn't be taken away arbitrarily
Most consumers also understand that a game shutting down or the servers shutting down for an online game, is not "arbitrary".
> this is how most multiplayer games have worked for the last... 30 years or so?
I don't believe that timeline is accurate. p2p online gaming has not been mainstream for a very long time. Halo 5 started using dedicated servers 9 years ago. Overwatch 8 years ago has always been dedicated servers. MMO's have obviously always been dedicated servers and WoW came out 20 years ago, everquest 25 years ago. There are other examples but I don't feel like looking up the full history of gaming.
Let's also not pretend that the only reason companies switched to dedicated servers was for money. p2p servers had tons of problems. From host advantage, lag since even today most people have really bad upload speeds, games ending or pausing if the host left, if you could run a private server you had to pay for that.
Dedicated servers fixed major problems with online gaming, especially anything competitive. It really isn't hard to find people complaining about online play back at this time. Most people just kinda forgot about it, or didn't grow up playing those games so never experienced it but I have vivid memories of it with Halo 2 and 3. It sucked, it was better than nothing and was a ton of fun, but when the problems came up, it sucked.
But even when those games were p2p, they still had an online requirement for matchmaking. Halo 2 came out 20 years ago. The online component was required for the online part to work.
Now yes, Halo 2 supported LAN play. and thats great, but that doesn't work for every game due to the game requirements itself. I highly highly doubt the idea of LAN play for WoW is anywhere at all realistic.
> If Wow's payed expansions get a pass here, it's ONLY because running a server might require unreasonable hardware for an individual (believe me, I'd prefer not to give them a pass).
But you can make that exact same argument for GW2. Outside of a subscription the server side for those games are fundamentally not that different. Obviously different code, but they are still both MMO's and everything that comes along with that.
Going back to my original argument, it doesn't help that that list includes many online games not just games that "phone home". That is the list I am far more interested in.
Including Overwatch and FFXIV (Yes I know what happened with reborn) is questionable at best given that both of those games are still running, just have been updated and changed. Most people don't argue that every patch of an MMO should be readily playable so not really sure why those 2 are there.
> Anything that lists "no" under offline mode is pretty much going to die, anything with "download required" is potentially dead unless someone figures out a patch when the server shuts down.
Multiple people have responded with similar things, that X game requires phoning home right now so it's at risk. Well this petition does nothing about that. It doesn't stop the practice of phoning home in the first place.
Honestly that would be far more valuable and just avoid this situation in the first place, which I would fully support a ban on phoning home since it also frustrates me with mobile gaming with my steam deck and similar.
For all we know there is already a solution in place for these games that just has to be released or flipped on. Given that that list is almost 3000 and the other list is 177, that is a huge discrepancy that may not ever be a thing.
But I am going to leave this here because I don't think we are getting anywhere with this conversation. Ultimately your responses and others is why I have a problem with this petition.
There are at least 3 different interpretations of this in this thread.
We have mine that sees that it only ever mentions phoning home and is concerned that its scope seems to not match its original (and only clearly outlined) concern and could be misunderstood.
There is yours that says that no they are talking about online games, but only some that don't require a subscription.
And then there is someone else who is specifically using WoW as an example of a game that should open up when it closes down.
Clearly there is a lot missing here. We have very critical points that are not clear, we don't know the scope, and we are all interpreting it different ways, possibly just to align with our own views with no basis on what the original writers intended.
>I'm sure there's going to be someone saying "NOOOOO they'll have to do more work to make sure the game is still playable!" Ok, and? You're saying they should legally be allowed to sell the game on a DVD that self-destructs after a year because it's "too much work" to sell non-destructing discs
yes, that's how servers work. You don't own anything. You didn't pay for support. If you don't like that risk, don't play on games with no LAN hosting.
But consumer demands have risen and clearly they stopped caring about local hosting, especially since they are spoiled by dedicated servers and their optimizations. So I don't think the scheme is going away.
>And also it needs to be clear this DOES NOT APPLY to games that have a monthly subscription fee like WoW, or games that are completely free to play.
oh cool. I guess we'll be getting a lot more F2P titles. These console companies should be caught up to what is standard in mobile by the time any bills pass. I think they'll try subs for a short spell, but quickly default back to f2p.
The whole concept of putting software on someone’s computer, but you actually own and operate it, is kinda crazy to start with. Stallman isn’t wrong about the abuse potential of proprietary software.
We had a similar discussion about this before and I feel like this is an incredibly simplistic view of the situation.
How many games actually only phone home and have been rendered unplayable for that reason?
I am struggling to find any examples of this happening, but I am sure there are a few. Unless I am missing it, I don't even see an example listed here.
If the game relies on servers for data, online play, or other things that is a completely different beast. That isn't just, "oh it was rendered unplayable". No it was an online game and the servers were shut down. It sucks but thats the nature of moving away from p2p online games.
To be very clear here, I agree with this when it comes to single player games. But as its written, it has the potential to conflate 2 massively different issues (as the Crew discussion did last time) that it should be very clear on those distinctions and I would love examples.
> If the game relies on servers for data, online play, or other things that is a completely different beast. That isn't just, "oh it was rendered unplayable". No it was an online game and the servers were shut down. It sucks but thats the nature of moving away from p2p online games.
A non-exhaustive list of games I have operated servers for: Freelancer, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Counterstrike, Space Engineers, Minecraft.
We know how to solve this problem. Companies don't want to, because they make more money out of lock-in live service games. We're allowed to tell our lawmakers to tell them tough shit. Build games to be used after servers are decommissioned, or don't built games.
> Build games to be used after servers are decommissioned, or don't built games.
To my knowledge you are talking about games that all of the core data is stored on the client side and don't rely on updates being able to be applied to servers on data required for the game to work.
How would you propose WoW, FFXIV, or other MMO's continue to be run after? There are fan projects to make private servers for some of those but those rely on data and processes running on the sever's. Controlling bosses, NPC's, events, and other things.
It isn't realistic to expect that these companies would release the source code for their servers. Companies re-using code and components for other projects is very much a thing.
> It isn't realistic to expect that these companies would release the source code for their servers.
Why is that not realistic? If the company is ending support, surely that code is ancient at that point. What's the risk? The company is ending support, by virtue of that fact, they are conceding they are not making any/enough money to continue the work. So leave it for someone else to do then, if they're inclined.
I posit the opposite question to you: why is it normal and acceptable for Blizzard to say "WoW is done and no one can play anymore" and an entire vibrant community and player-base just doesn't get to play their favorite game anymore, because Blizzard decided it wasn't profitable enough? Yeah sure Blizzard made it, fine enough, but that's not the sum total of all work involved. Probably millions of hours at this point of streams, guides, explainers, millions of wiki pages, guides, all kinds of shit that tons of people have invested thousands of hours into. What right does Blizzard have to simply take all of that and turn it off? What about people who make their own living in turn with WoW?
We have seen plenty of games shut down after only a year or so to know that is not the case.
But also as I said in my response, reusing code is a thing. Maybe it relies on another internal tool that is used in some of their other games. They are not going to release that part, which would make the first part they released unusable.
Just because they are ending support doesnt mean that the some of the serverside code is not being used elsewhere or is not a shared service with another game.
> I posit the opposite question to you: why is it normal and acceptable for Blizzard to say "WoW is done and no one can play anymore" and an entire vibrant community and player-base just doesn't get to play their favorite game anymore,
I mean, I highly doubt if it was a "vibrant community" it would be shutting down at this point.
> because Blizzard decided it wasn't profitable enough? Yeah sure Blizzard made it, fine enough,
Regardless of any of our other opinions on this work, that is exactly it. They own it, they run the servers, they update it, it is their creation and with the example of an MMO it has always been clear that it relies on an online connection to work since that is the very basis of the game.
> but that's not the sum total of all work involved. Probably millions of hours at this point of streams, guides, explainers, millions of wiki pages, guides, all kinds of shit that tons of people have invested thousands of hours into. What right does Blizzard have to simply take all of that and turn it off? What about people who make their own living in turn with WoW?
You could say that about anything. Even if Blizzard did nothing, the popularity of WoW going down would still impact all of those people.
What about people that covered a tv show for several seasons just for it to be canceled (or just ending)? Maybe they made a living covering that show, are they somehow owed something because they no longer have new episodes that come out? No of course not.
Are people that made a living on Instagram or whatever owed something if those platforms shut down?
No, they boxed themselves in instead of diversifying. That should be a normal practice and recognize the risk to your livlyhood of relying on a single platform, game, tv show, or whatever other niche.
Also should be worth mentioning that all of that content that was made, won't be disappearing. There obviously won't be new content, but it would still be there and likely for a while there will be people looking it up for nostalga.
Honestly (for online multiplayer games) I'd be OK with companies simply documenting the server API and allowing you to point the client to a different server.
>Companies don't want to, because they make more money out of lock-in live service games.
Operating servers paid with company budget makes more money than offloading the compute to customers' computers paid on customers' dimes? What?
No, the reason multiplayer games have moved away from peer-to-peer to hub-and-spoke is because it's easier for the customers. Most people frankly cannot and moreover do not want to be sysadmins when they just want to play their vidja gaemz. This becomes even more of a poignant issue with more "normies" and "casuals" becoming gamers.
Hub-and-spoke Just Works(tm) Out Of The Box(tm) so long as the hub exists, and that's something the majority of people desire and appreciate.
I'm obviously not speaking with regards to games that must be hub-and-spoke (eg: MMOs) or games that do so for no good reason (eg: Hitman World of Assassination).
> Most people frankly cannot and moreover do not want to be sysadmins when they just want to play their vidja gaemz. This becomes even more of a poignant issue with more "normies" and "casuals" becoming gamers.
Normies don't self-host - they go to a game hosting service provider and pay a few bucks a month to have hosting done for them.
> Operating servers paid with company budget makes more money than offloading the compute to customers' computers paid on customers' dimes? What?
There's no reason to invest in in-game monetization if you can unlock it all via changing the server you play on, and have access to all of that content without paying. That's a huge part of how live service games are monetized and if people can change how their server works to just unlock it all and be done, the company loses revenue. Or at least, that's what they're going to say.
> No, the reason multiplayer games have moved away from peer-to-peer to hub-and-spoke is because it's easier for the customers. Most people frankly cannot and moreover do not want to be sysadmins when they just want to play their vidja gaemz.
Literally no one in this discussion is saying companies can't run their own servers. The obvious choice would be hosting their own servers with the server binaries they distribute, or perhaps more tuned versions for their hosting arrangements. We're just saying, if at such time a company shuts their servers down, there should be a way to make new ones so people can still play the game they bought.
> I'm obviously not speaking with regards to games that must be hub-and-spoke (eg: MMOs)
Any sufficiently powerful server could host an MMO. This is not black magic, it's computing.
> or games that do so for no good reason (eg: Hitman World of Assassination).
Yes. That's literally what this is attempting to address.
>There's no reason to invest in in-game monetization if you can unlock it all via changing the server you play on, and have access to all of that content without paying.
Choosing servers generally depends on two things: Gameplay quality (eg: latency), and the people playing on the server.
In-game monetizations are done because the market-at-large refuses and continues to refuse hiking up prices despite rising costs and inflation.
>Literally no one in this discussion is saying companies can't run their own servers.
That is not what I said at all.
>We're just saying, if at such time a company shuts their servers down, there should be a way to make new ones so people can still play the game they bought.
That potentially conflicts with safeguarding trade secrets, licensing, and so on. Would it be nice? Yes. But reality is seldom easy or ideal.
>Any sufficiently powerful server could host an MMO. This is not black magic, it's computing.
Hell no. An MMO usually has one world or environment that is consistent, one set of data that is universal to the game. The very nature of MMOs requires that someone central and singular operates the server(s), which almost always is either the devs or publishers so-concerned.
It's dead cheap and easy for anyone to run servers capable of running entire MMOs, it's practically impossible to share the pre-requisite singular data and then also process it identically between innumerable servers owned and ran by independent entities.
You cannot address social challenges with technological solutions (read: more compute).
>Yes. That's literally what this is attempting to address.
And I did not speak as to those games, what are you contesting with me?
Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a good example. It is a single player game with some minor and optional online elements, and used to have a pay to win store that needed internet access. It requires an online connection the first time you start it. If that server goes away - we're hoping the devs will patch it before that happens.
I was asking for examples of where a game is unplayable.
I know that there are games that only phone home or require an online connection to play online like Kingdom Hearts (which is particularly frustrating on my steam deck).
That part of this I am not disputing.
From the way this is written it sounds like this is a big problem that keeps happening for single player games, but I am struggling to find a ton of examples.
The game is unplayable without an internet connection - it refuses to start.
In spite of the fact that the internet connection is only used to provide optional content, without an authenticating server this game which is otherwise fundamentally a single player, offline game will not let you play it.
No they did not as I clearly stated the distinction in my response.
> The game is unplayable without an internet connection
That was not my question. It is still actively playable. I even gave an example of another game that I know in that situation clearly showing that I do in fact know of games that work this way and I have had my own annoyances with them.
My original question:
> How many games actually only phone home and have been rendered unplayable for that reason?
Unless I am mistaken, that game is in fact still playable.
As it is currently written this petition does nothing about that. It is not banning phoning home, just that a patch is required if/when you shut down your servers. It is talking about games that did not get that patch.
They provided an example of a game that could fit what this is proposing to stop in the future, but does not fit it at the moment.
Frankly I would support a ban on phoning home, but that is not what we are talking about.
See my other comment to the person that mentioned NFS Underground, that is an example of a game that fit the question I was asking and this petition.
I fully agree that the single player part of that should still be playable. (And multiplayer if its p2p but i assume it is not).
I don't quite understand why this petition did not list examples of this happening, since I assume some game caused someone to make this petition.
But I still stand by what I originally said that we need to distinguish between games that are offline for no good reason (Like NFS Underground) and games like WoW if/when that shuts down.
Game purchases were originally linked to a Mojang account, and even single-player mode required you to log in at least once before you could play. Fair enough.
The servers are still up, but they forced people to migrate from Mojang accounts to Microsoft accounts. There was a reasonable grace period, but I didn't want a Microsoft account, so now I can't legally play the game anymore.
> How many games actually only phone home and have been rendered unplayable for that reason?
The entire Xbox Series catalog, for starters. You can't even setup the console without phoning to Microsoft's servers. Meaning units not already associated with an account will become paperweights once Microsoft inevitably kills support.
I believe this is related to the movement that started/was spurred after the shutdown of The Crew. https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ appears to be the same initiative/organization.
People on this site repeat this meme every time there's an EU initiative to protect personal freedoms or consumer rights.
It hasn't happened so far, but I'm sure you'll be right one day and we'll all be collectively begging for mega-corporations' forgiveness.
Any entity that doesn't want to abide by these rules would be a good riddance anyway and it would give room for customer-respecting alternatives to flourish. That's a win-win.
Apple's newest features (both iPhone mirroring and AI) are a great example, so are Meta's. A lot of accessibility tech (like Meta's new glasses or their feature allowing the blind to identify people in photos) is also impacted.
There are many more examples, most local American newspapers just straight out can't be accessed from the EU for example.
The more laws like these we have, the less attractive the EU is going to be for foreign companies to enter. We're on the way to turn into another South Korea, with their shitty local apps for everything and banks that still required Active X controls and Internet Explorer in the early 2020s.
When companies like Apple put blame on EU regulations, it's worth keeping in mind that they're usually lying. See Microsoft's response to the Crowdstrike incident, and Apple's petulant behavior in regards to the DMA over the past year or so. It's safe to assume that this is just their way of pushing their anti-DMA agenda until proven otherwise.
> We're on the way to turn into another South Korea, with their shitty local apps for everything and banks that still required Active X controls and Internet Explorer in the early 2020s.
It's funny that you bring up banking. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the day when SEPA became available in all EU countries. We figured out a universal low/no fee payment system far earlier and better than the US did - I'm not up to date - is it actually figured out yet?
Additionally, the EU is home to numerous fintech startups like N26, Revolut, Monzo, TransferWise, etc. that brought innovative features like even quicker person to person payments (just send money to their phone number in the app), disposable cards for online shopping, and cheap transfers across continents (especially TransferWise). Many of these features are now being implemented by established banks and this is frankly a poor example of EU regulations that supposedly block innovation.
I've read the GDPR, DMA, and the EU AI act and I'm familiar with them at a high level. My position is that any product or service that doesn't comply with the these regulations shouldn't be available in the EU, the spirit of these regulations is sound and ensures that we have keep some semblance of freedom and sovereignty in the future.
I think you're being alarmist and conflating predatory business practices with "innovation". They're orthogonal, and we don't have to accept invasion of privacy, exploitative business models, and unaccountable AI black boxes that decide our fate, in exchange for temporary shiny new toys.
1. Because at its core, this is about personal property rights that we already (used to) have. When we "bought" something, we owned it and it couldn't legally be taken away from us. With digital media these rights have been eroded and laws have been slow to catch up. We're just asking for existing consumer protection laws and personal property rights to be adapted and/or enforced for digital products.
2. The idea of a free market relies on consumers having perfect information about the product at the time of purchase. If one product page said "Buy", and the other one said "Rent for 3 months or more, at our discretion", then consumers could make an informed decision.
Right now both product pages are allowed to say "Buy", and so the predatory business practices are financially rewarded rather than being treated as fraud.
The only time a digital product (or any other internet-dependent product) should be allowed to use the word "Buy" is when all of its features would remain functional even if the company behind it and all of their servers ceased to exist. For multiplayer games that would mean having the option to self-host a server. For other media that would mean a downloadable, DRM-free copy.
3. Since this practice is profitable, we can expect it to be adopted by an ever-growing number of companies. That's capitalism and we need laws to protect consumers from predatory business practices.
4. At the time of purchase, you don't know whether you're going to get screwed later down the line, so eventually, the only real choices are going to be to avoid the entire sector, or piracy. That's a problem for both sides.
What's the difference between a successful and unsuccessful campaign? How hard the organizers work at collecting signatures? Or does mainstream media get involved and publicize it?
I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this as people seem to be very much of an opposite opinion, but my $0.02 based on having launched a server backed game. It was a AAA game by a major publisher and a well known studio. I was the only one at the studio working on the game with some help (~10 heads) from the publisher.
First people are not taking into account proprietary software licenses. We used software to build the servers we didn't have a distribution license for, only a server license. Ripping that out was non-trivial work if even possible. That doesn't include the proprietary internal platform stuff like crypto validation, telemetry, harm reporting, etc.
I was the only one from the studio working on the server feature directly, client and server. At the time I was the only one with that skillset. It would have taken me around 3 months to change the client to work with non-auth'd servers. This may sound long but we didn't have standard apis; it took me 2 weeks to get TLS working. Beyond that it would have been another 3-5 months to do legal and security review to make sure we hadn't introduced a platform vulnerability through a malicious server, work we skipped originally because we were able to lock everything down internally.
The servers would have taken another 2 months or so to setup. However they were built to some very specific software and specific to AWS, if I were to change it to not be cluster based, run in a single app, I'd call it 6 total.
None of this includes documentation or making it nice. So we're talking a year with marketing, documentation, testing, etc. Which is a large percentage of what it took me to build the server features in the first place.
This was also a little big planet / mario maker type feature, not full on multiplayer / match making. I would greatly increase my estimate for those.
Instead, with that same time I: 1) helped greatly improved the internal engine tools, speeding up all of the developers and artists enabling them to do more on the next game, 2) Built internal and external player telemetry getting us a lot better QA coverage and great details on what players were doing which helped our DLC, 3) altered the server feature for internal use as well, letting us publish several extra free missions for the main game and DLC to fill in parts that were missing, 4) build a render farm which improved the artists cycle time from weeks to hours. 5) taught several of the more technical artists C++ to bind UI to shader features saving developer and artist time. Not doing each of these would materially have diminished the game or subsequent titles.
And finally, before you downvote, I did in fact work to make the system work after we shut it down, just not the same way people want to mandate. I ensured that it would work locally and all of your downloaded content was saved. I also make it trivially easy for us to dump the database to s3 json for the top 10,000 missions, well into the long tail. And finally and most importantly, I spent time making the system as cheap as possible to run, which turns out to be THE key feature for businesses. It's been 13 years and I'm not at the studio anymore and and the servers are still running, mainly because they cost almost nothing to run.
Maybe big studios could amortize this over time. It'd make smaller studios much less likely to build the server features in the first place. Many might chose to close to not deal with it and re-form. It would have made us think twice, so really I think it'd have a chilling effect, not the effect you want.
(meta comment) I dont think downvotes will come. Only search can find this comment.
As someone working in gamedev on live service game I think you are right about chilling effects. EU is a large market but if they will regulate themselves out of online gaming its their loss. It will not going to be completely empty - many projects will adapt to comply. I think chilling effect will be minor tbh.
Case in point is "Redbox Revokes Access to All Previously Purchased Content After Bankruptcy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41076807
How many times has Microsoft done it with music? How many times have companies that are still in business disabled older devices that are still perfectly functional in hopes to sell newer devices and/or get people to sign up for subscriptions, while not allowing end user access to their own devices?
California and Massachusetts have made some steps to correct this. I'd love to see more.