Hm, wonder if the Stop Killing Games campaign (https://www.stopkillinggames.com/) will be able to make use of this, like they're trying to make use of consumer protection law in France...
Wow, signing that petition was shockingky smooth with my national e-ID. I thought it was just a random petition site, but its an official EU system that verifies your identity. And it just worked with the ID app I have installed. Nice.
SKG organizer here. Something like this CA legislation was our "worst case scenario, everything else failed, at least we could do this much, we've compromised on everything" goal.
That is to say, now opponents can't push us to compromise to that level and our worst case scenario in case we pass anything at all is looking better.
We're really happy this is happening because it changes the Overton window for us and makes our case stronger and easier to argue for, as you say.
A lot of change has been happening in the past few months and even weeks with regards to the market and legislative situation around the problematic of SKG and while you can't ever fully attribute something, we hope that it's thanks to our actions. Ubisoft promising end of life offline modes for The Crew 2 and the third game in the series called Motorfest. Capcom bringing back Windows 7 era games that were lost to G4WL.
The "Ubisoft scandal" mentioned in the headline - specifically the unforced shutdown and resulting removal of functioning state from The Crew - is something that SKG have no doubt popularized. Now that we're at 350 000 signatures of a goal of 1 000 000 in our direct democracy initiative, companies and lawmakers are starting to take things seriously. And this is with a $0 budget. We're still in need of more signatures over the next 10 months to reach the goal, so if you're an EU citizen, go click the link Sniffnoy posted above and sign. Worth doing even if you're not a gamer, just to claw back some ownership rights from corporations worth billions of dollars, spreading out to all corners of technology, not just games.
Ross Scott is best known for his youtube series "Freeman's Mind" where he plays Half-Life and narrates what Gordon Freeman must be thinking, with a lot of deeply philosophical considerations. It's a staple of YouTube. He's also been running a series called "Dead Game News" and that's how Stop Killing Games was born.
The other organizer, Damian, is a real-deal neckbeard dev and has pretty much done it all from BASIC on 8-bit micros to theorem provers and from video games to cryptography audits.
If the EU decides to build any legislation around SKG, they will give developers ample warning before things go into effect. Apple had years to prepare for USB C. This is still years out. So the answer is: negotiate compatible terms, or don't use the third party library.
This is merely an issue to begin with for companies that are absolutely massive, like Sony or Activision. Smaller developers just don't do stuff like that in general: you download the game and then you have the game.
Since the ask is for a reasonably working game, maybe as a developer in that position you can just cut out the functionality that depends on the library or replace the library with something similar or mock it out or use a static cache of request vs response for all possible requests. The technological possibilities are endless.
It's not like as developers we're these helpless infants who have never solved a problem in our lives. It's a tech problem, tech a solution to it, that's why you're a professional and not bush league.
Ultimately if someone can't figure out how to do their business without scamming people out of ownership then that's a skill issue. If they're not creative enough to figure it out, the business is doomed to begin with. Legislation often has the additional positive effect of ridding the market of people who shouldn't be there to begin with, like food trucks infested with cockroaches and pizza places that use fake cheese.
What I don’t like about this argument is that this was originally pitched in the initial video as “All you have to do is release the server you already have, you don’t have to do any extra work”.
And I took that to mean that you just have to provide the server binaries and no support for them.
And fair enough, as a developer of a large online game myself, could get behind that.
But the moment this extends to needing to find solutions for people to be able to actually run it, I would withdraw my support.
Except it's not - it's a business problem. SKG would essentially ban the use of Oracle as an example. Or it would likely kill games like Rock band which have licensed audio. You might be ok with that, but why are your preferences more important than mine.
> This is merely an issue to begin with for companies that are absolutely massive, like Sony or Activision. Smaller developers just don't do stuff like that in general
This is a naive viewpoint IMO. Another way of looking at it is that only large companies will be able to conform and this will squeeze out the possibility of small developers having multiplayer games. This sort of red-tape stifles innovation.
Small developers have multiplayer games all the time that aren't affected by issues like the ones SKG is concerned with. Ad-hoc multiplayer and dedicated servers that players can self-host are long-established solutions. A common argument in bad faith is that SKG demands perpetual upkeep of presumed infrastructure that will somehow harm small developers, and it just isn't true.
To be fair they didn't make that argument, but thanks for the support none the less! Agreed, ad-hoc servers are a staple and a worked out problem. 99% of the time you have to go out of your way as a developer to make things not work in this way.
> Except it's not - it's a business problem. SKG would essentially ban the use of Oracle as an example
why are you using Oracle for video games? what's wrong with you?
> Or it would likely kill games like Rock band which have licensed audio.
Rock Band DOES work offline. Licensed audio in Rock Band is licensed in such a way that once a copy is sold the license allows the use of that copy in perpetuity. 100 years from now I'll still be able to pop in my Rock Band disc and play it, because that's how ownership works and the developer didn't get in the way of my ownership of my own property.
But when I said "It's a tech problem" I was answering someone who mentioned a tech problem.
Coming up with a different, non-tech problem as a counter-point to a whole discussion exclusively about a tech problem is not as smart as you think it is, and the examples you bring up aren't very good at all.
> Another way of looking at it is that only large companies will be able to conform
No, that's unmitigated nonsense. Just your first paragraph showed you have no idea what you're talking about, but now you're just stringing words together. The reason why only the largest companies can have these problems in the first place is because of their legacy technology integrations and pre-existing technology supplier agreements which they would have to re-negotiate. Remember, this is a scenario AFTER the initiative gets a million signatures, which is a year out, and AFTER the EU has legislated, which is another year at least, and AFTER the warning period which is several years. Even with the fastest possible timeline it's probably like 5 years of warning that things are going to change. And at that point anyone entering the space from the bottom as a new player is free to negotiate a deal which conforms with the market regulations going forward; if the technology suppliers don't want to negotiate realistic terms, they go out of business. While we're at it, large companies are also free to renegotiate their contracts to make them legal in the eyes of the legislation because contract survival terms are a standard staple in any technology supply agreement and if changes to market regulations make a contract unfit or illegal then renegotiations commence as a matter of course. But given the timeline of this going into effect they'll have renegotiated YEARS ahead of the deadlines.
This isn't a twitter poll. It's not going to go into effect 5 minutes after it's been posted. There will be AMPLE time for everyone to figure stuff out and change their paperwork, and the only companies really affected are the ones that already spend $1M+/year on legal anyways.
> why are you using Oracle for video games? what's wrong with you?
Because my previous project used it. It's an example. There are plenty of others. And I think this sort of attitude is unfair towards people like me who genuinely want to preserve video games, but are concerned that an ideological battle is going to negatively affect the industry.
> Licensed audio is licensed in such a way that once a copy is sold the license allows the use of that copy in perpetuity.
Licensed audio can be licensed in such a way. GTA being a great example of something that doesn't have perpetual licenses to their music.
> Coming up with a different, non-tech problem as a counter-point to a whole discussion exclusively about a tech problem is not as smart as you think it is
> no, that's unmitigated nonsense. Just your first paragraph showed you have no idea what you're talking about, but now you're just stringing words together.
In three paragraphs, you've attacked me three times, when there's no need to have done. If you can't have civil discourse, I'm not interested in discussing this with you.
no, it's not. An example is something that happens. What you brought up is a fantasy.
> GTA being a great example of something that doesn't have perpetual licenses to their music.
that's wrong, because even if Rockstar removed some songs from some versions of their game, if you bought the disc version of the game, then guess what - the songs are still on there.
it is neither the consumers' nor SKG's fault that the richest company in the richest entertainment industry is unwilling to negotiate terms that don't scam the people purchasing their products.
> you've attacked me three times
if you're going to make stuff up and bring up things that don't stand up to the simplest scrutiny then that's going to be brought up. that's not an attack on you, but it definitely is a comment on the quality of points you bring to the discussion. if you want to make better points, it's as simple as: before typing "X" google for "X?" and then read the top result. otherwise it's just whataboutism.
Citizens only, and anywhere in the world. If you're not a citizen but are a resident, you can support in another way - go to your friends who are EU citizens and ask them to sign! Even if they're not gamers, remember that it's about ownership in general. There are many other things that can and are being remotely shut down, such as cars, trains, implants for disabled people, etc. This is just the first step in regaining ownership of things you buy. Try asking a few people for support!
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But now that AB 2426 has become law, it moves more in line towards GDPR in terms of transparency. E.g. you have to be transparent of using licenses etc.
What I really like about this new law is that it makes (or should make) it easier to unsubscribe. Just Google how difficult it is to unsubscribe several major SaaS players, like e.g. Semrush on SEO. Good luck being compliant to AB 2426 with that 6-10 step!
