This is just pure fabricated bullshit. They themselves started limiting options. Remember the old days where you could host your own server with basically any game? They took that away, not us. So they themselves are 100% responsible for this ‘uprising’. Besides they could just provide/open-source the backend and disable drm. Hardly any work at all.
But of course it’s not about that. They just try to hide behind this ‘limits options’ argument. But they simply don’t want you to be able to play their old games. They want you to buy their latest CoD 42.
I remember the “old days”. That was when dialup internet was still popular and running a server usually meant it was on your 10Mb LAN. When we got DSL it was better and you could serve outside your LAN. This was also the time when games had dark red code booklets, required having a physical CD inserted or weirdly formatted floppies (sometimes a combination of these). You could get around these things and many groups of people worked hard at providing these workarounds. Today, many of these games are only playable and only still exist because of the thankless work these groups did. As it was and as it is has not changed. Many groups of people are still keeping games playable despite the “war” that corporations wage on them (and by proxy on us). Ironically, now that there is such a thing as “classic games” and people are nostalgic for what brought them joy in the past, business has leapt at this as a marketing opportunity. What makes that ironic? These business are re-selling the versions of games with the circumvention patches that the community made to make their games playable so long ago. The patches that publishers had such a big problem with and sought to eradicate. This is because the original code no longer exists and the un-patched games will not run at all on modern hardware and the copy-protections will not tolerate a virtual machine. Nothing has changed.
We can even go back as far as when people first started making books or maps that had deliberate errors so that they could track when their work was redistributed. Do the people referencing these books or maps benefit from these errors?
Why do some of us feel compelled to limit knowledge even at the cost of corrupting that knowledge for those we intend it for (and for those long after who wish to learn from historical knowledge)?
I’m speaking from ignorance but isn’t the server backend often licensed and they couldn’t release it if they wanted, even as binaries? Granted, going forward they’d have to make those considerations before they accept restrictive licenses in core parts of their game. And the market for those licenses will change accordingly. So there core of your argument is correct.
Maybe so, but that’s a decision they make. Surely I as customer shouldn’t be taken away what i paid for because of that? And if so they should have mentioned clearly upon sale that they would take away my product after 3-4 years (though maybe that’s the case in those dense ToS?) . Everything else should be considered illegal and fraudulent if they planned/knew it from the start. Which is the case if it’s a licensing issue
Besides, I’m pretty sure after those 4 years the code is outdated and they could renegotiate the license to be more open to release a binary.
Lol. We’re gamers. We know that if we encounter enemies we’re going in the right direction.
Still trying to find the right direction on animal crossing.
Towards the bees!
paying your debts. The game breaks as it cannot speculate anymore on your debt
“curtail developer choice” is such a weak argument because you could equally apply it to literally every piece of regulation ever passed. Of course it curtails choice, that’s almost the dictionary definition of an industry regulation.
Why are publishers speaking for devs about how much choice devs would have? Why not get devs to speak?
Because sometimes publishers like to be the ones curtailing dev choices
Because most devs are just codemonkeys implementing what they’re told to. This is pure manipulative propaganda from the suits who are already robbing wages from good devs.
Ah, the propaganda war has started.
That’s good news. Means the initiative has a shot.
It was disquieting back when they were just flat out ignoring it.
They were probably thinking that by openly opposing it before it collected enough signatures, they would have given it more publicity and hence made more people sign it.
The original article completely misrepresents the initiative:
We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
…
Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:
- provide alternatives to any online-only content
- make the game P2P if it requires multiplayer (no server needed, each client is a server)
- gracefully degrading the client experience when there’s no server
Of course, releasing server code is an option.
The expectation is:
- if it’s a subscription game, I get access for whatever period I pay for
- if it’s F2P, go nuts and break it whenever you want; there is the issue of I shame purchases, so that depends on how it’s advertised
- if it’s a purchased game, it should still work after support ends
That didn’t restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they’re expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they’re done).
I argue Stop Killing Games doesn’t go far enough, and if it’s pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.
Another part of it is that if they discontinue support, they can’t stop the community from creating their own server software.
There are so many ways to approach this. The point is ensuring consumers retain the right to keep using what they purchased, even if they have to support it themselves.
Sort of. They need to have the tools as well. So I suppose they could release the APIs for their servers before shutting down their servers so community servers can be created, that would probably be sufficient. But they need to do something beyond just saying, “we won’t sue you if you reverse engineer it.”
Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers
I don’t think this is what they mean. They say that of they provide the tools for users to deploy the servers, bad things can happen. So I think they understood SKG, they just lie about the consequences for gamers
If that’s their argument, then the counterargument is simple: preserve the game another way. If hosting servers is dangerous, put the server code into the client and allow multiplayer w/ P2P tech, as had been done since the 90s (e.g. StarCraft).
What they seem to be doing is reframing the problem as requiring users to host servers, and arguing the various legal issues related to that. SKG just needs to clarify that there are multiple options here, and since devs know about the law at the start (SKG isn’t retroactive), studios can plan ahead.
It’s just a disingenuous argument trying to reframe the problem into cyber security and IP contexts, while neither has been an issue for other games in the past.
Yeah, I agree. We have been hosting servers at friend houses with consumer (mostly our own gaming PCs) forever.
The risk involved exists, but it’s far from the threat they make it be.
Yeah… The abstract (sorry, will read article a bit later) is bunch of nonsense to me (in respect to what is written, no offense to you):
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online experience commercially viable? The fuck they are talking about? Yeah, I know what is meant, but they would get fucking F in school for expressing thoughts in such a nonsensical way
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protections against illegal content would not exist on private servers? Really? Like only your company’s servers can run that? What, you write them in machine code directly? Or is it all done manually? Anyhow, just release source code and it will be up to community to find a way to make it run
I basically quoted the whole thing, the last bit wasn’t really relevant. And yeah, it’s pretty much just BS.
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This initiative sure would make things more complicated for the game publishers, yes.
Because they’re currently not doing the bare minimum.
If they weren’t so accustomed to not doing the bare minimum, maybe they would have different opinions! Just saying.
Edit: Just signed the petition. Didn’t think this was necessary before because, as soon as I heard of it, Finland was already top of the list percentage wise. But I did sign it, just for the hell yeah of it.
It’s not just for the hell of it!
Invalid votes will be removed when it’s time for the final tally, so the initiative needs a solid buffer to still he over a million after.
There’s been a talk of some people using bots to inflate the numbers in a misguided attempt to help the initiative, so every vote is still very welcome.
Also, I kinda want to see just how high Finland can go above the threshold.
Tell your friends!
I wouldn’t be surprised if the game industry isn’t also using bots to inflate the numbers to make people procrastinating not feel the need to contribute and make the petition look less valid.
Eh, doubtful. The initiative got a shitton of extra coverage as it was nearing/reached the goal. They would have preferred if it went a lot slower.
Major game publishers aren’t known for their good ideas.
I agree wholeheartedly and I also signed late while being Finnish.
Corporate jargon translation:
“It’s going to limit innovation” = “We won’t be able to use those new ways of ripping off our customers anymore”
If it means developers won’t make “live-service”/trash games anymore, we should hasten the SKG movement.
FPS games with community servers coming back is my dream
Only server browser, no matchmaking.
They still will, this will just limit their ability to force you to move to the next one once the servers shut down.
“Developers” are the ones who are passionate about the games they make, and definitely don’t want their games dead.
“Corporations” are the ones who only want to profit from selling the game, and then ditch it once it’s no longer lucrative enough.
they say “developer choice” because they know those words have positive connotations but what they mean is “publisher greed”
Developer choice, ha-ha, very funny. I am not familiar with the industry and still feel safe to bet most of them (edit: actual software developers making games) just want to get enough money for doing what they can do without too much stress/disgust and also most of them don’t have a desire to see their work die just because some manager decided it is time to make some other games instead
Anti-murder laws are cuttailing my choice! What if I someday would like to make a choice to murder someone?
Yes! When I read that, I immediately thought “curtailing developer choice is exactly the point.”
“Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the
childrendevs!?”The last refuge of a dying argument 😴
The devs would probably prefer if their work for several years wasn’t thrown in the trash. It’s the publishers and suits killing games.
