Video games publishers don't want you to play the same game for too long without spending more money. They don't want to make games like Terraria where you have a $10 game you can play for a thousand hours. They'd much rather you buy multiple $60+ games, plus expansions, "micro"-transactions and subscriptions.
They don't want games that last forever, they want to pressure you into constantly buying the next big thing.
That kind of reasoning makes sense if you have a single publisher controlling the entire market and they don't want to undercut their own business. But that's obviously not the case. There are plenty of publishers that want to publish games like Terraria, especially if they go on to sell more than 60 million copies.
I think the market is actually much more segmented than your comment implies. There's publishers who absolutely dominate certain niches, especially sporting games, and the only realistic competition they have are themselves.
It's worth keeping in mind that the "market" for a particular player can actually be incredibly small depending on their interests. In the most extreme example, a player might be a fan specifically of a single IP or series of games. Call of duty is one good example because there really are a lot of people who are like this. Video game IPs are a government granted monopoly on a small scale, and the word monopoly is not there for no reason, there is only one place to get CoD if you are a fan of CoD. Predictably, these companies follow the OA's suggested strategy very closely!
By playable do you just mean new content? It will be perfectly playable in 10 years just like all the other classic CRPGs. It would be amazing if modding in content was easy like NWN, if that’s what you mean, because it obviously isn’t. It does seem like such a waste. I’m in a second replay and it’s enjoyable but just so long and will become more repetitive. There are certain sections in Act I that I can’t see myself enjoying a third time at all. Some smaller modules would be amazing. I think the closest thing to that will be Solasta II in the modern era.
It's called bg3_dx11.exe. BG3 doesn't have dedicated servers, one player hosts and the others connect to them. It (obviously) works on LAN, no internet connection required.
Your article doesn't say "Larian are no longer involved with development of BG3". It in fact says they're still developing it, but won't be making BG4.
The official Larian BG3 Discord server is promoting a mod competition, and they're still adding content, bug fixes, and new features to the game as well.
I've update the link. It seems they've released a bunch of free content instead in recent patches, which contradicts what they previously said somewhat.
I’m not sure “sellers would love to raise prices and have people keep buying” is the indictment that you think it is. Terraria and Modern Warfare, which is monetized the way you describe, are such different products…
This is literally every industry now. Shall we "regulate" all industries to be like this, then? Is that achievable?
Shall we require Netflix to release server builds so that you can access their content indefinitely because you paid for a subscription at some point? "That's not what this is about. Ok, where are we heading then?
Paying for a subscription is explicitly not what this is about. No one is suggesting this for MMOs. Just that it be clear that it is a subscription, that you're not actually buying the game. What a one-time fee for an MMO? Give it an expiry date. You can keep pushing the expiry date, but you have to promise support up to at least that date.
AFAICT SKG doesn't really make a distinction between games bought with a one-time purchase and games that are subscribed to. In their FAQ, they explicitly say it would apply to MMOs too (see https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq "What about large-scale MMORPGs? Isn't it impossible for customers to run those when servers are shut down?) although they don't spell out whether they mean exclusively games bought with a one-time fee or games that are subscription-only.
Ross from Accursed Farms said this in a video FAQ on youtube:
"
Would this initiative affect subscription games?
Well, that's another question that depends on what the EU says. Personally, I think it's very unlikely because that doesn't fit well with other existing consumer laws. I think the only way you could even make that argument would be that this is necessary for preservation and most governments don't seem to care about that at all.
However, I don't think this is a huge loss, since only a handful of games operate that way today.
So if we can give up those but then save 99% of other games, I'm willing to make that bargain.
"
so it seems like they actually are suggesting that they'd like for (a law that came out of) SKG to apply to subscription games but there's an understanding that it probably won't.
A more accurate analogy would be: you bought a physical DVD and DVD player, but now the film studio is preventing you from playing the DVD that you own on the hardware you own. In which case yes, we should regulate. Paying for access to a constantly changing library is not the same as paying to permanently own a single product.
> Shall we require Netflix to release server builds so that you can access their content indefinitely because you paid for a subscription at some point?
Actually not Netflix as they just offer a monthly subscription and not individual sales, but _YES_ by all means if I "purchase" (not rent!) a book or movie on Amazon (or anyone else), I'd like that, thank you.
I'm sure if movie studios could get together and throw a switch that made every 5+ year old disappear entirely, forcing consumers to keep buying new movies, they would. Just like every car manufacturer would choose to disable every 2+ year old car on the road if they could. Why do we give video game companies this power?
It’s pretty easy to solve static content like ebooks and video games; just legislate that your license is transferrable between services and media. Then I can legally torrent a game that is unsupported.
Content subscriptions like Netflix are different because you are not paying face value for one title. The better analogy here would be the game streaming services like XBox online. It’s clear you are not doing anything like “buying a game”, it’s the whole point of the business model. As you say, it would be a lot harder to make these laws apply there (but I bet that wouldn’t stop the EU from trying).
I think any legislation on this subject would have to reckon with the second-order effects; on the margin you’d be adding pressure for publishers to move to pure subscription services, if these laws don’t apply in those cases.
What we should be doing is applying the laws that already exist: when I purchase a physical book I own a copy of it and can sell it, lend it, modify it.
Amazon and the publishers have zero say in the matter.
Buying a digital copy should be no different. I more of this stupid “you bought a license to access a copy” crap.
All Xbox games around 2004 were physical CDs. Many had online services attached to them. Eventually, those servers were turned off. You can still play LAN and singleplayer. You still have your access to the physical bytes on the disk (though there is copy protection).
What should companies be required to do regarding the servers?
Thing is, you are by default allowed to write mostly any contract / ToS you like (within the broad rules of contract law). So to implement this you need to explicitly ban “license for things that could be purchases”. And as I noted above the edge cases and market pressures make that non-trivial; do you also ban subscription services like Audible?
We already have subscriptions services for physical books and audiobooks.
They’re called libraries.
You don’t own the books when you check them out, and you wouldn’t own a digital copy when you check it out from audible.
As for market pressure, you don’t have to ban them. Require that if they want to rent digital copies out they must also allow for purchasing of them at a price that the average person would find resonable.
> Shall we require Netflix to release server builds so that you can access their content indefinitely because you paid for a subscription at some point?
No. However, you should be able to make a copy using your own computer (onto the computer or onto an external media such as a DVD) and then you can play the movies that you have copied on your own computer (not necessarily the one used for Netflix) or DVD player. This should be possible without needing to use their software, and it does not mean that their software or their service should need to offer it as an option; it is done on your side. (They can refuse to serve the movie to you faster than the actual duration of the movie if they want to do, though, therefore making it take as much time to copy as it does to watch it normally.)
(However, I am generally opposed to copyright anyways.)
If Netflix decides to end their service and make every TV show and movie they have permanently unavailable, even through all other legal businesses, then yeah, it would be nice of them to give that stuff away.
The FTC is currently suing John Deere over this kind of thing.
Also, Netflix is a weird comparison here. That seems like it should be an online-only service, they're not selling the actual movies to you. It's one of the situations where the model actually makes sense, unlike single-player video games.
I mean, what you describe sounds pretty good. It sounds like you think it's not feasible for some reason (other than political will). Do you want to elaborate on that?
It certainly is feasible. Requiring it to happen though, would result in some interesting economic dynamics, I believe.
We currently exist in a two tier global economy where some countries are required to follow a strict set of laws, and others basically make their own. To be clear, I am saying that Russia and China do not care at all about piracy and IP theft and so on.
As you increase the rules that Western companies must follow, you run the risk that some day your only options will be non-Western companies, and that may or may not be a good thing. This is what has happened with manufacturing, and it was good for a while until it wasn't. It still is quite good in some pockets though, like batteries and solar.
Having worked there in the past, Ubisoft is awful. When I was there previously there was an aggressive push for UPlay (now Ubisoft Connect) integration into all products. Then there were the bullshots for promos/E3/etc. There were often clashes with leadership who would fight against creativity / novel ideas in favour of cookie-cutter mechanics that would not add anything to the experience - certainly there was a mentality of, let's just copy what was recently successful.
I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink.
I'll never buy an Ubisoft game again. Instant dealbreaker to see that studio on the Steam store page; I've deleted a $3 sale game from my cart when I realized that it was Ubisoft. No game is worth giving money to a company that hates its customers so much.
For Steam users, a reminder that you can go to a publisher's page and "Ignore" that publisher. The option is a little bit hidden, it's in the settings cog on the right-hand side of the page. It'll stop steam from recommending their games to you, and when one does show up, like in the Top Sellers list, it'll have a message on it saying that it's by a publisher that you ignored.
I have Ubisoft, EA, and Sony marked as such, personally.
> I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink.
They are like junk food. Everyone has the junk food that they enjoy. FarCry is certainly the McDonald's of games. I enjoy some junk food once in a while, problems arise if I make it my staple diet.
I think very few people (outside of the industry - important caveat) are opposed to the stated goals of the initiative:
> This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union [...] to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
The concern that I have is that I have no idea what the actual text of the law is going to be.
You can look at laws like the DMCA, that had a reasonable purpose (made adjustments to the copyright system for the age of the internet) and a royally screwed up implementation that basically everyone can find a problem with.
It's easy to imagine that the laws that pass could be (1) completely neutered by corruption in the EU leading to regulatory capture (2) far too strong and written in a way that imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too) or (3) bad just because of technical incompetence of the authors.
I know that there's not much I can do about those things, but that may explain the emotional reactions of some people like e.g. PirateSoftware - nobody actually knows what the resulting law will be like, and everyone familiar with the legislative system knows how bad the outputs can be.
> to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
Yeah, I like the general goal, but I worry about the corner cases; is an MMO “functional/playable” if you just release a localhost server? Are we forcing indie shops to pay for servers indefinitely now? Great way to ensure no more indie MMOs get built if that ends up being the text interpretation.
And, as you say, the question you should always be asking about EU legislation - how does this affect the small/medium shops’ competitiveness? Counterintuitively, compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys.
Not to say that we shouldn’t try to fix the problem. But agree that skepticism about EU regulations has some historical merit.
> is an MMO “functional/playable” if you just release a localhost server? Are we forcing indie shops to pay for servers indefinitely now?
The man behind Stop Killing Games has made it perfectly clear that they do not want to force game developers to continue operating servers. Rather, as you suggest, releasing server binaries would be acceptable. Although a mere "localhost" server would likely not be sufficient, because (if I interpret your suggestion correctly) it takes away the multiplayer funtionality of the game. I think it would be reasonable to require developers to release online multiplayer capable server binaries.
> I think it would be reasonable to require developers to release online multiplayer capable server binaries.
Not a game dev but would there be concerns about forcing devs to ship binaries for a codebase that was previously purely SaaS and proprietary, and likely containing logic that is a reusable for future games? The edge cases here seem a little gnarly. (Maybe it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, how much competitive advantage comes from the MMO server code? I gather it can be tricky to do some things well like AoC pushing high player counts.)
> compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys
This is almost always the case, actually. Regulation and compliance are taxes on the productivity of an organization. And the "shape" of the tax is mostly flat - the burden is sublinear in the size of the organization, so the relative effects on smaller companies are bigger. And smaller companies already have significantly less available resources, and especially less legal resources (no lawyers on retainer), to handle it.
Obviously that doesn't mean that regulation shouldn't be passed, just that you have to write it very, very carefully - think embedded systems rather than web frontend - minimizing complexity and aggressively red-teaming it for loopholes and edge-cases.
Yes, that's true, but to be clear, even if the actual compliance isn't that much of a problem (as you correctly point out here), just determining how to comply is burdensome and may require expensive experts (or even lawyers) to verify - see the confusion around GDPR, for instance.
Again, I'm not saying that it isn't worth regulating, just that you need to design the regulation as carefully as possible. You'd probably agree that the best regulation is that that minimizes burden on companies while maximizing positive effects for consumers, no?
Ross addresses these things in his videos on the initiative. For one, the game doesn't have to be 100% functional, it just has to do a bare minimum.
They might not even need to release server binaries, even. I would think releasing documentation on how the network commication runs, and adding a box to enter a server IP into the client at EOL would be sufficient. The community, if enough people care, would then be empowered to write their own server implementation without needing the reverse engineering step.
Online games like MMOs and live service games generally have tooling for developers to run the game on their local machines for obvious reasons. Releasing said tooling would also be an option.
This vague handwringing isn't any better. None of us know what the law will end up turning into. But we shouldn't let that stop this being addressed properly in our political institutions. That's what they're there for.
Also, bringing up the DMCA is sort of rich, since it was always just a vehicle for the biggest content companies in publishing, film, television, music and software to protect their property online.
Now we have something that was brought into being by consumers and may finally do something to curb anti-consumer behaviour by companies like this, and you're against it because you have no idea what it'll look like. I just can't, man. What's even the point of legislation if we have to be afraid it'll all be corrupted? Why even have political institutions at all at that point?
And if the end result of this legislation is that videogames in EU aren't licensed or sold but are instead all streamed and you are instead just buying access to stream a game, then what?
TO me it's just amazing how the advocates for SKG ignore any possibility that it could make things much worse that they already.
If that business model worked so well, they'd all be doing it already. It'd cause piracy to cease, and (mostly) render the need for anti-cheat redundant, barring external image recognition cheats that are already tough to stop anyway.
> And if the end result of this legislation is that videogames in EU aren't licensed or sold but are instead all streamed and you are instead just buying access to stream a game, then what?
Then the industry is honest, and I can spend my money on an indie developer that doesn't do that.
Companies that do that will likely be completely outcompeted by studios that give a shit.
Baseless, fallacious emotional manipulation in substitute for being able to apply useful criticism.
> None of us know what the law will end up turning into. But we shouldn't let that stop this being addressed properly in our political institutions.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to more corruption and regulatory capture. You are literally enabling that kind of behavior by advocating that we should just push ahead without addressing my concerns.
The correct thing to do is for the Stop Killing Games initiative to be more concrete and specify what features of the laws they want implemented to reduce latitude for the EU to screw things up. That's the outcome I'm hoping for - not that the SKG initiative doesn't pass.
> you're against it because you have no idea what it'll look like
I never said that. Perhaps you should read comments more carefully before responding to them.
> What's even the point of legislation if we have to be afraid it'll all be corrupted? Why even have political institutions at all at that point?
If you don't know that citizens have more leverage than just voting yes or no, I'm afraid you won't be able to comprehend the answer.
Based on how you talk to people, I see no value in discussing this with you any further after this.
> The correct thing to do is for the Stop Killing Games initiative to be more concrete and specify what features of the laws they want implemented to reduce latitude for the EU to screw things up. That's the outcome I'm hoping for - not that the SKG initiative doesn't pass.
They were as concrete as they needed to be. The people who wrote SKG aren't subject matter experts. They don't have to be in order to point out a problem that they want political institutions to discuss and address. It's not their place to specify the details. These people do not represent the wide population. They are not elected officials. This is what we elect political representatives for. Their job is to figure out the problem and the details.
If you do not believe in this process, that's not a problem with this petition. That's a you problem.
Don't bother replying. I don't care what you have to say anymore. I'm not tolerating your ad hominem attacks. It's not suitable for this site and I wish you'd go elsewhere to be toxic.
> Based on how you talk to people, I see no value in discussing this with you any further after this.
That's a concession that you cannot defend your position.
> If you do not believe in this process, that's not a problem with this petition. That's a you problem.
There's very well-documented issues of corruption in both US and EU government, so no, this is not a "me problem" - yet more emotional manipulation and misdirection. The existence of that corruption also nullifies everything that you wrote above. If you're denying the corruption, you're part of the problem.
> I'm not tolerating your ad hominem attacks.
I never committed an ad hominem, and you know it.
> It's not suitable for this site and I wish you'd go elsewhere to be toxic.
You know what's not suitable? The falsehoods and emotional manipulation that you've repeatedly made in your comments. That is toxic - not calling it out. What a perverse thing to claim.
You need to learn to be able to make your points without emotional outbursts. Being mad does not make you right.
It’s kind of implied by your argument. All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
No, it's absolutely not. You're reading your own thoughts into it. Nowhere is the implication that we should do nothing.
> All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
Because the authors are asking for public support for an initiative, and it now has a lot of public attention, with some specific people (mostly PirateSoftware) that are also publicly opposing it, and likely many more lurkers that don't want to sign it because of their concerns.
It's also the case that the more technical the topic, the more that legislators tend to screw it up, likely because of technical incompetence.
I'm elaborating the concerns so that they can get addressed. If you want more signatures, then you'd want to know what peoples' hangups are so that you can fix them.
The correct path would be to establish/find a consumer protection group to help legislative bodies craft the documents in a way that held true to the spirit of what is driving this initiative. The industry will do the same to thing. So as the documents are drafted the feedback from the public’s standpoint continues to have a voice. Hopefully that happens but it’s too early in the process to say and it requires funding too.
The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing
> establish/find a consumer protection group to help legislative bodies craft the documents
Yes, that's one of the ways to address this. Active consumer participation is still necessary, though, as the consumer protection group can still lose its way.
> The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing
No, it's factually not. If I order soup from a restaurant, and it arrives and is terrible and I complain, I do not have to specify what the chef did wrong, or how they should fix it, for my complaint to be valid - and the fact that I'm not providing the solution does not mean that I think nothing should be done. Similarly, I don't have to point out what the solution has to be for my complaint to be valid, and that does not mean that I think nothing should be done. That's just insane.
To correct your analogy to apply to prior comments, you didn’t like your soup so you tell the chef you have no confidence in their ability as a cook and should never even try to sell food because you have such little confidence in his abilities to create an dish anyone would enjoy eating. That’s nihilistic
> imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too)
Any such law should include a carve-out so that indie devs and small startups aren't impacted because just the need maintain compliance paperwork can be a burden. Carve out thresholds can be based on a combination of product revenue and units sold. Similar carve outs should generally be part of a lot of government regulations because startup entrepreneurship is so key to job growth, innovation and ensuring more choice for consumers. The best way to keep huge companies honest is making them keep earning their success by enabling smaller, hungrier new competitors laser focused on better serving customer needs.
That said, I do generally agree with your broader point that how regulations are written and enforced matters a lot. Too many start with good intentions but end up being sidestepped, subverted or triggering unintended consequences. If a "Stop Killing Games" regulation is drafted I think it should be narrowly targeted and conceived with the understanding that both the tech and business models will continue rapidly evolving and the market will quickly adapt to sidestep or subvert whatever new rules are put in place. That will likely mean that, realistically, an effective regulation probably shouldn't be as expansive or all-encompassing as we might be imagining from our armchairs.
I'd be happy if the focus was simply on getting large game companies to clearly commit up front what their commitments are over time by listing how long will each aspect of the game will continue to work by type (ie single-player offline, multiplayer self-hosted, multiplayer cloud, feature updates, security updates). Then company management and investors will know to set aside funds to cover server fees for that time period after the final sale. This isn't new or burdensome. Large companies already have accounting practices to accrue future liabilities on their books. When they sell future enterprise services to other companies there's a contract with financial reserves and revenue recognition. Selling a game to consumers with the expectation of future online delivered services should have a similarly spelled out commitment and appropriate financial reserves.
In reality, this may mean some companies choose minimum commitments that we'd all feel are far too short but as long as the consumers know up front what the commitment actually is, the free market can determine over time what costs consumers are willing to pay for which commitments. I expect some companies will try to minimize their financial commitment by making games which could obviously have offline single-player aspects always require online for everything or be subscription-only and only commit to offer the subscription for 1 month after purchase. Let them try and see how the market reacts. Government regulation isn't some magic wand we can wave to just force companies to "do the right thing" or, more specifically, make the products we want and sell them to us on the terms we'd prefer. Companies will either pass the increased costs on to consumers or not go into that business at all. Realistic regulation should focus first on two things: 1) Ensuring a level-playing field for fierce competition and, 2) clear up front disclosure of what the deal is.
---This seems like it's being overly complicated. Isn't one of their requested options just to say that it's a "subscription" or that it may be discontinued some day when you originally "purchase" the game?
---If that option is acceptable to the stop game killing folks, why all this talk about public/private servers, security, portability, etc.
---When you sell it, just say "you are really kinda buying a subscription and we might shut it off in the future, but we'll try to give you some warning.?"
---Why would the industry be against that?
Its not always obvious when you buy them which games will still be around a few years later.
Some singleplayer titles from just a few years ago are no longer playable. (Hello, Ubisoft). Meanwhile there are MMOs like guild wars 1, released 20 years ago, still playable today.
Right, exactly. Game companies don't advertise when you buy a game that its single-player features will only work as long as the servers stay up. I'm sure they don't want to. But if players aren't made aware of that fact then it's hard for them to make informed purchasing decisions.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was such a breath of fresh air in this regard. If you just want a reasonably priced, good game with no shady stuff but still that AA (arguably AAA) experience I can’t recommend it enough.
Almost every time I have spent more than $35 on a game in the past year I have wound up regretting it. It seems as though the quality of games typically increases til that point (exceptions exist, Terraria) and then declines sharply (again, exceptions exist). It has turned out to be a useful signal to be way more careful about a purchase for me.
And people are. Games sales are slumping in response to a decade of predatory dark patterns and simply not giving the audience what they're asking for.
Just keeping the games playable is a singular issue and in the noise. It's a good issue to single out for regulation.
I bought Minecraft from Mojang, years later I am forced to setup a Microsoft account to play the game, or risk downloading a cracked version. They did not offer a refund. Minecraft is a video game where you need to login even if you do not play online. (maybe things changed , I think this MS account thing was a few years back, it worked for my account but I read of people having big issues because some MS assholes ahd to force the Java edition players to use an MS account)
I was forced to not only setup a Microsoft account, but hand over my phone number - after creating an account without a phone number and transferring my Minecraft license over, they immediately locked my account.
Minecraft is at least reasonably easy to play offline, the account mostly only stores your skins. That said, it may require a third-party launcher now.
There's fewer games to vote on every year, as conglomerates like Microsoft out vote your wallet a billion times over every time they buy a game studio to embrace, extend and then extinguish.
If looking at AAA publishers, maybe. The indie game scene continues to pump out games, some good, some bad, at half or less of cost of the AAA games. They won't be as polished, but many still deliver an exceptional experience.
there are more games than ever, it's just that microsoft, ubisoft, etc are spending billions on actual psychologists to ensure the populace remains apathetic towards them.
I don't care how smart you are, how much self control you have, whatever, in the face of billions of dollars, voting with your wallet does not stand a chance. The house always wins.
> I don't care how smart you are, how much self control you have, whatever, in the face of billions of dollars, voting with your wallet does not stand a chance. The house always wins.
Yes, you're totally right that HN users are far from the average consumer, but they weren't talking about the average consumer - they were making a categorical statement that all consumers have no self-agency and are mind-controlled by these companies, and I was pointing out how clearly insane that claim is.
Your claim that there has been "decades of voting with our wallets" is laughable. Nobody I know who plays games decides to buy them or not based on ideological reasons - they just buy the things that are popular or that their friends play. There's extremely little engagement on these issues.
But it's true. Most people pay for what's being currently promoted. So "voting with wallet" doesn't really work, because you will be outvoted by majority of people who don't know what they're getting into. That's why gacha games and other lootbox-heavy ones are most profitable. This is where "vote with your wallet" brought us.
You're confused about the meaning of "voting with your wallet".
> But it's true.
It's not - you're talking about something else entirely. When @umvi says "vote with your wallet" they mean buy things whose values you support. You, and GP @thrance, are not describing that - you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values - the exact opposite. So, no, we haven't had decades of "unsuccessful voting with your wallet" because consumers have been mentally checked out for decades.
> So "voting with wallet" doesn't really work, because you will be outvoted by majority of people who don't know what they're getting into
That's literally how normal democracy works - if the majority of the populace is uninformed, then they'll vote in an uninformed way, and the solution is for them to get informed and start doing research and making conscious decisions. That's what @umvi means when they say "vote with your wallet." - active participation instead of passive existence.
You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
>You're confused about the meaning of "voting with your wallet".
>You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
Probably.
>you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values
That is probably where I am confused - I'm not sure that people "do not respect the values". It's either that they have values, but those values are imposed, or it's what you describe, that people just don't think deeply about it. And from my personal experience I really can't tell. But when I read the web, everyone apparently figured it out, and do indeed consciously decide.
The problem with democracy: people on average have average intelligence and you don't solve difficult problems with average intelligence. That being said, it's still better than anything else we've tried.
Right - I'm also hand-waving a bit here and lumping democratic republics in with "true democracies" for the sake of simplicity, but you're absolutely correct.
Then why do you call it "vote with your wallet" and not "buy stuff you like"? If you don't intend for your purchase to weigh in on anything, why do you call it "voting"?
If that's truly what you mean by "vote with your wallet", then yeah, we're on the same page. I almost only play solo games, most of them indie.
It would be fair, but when you go online, everyone (and I mean everyone) shares their distaste for modern gaming industry and its practices. Yet, those practices still bring the most money to this day. So does it mean that people go against their principles? Or is it just another "vocal minority" situation?
There's some evidence that it's a vocal minority. Taking a game made by a terrible company that has a lot of dark patterns, Call of Duty Black Ops 6 has sold at least 491 thousand units (https://steamdb.info/app/1938090/charts/) (certainly far higher, but apparently they haven't published the sales figures, so this is the best lower bound that we get), yet you see far fewer than that number of Reddit posts and comments and upvotes, or upvotes on YouTube videos about these terrible practices.
I suspect that the majority of those who play games would rather these mechanics not exist, but don't feel strongly enough about it to boycott those games. I don't have evidence for this beyond my interactions with personal friends and their "mild apathetic unhappiness" for lack of a better term.
There's also definitely a number of people that are willing to accept some compromise to either play a very well-made game, or one that their friends are playing. I hate Epic Games and its practices, for instance, but I'm willing to play Fortnite with friends if they ask me, and I justify that by telling myself that I'm never going to buy anything with their premium currency.
You proved my point: "voting with your wallet" will never work. DLCs, microtransactions, lootboxes... They all got normalized alarmingly quickly, despite numerous calls to "vote with your wallets" every single times. We need regulations, isolated individuals have no power against a system built to extract the most out of them.
> You proved my point: "voting with your wallet" will never work. DLCs, microtransactions, lootboxes... They all got normalized alarmingly quickly, despite numerous calls to "vote with your wallets" every single times.
Factually incorrect. There are numerous instances of consumers complaining, leaving bad reviews on Steam, refunding games, or stopping buying games because of their values, and the studios/producers actually changed the thing. Helldivers 2's mandatory PSN account is one of the most recent instances of that happening.
Factually, consumers will band together to take collective action, and when they do, there are positive effects. The problem is apathy, not lack of power.
> We need regulations, isolated individuals have no power against a system built to extract the most out of them
This is literally self-contradictory. If individuals can't "vote with their wallets" to achieve change (which, as I described above, empirically does happen), then individuals in a democracy also can't vote to enact their will on the system - and those regulators are appointed by those elected representatives.
Make up your mind - does voting work, or does it not?
How. You only gave anecdotal evidence of some instances where enough complaining got consumers a little concession. Meanwhile, DLCs, microtransactions and lootboxes went from "totally inacceptable" to "absolutely bog standard" in a few years. Do you deny that at each step of this process, many people called to "vote with your wallet"? Do you deny that it failed miserably and that the game industry keeps getting away with more and more, in spite of it?
> This is literally self-contradictory. If individuals can't "vote with their wallets" to achieve change (which, as I described above, empirically does happen), then individuals in a democracy also can't vote to enact their will on the system - and those regulators are appointed by those elected representatives.
Literally straw-manning my point. I should have emphasized "isolated". To me calls to "vote with your wallet" are akin to a single worker demanding a raise or better working conditions. Without a union, they're out of luck. On the other hand, a collective effort to change the law like "Stop Killing Games", now we're talking.
> You only gave anecdotal evidence of some instances where enough complaining got consumers a little concession
You're using "anecdotal" incorrectly. Your statement was ""voting with your wallet" will never work." and I provided a counterexample, meaning that your statement is factually incorrect, so you're just wrong. It's also incorrect to call it a "concession" - the players got everything they asked for - there was no compromise. There are also far more counterexamples if you cared to search the internet for a few minutes - the Skyrim paid mods incident, the League of Legends free lootbox removal, and The Crew 2 and Motorfest not having offline modes as just three more.
> Meanwhile, DLCs
Been around for decades, not just "a few years"...
> microtransactions and lootboxes went from "totally inacceptable" to "absolutely bog standard" in a few years
Yes, and? Not enough people cared to actually do anything about it. The fact is, that when people care enough, and actually put their money where their mouth is, companies either listen (as above) or go out of business (as a number of studios are today).
It's quite simple to see that when people don't buy a studio's games, the studio either changes things or goes out of business. The reason that companies get away with these practices is because people either (1) morally compromise enough to buy games with mechanisms that they don't approve of, (2) they literally just don't care, or (3) aren't even aware of the issues. The call to "vote with your wallet" is meant to encourage the compromisers to stop compromising and the apathetic to realize that they have to take action for change to happen.
If your claim is that when people make values-based purchases it doesn't affect the market or fix issues - that's just factually wrong. If your complaint is that people don't care enough to make values-based purchases - that's exactly what the call to action of "vote with your wallet" is meant to help.
> Literally straw-manning my point. I should have emphasized "isolated".
I assumed you weren't talking about isolated individuals because that's completely irrelevant to this discussion. The poster's call to action of "vote with your wallet" on a site with tens/hundreds of thousands of visitors is literally a call to collective action, so any references to isolated action is just not relevant or logically coherent.
And, because you got that part wrong, this isn't really relevant, but...
> To me calls to "vote with your wallet" are akin to a single worker demanding a raise or better working conditions
This is also completely incorrect. If an individual worker demands something from their employers, they can just get fired. The power is in the hands of the employer. In the case of games, the power imbalance is heavily skewed towards the purchasers - if you decide not to purchase a game, the studio loses on revenue, and you lose some tiny increment of entertainment. Comparing someone having to play a different game, with someone getting fired, is crazy. Those situations are categorically different.
> On the other hand, a collective effort to change the law like "Stop Killing Games", now we're talking.
Telling people to "vote with their wallets" is a collective effort, and it works. That doesn't mean you can't complement it with regulation, but anyone familiar with the legislative system knows how incredibly difficult it is to wield regulation and how much you should try to solve problems through other methods first.
> 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.
I find it really frustrating how they phrase things because there is so much BS in almost one sentence. The entire point of having a private server is so that they are no longer in control of these things.
Moreover if I am running a private server:
- It isn't their responsibility to secure players data.
- it isn't their responsibility to remove illegal content.
- it isn't their responsibility to remove "unsafe" (whatever that means) community content.
So how could they be 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.
This is pretty much disingenuous argument that "PirateSoftware" was pushing. They are pretending that a single player mode would need to be created. This isn't what is being requested.
I don't disagree, but this is just one symptom of what the video game industry has become.
As someone who hadn't played video games since his youth back in the late 80s, 90s, I was astonished when I tried to get back into it a few years ago.
Kernel-level DRM, online checks, €80+ price tags, incomplete games that require DLC, and all this for rushed unfinished broken games. You keep paying though, so the game companies keep pushing ("if they'll put up with this, what else can we get away with?").
If any of this goes through in terms of legislation, it will mostly just have “buy” change into “lifetime subscription” (where as usual, “lifetime” means the lifetime of the service). I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done, and the article itself alludes to that outcome, but it also means that it won’t stop the killing of games.
There is a competitive advantage for being able to hold onto your code and builds. It currently requires quite a lot of effort and skill and persistence to resurrect live service games. This allows us to make money by re-releasing games and remastering them and so on.
If you require us to release server builds and or code "while still respecting copyright", the result will be that countries like Russia and China will offer competing services against us and we will not be able to make nearly as much money anymore.
I don't think there is much trouble in re-releasing and remastering games, since the company does not forfeit its IP and it doesn't give anyone else the right to publish the same game. Plus no one suggests that the company should instantly release the server binaries or source code upon game's release. Only when they themselves stop profiting from it.
For instance, with WoW, you currently have unofficial servers, but it doesn't stop Activision Blizzard from making huge money from WoW, both from new addons and classic ones.
I don't think the companies should be required to release server executables ever, and yes especially not at release.
Let me try to argue against my own point with WoW as an example then.
You say there are unofficial/private servers. Are these server builds downloadable online somewhere? It doesn't matter if it was from a leak, a reverse engineering effort, etc. Or are they the guarded property of the groups running the private servers?
The reason I ask is because, it is my opinion that once a reliable build exists, inevitably it will be hosted in China and Russia and so on, and now you have a serious competitor to deal with who doesn't need to follow the same laws as you.
If WoW is still able to make a ton of money despite widely available builds being out there, then I think my position would be that WoW is just a cultural phenomenon that can survive all of that. But if it turns out that the server builds aren't widely available, I'd be curious to see how it survives when those are released.
Think-- why would you pay a quite high monthly price for the official thing when you can pay pennies for the same exact thing? The only possible answer is conveniece and network effects ("my friends are on the official WoW so...")
> I don't think the companies should be required to release server executables ever
I still don't get why. If the company stops profiting from the product, they shouldn't care if people self-host it. Unless, of course, the company wants to force their playerbase to another project that does currently generate profit.
> Are these server builds downloadable online somewhere?
Not that I know of.
>once a reliable build exists, inevitably it will be hosted in China and Russia and so on, and now you have a serious competitor to deal with who doesn't need to follow the same laws as you
That's true, but it's not a problem for Blizzard, rather for those who host those unofficial servers. Because the main competition will be among them.
>why would you pay a quite high monthly price for the official thing
Mainly because of the quality. The official servers are fully functional, get regular maintenance and updates. While unofficial servers can go offline easily, they lack latest content, not all quests might work etc.
So if, for some reason, Blizzard can't keep their servers in good shape, but the community can, then it's Blizzard's fault if people start leaving official servers. And what if Blizzard intentionally starts making the service worse and worse to shift people to their other game (whatever it may be)? In this case I think that having an option like unofficial servers is good for community. Not good for Blizzard, yes, but good for people that just want to play the video game that they've been playing for 20+ years. This is what SKG is about.
If game publishers could in clear writing at time of purchase commit to a set number of years that game will be live then I think that is a good start. For example when the next live service game is released and you go to purchase it there is a clear warning that the publisher has only guaranteed the game to be live for 2 years. Personally that would prevent me from buying the game, but perhaps not others.
The idea that a publisher can sell a live service game and shut it down in 1 month with no legal repercussions is ridiculous to me.
Predictable response, they'd rather have complete autonomy to decide what they will do and be the sole arbiter of consumers' rights, while gaming history disintegrates thanks to the double-tap of online-dependency shutdowns and marketplaces that make it a TOS violation to leave your library to someone.
> If you complained that it's too hard to hash the passwords entered by your users or to encrypt medical data, or that you don't feel like complying with GDPR, you'd get rightfully fined out of existence.
If this happened all multiplayer titles would turn F2P.
People do not appreciate quite what a narrow path has to be walked by games from an IP standpoint. Code libraries, licensed property, per platform (and platform category) restrictions, general IP restrictions (not showing vehicles being damaged, or UI overlays on certain parts of licensed objects) and so on. This is why in the recent ROG Ally announcement Microsoft could not say all XBox games will run on it, because if it's a PC it's not a console, so various games will not be allowed to be sold on it as those contributing IP rights will have been split up separately.
Simply pretending these very real concerns don't exist is nonsense land. You want games with real vehicles or licensed music? This is what you have to deal with. At least these days they have learned to license music for longer than used to be the case.
This is part of the beauty of such a thing being a law.
If your code library, licensed property etc. does not allow companies to comply with the law, then its value is zero and you won't be able to sell it. So suddenly, all providers of such libraries etc. have to make this possible.
how did they do it in the past? If I can put my Tony Hawks cd from the PS2 into a cd player and enjoy all the DRM music, what changed between now and then?
If music labels refuse to license out their songs like that, then if this law passes, they're going to have to suck it up and play nice again, else lose customers/publishers.
Most of that era consoles would load level data from the CD, and then play the music as cd-da audio. There was no DRM on the music, perhaps because nobody thought of it, but more likely because there wasn't quite enough computing power to do it. PS2 games could be on CD or DVD and could have had cd quality music as a data file reasonably, but PS1 probably not, and cross platform games likely would use cd audio because it's easy.
The choice for licensors was to have the music in the game and available on the cd or not.
For a modern release, DRM music tracks that only play in the game is an option.
We've also learned that the licenses are (or were) often time limited... The publisher can't make new copies after some time, without getting a new license for the audio. Sometimes that's also related to a different format.
The issue with most of what you're saying here is that all of that works the way it does because it can, not because it has to. Code libraries, for example, may essentially prohibit what is being requested by SKG because they can. However, if they couldn't then they wouldn't. The companies selling the libraries aren't going to simply shut up shop.
Which is just to say, if there's money to be made then businesses will do so within the regulatory framework.
Those are all just decisions the companies made. For future games, the game developers and the companies licensing IP can simply make different decisions. If a large market like the EU creates strong incentives for them, they will make different decisions.
Now, this is not necessarily the case for existing games. Revisiting existing licensing deals can be needlessly difficult. But I'm assuming the proposed regulations will only apply to new games rather than trying to force changes retroactively.
All of those things are concerns. But if video game publishers really needed to figure this stuff out in order to sell units, they would. Contracts would change. But they'd still get signed. Everyone wants money too much. The only hard part is trying to fix this stuff for games which have already signed on the dotted line. Or games which have shipped and disbanded their software teams.
But even then, can't they just opensource what they're allowed to? Even if it doesn't build, it wouldn't take the community long to rip out FMOD or whatever and replace it with working alternatives. Or submit a final patch which removed the part where games phone home before launching in singleplayer mode. Why would that interfere with the licence for 3rd party IP?
IMO if I'm "buying" the game, you can't also remotely disable the thing I bought. (And "buy" is the word they all use!). If you want to remotely disable the game at some point in the future, I'm fine with that so long as they list it very explicitly and loudly on the box. "THIS GAME ONLY PLAYABLE UNTIL 2030". Games publishers need to start being honest and upfront about what we're paying for. Its not an unreasonable ask.
anyone ever noticed how so many completely different restaurants food tastes almost exactly the same? it’s because so many of them use the exact same food suppliers to buy their food before they cook it. [0]
gaming over the last few years feels the same way. like they all taste almost the same.
> Simply pretending these very real concerns don’t exist is nonsense land.
i don’t believe this to be true at all.
if all of the things you listed are limiting game development so much, than this isn’t “progress” in the games space. if it’s really that bad, maybe we should regress, start from the basics and let some of the incredible indie studios or midsize studios take the lead who will A) bring us actual originality, not more IP rehashed for the thousandth time, B) not bleed gamers wallets dry and C) lets us actually own the thing we buy.
sooo many amazing games were made in the past that were able to do this and do it well, the difference is they didn’t cry if they “only” made $40 million in profit.
cod3 made like $400 million in the first 24 hours.
the difference now is the AAA studios are sucking all of the air out of the room and not leaving nearly as much room for midsize studios.
[0] sysco, us foods, and pfg supply an absolute massive number of restaurants in the US. sysco alone distributes to something like 700,000 restaurants.
These concerns have been raised and addressed. Firstly, I am not sure how cars getting damaged means that multiplayer games have to become F2P - but that's not steelmanning your argument.
One of the major concerns raised has been middle are: components that developers purchase and use in their server implementation. This is often the largest hurdle to many pro-consumer outcomes: the developers can't share anything related because they don't own it.
The most likely outcome after sensible laws are passed is that the industry evolves just as it did with GDPR. Developers will look to other middlewares that are SKG compliant.
Failing that, gamers have routinely shown that they are capable of clean room implementations of server software (WoW and Genshin Impact) - all that needs be done is the client being released with all server auth disabled and some way to specify the server to use. Developers might even be required to provide basic protocol specifications. Essentially, repair it yourself instructions.
This strawman argument you have provided is exactly the same one used by Pirate Software. It relies on a highly specific interpretation of the initiative. The initiative calls for "reasonably playable state," which can have a vast number of outcomes that are different to the single one that you have chosen.
And if the cars do prohibit a game from addressing server concerns and remaining in a reasonably playable state, remove them. The game will continue to be reasonably playable following that.
This goes beyond games and calls for regulation of anything sold as a product, but working more like a subscription service. Similar issues also affect an increasing number of appliances that rely on apps and connect through manufacturer-hosted services. If the manufacturer goes out of business or shuts down a service, fully working devices can lose some or all of their features. Manufacturers should be required to open up their devices and provide a documented local API, if for no other reason, then to reduce the huge amount of electronic waste created by making devices artificially obsolete.
I think that approaching the problem from the perspective of a physical product, like a smart lightbulb that doesn't work anymore because the manufacturer shut down its servers, would be easier for non-technical people to understand and would likely have a better chance of success.
Seems pretty obvious to me that if this passes, big game companies will either re-label all new releases as “subscriptions” and/or just never make a single-player game again. And mostly nothing will change. If you don’t like companies like this, don’t buy their games. There’s literally thousands of indie game companies that don’t abuse their users.
Not a solution. Other people will buy them and outvote you with their wallets. This has already happened. People did buy The Crew, and I doubt that most of them realized that it will be closed 10 years later.
Having followed this initiative quite extensively from the beginning, the most baffling thing has been the underwhelming support from developers themselves, both from studios and individual devs.
You would think the very idea of years of your work being rendered unplayable in an instant would be enough incentive to signal boost any effort against this industry practice.
Instead, developer discourse has revolved around just how hard it would be to do what this is petition is asking for. You are an engineer for crying out loud. If you solved a problem but a new constraint arrives in the form of a law, you figure out how to solve the problem under the new constraint. Just because something is hard, doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
It's almost like flexing your skills and signalling your elite knowledge is more important to people than simply defending what's right.
I think that most developers are just afraid to voice such anti-industry opinion. Gamedev is fairly small industry, so if you piss off wrong people, you might be left without job opportunities.
If so, are you comfortable telling artists what types of art they can create? I know not everyone is going to agree with me here but it feels like a slippery slope.
art, shmart. aside the fact that a large part of art is money laundering or tax evasion, what is being asked for is more like banning radioactive or cancerous paint pigment
Depends entirely on the game. Some are art, games designed by people who love games for the sake of games. Others are things that employ the use of art for the sake of long-term financial gain.
Yes, games are art. Which is why this is so important. Are you comfortable with destroying cultural heritage for the sake of corporate profit? Did you even ask artists working in the game industry what they think about this?
Yes, which is precisely why they shouldn't be treated like a commodity. Nobody is telling artists what art they can make, what the initiative is about making sure public continues to have access to works of art.
Which is normal for everything that's considered to be of cultural relevance. Film studios and novelists don't get to burn libraries down the moment someone stops paying them. It's exactly because games are art that preservation and access need to be priorities. Can you imagine if Amazon started to delete books from your Kindle? (I'm pretty sure they tried that once actually, with 1984 no less)
The destruction of art is, in most civilizations, seen as completely obscene. The reason why game companies got away with it was precisely because games had a lower status.
what a strawman. its not about "you cannot draw this" but its more like "please dont use dyes that offgas deadly fumes", a technical regulation not about substance
IMHO the incentives are disproportionately in favour of everyone doing something that hurts consumers (= "something that I don't like"), thus regulation in favour of consumer rights is appropriate.
There isn't a scenario where, at scale, someone can offer a product that respects consumer rights and is successful, because it's too profitable to not respect consumer rights just like it wasn't in many other cases.
this was not a literal comparison, wtf, but an example of a technical limitation that will be imposed by law as a counter to your "art" stupidity. You can Use alternative formulation if you cant comprehend basic methaphors: „stop using dyes that decay in 2 months“
At a macro level, killed games are a good thing for gaming companies. It creates a shortage of playable games so that new games sell and continue to make money.
The biggest competitor to the video game industry is movies (Netflix, Disney plus, etc) and past games.
Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today? If players can play thousands of high quality games for free, why bother paying for a new game?
I suppose the book industry has the same problem, maybe there are some parallels to study from that.
> Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today?
This is something we can answer pretty easily by looking at the book industry. People do enjoy novelty. The pulp sci-fi/fantasy from the 60s-80s is long forgotten save for a few masterpieces, and there is a flow of recent books that people buy and read.
Silly that this is being downvoted, especially since the book industry comparison is an interesting one:
There will always be people like myself who enjoy older (even outdated) books, but even we still buy new books because they are part of the zeitgeist and carry new ideas/developments. It'd be the same for new video games, some people would enjoy older games, but they'd likely still pick up a similar new game that developed something novel.
I guess the real problem here is that video game companies don't want to create anything novel, not least because it's a risk.
It would still be illegal to acquire a copy of a killed game. Their numbers would still dwindle, since they'd be limited to people who bought the game before it was killed.
> Even the singleplayer components [of Ubisoft’s “The Crew (2014) were unusable when the servers were turned off]: [Y]ou just wanting to race around cars in a world with you and other NPCs in it, is no longer viable. Essentially, you didn't "buy" the game, but in a sense were "renting" it for an indeterminate amount of time, a lease that expired due to the publishers and developers no longer wanting to provide that service for you.
Probably true! There is likely some additional revenue that the publisher gets from running servers, even for single-player mode. The question then is what will change in these games if that revenue is no longer there to fund them? Will the quality be lower? Will the price be higher? Will the publishers release new games less frequently? Maybe they just don’t make single-player games anymore?
Maybe they just stop adding hard requirements for online connectivity to their single-players games, which is something which takes more effort to do in the first place?
That is fine. Other companies will fill that void. There are plenty of small indy companies that make great single-player games, that could benefit from the attention.
Ok, but the context of the article (which I quoted) is multi player games with a single player mode. Of course single player games don’t need and often don’t have a server, so whether or not they make up a large part of the market is irrelevant here.
Honestly? I think we can do without these predatory practices even at the cost of some games.
And I somehow doubt there’s revenue to make off these single player games being online dependent, because the most probable ways simply wouldn’t fly in Europe due to consumer protections.
Most likely it’s just “anti-piracy” or something like that.
> the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers
Nice way to make publishers stop making multiplayer services available to the EU in the first place because deactivating it is illegal when costs outweigh profits.
they won't leave the biggest global market with almost 500 million potential buyers because they can't rug pull anymore, even if they somehow suddenly don't like money anymore others will gladly take there place.
the same "argument" has been thrown at GDPR which now every single corporation follows.
I work for a game company. I am ardently opposed to this idea.
All you will end up with, in the best case scenario that isn't even guaranteed to happen, is extremely mediocre games for which you will have the server executable along with the client.
Whether you like it or not, thanks to piracy and competition (and yes I've heard Gabe Newell's quote on piracy), server authoritative video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy, and not even just for games. And no, "just release your source code then" is not a valid rule to enforce either.
If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own? It has never been easier to do so, and there are freely usable code and art assets on hundreds of different platforms for you to attempt.
Re subscription marketing messaging, totally agree.
Re mediocre, ok that's fine.
Re the "how", then we arent really talking about anything here. Until there is a how, there is nothing to firmly agree or disagree with, so we have to talk in hypotheticals, which we are, and which is semi valuable.
Re making your own, when a company sells you a toilet and it breaks, you fix it yourself or buy a new one. When your 1999 game doesnt run on Windows 11, you fix it yourself or you buy a new one. If you require companies to fix it for you, the small ones will go bankrupt and the big ones will find a loophole.
private server where the default in the past. that's why games that are 30 years old like quake, doom and unreal tournament (all created by dev teams the size of about a dozen with as much funding as current indie games) can still be played to this day and as long as software allows it forever with 0 effort or cost by the developers.
I completely and thoroughly agree with this suggestion. It shouldn't be a requirement, however. You should reward companies who do this with your money, and it should be clearly labeled that you will or will not be receiving this.
If that was the end of the road, then I definitely don't have a problem with it. Like another poster said, it would be like labeling for cigarettes, and that is totally fine.
What I do fear however, is that they will go a step further, requiring companies to release server builds, client and server sourde code, and then of course the ultimate dream, "well no you actually can't turn it off, we require you to maintain it forever even if it loses you money because gaming is a right".
>requiring companies to release server builds, client and server sourde code
you did not read the initiative. they do not mention any of that and explicitly state that this won't be required (even if they wanted because of copyright laws).
Politics is a forward looking industry. As you can see with Trump, he went from talking about deporting so called illegal immigrants to deporting naturalized citizens.
Do not be surprised when they go from something harmless to something punitive that forces small companies out of business.
punitive won't be "break there own laws to enforce others" but nice fear mongering. copyright infringement might as well be above murder in terms of politician interest don't worry.
How do they handle piracy, unless they don't? In which case, very good for them that they have such a great group of supporters. I am not sure if we should require every company to behave in such a way, and simply let consumers reward such companies with their money? This is just a fundamental economic model argument that I apply to any industry, except maybe baby formula or something.
So your point is that you need to fuck your paying customers in order to mildly annoy people who don't buy your games?
Besides, the proposal doesn't even require you not to have anti-piracy servers; it only requires you to avoid bricking the game once you turn of the servers.
> simply let consumers reward such companies with their money?
I think there’s a mid ground where industry does nothing except slap a sticker on warning people that game features will sunset in the future, making parts of the game unplayable, perhaps making some commitment like no sooner than December 31, 2030.
It will essentially be the similar thing as the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes or the Parental Guidance logo on an album. The are US things, not sure if EU has similar.
This is already one of the proposed solutions. Although you would have to state a specific date as not to mislead consumers.
I would then have to decide if paying 80$ for a game I won't be able to play in the next 5 years is worth it.
It seems you didn't read the initiative text. The initiative does not force game Devs to release the code or make specific technical demands.
Game Devs only have to make a plan for when the game gets shut down to still allow the users to be able to play the game. How that is archived can be decided by the developers. Of course the law could be different in the future.
But most people do agree that it is bad to intentionally break games that people payed money for. All they are basically are asking for, is that games are built in a way that they can be enjoyed as long as possible (maybe supported by the community). Is that not also in the intention of the game developers?
It might be the intention of some game developers. I can tell you however that the intention of the people who run my company is to make as much money as possible.
My opinion is that you, as a consumer, should reward the companies who treat you best with your money. You should not require the government to do it for you, because if you do, the thing you end up with might not be the thing you receive, sadly.
And yes, this logic holds for most industries, but not all. I for one think there should be stringent rules for food processing, since that can actually kill you, and yet still putrid beef and tainted baby formula are sold on a relatively frequent basis.
> Whether you like it or not, thanks to piracy and competition ... server authoritative video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy
The only people you're effecting are legitimate players. Pirates crack the games and have an easier time for it. Unless you're talking about multiplayer games, which wasn't the target of the proposal (though even there I'd argue it's definitely doable).
It's better to have a mediocre game that one can play, than an exceptional game that one can't.
You're free to make games now, and yet it's most often hard to justify money for a game that isn't a skin on a version of solitaire (on sale).
That's how bad your industry is. So, please, with your warning. As if you have work product to bargain with.
You act as if your industry is busy. Outside of a couple of exceptional studios, and infinite sequels on literally only a few popular formulas (whether or not these formulas are good is another discussion), your industry is largely non-productive. If we are utilizing your metric of good vs mediocre.
I agree with you that there is a mountain of shit in the gaming industry.
Is any other industry different? Are Instagram and Tiktok literally not brainwashing hundreds of millions of people? Do defense companies care that innocents are murdered with their weapons? Do airplane companies face any enforceable moral judgment that they encourage relatively rich people to engage in idle leisure in other countries rather than being productive with their time for society, to which they owe some level of production in exchange for the society that raised them?
The argument knows no bounds. It is a matter of taste.
Ok, so your idea is that we will require all companies to release server and client builds, and also the source code as well (?), at some clearly defined point in the future, if they decide to terminate the live service?
Will we also require the same of the smart fridge companies? Will we also require the same of companies that don't sell live services, such as toilets?
If I buy a smart fridge and the company that made them suddenly decided to turn them all off, then I'd definitely like the ability to turn mine back on, yes.
And no, there's no expectation of source code. That's been covered many times.
How can we ensure that if we legislate the games industry, then we also legislate all other industries with no special carve outs? That would make me much more supportive.
Yes that's right. My opinion is that I am against legislating anything until we legislate everything.
Put yourself in the shoes of an employee or owner of some business. Would you enjoy being forced to follow certain rules of actual consequence, while others are allowed to do whatever they want?
Video games publishers don't want you to play the same game for too long without spending more money. They don't want to make games like Terraria where you have a $10 game you can play for a thousand hours. They'd much rather you buy multiple $60+ games, plus expansions, "micro"-transactions and subscriptions.
They don't want games that last forever, they want to pressure you into constantly buying the next big thing.
That kind of reasoning makes sense if you have a single publisher controlling the entire market and they don't want to undercut their own business. But that's obviously not the case. There are plenty of publishers that want to publish games like Terraria, especially if they go on to sell more than 60 million copies.
I think the market is actually much more segmented than your comment implies. There's publishers who absolutely dominate certain niches, especially sporting games, and the only realistic competition they have are themselves.
It's worth keeping in mind that the "market" for a particular player can actually be incredibly small depending on their interests. In the most extreme example, a player might be a fan specifically of a single IP or series of games. Call of duty is one good example because there really are a lot of people who are like this. Video game IPs are a government granted monopoly on a small scale, and the word monopoly is not there for no reason, there is only one place to get CoD if you are a fan of CoD. Predictably, these companies follow the OA's suggested strategy very closely!
So much this.
Its why Neverwinter Nights had extensive modding, local hosted server, and more....
But Baldurs Gate 3 doesn't.
NWN will still be playable in 10 years. BG3 likely won't be, or significant reductions in game quality will take place.
By playable do you just mean new content? It will be perfectly playable in 10 years just like all the other classic CRPGs. It would be amazing if modding in content was easy like NWN, if that’s what you mean, because it obviously isn’t. It does seem like such a waste. I’m in a second replay and it’s enjoyable but just so long and will become more repetitive. There are certain sections in Act I that I can’t see myself enjoying a third time at all. Some smaller modules would be amazing. I think the closest thing to that will be Solasta II in the modern era.
My understanding is that WOTC wouldn’t extend their d&d license to be used in bg3 with that full set of modding that you want.
Knowling Larian I dont think that will be the case. what are you basing your assumptions upon? there is already extensive modding for bg3
Show me the local server executable.
It's called bg3_dx11.exe. BG3 doesn't have dedicated servers, one player hosts and the others connect to them. It (obviously) works on LAN, no internet connection required.
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Larian are no longer involved with development of BG3:
https://www.ign.com/articles/wizards-of-the-coast-not-to-bla...
EDIT: Updated Link. It seems they've added free patches and won't be working on BG4.
Your article doesn't say "Larian are no longer involved with development of BG3". It in fact says they're still developing it, but won't be making BG4.
The official Larian BG3 Discord server is promoting a mod competition, and they're still adding content, bug fixes, and new features to the game as well.
I've updated the Link with the right one.
https://baldursgate3.game/news/the-final-patch-new-subclasse...
So it looks like they've released free content update and after this is is going to be hot fixes?
That announcement is about BG4 not BG3.
I've update the link. It seems they've released a bunch of free content instead in recent patches, which contradicts what they previously said somewhat.
BG3 is quite possibly one of the most modable games of the last five years, and the multiplayer game is self hosted (peer to peer)
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. There is a lot of confusion about this, almost certainly from people who have never played the game.
This would be why they’re trying to create consumer protection laws
I’m not sure “sellers would love to raise prices and have people keep buying” is the indictment that you think it is. Terraria and Modern Warfare, which is monetized the way you describe, are such different products…
This is literally every industry now. Shall we "regulate" all industries to be like this, then? Is that achievable?
Shall we require Netflix to release server builds so that you can access their content indefinitely because you paid for a subscription at some point? "That's not what this is about. Ok, where are we heading then?
Paying for a subscription is explicitly not what this is about. No one is suggesting this for MMOs. Just that it be clear that it is a subscription, that you're not actually buying the game. What a one-time fee for an MMO? Give it an expiry date. You can keep pushing the expiry date, but you have to promise support up to at least that date.
AFAICT SKG doesn't really make a distinction between games bought with a one-time purchase and games that are subscribed to. In their FAQ, they explicitly say it would apply to MMOs too (see https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq "What about large-scale MMORPGs? Isn't it impossible for customers to run those when servers are shut down?) although they don't spell out whether they mean exclusively games bought with a one-time fee or games that are subscription-only.
Ross from Accursed Farms said this in a video FAQ on youtube:
" Would this initiative affect subscription games? Well, that's another question that depends on what the EU says. Personally, I think it's very unlikely because that doesn't fit well with other existing consumer laws. I think the only way you could even make that argument would be that this is necessary for preservation and most governments don't seem to care about that at all. However, I don't think this is a huge loss, since only a handful of games operate that way today. So if we can give up those but then save 99% of other games, I'm willing to make that bargain. "
so it seems like they actually are suggesting that they'd like for (a law that came out of) SKG to apply to subscription games but there's an understanding that it probably won't.
Then this is essentially a formalized buggestion, and what will almost certainly happen is companies will respond back with "Won't Fix"
A more accurate analogy would be: you bought a physical DVD and DVD player, but now the film studio is preventing you from playing the DVD that you own on the hardware you own. In which case yes, we should regulate. Paying for access to a constantly changing library is not the same as paying to permanently own a single product.
> Shall we require Netflix to release server builds so that you can access their content indefinitely because you paid for a subscription at some point?
Actually not Netflix as they just offer a monthly subscription and not individual sales, but _YES_ by all means if I "purchase" (not rent!) a book or movie on Amazon (or anyone else), I'd like that, thank you.
I'm sure if movie studios could get together and throw a switch that made every 5+ year old disappear entirely, forcing consumers to keep buying new movies, they would. Just like every car manufacturer would choose to disable every 2+ year old car on the road if they could. Why do we give video game companies this power?
It’s pretty easy to solve static content like ebooks and video games; just legislate that your license is transferrable between services and media. Then I can legally torrent a game that is unsupported.
Content subscriptions like Netflix are different because you are not paying face value for one title. The better analogy here would be the game streaming services like XBox online. It’s clear you are not doing anything like “buying a game”, it’s the whole point of the business model. As you say, it would be a lot harder to make these laws apply there (but I bet that wouldn’t stop the EU from trying).
I think any legislation on this subject would have to reckon with the second-order effects; on the margin you’d be adding pressure for publishers to move to pure subscription services, if these laws don’t apply in those cases.
> legislate the that your license
What we should be doing is applying the laws that already exist: when I purchase a physical book I own a copy of it and can sell it, lend it, modify it.
Amazon and the publishers have zero say in the matter.
Buying a digital copy should be no different. I more of this stupid “you bought a license to access a copy” crap.
Let's step through this example.
All Xbox games around 2004 were physical CDs. Many had online services attached to them. Eventually, those servers were turned off. You can still play LAN and singleplayer. You still have your access to the physical bytes on the disk (though there is copy protection).
What should companies be required to do regarding the servers?
Not sue people into oblivion if they want to reverse engineer and create their own servers.
That is a perfectly rational suggestion. It is repulsive that large companies such as my employer do this.
Thing is, you are by default allowed to write mostly any contract / ToS you like (within the broad rules of contract law). So to implement this you need to explicitly ban “license for things that could be purchases”. And as I noted above the edge cases and market pressures make that non-trivial; do you also ban subscription services like Audible?
We already have subscriptions services for physical books and audiobooks.
They’re called libraries.
You don’t own the books when you check them out, and you wouldn’t own a digital copy when you check it out from audible.
As for market pressure, you don’t have to ban them. Require that if they want to rent digital copies out they must also allow for purchasing of them at a price that the average person would find resonable.
> Shall we require Netflix to release server builds so that you can access their content indefinitely because you paid for a subscription at some point?
No. However, you should be able to make a copy using your own computer (onto the computer or onto an external media such as a DVD) and then you can play the movies that you have copied on your own computer (not necessarily the one used for Netflix) or DVD player. This should be possible without needing to use their software, and it does not mean that their software or their service should need to offer it as an option; it is done on your side. (They can refuse to serve the movie to you faster than the actual duration of the movie if they want to do, though, therefore making it take as much time to copy as it does to watch it normally.)
(However, I am generally opposed to copyright anyways.)
If Netflix decides to end their service and make every TV show and movie they have permanently unavailable, even through all other legal businesses, then yeah, it would be nice of them to give that stuff away.
The FTC is currently suing John Deere over this kind of thing.
Also, Netflix is a weird comparison here. That seems like it should be an online-only service, they're not selling the actual movies to you. It's one of the situations where the model actually makes sense, unlike single-player video games.
I mean, what you describe sounds pretty good. It sounds like you think it's not feasible for some reason (other than political will). Do you want to elaborate on that?
It certainly is feasible. Requiring it to happen though, would result in some interesting economic dynamics, I believe.
We currently exist in a two tier global economy where some countries are required to follow a strict set of laws, and others basically make their own. To be clear, I am saying that Russia and China do not care at all about piracy and IP theft and so on.
As you increase the rules that Western companies must follow, you run the risk that some day your only options will be non-Western companies, and that may or may not be a good thing. This is what has happened with manufacturing, and it was good for a while until it wasn't. It still is quite good in some pockets though, like batteries and solar.
Having worked there in the past, Ubisoft is awful. When I was there previously there was an aggressive push for UPlay (now Ubisoft Connect) integration into all products. Then there were the bullshots for promos/E3/etc. There were often clashes with leadership who would fight against creativity / novel ideas in favour of cookie-cutter mechanics that would not add anything to the experience - certainly there was a mentality of, let's just copy what was recently successful.
I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink.
I'll never buy an Ubisoft game again. Instant dealbreaker to see that studio on the Steam store page; I've deleted a $3 sale game from my cart when I realized that it was Ubisoft. No game is worth giving money to a company that hates its customers so much.
On the flip side ex-Ubisoft employees seem to be finding success after their departure. Highly recommend Clair Obsur: Expedition 33.
For Steam users, a reminder that you can go to a publisher's page and "Ignore" that publisher. The option is a little bit hidden, it's in the settings cog on the right-hand side of the page. It'll stop steam from recommending their games to you, and when one does show up, like in the Top Sellers list, it'll have a message on it saying that it's by a publisher that you ignored.
I have Ubisoft, EA, and Sony marked as such, personally.
> I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink.
They are like junk food. Everyone has the junk food that they enjoy. FarCry is certainly the McDonald's of games. I enjoy some junk food once in a while, problems arise if I make it my staple diet.
Not to mention the sexual assault
I think very few people (outside of the industry - important caveat) are opposed to the stated goals of the initiative:
> This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union [...] to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
The concern that I have is that I have no idea what the actual text of the law is going to be.
You can look at laws like the DMCA, that had a reasonable purpose (made adjustments to the copyright system for the age of the internet) and a royally screwed up implementation that basically everyone can find a problem with.
It's easy to imagine that the laws that pass could be (1) completely neutered by corruption in the EU leading to regulatory capture (2) far too strong and written in a way that imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too) or (3) bad just because of technical incompetence of the authors.
I know that there's not much I can do about those things, but that may explain the emotional reactions of some people like e.g. PirateSoftware - nobody actually knows what the resulting law will be like, and everyone familiar with the legislative system knows how bad the outputs can be.
> to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
Yeah, I like the general goal, but I worry about the corner cases; is an MMO “functional/playable” if you just release a localhost server? Are we forcing indie shops to pay for servers indefinitely now? Great way to ensure no more indie MMOs get built if that ends up being the text interpretation.
And, as you say, the question you should always be asking about EU legislation - how does this affect the small/medium shops’ competitiveness? Counterintuitively, compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys.
Not to say that we shouldn’t try to fix the problem. But agree that skepticism about EU regulations has some historical merit.
> is an MMO “functional/playable” if you just release a localhost server? Are we forcing indie shops to pay for servers indefinitely now?
The man behind Stop Killing Games has made it perfectly clear that they do not want to force game developers to continue operating servers. Rather, as you suggest, releasing server binaries would be acceptable. Although a mere "localhost" server would likely not be sufficient, because (if I interpret your suggestion correctly) it takes away the multiplayer funtionality of the game. I think it would be reasonable to require developers to release online multiplayer capable server binaries.
> I think it would be reasonable to require developers to release online multiplayer capable server binaries.
Not a game dev but would there be concerns about forcing devs to ship binaries for a codebase that was previously purely SaaS and proprietary, and likely containing logic that is a reusable for future games? The edge cases here seem a little gnarly. (Maybe it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, how much competitive advantage comes from the MMO server code? I gather it can be tricky to do some things well like AoC pushing high player counts.)
Perhaps mandatory Docker container packaging for EOL multiplayer games?
> compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys
This is almost always the case, actually. Regulation and compliance are taxes on the productivity of an organization. And the "shape" of the tax is mostly flat - the burden is sublinear in the size of the organization, so the relative effects on smaller companies are bigger. And smaller companies already have significantly less available resources, and especially less legal resources (no lawyers on retainer), to handle it.
Obviously that doesn't mean that regulation shouldn't be passed, just that you have to write it very, very carefully - think embedded systems rather than web frontend - minimizing complexity and aggressively red-teaming it for loopholes and edge-cases.
OTOH an indie dev probably isn't running some massive server farm with 20 linked microservices that would be hard to replicate.
Yes, that's true, but to be clear, even if the actual compliance isn't that much of a problem (as you correctly point out here), just determining how to comply is burdensome and may require expensive experts (or even lawyers) to verify - see the confusion around GDPR, for instance.
Again, I'm not saying that it isn't worth regulating, just that you need to design the regulation as carefully as possible. You'd probably agree that the best regulation is that that minimizes burden on companies while maximizing positive effects for consumers, no?
Ross addresses these things in his videos on the initiative. For one, the game doesn't have to be 100% functional, it just has to do a bare minimum.
They might not even need to release server binaries, even. I would think releasing documentation on how the network commication runs, and adding a box to enter a server IP into the client at EOL would be sufficient. The community, if enough people care, would then be empowered to write their own server implementation without needing the reverse engineering step.
Online games like MMOs and live service games generally have tooling for developers to run the game on their local machines for obvious reasons. Releasing said tooling would also be an option.
This vague handwringing isn't any better. None of us know what the law will end up turning into. But we shouldn't let that stop this being addressed properly in our political institutions. That's what they're there for.
Also, bringing up the DMCA is sort of rich, since it was always just a vehicle for the biggest content companies in publishing, film, television, music and software to protect their property online.
Now we have something that was brought into being by consumers and may finally do something to curb anti-consumer behaviour by companies like this, and you're against it because you have no idea what it'll look like. I just can't, man. What's even the point of legislation if we have to be afraid it'll all be corrupted? Why even have political institutions at all at that point?
And if the end result of this legislation is that videogames in EU aren't licensed or sold but are instead all streamed and you are instead just buying access to stream a game, then what? TO me it's just amazing how the advocates for SKG ignore any possibility that it could make things much worse that they already.
If that business model worked so well, they'd all be doing it already. It'd cause piracy to cease, and (mostly) render the need for anti-cheat redundant, barring external image recognition cheats that are already tough to stop anyway.
> And if the end result of this legislation is that videogames in EU aren't licensed or sold but are instead all streamed and you are instead just buying access to stream a game, then what?
Then the industry is honest, and I can spend my money on an indie developer that doesn't do that.
Companies that do that will likely be completely outcompeted by studios that give a shit.
> This vague handwringing isn't any better.
Baseless, fallacious emotional manipulation in substitute for being able to apply useful criticism.
> None of us know what the law will end up turning into. But we shouldn't let that stop this being addressed properly in our political institutions.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to more corruption and regulatory capture. You are literally enabling that kind of behavior by advocating that we should just push ahead without addressing my concerns.
The correct thing to do is for the Stop Killing Games initiative to be more concrete and specify what features of the laws they want implemented to reduce latitude for the EU to screw things up. That's the outcome I'm hoping for - not that the SKG initiative doesn't pass.
> you're against it because you have no idea what it'll look like
I never said that. Perhaps you should read comments more carefully before responding to them.
> What's even the point of legislation if we have to be afraid it'll all be corrupted? Why even have political institutions at all at that point?
If you don't know that citizens have more leverage than just voting yes or no, I'm afraid you won't be able to comprehend the answer.
Based on how you talk to people, I see no value in discussing this with you any further after this.
> The correct thing to do is for the Stop Killing Games initiative to be more concrete and specify what features of the laws they want implemented to reduce latitude for the EU to screw things up. That's the outcome I'm hoping for - not that the SKG initiative doesn't pass.
They were as concrete as they needed to be. The people who wrote SKG aren't subject matter experts. They don't have to be in order to point out a problem that they want political institutions to discuss and address. It's not their place to specify the details. These people do not represent the wide population. They are not elected officials. This is what we elect political representatives for. Their job is to figure out the problem and the details.
If you do not believe in this process, that's not a problem with this petition. That's a you problem.
Don't bother replying. I don't care what you have to say anymore. I'm not tolerating your ad hominem attacks. It's not suitable for this site and I wish you'd go elsewhere to be toxic.
> Based on how you talk to people, I see no value in discussing this with you any further after this.
That's a concession that you cannot defend your position.
> If you do not believe in this process, that's not a problem with this petition. That's a you problem.
There's very well-documented issues of corruption in both US and EU government, so no, this is not a "me problem" - yet more emotional manipulation and misdirection. The existence of that corruption also nullifies everything that you wrote above. If you're denying the corruption, you're part of the problem.
> I'm not tolerating your ad hominem attacks.
I never committed an ad hominem, and you know it.
> It's not suitable for this site and I wish you'd go elsewhere to be toxic.
You know what's not suitable? The falsehoods and emotional manipulation that you've repeatedly made in your comments. That is toxic - not calling it out. What a perverse thing to claim.
You need to learn to be able to make your points without emotional outbursts. Being mad does not make you right.
So don’t even try because it might be bad?
Nowhere did I say or imply that - did you respond to the wrong comment by accident?
It’s kind of implied by your argument. All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
> It’s kind of implied by your argument.
No, it's absolutely not. You're reading your own thoughts into it. Nowhere is the implication that we should do nothing.
> All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
Because the authors are asking for public support for an initiative, and it now has a lot of public attention, with some specific people (mostly PirateSoftware) that are also publicly opposing it, and likely many more lurkers that don't want to sign it because of their concerns.
It's also the case that the more technical the topic, the more that legislators tend to screw it up, likely because of technical incompetence.
I'm elaborating the concerns so that they can get addressed. If you want more signatures, then you'd want to know what peoples' hangups are so that you can fix them.
The correct path would be to establish/find a consumer protection group to help legislative bodies craft the documents in a way that held true to the spirit of what is driving this initiative. The industry will do the same to thing. So as the documents are drafted the feedback from the public’s standpoint continues to have a voice. Hopefully that happens but it’s too early in the process to say and it requires funding too.
The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing
> establish/find a consumer protection group to help legislative bodies craft the documents
Yes, that's one of the ways to address this. Active consumer participation is still necessary, though, as the consumer protection group can still lose its way.
> The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing
No, it's factually not. If I order soup from a restaurant, and it arrives and is terrible and I complain, I do not have to specify what the chef did wrong, or how they should fix it, for my complaint to be valid - and the fact that I'm not providing the solution does not mean that I think nothing should be done. Similarly, I don't have to point out what the solution has to be for my complaint to be valid, and that does not mean that I think nothing should be done. That's just insane.
To correct your analogy to apply to prior comments, you didn’t like your soup so you tell the chef you have no confidence in their ability as a cook and should never even try to sell food because you have such little confidence in his abilities to create an dish anyone would enjoy eating. That’s nihilistic
> imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too)
Any such law should include a carve-out so that indie devs and small startups aren't impacted because just the need maintain compliance paperwork can be a burden. Carve out thresholds can be based on a combination of product revenue and units sold. Similar carve outs should generally be part of a lot of government regulations because startup entrepreneurship is so key to job growth, innovation and ensuring more choice for consumers. The best way to keep huge companies honest is making them keep earning their success by enabling smaller, hungrier new competitors laser focused on better serving customer needs.
That said, I do generally agree with your broader point that how regulations are written and enforced matters a lot. Too many start with good intentions but end up being sidestepped, subverted or triggering unintended consequences. If a "Stop Killing Games" regulation is drafted I think it should be narrowly targeted and conceived with the understanding that both the tech and business models will continue rapidly evolving and the market will quickly adapt to sidestep or subvert whatever new rules are put in place. That will likely mean that, realistically, an effective regulation probably shouldn't be as expansive or all-encompassing as we might be imagining from our armchairs.
I'd be happy if the focus was simply on getting large game companies to clearly commit up front what their commitments are over time by listing how long will each aspect of the game will continue to work by type (ie single-player offline, multiplayer self-hosted, multiplayer cloud, feature updates, security updates). Then company management and investors will know to set aside funds to cover server fees for that time period after the final sale. This isn't new or burdensome. Large companies already have accounting practices to accrue future liabilities on their books. When they sell future enterprise services to other companies there's a contract with financial reserves and revenue recognition. Selling a game to consumers with the expectation of future online delivered services should have a similarly spelled out commitment and appropriate financial reserves.
In reality, this may mean some companies choose minimum commitments that we'd all feel are far too short but as long as the consumers know up front what the commitment actually is, the free market can determine over time what costs consumers are willing to pay for which commitments. I expect some companies will try to minimize their financial commitment by making games which could obviously have offline single-player aspects always require online for everything or be subscription-only and only commit to offer the subscription for 1 month after purchase. Let them try and see how the market reacts. Government regulation isn't some magic wand we can wave to just force companies to "do the right thing" or, more specifically, make the products we want and sell them to us on the terms we'd prefer. Companies will either pass the increased costs on to consumers or not go into that business at all. Realistic regulation should focus first on two things: 1) Ensuring a level-playing field for fierce competition and, 2) clear up front disclosure of what the deal is.
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---This seems like it's being overly complicated. Isn't one of their requested options just to say that it's a "subscription" or that it may be discontinued some day when you originally "purchase" the game? ---If that option is acceptable to the stop game killing folks, why all this talk about public/private servers, security, portability, etc. ---When you sell it, just say "you are really kinda buying a subscription and we might shut it off in the future, but we'll try to give you some warning.?" ---Why would the industry be against that?
Vote with your wallet, there are thousands of games that don't do shady stuff.
Its not always obvious when you buy them which games will still be around a few years later.
Some singleplayer titles from just a few years ago are no longer playable. (Hello, Ubisoft). Meanwhile there are MMOs like guild wars 1, released 20 years ago, still playable today.
Right, exactly. Game companies don't advertise when you buy a game that its single-player features will only work as long as the servers stay up. I'm sure they don't want to. But if players aren't made aware of that fact then it's hard for them to make informed purchasing decisions.
It's obvious enough if you buy on Steam. Any game that says it needs it's own DRM or an account with the publisher is a nope.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was such a breath of fresh air in this regard. If you just want a reasonably priced, good game with no shady stuff but still that AA (arguably AAA) experience I can’t recommend it enough.
Yup
Something I am noticing more and more is how stagnant the North American game industry is. Meanwhile Europe and Japan are still killing it
Larian with BG3 - Europe Cd Projekt with Witcher and Cyberpunk - Europe
Nintendo rocking on as normal Monster hunter wilds and the RE remakes? Capcom, Japan
Elden Ring and Nightreign. FromSoft, Japan
Helldivers 2. Arrowhead Studios, Sweden
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Warhorse Studios, Czech
I cannot remember the last time I bought a new game and had a blast with it from a North American studio. Certainly not a AAA studio anyways
> Certainly not a AAA studio anyways
Almost every time I have spent more than $35 on a game in the past year I have wound up regretting it. It seems as though the quality of games typically increases til that point (exceptions exist, Terraria) and then declines sharply (again, exceptions exist). It has turned out to be a useful signal to be way more careful about a purchase for me.
I refuse to buy any game, AAA studio or indie, that costs more than $25.
I have shit to do and not a lot of time to game, so I can be patient for games to go on sale.
You mean you're not a fan of the latest reskin of CoD, or the latest reskin of CS with even more loot boxes?
And people are. Games sales are slumping in response to a decade of predatory dark patterns and simply not giving the audience what they're asking for.
Just keeping the games playable is a singular issue and in the noise. It's a good issue to single out for regulation.
>Vote with your wallet
I bought Minecraft from Mojang, years later I am forced to setup a Microsoft account to play the game, or risk downloading a cracked version. They did not offer a refund. Minecraft is a video game where you need to login even if you do not play online. (maybe things changed , I think this MS account thing was a few years back, it worked for my account but I read of people having big issues because some MS assholes ahd to force the Java edition players to use an MS account)
This behaviour should not be legal.
I was forced to not only setup a Microsoft account, but hand over my phone number - after creating an account without a phone number and transferring my Minecraft license over, they immediately locked my account.
Someone at Microsoft should go to jail for this.
Minecraft is at least reasonably easy to play offline, the account mostly only stores your skins. That said, it may require a third-party launcher now.
But you won't be able to access some public servers for a game you paid for without the account.
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I don't remember this being the case, you could reuse your old MC purchase when they made the transition over.
the mojang to minecraft.net transition, yeah. the minecraft.net to microsoft transition, no. https://youtu.be/rUFDRAEducI
There's fewer games to vote on every year, as conglomerates like Microsoft out vote your wallet a billion times over every time they buy a game studio to embrace, extend and then extinguish.
If looking at AAA publishers, maybe. The indie game scene continues to pump out games, some good, some bad, at half or less of cost of the AAA games. They won't be as polished, but many still deliver an exceptional experience.
there are more games than ever, it's just that microsoft, ubisoft, etc are spending billions on actual psychologists to ensure the populace remains apathetic towards them.
I don't care how smart you are, how much self control you have, whatever, in the face of billions of dollars, voting with your wallet does not stand a chance. The house always wins.
Huh, that's funny, I've never bought a Ubisoft game. I guess I'm the first person ever who's resistant to those psychologists.
Do you not understand that the people on HN, you and me included, are far from the average consumer? We care about things most people really don't.
They said:
> I don't care how smart you are, how much self control you have, whatever, in the face of billions of dollars, voting with your wallet does not stand a chance. The house always wins.
Yes, you're totally right that HN users are far from the average consumer, but they weren't talking about the average consumer - they were making a categorical statement that all consumers have no self-agency and are mind-controlled by these companies, and I was pointing out how clearly insane that claim is.
Or just sign the initiative, so that you maybe don't have to abstain to achieve this goal? I don't understand this mentality.
Americans have been conditioned to blame individuals for everything wrong in society.
Look where decades of "voting with our wallets" led us. How some people can still utter that sentence unironically is beyond me at this point.
Your claim that there has been "decades of voting with our wallets" is laughable. Nobody I know who plays games decides to buy them or not based on ideological reasons - they just buy the things that are popular or that their friends play. There's extremely little engagement on these issues.
But it's true. Most people pay for what's being currently promoted. So "voting with wallet" doesn't really work, because you will be outvoted by majority of people who don't know what they're getting into. That's why gacha games and other lootbox-heavy ones are most profitable. This is where "vote with your wallet" brought us.
You're confused about the meaning of "voting with your wallet".
> But it's true.
It's not - you're talking about something else entirely. When @umvi says "vote with your wallet" they mean buy things whose values you support. You, and GP @thrance, are not describing that - you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values - the exact opposite. So, no, we haven't had decades of "unsuccessful voting with your wallet" because consumers have been mentally checked out for decades.
> So "voting with wallet" doesn't really work, because you will be outvoted by majority of people who don't know what they're getting into
That's literally how normal democracy works - if the majority of the populace is uninformed, then they'll vote in an uninformed way, and the solution is for them to get informed and start doing research and making conscious decisions. That's what @umvi means when they say "vote with your wallet." - active participation instead of passive existence.
You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
>You're confused about the meaning of "voting with your wallet".
>You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
Probably.
>you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values
That is probably where I am confused - I'm not sure that people "do not respect the values". It's either that they have values, but those values are imposed, or it's what you describe, that people just don't think deeply about it. And from my personal experience I really can't tell. But when I read the web, everyone apparently figured it out, and do indeed consciously decide.
The problem with democracy: people on average have average intelligence and you don't solve difficult problems with average intelligence. That being said, it's still better than anything else we've tried.
Right - I'm also hand-waving a bit here and lumping democratic republics in with "true democracies" for the sake of simplicity, but you're absolutely correct.
Then why do you call it "vote with your wallet" and not "buy stuff you like"? If you don't intend for your purchase to weigh in on anything, why do you call it "voting"?
If that's truly what you mean by "vote with your wallet", then yeah, we're on the same page. I almost only play solo games, most of them indie.
Voting with your wallet does work, possibly others don't share in your tastes.
It would be fair, but when you go online, everyone (and I mean everyone) shares their distaste for modern gaming industry and its practices. Yet, those practices still bring the most money to this day. So does it mean that people go against their principles? Or is it just another "vocal minority" situation?
There's some evidence that it's a vocal minority. Taking a game made by a terrible company that has a lot of dark patterns, Call of Duty Black Ops 6 has sold at least 491 thousand units (https://steamdb.info/app/1938090/charts/) (certainly far higher, but apparently they haven't published the sales figures, so this is the best lower bound that we get), yet you see far fewer than that number of Reddit posts and comments and upvotes, or upvotes on YouTube videos about these terrible practices.
I suspect that the majority of those who play games would rather these mechanics not exist, but don't feel strongly enough about it to boycott those games. I don't have evidence for this beyond my interactions with personal friends and their "mild apathetic unhappiness" for lack of a better term.
There's also definitely a number of people that are willing to accept some compromise to either play a very well-made game, or one that their friends are playing. I hate Epic Games and its practices, for instance, but I'm willing to play Fortnite with friends if they ask me, and I justify that by telling myself that I'm never going to buy anything with their premium currency.
You proved my point: "voting with your wallet" will never work. DLCs, microtransactions, lootboxes... They all got normalized alarmingly quickly, despite numerous calls to "vote with your wallets" every single times. We need regulations, isolated individuals have no power against a system built to extract the most out of them.
> You proved my point: "voting with your wallet" will never work. DLCs, microtransactions, lootboxes... They all got normalized alarmingly quickly, despite numerous calls to "vote with your wallets" every single times.
Factually incorrect. There are numerous instances of consumers complaining, leaving bad reviews on Steam, refunding games, or stopping buying games because of their values, and the studios/producers actually changed the thing. Helldivers 2's mandatory PSN account is one of the most recent instances of that happening.
Factually, consumers will band together to take collective action, and when they do, there are positive effects. The problem is apathy, not lack of power.
> We need regulations, isolated individuals have no power against a system built to extract the most out of them
This is literally self-contradictory. If individuals can't "vote with their wallets" to achieve change (which, as I described above, empirically does happen), then individuals in a democracy also can't vote to enact their will on the system - and those regulators are appointed by those elected representatives.
Make up your mind - does voting work, or does it not?
> Factually incorrect.
How. You only gave anecdotal evidence of some instances where enough complaining got consumers a little concession. Meanwhile, DLCs, microtransactions and lootboxes went from "totally inacceptable" to "absolutely bog standard" in a few years. Do you deny that at each step of this process, many people called to "vote with your wallet"? Do you deny that it failed miserably and that the game industry keeps getting away with more and more, in spite of it?
> This is literally self-contradictory. If individuals can't "vote with their wallets" to achieve change (which, as I described above, empirically does happen), then individuals in a democracy also can't vote to enact their will on the system - and those regulators are appointed by those elected representatives.
Literally straw-manning my point. I should have emphasized "isolated". To me calls to "vote with your wallet" are akin to a single worker demanding a raise or better working conditions. Without a union, they're out of luck. On the other hand, a collective effort to change the law like "Stop Killing Games", now we're talking.
> You only gave anecdotal evidence of some instances where enough complaining got consumers a little concession
You're using "anecdotal" incorrectly. Your statement was ""voting with your wallet" will never work." and I provided a counterexample, meaning that your statement is factually incorrect, so you're just wrong. It's also incorrect to call it a "concession" - the players got everything they asked for - there was no compromise. There are also far more counterexamples if you cared to search the internet for a few minutes - the Skyrim paid mods incident, the League of Legends free lootbox removal, and The Crew 2 and Motorfest not having offline modes as just three more.
> Meanwhile, DLCs
Been around for decades, not just "a few years"...
> microtransactions and lootboxes went from "totally inacceptable" to "absolutely bog standard" in a few years
Yes, and? Not enough people cared to actually do anything about it. The fact is, that when people care enough, and actually put their money where their mouth is, companies either listen (as above) or go out of business (as a number of studios are today).
It's quite simple to see that when people don't buy a studio's games, the studio either changes things or goes out of business. The reason that companies get away with these practices is because people either (1) morally compromise enough to buy games with mechanisms that they don't approve of, (2) they literally just don't care, or (3) aren't even aware of the issues. The call to "vote with your wallet" is meant to encourage the compromisers to stop compromising and the apathetic to realize that they have to take action for change to happen.
If your claim is that when people make values-based purchases it doesn't affect the market or fix issues - that's just factually wrong. If your complaint is that people don't care enough to make values-based purchases - that's exactly what the call to action of "vote with your wallet" is meant to help.
> Literally straw-manning my point. I should have emphasized "isolated".
I assumed you weren't talking about isolated individuals because that's completely irrelevant to this discussion. The poster's call to action of "vote with your wallet" on a site with tens/hundreds of thousands of visitors is literally a call to collective action, so any references to isolated action is just not relevant or logically coherent.
And, because you got that part wrong, this isn't really relevant, but...
> To me calls to "vote with your wallet" are akin to a single worker demanding a raise or better working conditions
This is also completely incorrect. If an individual worker demands something from their employers, they can just get fired. The power is in the hands of the employer. In the case of games, the power imbalance is heavily skewed towards the purchasers - if you decide not to purchase a game, the studio loses on revenue, and you lose some tiny increment of entertainment. Comparing someone having to play a different game, with someone getting fired, is crazy. Those situations are categorically different.
> On the other hand, a collective effort to change the law like "Stop Killing Games", now we're talking.
Telling people to "vote with their wallets" is a collective effort, and it works. That doesn't mean you can't complement it with regulation, but anyone familiar with the legislative system knows how incredibly difficult it is to wield regulation and how much you should try to solve problems through other methods first.
> 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.
I find it really frustrating how they phrase things because there is so much BS in almost one sentence. The entire point of having a private server is so that they are no longer in control of these things.
Moreover if I am running a private server:
- It isn't their responsibility to secure players data.
- it isn't their responsibility to remove illegal content.
- it isn't their responsibility to remove "unsafe" (whatever that means) community content.
So how could they be 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.
This is pretty much disingenuous argument that "PirateSoftware" was pushing. They are pretending that a single player mode would need to be created. This isn't what is being requested.
I don't disagree, but this is just one symptom of what the video game industry has become.
As someone who hadn't played video games since his youth back in the late 80s, 90s, I was astonished when I tried to get back into it a few years ago.
Kernel-level DRM, online checks, €80+ price tags, incomplete games that require DLC, and all this for rushed unfinished broken games. You keep paying though, so the game companies keep pushing ("if they'll put up with this, what else can we get away with?").
If any of this goes through in terms of legislation, it will mostly just have “buy” change into “lifetime subscription” (where as usual, “lifetime” means the lifetime of the service). I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done, and the article itself alludes to that outcome, but it also means that it won’t stop the killing of games.
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How is forcing manufacturers to state that they are planning to bork your game in the future "increasing the barrier of entry"?
If the only thing that this initiative seeks to achieve is clear and fair labeling when purchasing something, I'm all for it.
If in the future, if anyone (including this initiative) requires the release or maintenance of server builds or code, I am against it.
> if anyone (including this initiative) requires the release or maintenance of server builds or code, I am against it
Why? What do you personally lose because of that?
There is a competitive advantage for being able to hold onto your code and builds. It currently requires quite a lot of effort and skill and persistence to resurrect live service games. This allows us to make money by re-releasing games and remastering them and so on.
If you require us to release server builds and or code "while still respecting copyright", the result will be that countries like Russia and China will offer competing services against us and we will not be able to make nearly as much money anymore.
I don't think there is much trouble in re-releasing and remastering games, since the company does not forfeit its IP and it doesn't give anyone else the right to publish the same game. Plus no one suggests that the company should instantly release the server binaries or source code upon game's release. Only when they themselves stop profiting from it.
For instance, with WoW, you currently have unofficial servers, but it doesn't stop Activision Blizzard from making huge money from WoW, both from new addons and classic ones.
I don't think the companies should be required to release server executables ever, and yes especially not at release.
Let me try to argue against my own point with WoW as an example then.
You say there are unofficial/private servers. Are these server builds downloadable online somewhere? It doesn't matter if it was from a leak, a reverse engineering effort, etc. Or are they the guarded property of the groups running the private servers?
The reason I ask is because, it is my opinion that once a reliable build exists, inevitably it will be hosted in China and Russia and so on, and now you have a serious competitor to deal with who doesn't need to follow the same laws as you.
If WoW is still able to make a ton of money despite widely available builds being out there, then I think my position would be that WoW is just a cultural phenomenon that can survive all of that. But if it turns out that the server builds aren't widely available, I'd be curious to see how it survives when those are released.
Think-- why would you pay a quite high monthly price for the official thing when you can pay pennies for the same exact thing? The only possible answer is conveniece and network effects ("my friends are on the official WoW so...")
> I don't think the companies should be required to release server executables ever
I still don't get why. If the company stops profiting from the product, they shouldn't care if people self-host it. Unless, of course, the company wants to force their playerbase to another project that does currently generate profit.
> Are these server builds downloadable online somewhere?
Not that I know of.
>once a reliable build exists, inevitably it will be hosted in China and Russia and so on, and now you have a serious competitor to deal with who doesn't need to follow the same laws as you
That's true, but it's not a problem for Blizzard, rather for those who host those unofficial servers. Because the main competition will be among them.
>why would you pay a quite high monthly price for the official thing
Mainly because of the quality. The official servers are fully functional, get regular maintenance and updates. While unofficial servers can go offline easily, they lack latest content, not all quests might work etc.
So if, for some reason, Blizzard can't keep their servers in good shape, but the community can, then it's Blizzard's fault if people start leaving official servers. And what if Blizzard intentionally starts making the service worse and worse to shift people to their other game (whatever it may be)? In this case I think that having an option like unofficial servers is good for community. Not good for Blizzard, yes, but good for people that just want to play the video game that they've been playing for 20+ years. This is what SKG is about.
If game publishers could in clear writing at time of purchase commit to a set number of years that game will be live then I think that is a good start. For example when the next live service game is released and you go to purchase it there is a clear warning that the publisher has only guaranteed the game to be live for 2 years. Personally that would prevent me from buying the game, but perhaps not others.
The idea that a publisher can sell a live service game and shut it down in 1 month with no legal repercussions is ridiculous to me.
The publisher can't do that. No one can tell the future.
They could be liable if they shut down the servers and make the purchase unusable before the end of the minimum contracted duration.
Predictable response, they'd rather have complete autonomy to decide what they will do and be the sole arbiter of consumers' rights, while gaming history disintegrates thanks to the double-tap of online-dependency shutdowns and marketplaces that make it a TOS violation to leave your library to someone.
> If you complained that it's too hard to hash the passwords entered by your users or to encrypt medical data, or that you don't feel like complying with GDPR, you'd get rightfully fined out of existence.
Hear, hear.
If this happened all multiplayer titles would turn F2P.
People do not appreciate quite what a narrow path has to be walked by games from an IP standpoint. Code libraries, licensed property, per platform (and platform category) restrictions, general IP restrictions (not showing vehicles being damaged, or UI overlays on certain parts of licensed objects) and so on. This is why in the recent ROG Ally announcement Microsoft could not say all XBox games will run on it, because if it's a PC it's not a console, so various games will not be allowed to be sold on it as those contributing IP rights will have been split up separately.
Simply pretending these very real concerns don't exist is nonsense land. You want games with real vehicles or licensed music? This is what you have to deal with. At least these days they have learned to license music for longer than used to be the case.
This is part of the beauty of such a thing being a law.
If your code library, licensed property etc. does not allow companies to comply with the law, then its value is zero and you won't be able to sell it. So suddenly, all providers of such libraries etc. have to make this possible.
how did they do it in the past? If I can put my Tony Hawks cd from the PS2 into a cd player and enjoy all the DRM music, what changed between now and then?
If music labels refuse to license out their songs like that, then if this law passes, they're going to have to suck it up and play nice again, else lose customers/publishers.
Most of that era consoles would load level data from the CD, and then play the music as cd-da audio. There was no DRM on the music, perhaps because nobody thought of it, but more likely because there wasn't quite enough computing power to do it. PS2 games could be on CD or DVD and could have had cd quality music as a data file reasonably, but PS1 probably not, and cross platform games likely would use cd audio because it's easy.
The choice for licensors was to have the music in the game and available on the cd or not.
For a modern release, DRM music tracks that only play in the game is an option.
We've also learned that the licenses are (or were) often time limited... The publisher can't make new copies after some time, without getting a new license for the audio. Sometimes that's also related to a different format.
The issue with most of what you're saying here is that all of that works the way it does because it can, not because it has to. Code libraries, for example, may essentially prohibit what is being requested by SKG because they can. However, if they couldn't then they wouldn't. The companies selling the libraries aren't going to simply shut up shop.
Which is just to say, if there's money to be made then businesses will do so within the regulatory framework.
Those are all just decisions the companies made. For future games, the game developers and the companies licensing IP can simply make different decisions. If a large market like the EU creates strong incentives for them, they will make different decisions.
Now, this is not necessarily the case for existing games. Revisiting existing licensing deals can be needlessly difficult. But I'm assuming the proposed regulations will only apply to new games rather than trying to force changes retroactively.
All of those things are concerns. But if video game publishers really needed to figure this stuff out in order to sell units, they would. Contracts would change. But they'd still get signed. Everyone wants money too much. The only hard part is trying to fix this stuff for games which have already signed on the dotted line. Or games which have shipped and disbanded their software teams.
But even then, can't they just opensource what they're allowed to? Even if it doesn't build, it wouldn't take the community long to rip out FMOD or whatever and replace it with working alternatives. Or submit a final patch which removed the part where games phone home before launching in singleplayer mode. Why would that interfere with the licence for 3rd party IP?
IMO if I'm "buying" the game, you can't also remotely disable the thing I bought. (And "buy" is the word they all use!). If you want to remotely disable the game at some point in the future, I'm fine with that so long as they list it very explicitly and loudly on the box. "THIS GAME ONLY PLAYABLE UNTIL 2030". Games publishers need to start being honest and upfront about what we're paying for. Its not an unreasonable ask.
How things are doesn’t prevent how things could be. Studios could negotiate better licensing deals.
anyone ever noticed how so many completely different restaurants food tastes almost exactly the same? it’s because so many of them use the exact same food suppliers to buy their food before they cook it. [0]
gaming over the last few years feels the same way. like they all taste almost the same.
> Simply pretending these very real concerns don’t exist is nonsense land.
i don’t believe this to be true at all.
if all of the things you listed are limiting game development so much, than this isn’t “progress” in the games space. if it’s really that bad, maybe we should regress, start from the basics and let some of the incredible indie studios or midsize studios take the lead who will A) bring us actual originality, not more IP rehashed for the thousandth time, B) not bleed gamers wallets dry and C) lets us actually own the thing we buy.
sooo many amazing games were made in the past that were able to do this and do it well, the difference is they didn’t cry if they “only” made $40 million in profit.
cod3 made like $400 million in the first 24 hours.
the difference now is the AAA studios are sucking all of the air out of the room and not leaving nearly as much room for midsize studios.
[0] sysco, us foods, and pfg supply an absolute massive number of restaurants in the US. sysco alone distributes to something like 700,000 restaurants.
> You want games with real vehicles or licensed music?
Not really if it means that I wouldn't be able to play the game in 10 or 20 years.
The number of people who want that may be higher than you think. It's the only/main reason why the FIFA-games exist.
All the more reason to have games that don't have it then? We could have a modern Sensible Soccer for everyone else who only cares about the gameplay.
This isn't relevant to your points, but thought I'd pipe in to your rhetorical question anyway:
> You want games with real vehicles or licensed music?
The answer is actually no.
These concerns have been raised and addressed. Firstly, I am not sure how cars getting damaged means that multiplayer games have to become F2P - but that's not steelmanning your argument.
One of the major concerns raised has been middle are: components that developers purchase and use in their server implementation. This is often the largest hurdle to many pro-consumer outcomes: the developers can't share anything related because they don't own it.
The most likely outcome after sensible laws are passed is that the industry evolves just as it did with GDPR. Developers will look to other middlewares that are SKG compliant.
Failing that, gamers have routinely shown that they are capable of clean room implementations of server software (WoW and Genshin Impact) - all that needs be done is the client being released with all server auth disabled and some way to specify the server to use. Developers might even be required to provide basic protocol specifications. Essentially, repair it yourself instructions.
This strawman argument you have provided is exactly the same one used by Pirate Software. It relies on a highly specific interpretation of the initiative. The initiative calls for "reasonably playable state," which can have a vast number of outcomes that are different to the single one that you have chosen.
And if the cars do prohibit a game from addressing server concerns and remaining in a reasonably playable state, remove them. The game will continue to be reasonably playable following that.
This goes beyond games and calls for regulation of anything sold as a product, but working more like a subscription service. Similar issues also affect an increasing number of appliances that rely on apps and connect through manufacturer-hosted services. If the manufacturer goes out of business or shuts down a service, fully working devices can lose some or all of their features. Manufacturers should be required to open up their devices and provide a documented local API, if for no other reason, then to reduce the huge amount of electronic waste created by making devices artificially obsolete.
I think that approaching the problem from the perspective of a physical product, like a smart lightbulb that doesn't work anymore because the manufacturer shut down its servers, would be easier for non-technical people to understand and would likely have a better chance of success.
Related:
Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44478083
Stop Killing Games
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44470632
Stop Killing Games
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44445880
Seems pretty obvious to me that if this passes, big game companies will either re-label all new releases as “subscriptions” and/or just never make a single-player game again. And mostly nothing will change. If you don’t like companies like this, don’t buy their games. There’s literally thousands of indie game companies that don’t abuse their users.
> don’t buy their games
Not a solution. Other people will buy them and outvote you with their wallets. This has already happened. People did buy The Crew, and I doubt that most of them realized that it will be closed 10 years later.
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Having followed this initiative quite extensively from the beginning, the most baffling thing has been the underwhelming support from developers themselves, both from studios and individual devs.
You would think the very idea of years of your work being rendered unplayable in an instant would be enough incentive to signal boost any effort against this industry practice.
Instead, developer discourse has revolved around just how hard it would be to do what this is petition is asking for. You are an engineer for crying out loud. If you solved a problem but a new constraint arrives in the form of a law, you figure out how to solve the problem under the new constraint. Just because something is hard, doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
It's almost like flexing your skills and signalling your elite knowledge is more important to people than simply defending what's right.
I think that most developers are just afraid to voice such anti-industry opinion. Gamedev is fairly small industry, so if you piss off wrong people, you might be left without job opportunities.
I feel... uneasy about the idea. Are games art?
If so, are you comfortable telling artists what types of art they can create? I know not everyone is going to agree with me here but it feels like a slippery slope.
Would any art gallery pay for a piece that the artist could walk in and take away whenever they wanted?
This isn't so much about art, more about what you deserve when you pay money for something. People are still free to make whatever they want.
art, shmart. aside the fact that a large part of art is money laundering or tax evasion, what is being asked for is more like banning radioactive or cancerous paint pigment
Once art get sold, it becomes a product and your customers have legal rights in that transaction
Depends entirely on the game. Some are art, games designed by people who love games for the sake of games. Others are things that employ the use of art for the sake of long-term financial gain.
> are you comfortable telling artists what types of art they can create?
Yes, absolutely. For instance, I think it's fine to prohibit artists to kill animals for the sake of making art. Or humans, but it's already outlawed.
Yes, games are art. Which is why this is so important. Are you comfortable with destroying cultural heritage for the sake of corporate profit? Did you even ask artists working in the game industry what they think about this?
>I feel... uneasy about the idea. Are games art?
Yes, which is precisely why they shouldn't be treated like a commodity. Nobody is telling artists what art they can make, what the initiative is about making sure public continues to have access to works of art.
Which is normal for everything that's considered to be of cultural relevance. Film studios and novelists don't get to burn libraries down the moment someone stops paying them. It's exactly because games are art that preservation and access need to be priorities. Can you imagine if Amazon started to delete books from your Kindle? (I'm pretty sure they tried that once actually, with 1984 no less)
The destruction of art is, in most civilizations, seen as completely obscene. The reason why game companies got away with it was precisely because games had a lower status.
How do you feel about art that changes over time? Temporal pieces. Plays that were only ever to be performed once?
Those are cool! They're also designed that way for a specific art-based reasoning - the temporality often has a deeper meaning.
Games designed for limited play, however, are designed that way for the sake of profit churn.
what a strawman. its not about "you cannot draw this" but its more like "please dont use dyes that offgas deadly fumes", a technical regulation not about substance
Talk about strawman, it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!" And you're comparing it to poison gas
>... it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!"
It's much more like "I paid for something, there should be a law so no one can take what I've paid for"
>... it's literally "I paid for something I don't like, there should be a law!"
Is this entirely the fault of the customer, or is it that the studios have largely forced this model upon customers, leaving them with little choice?
IMHO the incentives are disproportionately in favour of everyone doing something that hurts consumers (= "something that I don't like"), thus regulation in favour of consumer rights is appropriate.
There isn't a scenario where, at scale, someone can offer a product that respects consumer rights and is successful, because it's too profitable to not respect consumer rights just like it wasn't in many other cases.
this was not a literal comparison, wtf, but an example of a technical limitation that will be imposed by law as a counter to your "art" stupidity. You can Use alternative formulation if you cant comprehend basic methaphors: „stop using dyes that decay in 2 months“
At a macro level, killed games are a good thing for gaming companies. It creates a shortage of playable games so that new games sell and continue to make money.
The biggest competitor to the video game industry is movies (Netflix, Disney plus, etc) and past games.
Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today? If players can play thousands of high quality games for free, why bother paying for a new game?
I suppose the book industry has the same problem, maybe there are some parallels to study from that.
> Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today?
This is something we can answer pretty easily by looking at the book industry. People do enjoy novelty. The pulp sci-fi/fantasy from the 60s-80s is long forgotten save for a few masterpieces, and there is a flow of recent books that people buy and read.
> At a macro level, killed games are a good thing for gaming companies.
But they aren’t good for consumers.
Silly that this is being downvoted, especially since the book industry comparison is an interesting one:
There will always be people like myself who enjoy older (even outdated) books, but even we still buy new books because they are part of the zeitgeist and carry new ideas/developments. It'd be the same for new video games, some people would enjoy older games, but they'd likely still pick up a similar new game that developed something novel.
I guess the real problem here is that video game companies don't want to create anything novel, not least because it's a risk.
It would still be illegal to acquire a copy of a killed game. Their numbers would still dwindle, since they'd be limited to people who bought the game before it was killed.
Until copyright runs out.
And as we all know, the book, music and motion picture industries have all ceased operations due to the presence of copyright expiry.
I mean, Project Gutenberg and libraries exist and the literature industry hasn't died yet.
> Even the singleplayer components [of Ubisoft’s “The Crew (2014) were unusable when the servers were turned off]: [Y]ou just wanting to race around cars in a world with you and other NPCs in it, is no longer viable. Essentially, you didn't "buy" the game, but in a sense were "renting" it for an indeterminate amount of time, a lease that expired due to the publishers and developers no longer wanting to provide that service for you.
Probably true! There is likely some additional revenue that the publisher gets from running servers, even for single-player mode. The question then is what will change in these games if that revenue is no longer there to fund them? Will the quality be lower? Will the price be higher? Will the publishers release new games less frequently? Maybe they just don’t make single-player games anymore?
Maybe they just stop adding hard requirements for online connectivity to their single-players games, which is something which takes more effort to do in the first place?
I worry that they just stop completely shipong single-player mode as that seems easiest.
That is fine. Other companies will fill that void. There are plenty of small indy companies that make great single-player games, that could benefit from the attention.
This might happen to so extent but a big part of the market is single player games, so those companies would also lose a large portion of their profit
Ok, but the context of the article (which I quoted) is multi player games with a single player mode. Of course single player games don’t need and often don’t have a server, so whether or not they make up a large part of the market is irrelevant here.
Honestly? I think we can do without these predatory practices even at the cost of some games.
And I somehow doubt there’s revenue to make off these single player games being online dependent, because the most probable ways simply wouldn’t fly in Europe due to consumer protections.
Most likely it’s just “anti-piracy” or something like that.
> the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers
Nice way to make publishers stop making multiplayer services available to the EU in the first place because deactivating it is illegal when costs outweigh profits.
Great, maybe it will foster innovation among indie studios.
this has already been addressed but just for you.
they won't leave the biggest global market with almost 500 million potential buyers because they can't rug pull anymore, even if they somehow suddenly don't like money anymore others will gladly take there place.
the same "argument" has been thrown at GDPR which now every single corporation follows.
Sounds good to me! EU gamers will not be taken advantage of.
I'm fine with that. Others will come and fill the void.
I work for a game company. I am ardently opposed to this idea.
All you will end up with, in the best case scenario that isn't even guaranteed to happen, is extremely mediocre games for which you will have the server executable along with the client.
Whether you like it or not, thanks to piracy and competition (and yes I've heard Gabe Newell's quote on piracy), server authoritative video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy, and not even just for games. And no, "just release your source code then" is not a valid rule to enforce either.
If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own? It has never been easier to do so, and there are freely usable code and art assets on hundreds of different platforms for you to attempt.
>is extremely mediocre games for which you will have the server executable along with the client.
opposed to absolutely nothing? yeah i think we can do with "mediocre"
>video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy
if they aren't misleading customers about it sure. make the game a subscription and you can shut it down whenever you want :)
>And no, "just release your source code then" is not a valid rule to enforce either.
nobody said that. the petition explicitly leaves out the "how" because it could possibly run against existing copyright laws.
>have you tried making your own?
ad hominem and irrelevant to the topic. i don't need to have every build a roof to be against building it with asbestos.
Re subscription marketing messaging, totally agree.
Re mediocre, ok that's fine.
Re the "how", then we arent really talking about anything here. Until there is a how, there is nothing to firmly agree or disagree with, so we have to talk in hypotheticals, which we are, and which is semi valuable.
Re making your own, when a company sells you a toilet and it breaks, you fix it yourself or buy a new one. When your 1999 game doesnt run on Windows 11, you fix it yourself or you buy a new one. If you require companies to fix it for you, the small ones will go bankrupt and the big ones will find a loophole.
>the small ones will go bankrupt and the big ones will find a loophole.
you mean the loop hole that was industry standard before 2000 and a handful of dudes in basements solved?
Sorry I am not sure what you mean, but I would actually really like to know what you are referencing
private server where the default in the past. that's why games that are 30 years old like quake, doom and unreal tournament (all created by dev teams the size of about a dozen with as much funding as current indie games) can still be played to this day and as long as software allows it forever with 0 effort or cost by the developers.
I completely and thoroughly agree with this suggestion. It shouldn't be a requirement, however. You should reward companies who do this with your money, and it should be clearly labeled that you will or will not be receiving this.
> If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own?
This is such and odd thing to suggest. People want to play the games they paid for, _obviously_ they aren't going to make their own game.
What you have paid for is not a physical copy of something that is guaranteed to work forever.
All you will achieve with this initiative is that that will be clearly labeled now, instead of implied.
If that's all that will happen, why do you have a problem with it?
If that was the end of the road, then I definitely don't have a problem with it. Like another poster said, it would be like labeling for cigarettes, and that is totally fine.
What I do fear however, is that they will go a step further, requiring companies to release server builds, client and server sourde code, and then of course the ultimate dream, "well no you actually can't turn it off, we require you to maintain it forever even if it loses you money because gaming is a right".
>requiring companies to release server builds, client and server sourde code
you did not read the initiative. they do not mention any of that and explicitly state that this won't be required (even if they wanted because of copyright laws).
Politics is a forward looking industry. As you can see with Trump, he went from talking about deporting so called illegal immigrants to deporting naturalized citizens.
Do not be surprised when they go from something harmless to something punitive that forces small companies out of business.
punitive won't be "break there own laws to enforce others" but nice fear mongering. copyright infringement might as well be above murder in terms of politician interest don't worry.
>What you have paid for is not a physical copy of something that is guaranteed to work forever.
untested legal ground in the EU
>All you will achieve with this initiative is that that will be clearly labeled now, instead of implied.
maybe or maybe not. creator of the infinitive has already acknowledged that its possible but still preferable to a surprise rug pull grey area.
> If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own?
No need to go that far, there's plenty of games sold with better terms of service than the ones your company offers.
Forcing companies to be upfront about this aspect will help concerned consumers choose these instead of yours.
And which company is that?
e.g. Factorio. e.g. Hades.
Both games available offline and DRM-free.
How do they handle piracy, unless they don't? In which case, very good for them that they have such a great group of supporters. I am not sure if we should require every company to behave in such a way, and simply let consumers reward such companies with their money? This is just a fundamental economic model argument that I apply to any industry, except maybe baby formula or something.
> How do they handle piracy, unless they don't?
So your point is that you need to fuck your paying customers in order to mildly annoy people who don't buy your games?
Besides, the proposal doesn't even require you not to have anti-piracy servers; it only requires you to avoid bricking the game once you turn of the servers.
> simply let consumers reward such companies with their money?
For that you would need to be upfront about it.
I think there’s a mid ground where industry does nothing except slap a sticker on warning people that game features will sunset in the future, making parts of the game unplayable, perhaps making some commitment like no sooner than December 31, 2030.
It will essentially be the similar thing as the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes or the Parental Guidance logo on an album. The are US things, not sure if EU has similar.
This is already one of the proposed solutions. Although you would have to state a specific date as not to mislead consumers. I would then have to decide if paying 80$ for a game I won't be able to play in the next 5 years is worth it.
Completely and thoroughly agree. That is a very reasonable outcome.
It seems you didn't read the initiative text. The initiative does not force game Devs to release the code or make specific technical demands.
Game Devs only have to make a plan for when the game gets shut down to still allow the users to be able to play the game. How that is archived can be decided by the developers. Of course the law could be different in the future.
But most people do agree that it is bad to intentionally break games that people payed money for. All they are basically are asking for, is that games are built in a way that they can be enjoyed as long as possible (maybe supported by the community). Is that not also in the intention of the game developers?
It might be the intention of some game developers. I can tell you however that the intention of the people who run my company is to make as much money as possible.
My opinion is that you, as a consumer, should reward the companies who treat you best with your money. You should not require the government to do it for you, because if you do, the thing you end up with might not be the thing you receive, sadly.
And yes, this logic holds for most industries, but not all. I for one think there should be stringent rules for food processing, since that can actually kill you, and yet still putrid beef and tainted baby formula are sold on a relatively frequent basis.
> Whether you like it or not, thanks to piracy and competition ... server authoritative video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy
The only people you're effecting are legitimate players. Pirates crack the games and have an easier time for it. Unless you're talking about multiplayer games, which wasn't the target of the proposal (though even there I'd argue it's definitely doable).
> I work for a game company
You work for a shit game company.
Your games are mediocre now.
It's better to have a mediocre game that one can play, than an exceptional game that one can't.
You're free to make games now, and yet it's most often hard to justify money for a game that isn't a skin on a version of solitaire (on sale).
That's how bad your industry is. So, please, with your warning. As if you have work product to bargain with.
You act as if your industry is busy. Outside of a couple of exceptional studios, and infinite sequels on literally only a few popular formulas (whether or not these formulas are good is another discussion), your industry is largely non-productive. If we are utilizing your metric of good vs mediocre.
I agree with you that there is a mountain of shit in the gaming industry.
Is any other industry different? Are Instagram and Tiktok literally not brainwashing hundreds of millions of people? Do defense companies care that innocents are murdered with their weapons? Do airplane companies face any enforceable moral judgment that they encourage relatively rich people to engage in idle leisure in other countries rather than being productive with their time for society, to which they owe some level of production in exchange for the society that raised them?
The argument knows no bounds. It is a matter of taste.
Points for the most insane answer possible, no offense. No idea what you are talking about.
Given that you work for the video game industry, perhaps your comment is in a sense perfect.
The last part of it is just me going off the rails, but do you really think only the game industry is bad?
Good luck with that really weird approach.
It is about truthful advertising. If you are selling a video game, you aren't allowed to yank access to that game away from users.
If you wanna do a subscription or a rental, you have to call it that.
I don't see why forcing companies to stop lying is a bad idea.
ah, yes, for example quake3 an extremely mediocre game that has server executable along with the client? what is this argument even about?
Ok, so your idea is that we will require all companies to release server and client builds, and also the source code as well (?), at some clearly defined point in the future, if they decide to terminate the live service?
Will we also require the same of the smart fridge companies? Will we also require the same of companies that don't sell live services, such as toilets?
If I buy a smart fridge and the company that made them suddenly decided to turn them all off, then I'd definitely like the ability to turn mine back on, yes.
And no, there's no expectation of source code. That's been covered many times.
How can we ensure that if we legislate the games industry, then we also legislate all other industries with no special carve outs? That would make me much more supportive.
So your argument is that you won't support Stop Killing Games, but you'll support Stop Killing Things In General?
That's a strange stance. Even if that was your position SKG has a good opportunity to act as a stepping stone towards something grander.
Yes that's right. My opinion is that I am against legislating anything until we legislate everything.
Put yourself in the shoes of an employee or owner of some business. Would you enjoy being forced to follow certain rules of actual consequence, while others are allowed to do whatever they want?
good idea! we need to give rights to the consumers!
I'm all for it if no industry receives a special carve out!
> server authoritative video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy
It is a legitimate business strategy... for now.