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Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

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Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#31

Post by gchamonlive »

imiric wrote: post #23
gchamonlive wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you played The Talos Principle 2? Yep, games are toys! It's nothing more than that. What we fail to realise in our industrial society is that toys are a fundamental piece of our culture, they enable learning lots of different skills that wouldn't be possible in the "real world", they foster creativity, problem solving, bonding and cooperation... Toys are just toys, and yet they are the most important things we h…

I agree with most of what you said, but describing video games as nothing more than toys does a disservice to the medium. Yes, video games can be educational and entertaining, just like real world toys, but they can also be artistic and communicate stories. They're the most expressive and engaging storytelling device we have ever invented. Not all games are all of these things, and there's nothing wrong with games th…

> Yes, video games can be educational and entertaining, just like real world toys, but they can also be artistic and communicate stories.

Storytelling and art isn't exclusive to video games though. Board games for instance have tons of storytelling and are very rich in art. They are, however nothing more than toys, and they don't need to be. That's my whole point. Being "just a toy" is pejorative only in the industrial, productive society.

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#32

Post by OkayPhysicist »

1123581321 wrote: post #25
prartichoke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common mischaracterization of stop killing games. It does not propose publishers keep games online indefinitely, but to provide the bare minimum to the community to host them if they decide to shut the servers down for good. If the 16-year-old Unturned dev could do it, so can AAA studios

What is the bare minimum they are seeking? It seems like advocates would give varying answers depending on their technical ability.

They're pretty up front about the fact that the final result is going to have be some sort of compromise.

Based on the words of the most involved proponents of the movement have said, the absolute least they could be forced into accepting would be "Developers can't sue people hosting reverse engineered servers after the main game has gone offline". Which is trivial to comply with (just don't sue someone), but probably insufficient for living up to the main messaging of the movement (since there's a lot more games that people care about preserving than games people care enough about preserving to completely re-implement servers for).

Slightly more reasonably, there's the pitch of "release your server binaries". As the market stands at the moment, that'd be difficult, because in large studios it's common to have all sorts of licensed software involved in hosting your backend, but it's the kind of thing that's pretty trivially responded to on new projects: companies selling software for game service backends would have to adjust their licenses in response to their customers' legal requirements, but that's far from impossible given all the licensed code that's running on client machines already.

In the best possible world, consumers would get access to the source code of the entire project after the company is done making money on it, but everyone involved seems to think that's a pipe dream.

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#33

Post by m4rtink »

bsjaux628 wrote: post #24
lopatin wrote: post #16

Can someone please ELI5? I've heard much about it but still, with all the drama, I still don't get it. SKG is an initiative that will force game publishers to keep a game online, provided that people have paid for it, and the publisher is not bankrupt? Is that right? What does it have to do with democracy?

What SKG movement want, in short terms, is that game developers/publishers of live service games and online only games be forced, once the games is no longer supported, to provide tools, software, executables to the community to keep the game going. They are using the banner of consumer protection and a public EU initiative to force the EU politicians to debate and come up with a solution. The drama mostly stems from…

I think someone with his perspective might be actually a perfect head of the movement. Most people who play games are not programmers & games are becoming a big part of modern culture.

Why should people playing (and paying !) for games really care what bad technical or business decisions have the publishers done when they see part of their culture being killed to save a buck ?

A lot of other important problems have been resolved in a similar manner without every participant in the movement being a technical expert.

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#34

Post by petcat »

TimFogarty wrote: post #28

An interesting question about Stop Killing Games is if this should apply to software more broadly. If a company shuts down should they open source their product so people can continue using it? There isn't as strong an argument for this since most software is structured like a SaaS rather than a one time purchase. But it's considerate when companies do this, e.g. Facebook open sourcing Parse Server was better than ou…

> If a company shuts down should they open source their product so people can continue using it?

The question is who is now responsible for the software? Who can the government compel to open source it? There is no more legal entity behind the software. Maybe the last employee just takes the source code home on their laptop and that's it.

How is a government forcing a private entity (especially a defunkt one) to release their source code?

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#35

Post by maccard »

cousin_it wrote: post #30
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #29

I in no way mean this to be rude, but I think a big part of why the EU isn't in the same galaxy as the US in the realm of business in general, is in some part, the knee jerk reaction to turn to the government to make products and services better. Governments cannot make you an alternative, they can only make something that already exists, different (usually worse). I have zero interest in creating in the gaming space…

It's not "demanding others make things for you". It's demanding they don't remotely disable the thing you already bought. Imagine you buy a car, then a few years later the company remotely disables it because they're selling a newer model. Without giving you the money back of course. That's what's happening with games. And not just multiplayer: tons of single player games have been killed this way. The whole SKG thin…

Why is this only targeted at games and not mobile apps, app subscriptions or websites.

This pretty much removes the ability to use _any_ commercial software without a custom license which is just insanity. No using any AWS services in case the pull the rug on you.

You might argue “but you can X and you can Y”, and that’s true, but again why is this only a problem for games?

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#36

Post by qwe----3 »

cousin_it wrote: post #30
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #29

I in no way mean this to be rude, but I think a big part of why the EU isn't in the same galaxy as the US in the realm of business in general, is in some part, the knee jerk reaction to turn to the government to make products and services better. Governments cannot make you an alternative, they can only make something that already exists, different (usually worse). I have zero interest in creating in the gaming space…

It's not "demanding others make things for you". It's demanding they don't remotely disable the thing you already bought. Imagine you buy a car, then a few years later the company remotely disables it because they're selling a newer model. Without giving you the money back of course. That's what's happening with games. And not just multiplayer: tons of single player games have been killed this way. The whole SKG thin…

I don't believe a ton of true single player games have been killed this way. For multiplayer games your car analogy completely fails. The car company doesn't pay the road tax, or gas, or your mechanic.

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#37

Post by maccard »

bsjaux628 wrote: post #24
lopatin wrote: post #16

Can someone please ELI5? I've heard much about it but still, with all the drama, I still don't get it. SKG is an initiative that will force game publishers to keep a game online, provided that people have paid for it, and the publisher is not bankrupt? Is that right? What does it have to do with democracy?

What SKG movement want, in short terms, is that game developers/publishers of live service games and online only games be forced, once the games is no longer supported, to provide tools, software, executables to the community to keep the game going. They are using the banner of consumer protection and a public EU initiative to force the EU politicians to debate and come up with a solution. The drama mostly stems from…

I’m a game developer - this sums up my feelings perfectly.

A lot of this middleware isn’t necessarily even game middleware - think of a turn based game that might use a custom DB instead of mongo or SQL. You’re effectively banning any non game specific middleware from being used or requiring that every company provide a separate licensing path for game developers.

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#38

Post by imiric »

I'm not sure how I feel about SKG. On one hand: sure, a product you buy should be expected to work for more than a couple of years. This gets fuzzy with modern service subscription models, licensing terms, etc., but in general, planned obsolescence shouldn't exist in digital products any more than in physical ones.

On the other, though, the companies that produce games that stop working are not worth supporting. Their games are often not great to begin with, and rewarding this behavior simply gives them a reason to keep abusing consumers.

There are so many studios that produce games worth playing, and make them accessible without DRM on platforms like GOG and itch.io. A one-time payment can get you many hours of enjoyment for as long as you have a compatible system to run it on. This is getting more difficult on Windows, but thankfully Linux is a solid gaming platform now, and there are many well supported virtualization options for older games.

So my point is: stop supporting scummy companies, and start supporting passionate game developers. There is a practically infinite catalog of great experiences beyond the yearly rehashed EA, Activision, or Ubisoft title.

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#39

Post by OkayPhysicist »

maccard wrote: post #35
cousin_it wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "demanding others make things for you". It's demanding they don't remotely disable the thing you already bought. Imagine you buy a car, then a few years later the company remotely disables it because they're selling a newer model. Without giving you the money back of course. That's what's happening with games. And not just multiplayer: tons of single player games have been killed this way. The whole SKG thin…

Why is this only targeted at games and not mobile apps, app subscriptions or websites. This pretty much removes the ability to use _any_ commercial software without a custom license which is just insanity. No using any AWS services in case the pull the rug on you. You might argue “but you can X and you can Y”, and that’s true, but again why is this only a problem for games?

The short answer is someone cared enough about the specific example in gaming to actually go through all the work to demand change.

The longer answer is that games are one of the only pieces of software your average consumer actually buys these days, and they have a few particularly egregious examples that make it much easier to argue in front of a bunch of politicians without a firm grasp on the digital world, like "Game is completely client side except it checks with a server every 5 minutes to make sure you have a valid license, so when the company goes belly up you're left with a brick"

Re: Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

#40

Post by OkayPhysicist »

qwe----3 wrote: post #36
cousin_it wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "demanding others make things for you". It's demanding they don't remotely disable the thing you already bought. Imagine you buy a car, then a few years later the company remotely disables it because they're selling a newer model. Without giving you the money back of course. That's what's happening with games. And not just multiplayer: tons of single player games have been killed this way. The whole SKG thin…

I don't believe a ton of true single player games have been killed this way. For multiplayer games your car analogy completely fails. The car company doesn't pay the road tax, or gas, or your mechanic.

There have been a few, and they make fantastic examples to bring up when explaining the concept to people without a broad understanding of the market.
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