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Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

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Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#51
post #15

Well, it's a million signatures for something to be brought up, not for something to definitely become law. A decade or so ago I (among millions) signed to abolish daylight saving time. Still waiting for that heh.

Trump's said he wants to end it. That's something I'd back him on. I wish he'd sign that executive order and tilt that windmill in the courts instead of the stuff he is pushing. I'd be rooting for him!

Ah, the same guy who promised to end wars, that sounds good

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#52

Is this cause even worth a movement?

Consider that basically every live-service game you have ever played will become unplayable sooner or later, and how many modern AAA games are live-service...

We can still play the NES version of Mario (1985), but we can't play Evolve (2015), Anthem (2019), Concord (2024), etc.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#53

As is stated in the article, but is not clear just from the headline, this was not an unexpected outcome from the initiative. The Commission did not seek discussions with SKG, and spent virtually all of their time with the gaming industry lobby groups. SKG was prepared for this, and their intention has been to join up with the group putting together the new Digital Fairness Act, since the objective there is very simi…

I'd say this shows how corrupted elites are. If the "democratic" entity spends all the time with lobbyists, and not the initiative which started the discussion, this speaks volumes.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#54
post #36

From the perspective of someone with some experience in consumer advocacy via the EU is that SKG did not do this the right way, or at least the right way right now. The EU expects radical compromise. The right starting point for SKG was to enter talks with games industry lobby groups to discuss possible solutions. If that fails - you will need to be able to prove that it isn't because you were unable to compromise. Y…

Completely agree with the first point; it would have been great showing a list of supporters from the game industry. Not that I am an expert in this matter, though.

However:

> The EU will view this from the perspective of balancing the rights of its citizen workers/producers (game developers) and its citizen consumers.

How could SKG be an attack on gamedevs? What changes in the life of someone in gamedev if the online game their company has them working on provides a self-hostable server or offline functionality once they finally stop working on it?

I guess we could argue that game companies may get less revenue because users will keep playing older games that no longer produce money, and I am not keen on "perpetual games," which could impact the workers of that company... But this is a highly abusive practice. Sure, gambling makes salaries for workers around the world, but that is no excuse to keep perpetuating such an abusive industry.

This is no attack; I am genuinely curious, and I might be wrong on everything :)

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#55
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is mob rule when I don’t like it. Democratic activity is populism when I don’t like it.

More direct democracy also makes it more attackable for misinformation campaigns (trying to offer a populist answer to complex problems).

That more democracy is more attackable is not a coherent position. More democracy means more people power. But people being powerless to resist misinformation campaigns means that they do not have power. Which means that it is not really democracy. This is the same as saying that democracy is being undermined by wealth inequality. If money can buy political power and money is unevenly distributed then it’s not a democracy.

If one was actually interested in actual democracy one would fix that misinformation asymmetry.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#56
post #54
post #36

From the perspective of someone with some experience in consumer advocacy via the EU is that SKG did not do this the right way, or at least the right way right now. The EU expects radical compromise. The right starting point for SKG was to enter talks with games industry lobby groups to discuss possible solutions. If that fails - you will need to be able to prove that it isn't because you were unable to compromise. Y…

Completely agree with the first point; it would have been great showing a list of supporters from the game industry. Not that I am an expert in this matter, though. However: > The EU will view this from the perspective of balancing the rights of its citizen workers/producers (game developers) and its citizen consumers. How could SKG be an attack on gamedevs? What changes in the life of someone in gamedev if the onlin…

If you're actually curious, to gate a taste of the cost of compliance, I recommend taking a look into the different standards for website accessibility, GDPR, etc. On paper it sounds great, who doesn't want a accessible websites or privacy? But in practice it's a total drain of resources, real legal risk even if you genuinely try and be compliant, and often you just pay a lot of $$$ for legal, compliance advisors etc. so you could tick off a box and have some sort of insurance in case you're being sued.

Now you probably don't have a lot of empathy for big corps, but those laws often apply for small businesses as well (why wouldn't they?) and now imagine the struggling indie dev now also having to deal with another legal compliance so they won't lose their house to a legal troll, when they just struggle to get a game out there they have no idea if it's even going to ever be successful.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#57
post #36

From the perspective of someone with some experience in consumer advocacy via the EU is that SKG did not do this the right way, or at least the right way right now. The EU expects radical compromise. The right starting point for SKG was to enter talks with games industry lobby groups to discuss possible solutions. If that fails - you will need to be able to prove that it isn't because you were unable to compromise. Y…

1. The standard of compromise makes no sense because there "the video-game industry" is not a company with a representative. Any compromise you could find would be dismissed on the basis that it's one lobby groups among others anyway.

2. The statements made by somewhat representative groups like the ESA showed any compromise was impossible since their whole premise is "if you don't let us kill games (which we aren't doing) then it's going to kill the industry"; the typical propaganda of "our enemies are insignificant and stupid yet the greatest threat to humanity"

3. The ESA statements were disavowed by some developers, and SKG made a point to have longer videos with developers agreeing and debunking the lies in the ESA statements already. If that's not enough, refer to point 1.

>rights of its citizen workers/producers

The whole point is that the basis of commerce is that you can't sell something and destroy it just afterwards. Sure you can have limited time subscriptions but that's not how video-games are sold. They are changing the definition based on context so they can do the most unethical things as they see fit, and as a result they are entirely destroying the industry by breaking consumer trust.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#58
post #53

As is stated in the article, but is not clear just from the headline, this was not an unexpected outcome from the initiative. The Commission did not seek discussions with SKG, and spent virtually all of their time with the gaming industry lobby groups. SKG was prepared for this, and their intention has been to join up with the group putting together the new Digital Fairness Act, since the objective there is very simi…

I'd say this shows how corrupted elites are. If the "democratic" entity spends all the time with lobbyists, and not the initiative which started the discussion, this speaks volumes.

what can you do? they have billions and we have signatures.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#59
post #53

As is stated in the article, but is not clear just from the headline, this was not an unexpected outcome from the initiative. The Commission did not seek discussions with SKG, and spent virtually all of their time with the gaming industry lobby groups. SKG was prepared for this, and their intention has been to join up with the group putting together the new Digital Fairness Act, since the objective there is very simi…

I'd say this shows how corrupted elites are. If the "democratic" entity spends all the time with lobbyists, and not the initiative which started the discussion, this speaks volumes.

> how corrupted elites are

The commission is defined by councils and policy from each member state. Many member states send their right wing nuts so there is a bigger picture than just "corrupt".

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#60

makes me envy of Switzerland's "enough signatures causes referendum which actually does create a new law" system

Proportional to the respective populations, this would have needed roughly four times as many signatures to get to that level in Switzerland.

if so, making that failure more explicit would also be of great help
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