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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

#91

Post by hobofan »

nairboon wrote: post #65
hobofan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For this argument to work, you'd need to show that a generic politician is somehow immune to misinformation campaigns/lobbyism.

It's reasonable to at least expect that. It's their job after all, while for any single voter there is a lower standard you can realistically hold them too and less time available to verify/debunk claims.

On top of that, there are also instruments that help the voters track whether politicians are engaging in corrupt lobbyism like voting records + donation / campaign contribution records, though few countries do that to a degree that it forms a cohesive anti-corruption framework. None of those measures exist for individual voters.

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

#92

Post by acron0 »

drorco wrote: post #87
pdpi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GDPR is almost trivial to comply with if you’re not harvesting data willy-nilly. Likewise, the legal risk for small indie games here rounds to zero. Most such games will, at worst, lose access to online leaderboards if their developers shut them down.

I'm a developer of a mobile indie game and it's not true. Just to get started you need to implement tons of third part SDKs like Meta Ads, AdMob, Google Analytics, etc. These require actual handling of player choices, data sanitation etc. disregarding the loss of revenue with not being able to serve personalized ads, or even ads at all to large segments of players. And I'm talking about strictly optional rewarded ads…

Maybe don't fill your games with ads and release them on restrictive, exploitative platforms?

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

#93

Post by Razengan »

nairboon wrote: post #67
Razengan wrote: post #33

When was the last time any law in any of the so-called democracies was influenced by common citizens? Serious question not snark

Last weekend in Switzerland.

Well that probably doesn't count as a "so-called" :)

But almost everywhere else it seems to be just corporations pushing for laws against other corporations, like with Epic/Tinder etc against Apple/Google etc

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

#94

Post by skotobaza »

maccard wrote: post #85
skotobaza wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The groups hit hardest by this are going to be small-medium developers who are just trying to build a game How so? Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public. That's mostly AAA publishers that do so (at least I can't remember the opposite from the top of my head).

Those games are unaffected whether or not SKG is written into law. If ojr of those games has an optional multiplayer component all of a sudden it can come under the purview. One of the things SKG has pushed down the line is what is “playable”. There is a very small but very active online community for a bunch of games that would call the online part of their game a requirement. The last of us and uncharted had very u…

Regarding the "friendslop" games - I don't see an issue, the companies that provide those game with online services will adapt to the new requirements to keep getting money from those game developers.

Regarding the optional multiplayer modes - the developers will probably not use some complex architecture for this, so giving it to the community will not be that hard. Also there are multiplayer games that do support community servers out of the box, so it's not an issue to make a game like this.

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

#95

Post by Ravus »

jon-wood wrote: post #83
p0w3n3d wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

> a lot of the time when servers start getting turned off the team that could do this work has been dissolved or are working on other things.

That is precisely why the SKG initiative mandates it - so that it's available from the start because it's a legal requirement. Without that, you have no financial nor legal incentive and you end up exactly like you mention - reassigning or dissolving the team.

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

#96

Post by maccard »

skotobaza wrote: post #75
maccard wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game developer here. If it were “just” that easy I’d love to support this. > All the publisher would have to do is to create a "mini self-hosted server" application and provide it and they would follow the law on this You’re making a huge assumption here both about the scope of the law, and about how straightforward this is to do. I’ve worked in games where we could drop a server binary over the fence an that would b…

> games that have required a bunch of different standalone services just for core logic But you don't have to design the backend this way. Especially if you know that you will have to share the binaries when the support for the game ends. > This effectively bans any third party non redistributable libraries (of which there are many), using many open source licensed projects for the backend Some games that have been o…

> But you don't have to design the backend this way.

You’re calling for legislating software architecture for a subset of software that is different to how it works everywhere else in the tech industry.

> Some games that have been open sourced by the developers solved this issue by replacing such library calls with stubs. I think this is an acceptable compromise.

The other commenter hit on the moving goalposts - I agree with him and not going to go into that more.

> If you don't support it (or decided that you don't want to keep supporting it because of the service shutdown), then you just release it with those service calls, and the community will replace them (if they want to of course).

I think this shows a misunderstanding of what’s actually involved here. If we can rely on the community to patch in missing calls, (and implement the logic behind those calls) then this law doesn’t do anything - the community are free to reverse engineer the service it relies on. If I make a chess game, and the community remake the matchmaker but without ELO that’s bordering on unplayable - in my mind it’s as bad as the game not existing anymore.

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

#97

Post by trinix912 »

one33seven wrote: post #58
p0w3n3d wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can vote for someone else the next time. Sadly the EU parliament elections turnout is still relatively low in many member states.

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

#98

Post by casey2 »

jon-wood wrote: post #83
p0w3n3d wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

The issue SKG tackles is that it's the video game equivalent of wildcatting & oil spoilation. A publishers contracting a small studio create a live service game hoping to strike it rich, often without doing any market research on the viability of their product, and then drop support shortly after launch leaving owners with a bricked copy.

They have this very cushy setup where they triple insulate themselves from risk while publishing games that have less snowballs chance in hell of matching their expectations (next HoK, Genshin Impact, PUBG, LOL, minecraft, fortnite, roblox, WoW).

I and a million others think the software industry needs to move past their infant stage and start taking their own products seriously. Frankly it's shocking regulation didn't come in the 00s.

>If you don’t like games that require a server to function don’t buy them, that’s a choice that can be made.

You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. People DON'T buy the game, they ARE voting with their wallet. You are doing the equivalent of telling people "If you don't like abandoned wells you shouldn't drive." We like the gushers, you should just pay the actual cost of drilling instead of passing those off on society. That all people would/should stop playing live service games because of the relatively small cost of dead games is just as ridiculous.

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

#99

Post by ozlikethewizard »

danieltanfh95 wrote: post #63
hodgehog11 wrote: post #7

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…

wrong, the commission did discuss with SKG, but the entire group had their head in the sand when reasonable people asked SKG to respect technical reality and resubmit a better, reality-focused proposal as SKG 2.0. They ban anyone not in their echo chamber.

The technical reality is peer to peer multiplayer has existed for decades, and if indie studios can manage both then AAA games certainly can. Single player always online need not even enter the conversation. No point engaging with bad faith arguments to the contrary.

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

#100

Post by maccard »

skotobaza wrote: post #88
hobofan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public. Yes, they do. Small developers disproportionally have to rely on online services to make their multiplayer games work to a playable standard acceptable to the users, as they can't afford to write them from scratch (and couldn't even afford to do the devops work that comes with a self-hosted a…

> Small developers disproportionally have to rely on online services I'm not convinced that that's the case. If you're talking about cloud providers then the cost can become very high very quickly, so smaller developers have to carefully manage the budget. To my knowledge, cloud services are usually used for simple stuff like logs and analytics, and games don't really need that to play the game. Also, don't forget th…

Most of the cloud providers have generous enough free tiers that small developers fit into them. Look at EOS, Playfab, Steam. You can run a backend for free for edit:

> To my knowledge, cloud services are usually used for simple stuff like logs and analytics

Respectfully, you’re wrong here and this is the problem that me and many others have with this line of defense for SKG. No small developers who are managing their budget tightly are storing logs on AWS for analysis after the fact and paying for it. They’re using services like Sentry that do it for free or for $19/months. They’re using services like playfab for parties, vivox for voice chat, flex match for Matchmaking. Those services are free for small amounts of use that 90% of games would fit under.

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