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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

#181

Post by drbscl »

drorco wrote: post #174
drbscl wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not related to SKG though, that's storefront policy. In principle, as long as _you_ are not blocking using the binary on hardware that supports (i.e. a player already has it installed on an old phone), you're in the clear. SKG is explicitly _not_ advocating for lifetime support, compatibility with new devices, etc

But there are 3rd party SDKs that rely on outside servers that will stop working and the app could have unexpected behavior. It doesn't have to be complete crash, but it might be enough to degrade functionality to a point where some players might say the game is unplayable etc. Being bootstrapped with no investors, there's no extra resources, and no financial benefit in making sure that the app can function well even…

> degrade functionality to a point where some players might say the game is unplayable etc.

Yeah, it's a good point, the law that may result from parliament does need to be clear on where the line is drawn.

Personally, I would expect singleplayer and LAN to work at EOL

Edit: on 3rd party libraries & services, I would expect that such vendors would need to make their software compliant for their customers after any law change on this front. No one is gonna buy GameLift if it's a legal liability for their EOL plan

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

#183

Post by dlahoda »

jstummbillig wrote: post #41

Why would 1.3M signatures be enough to secure EU law? That is entirely unreasonable and undemocratic, given the small section of the entire EU population that number represents. The "despite" certainly creates an interesting expectation, though.

Democracy is not just majority. But being represented.

Basically you said that Belarus is democratic country because 51% percent people voted for today's dictator.

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

#184

Post by drorco »

JimDabell wrote: post #134
drorco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I recommend taking a look into the different standards for website accessibility, GDPR, etc. On paper it sounds great, who doesn't want an 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 cas…

This is my second business after already having experience with GDPR. Thinking of it in advance does make it easier but it can definitely still break a business and it's not a trivial cost. Moreover, it's still changing frequently, just about 2 years ago there was a major change were asking for simple consent was not good enough and now there's a whole CMP TCF2 protocol you have to implement. From research I made, the tools that provide good coverage are not cheap, I pay a lot of money for these services, and they are also 3rd parties that without them the game experience might degrade. Just a little example, if the privacy consent service times out, the game load time increases to about ~10s at least.

Moreover, I have to also pay a company just to be my representative in the EU and have a stupid email address that is completely useless.

I don't know these things definitely don't make my appreciate regulations, and I think if you want to add more layers of regulation, you have to be really thoughtful about them, because often like DRM, eventually they screw the little guys more than they screw the bad actors.

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

#185

Post by infinite_spin »

walletdrainer wrote: post #148
monegator wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! That's exactly what lobbyists against regulations would say!

[flagged]

> absurd to the point of being actively malicious

No, it's not, and this is why you were called a shill .. not merely due to a disagreement, but due to you actively portraying your opposition as malicious, while you actively describe multi-billion dollar corporations as just people trying to "pay their rent and feed their children by selling games"

Deeply dishonest indeed.

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

#187

Post by dlahoda »

kgwxd wrote: post #175

1.3M signatures to grant government power it shouldn't be granted. It's good that it failed. Stop giving money to proprietary software if you have a problem with the arrangement.

nice idea.

Like,

1. Let make cocaine legal to sell

2. Say to people 'Stop giving money to drug deallers if you have a problem with the arrangement.'

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

#188

Post by drorco »

archievillain wrote: post #150
drorco wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your videogame is a data-harvester for the purpose of ad-serving, why on Earth would GDPR compliance be easy for you? It sucks that the mobile market is essentially just a glittery front over privacy invasion vectors, but just because it's normalized it doesn't mean it's right. "Serving third party ads" is exactly the kind of thing the GDPR exists to regulate harshly.

That's cool and all, I really don't have a problem with the requirement to tell players to their face that if they play the game for free, they are sharing their data and preferences with 3rd parties. Denying content creators the ability to (a) restrict content to free loaders who refuse, (b) forcing companies to pay for services that so they could reasonably comply, mostly because the legal language is so ambiguous and broad, is something I do not appreciate.

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

#189

Post by skotobaza »

kgwxd wrote: post #175

1.3M signatures to grant government power it shouldn't be granted. It's good that it failed. Stop giving money to proprietary software if you have a problem with the arrangement.

> to grant government power it shouldn't be granted

What power? Power to save games from becoming unplayable on the whim?

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