Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by rgoulter » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

_the_inflator wrote: post #205

I am mixed here. On the one hand there is the decision part from a game publisher, on the other hand the player. Subscription businesses is simply a usage over time. That's the troubling thing here. You don't really own games physically as we did during the 80th and 90th. Update-mania and buggy games were introduced first as consequence of the internet, then came the registration phase and after that the subsciption…

SKG aren't going for a maximalist "if you publish an online game, it must 100% work forever". Unfortunately, it seems it's not so easy to find a clear mission statement.

I see their main point as: it should still be possible to (in some way) have access to what you pay for after servers shut down.

Some games an online requirement makes sense (like where you play online with other people), but in some cases the online requirement is for a single player only game, where the server shutdown makes the game unplayable. -- Cases like that seem absurd.

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

#242

Post by brokensegue » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

rafterydj wrote: post #232

canthonytucci wrote: post #220

How about a “stop buying games” movement where people just don’t buy this live service garbage? It’s all shovelware. It’s all the same crap over and over. There are plenty of non live service games being released every day, buy those instead. If a game is actually important to people they’ll figure out a way to play it (as people did with WoW classic before classic). The idea that we should spend time and energy to r…

The classic SKG example is The Crew. Where is the indie recreation of the Continental USA to drive around? Indie games are great, but let's not act like art is fungible. I don't like the idea of "they will just find loopholes anyway", that seems defeatist. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas." I wish people started thinking of good regulation as a technical problem as much as it is a social one.

EU tried to ban tracking cookies. Anyone could've seen the result coming (every site now disrupts your reading). The defeatist attitude would've been right there.

I don't see how games won't just charge you a $0.01 "subscription" that lasts 5 years or various other such sidesteps. it'll just make everything more annoying.

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

#243

Post by butz » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

Government should just release legislation, that games that require additional upkeep should provide "Best before" date. That should make customers carefully consider their purchase up front, and instead of buying latest and greatest AAA title, purchase a few 10 year old indie games.

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

#244

Post by drorco » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #239

drorco wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, th…

> Thinking of it in advance does make it easier but it can definitely still break a business If privacy regulations can break your business , then I think there’s a very high chance what you are doing is exactly the sort of thing the regulations are explicitly designed to discourage. > now there's a whole CMP TCF2 protocol you have to implement. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. There’s no regulation saying you…

If I have to watch ads, I personally prefer personalized ads as they waste less of my time if I happen to see an ad for something I would actually want. I think generally, scaring people with "oh noes they'll have your annonymuized data" is not that dissimilar from scaring about radiation radiation from their wifi router.

Anyway, the discussion was about the harms of regulations and why developers would resist these. I personally know several indie mobile developers that had games that their core business model was ad monetization, and the regulation made these businesses less viable, and it's likely that players who enjoyed these kind of games, will now see less of these indie games.

I personally think this regulation does more harm then good for small businesses and players alike. I think legeslation has to be super careful when it comes to regulating businesses, anytime I had to deal with compliance around accessibility, privacy, transparency etc. I saw how intentions were good, but execution was absolutely terrible, with so many holes that the ones who benefit the most are the big companies that can workaround these clauses, while good intentioned small businesses need to spend money on compliance before they even know if the business is going to be viable.

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

#245

Post by thrance » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

orthoxerox wrote: post #223

thrance wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dilemma. Riot could release the server binaries when they end League of Legends service, and no one would get thrown on the street.

Depends on how they licensed various libraries used in the server binaries. Some of them might not allow redistribution of the final product, only provision of digital services.

That's a non-issue, those providers would have to relax their licenses, since releasing binaries after EOL would become expected of all.

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

#246

Post by walletdrainer » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

SpaceNugget wrote: post #237

walletdrainer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but due to you actively portraying your opposition as malicious It's extremely difficult to see how the statement quoted below is not fairly characterized as malicious >The industry should only be allowed to comment after the laws have been written and fulfill the goals of European citizens. If the opposition simply seeks to silence you, rather than to argue against you, how are they not malicious?

You seem to be arguing under the presupposition that there are two equal entities, industry lobbies and everyone else, and somehow that division of viewpoints gets equal consideration from the governing body. The other person is arguing that those two entities are not equal and should not have equal weight in affecting the decisions of the European commission. Calling them malicious for having a different view of the…

[flagged]

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

#247

Post by jcranmer » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #215

hobofan wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a LAN multiplayer mode (most match-based FPS/strategy games can do that Most match-based FPS don't do that anymore, as it's susceptible to DDOS. Whether a LAN-like mode is otherwise still feasible/acceptable by todays game quality standards is debatable. > Provide server binaries for self-hosted servers This is only feasible if the multiplayer backend is a simple server binary, which in many cases it's not anymore,…

> Most match-based FPS don't do that anymore, as it's susceptible to DDOS. We're talking about EOL plans here. You don't have to care about DDOS. > This is only feasible if the multiplayer backend is a simple server binary, which in many cases it's not anymore, but a full cloud architecture you would find for any SaaS app. There additionally is the issue of licensed libraries, which may prohibit redistribution of the…

> We're talking about regulation about _future games_ that haven't been made yet. So we're not talking about retrofitting an EOL plan on games that already rely on complex backend. If you're planning for it from the get-go, getting an architecture that isn't so cloud-reliant isn't that complicated.

I don't know about the EU effort, but the California bill would apply to any game that is released on or after January 1, 2027. That's not enough time to plan for the "changes from the get-go."

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

#248

Post by andwur » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

mafuy wrote: post #173

andwur wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like....what licencing issues? After the game is "dead" and the parent company doesn't want to support it anymore, we could easily release the source code or even just the executables for the servers. I can't speak to the parent's stance, but more generally this would be referring to IP licensing and patent encumbrance. I've worked on a number of large systems where non-trivial parts of the codebase were licensed f…

No problem at all. Just release your own source code. Leave out the licensed stuff. That's how id did it. If you have non-ridiculous development practices, knowing what's your IP and what is not is a basic requirement anyway. The modder base will reimplement the licensed stuff, if needed.

What if your licensed component is non-trivial, e.g. provides critical features so that omission renders the service entirely non-functional? These laws would need to cater for that scenario, as skimming over that detail and allowing stripped releases would either mean:

1) companies get to release broken, incomplete source under the banner of commercial licensing restrictions.

2) truly upstanding companies (/s) will use this as a loophole to block the majority of their source as commercially licensed by stuffing it all under related companies and licensing it back to themselves. e.g. Company A selling game licenses majority of source (say, the entire server platform) from Company B -> Company B can't be compelled to release their engine because they aren't selling the game.

#1 would be an annoyance through to major challenge depending on the scale, #2 seems a more likely outcome for the major players as they can afford to play that sort of game and get away with it.

To be clear, I think this law should be implemented. However it would be pointless to pretend that licensing constraints won't add significant complexity, and many inventive pathways to highly evasive yet technically compliant outcomes.

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

#249

Post by gambiting » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

andwur wrote: post #248

mafuy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem at all. Just release your own source code. Leave out the licensed stuff. That's how id did it. If you have non-ridiculous development practices, knowing what's your IP and what is not is a basic requirement anyway. The modder base will reimplement the licensed stuff, if needed.

What if your licensed component is non-trivial, e.g. provides critical features so that omission renders the service entirely non-functional? These laws would need to cater for that scenario, as skimming over that detail and allowing stripped releases would either mean: 1) companies get to release broken, incomplete source under the banner of commercial licensing restrictions. 2) truly upstanding companies (/s) will…

I think most people are looking at existing games made under different constraints and concluding that it can't be done. But If the law passed, to me it's quite clear that it's just something that would have to be considered during development - like, we already have to get a sign-off from legal on using any open source libraries, and they usually say if it's fine for something that ships vs something that doesn't. If we knew beforehand that server binaries will eventually ship then that changes the answer from legal, and we either don't use it or try to licence it for that usecase.

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

#250

Post by Krutonium » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

thrance wrote: post #245

orthoxerox wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how they licensed various libraries used in the server binaries. Some of them might not allow redistribution of the final product, only provision of digital services.

That's a non-issue, those providers would have to relax their licenses, since releasing binaries after EOL would become expected of all.

Alternatively, as SKG suggested, Riot could post the spec needed for a server to communicate with the game, and someone could just write a server for it.