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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

#271

Post by dyauspitr »

swiftcoder wrote: post #52
dyauspitr wrote: post #37

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.

Yeah, I guess my perspective is along the lines of nothing of value was lost, at least not enough to mobilize people from more pressing causes, but clearly other people think differently.

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

#272

Post by hobofan »

roblabla wrote: post #267
hobofan wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, PEAK has offline mode already built in, so no subscriptions needed. Yes, single player offline. SKG is specifically about deactivating the online/multiplayer component in games, so if PEAK were to deactivate their online coop mode, they would definitely fall under it (ignoring grandfathering).

SKG cares about games staying playable. If a game with both MP and SP modes has MP disabled, SKG’s proposals do not fall under it, because the game is still playable offline. They have repeatedly hammered this point in their official communications (such as their youtube and press releases).

I'm not sure what official communication you are seeing but e.g.[0][1] it was clearly stated that it would fall under that. And according to their framework of "game must stay in a reasonable playable state", of course the online mode of PEAK, Battelfield, Call of Duty - which are all games that are primarily purchased for their online mode (but do have an offline mode / singleplayer campaign) - would qualify for their proposal.

[0]: https://youtu.be/sEVBiN5SKuA?t=1967

[1]: https://youtu.be/36qDEeTDXNE?t=2378 - Statement by affiliated Pirate Party member

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

#273

Post by systemdev »

swiftcoder wrote: post #52
dyauspitr wrote: post #37

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.

The fun part about this is that Evolve is fundamentally a P2P game, so it got an offline revival pretty quickly. Anthem would have gotten one much quicker had they not wrapped the game in Denuvo, as it stands that one’s only possible under certain constraints (Linux with new enough AMD cpu/intel cpu, or windows with a hypervisor). Concord was similarly wrapped in an antitamper, but they shipped the majority of the stuff reqd for local play, so that got an offline revival as well.

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

#274

Post by systemdev »

I’m so skeptical of the “making it work offline is too hard” argument, I’ve personally RE’d dozens of these titles with no source access, often with anti tamper, and succeeded. Very few titles are genuinely unpreservable to some extent. For example, the VAST majority of Unreal Engine games are trivially preservable unless the developers have taken steps to strip server code, and even when devs do take those steps “reading between the ifdefs” isn’t the worst thing in the world.

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

#275

Post by skotobaza »

akramachamarei wrote: post #270
skotobaza wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to grant government power it shouldn't be granted What power? Power to save games from becoming unplayable on the whim?

Power to say "that product you are selling is not okay with me! If the customer is willing to buy, it must be because you have deceived him. We cannot trust customers to buy games on their own, they need help from the state to do that!" Shall I go on? CU: I consent. GD: I consent. EU: Isn't there someone you forgot to ask? "Oh, won't someone think of the gamers?"

The initiative is not about telling which games customers can and cannot buy, it's about customers getting to play a game they paid for without the fear of it becoming bricked after the publisher stops supporting it.

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

#276

Post by skotobaza »

hobofan wrote: post #259
sensanaty wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. How is LAN susceptible to DDoS? I think you're thinking of P2P, unless you're worried about your LAN buddies trolling you I guess. Regardless, whether the quality of LAN games is good or not is wholly irrelevant to the SKG initiative.…

> How is LAN susceptible to DDoS? I think you're thinking of P2P, unless you're worried about your LAN buddies trolling you I guess. I didn't say that. Games don't to P2P anymore because it's susceptible to DDOS. LAN as alternative to Internet P2P may have seperate drawbacks (but may obviously disregard DDOS protection). > The legislation is being discussed largely because of what EA, Activision, and Ubisoft do to ga…

> the cost of retrofitting games for all developers of games with any online component

As it has been said many times already, the initiative does not propose any "retrofitting" for existing games.

> the incredible entitlement from the customerbase

The ability to be able to play the game in the future is not entitlement, it's a normal thing. If you car stops working because the authentication servers are down, do you consider yourself entitled as well? I hope not. Why should games be different?

> That things you bought stop working is not unique to video games with online components. I can run very few games that I bought as a child, because I don't have a CD-ROM drive or a Windows 98 machine anymore

But modern titles stop working on modern systems, so it's not comparable. We can still play older games via different means. But with games that use online connection that's not the case when the servers get shut down.

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

#277

Post by skotobaza »

drorco wrote: post #244
JimDabell wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 think this regulation does more harm then good for small businesses and players alike

Are we supposed to just accept that games will die because of the profits of some game dev studios?

> 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

So we are supposed to not do anything...

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

#278

Post by sdenton4 »

akramachamarei wrote: post #269
sdenton4 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boycotts are the weakest form of protest.

How do you reckon? Boycotting has a concrete immediate effect, unlike for example, picketing, signing letters. Weak, maybe, weakest?

It's the standard problem of devolving responsibility to individual action: the effect is so diffuse as to be negligible in all but the most extreme cases. In most cases, one wouldn't even be able to correlate change in sales with the boycott action.

On the other hand, actions like picket lines produce a clear relationship between the issue (look at the sign) and the action. Contacting advertisers and shareholders to get them to pull out their funding also has a direct effect, and connects more cleanly the effect to the cause.

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

#279

Post by mvdtnz »

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…

I'll keep buying whatever games seem fun to me. I rarely play a game more than a year or two, they become stale and boring to me. I genuinely, genuinely do not care if the game stops working in 12 years time. Could not possibly care less.

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

#280

Post by [deleted] »

l23k4 wrote: post #137
Frieren wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spent virtually all of their time with the gaming industry lobby groups. The industry should only be allowed to comment after the laws have been written and fulfill the goals of European citizens. To ask the fox to guard the hen house is killing democracy.

This is idiotic . "The industry" are also European citizens. It's about balancing the interests of people who pay their rent and feed their children by selling games, and the interests of people who merely enjoy games. Consulting only the group which enjoys games would be absurd to the point of being actively malicious.

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