111–120 of 146 posts
My problem with things like this is that they mandate labor from others without compensating them.
My problem with things like this is that companies expect to sell a product to me and then steal it back from me without compensating me.
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Who will pay devs to convert World of Warcraft into a single-player game? This is probably covered by "reasonable means to continue functioning" and the answer will be "there are no reasonable means".. but the comment parent's point somewhat stands. Even moving a DLC check can be complicated. When you game is done, do you disable all DLC since you can't verify someone purchased it, or do you make it freely available?…
Cost of business that was previously avoided, to the detriment of consumers. Who pays for required warranty reserves? It is built into the cost of good sold model (EU requires warranties of no shorter than 2 years). If you sell something, it should continue to be usable after you as a business are gone. A game producer can always not make games if you find the regulation to be overly burdensome, that is a choice. It…
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Is everything a right now?
I would say it's fairly well established concept that there is a doctrine of sale, and that the purchaser gains rights to the item in exchange for the sale price - notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. Publishers are playing with fire by trying to undermine that doctrine for digital goods. So if your question is in good faith (and I very much doubt it is...) then at least this has a long history of es…
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> Democracies literally function via consent of the people. Do I really need explain why the majority thinking something is good does not make it good? Look-up tyranny of the majority. Obviously the vast majority of people are consumers and create nothing so it's naturally good that we just leech off creators to the largest extent possible since they are a smaller group. I am always biased in favor of people that cre…
> Do I really need explain why the majority thinking something is good does not make it good? Look-up tyranny of the majority. No, of course not, but if you look at what I wrote you'll note that I did not say that. Majority is obviously a terrible way to decide what's morally/ethically right. Within a democratic system though, it is the way we decide what rights to grant people. > I am always biased in favor of peopl…
or take rights from people, which seems to be in vouge as of late.
I simply think this is a foolish direction. Preservation is important but you can't mandate entertainment to keep servers up and running. If this focused on actual single player cases there may be a point here, but I feel trying to fit in cases like WoW is just asking this bill to fail.
And to recognize my bias: I have also been in enough gamer circles to know that any talk of preservation is just wolf whistles for enabling piracy. I lot of people don't actually care about ownership (look at how they praise gamepass, a system that will actually end games ownership as we know it), they care about getting games they like for free.
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I am surprised this reply gets down voted because it is pretty accurate. Video game makers/publishers (I am one!) design and distribute games based on what they can make money on. People tend to be cheap about entertainment, particularly the biggest consumers who have more time than money. So they complain about free to play but probably download 20 free to play games for every premium one they pay for. It's their ri…
It's being downvoted because it's baseless fearmongering. We used to buy games and get a server.exe alongside it! In my experience, the tide started turning around 15 years ago, every big release started getting infested with in-game payments, always-online components, and most titles took away our ability to self-host servers. With those changes, their profits skyrocketed - but greedy bastards running the show never…
>We used to buy games and get a server.exe alongside it!
And you still can. If you want real change vote with your wallet instead of saying "but no, I want THIS game to be playable for free forever!". But clearly others have already voted. It's not going away.
Nothing is forever. I see a game I may want to play X years later, I don't play if if it looks like it'll shut down >Indie games and smaller studios are still pumping out real gems that don't implement any of these predatory practices at the cost of $20-50.
yup. And look what the most profitable games are. Again, wallets have voted. We are the niche, the minority. And that's okay, that's just my life as a nutshell.
OK as usual there's a ton of misunderstanding on this issue so I feel the need to summarize it: The goal is to require publishers to leave the game in a working state when they end support. For single player focused games, this means removing the phone-home verification or drm so it can function offline. For multiplayer focused games, this means allowing users to run their own server. It DOES NOT mean keeping officia…
yes, that's how servers work. You don't own anything. You didn't pay for support. If you don't like that risk, don't play on games with no LAN hosting.
But consumer demands have risen and clearly they stopped caring about local hosting, especially since they are spoiled by dedicated servers and their optimizations. So I don't think the scheme is going away.
>And also it needs to be clear this DOES NOT APPLY to games that have a monthly subscription fee like WoW, or games that are completely free to play.
oh cool. I guess we'll be getting a lot more F2P titles. These console companies should be caught up to what is standard in mobile by the time any bills pass. I think they'll try subs for a short spell, but quickly default back to f2p.
This should be more aptly named the "make some videogames unavailable in the EU" initiative.
People on this site repeat this meme every time there's an EU initiative to protect personal freedoms or consumer rights. It hasn't happened so far, but I'm sure you'll be right one day and we'll all be collectively begging for mega-corporations' forgiveness. Any entity that doesn't want to abide by these rules would be a good riddance anyway and it would give room for customer-respecting alternatives to flourish. Th…
how would that be different from you simply choosing not to play the game as a personal choice? Why get the government involved?
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Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a good example. It is a single player game with some minor and optional online elements, and used to have a pay to win store that needed internet access. It requires an online connection the first time you start it. If that server goes away - we're hoping the devs will patch it before that happens.
I was asking for examples of where a game is unplayable. I know that there are games that only phone home or require an online connection to play online like Kingdom Hearts (which is particularly frustrating on my steam deck). That part of this I am not disputing. From the way this is written it sounds like this is a big problem that keeps happening for single player games, but I am struggling to find a ton of exampl…
play what online? Did they get Mirage Arena working in birth by Sleep?
Otherwise, I think the only online components is the rhythm side game.
We had a similar discussion about this before and I feel like this is an incredibly simplistic view of the situation. How many games actually only phone home and have been rendered unplayable for that reason? I am struggling to find any examples of this happening, but I am sure there are a few. Unless I am missing it, I don't even see an example listed here. If the game relies on servers for data, online play, or oth…
Minecraft, PC. 33 million copies sold. Game purchases were originally linked to a Mojang account, and even single-player mode required you to log in at least once before you could play. Fair enough. The servers are still up, but they forced people to migrate from Mojang accounts to Microsoft accounts. There was a reasonable grace period, but I didn't want a Microsoft account, so now I can't legally play the game anym…
I mean, that's a reasonable choice you made. Unfortunate, but 2.5b dollar aquisitions by a tech conglomerate will do that.
Fortunately, that situation is exceedingly rare.