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Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

stopkillinggames.com

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Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#151

Post by surgical_fire »

bitwize wrote: post #149

Games aren't really things you can keep forever anymore. They're events, like concerts. Or like movies were before that piracy device, the VCR, was ruled legal in American courts -- something industry moguls still fulminate about (Jack Valenti saw it as the Boston Strangler for his industry until he died). Get used to this new reality. Enjoy your gaming experiences when you have them.

> Get used to this new reality. Enjoy your gaming experiences when you have them.

Such a bizarre take, when most games I play are from a decade ago or more.

I have very little interest in current gaming trends.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#152

Post by sebstefan »

netcan wrote: post #82

Imo... even if they win this, they still lose. Requiring companies to do things they don't want to do... has limits. It's hard to prevent them from doing a crap job. The actual "solution" is radically reducing copyright duration. Most revenue is generated during the first N years.

>Requiring companies to do things they don't want to do... has limits. It's hard to prevent them from doing a crap job.

Not sure about that. It seems like Apple is having a pretty hard time skirting around the gatekeeper legislation right now, and I've asked for a copy of my data to a dozen different companies and all of them complied very closely to what gdpr is requiring.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#153

Post by Aachen »

bitwize wrote: post #149

Games aren't really things you can keep forever anymore. They're events, like concerts. Or like movies were before that piracy device, the VCR, was ruled legal in American courts -- something industry moguls still fulminate about (Jack Valenti saw it as the Boston Strangler for his industry until he died). Get used to this new reality. Enjoy your gaming experiences when you have them.

Games are as much like concerts as books are like a person reading it out live

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#154

Post by mapcars »

Sakos wrote: post #42
worble wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. The problem is that piracy doesn't help for always online "games as a service" games where the game is killed after the server has shut down. You can't pirate the server because it was never available, and outside of being lucky enough that a few hackers dedicate a lot of spare time to reverse engineering it, that gam…

There is a historical and cultural loss involved when online only games are shutdown. This isn't simply a problem of "oh there was never an expectation of eternal access". It's a problem of us losing historical artifacts because of financial incentives.

> oh there was never an expectation of eternal access

I would argue there kind of is such an expectation. Unless obviously stated in the game description before payment I would expect it to function similar to other games I purchased. And I can still play the offline games from early 2000s without any issues.

I'm saying that because if an online game would be sold with a banner like "we plan to support this game for next 3 years but it might shutdown any time after that" this would absolutely affect my decision to purchase it or to purchase microtransactions inside the game.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#155

Post by Karliss »

dalmo3 wrote: post #90

> Require video games sold Wouldn't this just incentivise companies to move to a F2P and/or subscription model? There's no expectation that, just because I've downloaded the client , I should be able to use a VPN service after the servers are discontinued. Or use AutoCAD after my licence has expired. You don't need to leave the gaming realm to imagine the unintended consequences of this petition - just look at the he…

If some companies explicitly switched to subscription model that would also be an improvement. With proper subscriptions the company at least needs to clearly specify how long they will provide their service in exchange for your money, and there are laws for dealing with situations when they take money for x months but fail to deliver it.

With many games you are currently paying money for unknown period of time. Maybe you will get 5 year, maybe 1 year, maybe 1 month or even just 3 days. It's not that much of exaggeration, there have been examples of companies continuing to sell a game without any warning that they will kill the servers making the product useless in a few months.

Any fair trade whether it's a purchase, subscription or rental needs to clearly state what exactly and how much of it each party will get from the deal.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#156

Post by elmimmo »

oblio wrote: post #109
diggan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not as impressed, tried to use my Spanish digital certificate and got "the submitted certificate is not an electronic DNI".

Is it this thing: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f14... (scroll down to Spain)?

No, it is not. In Spain, national and regional administrations support different methods for digital identification by their citizens. One is the certificate embedded into the chip in the national id card, arguably in everybody’s pocket, but, effectively so cumbersome to extract that virtually no one makes use of. That's the one this website claims to supports. Others methods are certificates issued by The Ministry of Treasury among others, downloadable after in-person identification, so used by far more people than the former, but, then again, complicated to use on mobile devices, and lastly specialized official TOTP apps which issue temporary codes for an authentication service that government web pages plug into. The latter, not supported by this webpage, is, I assume, by far the one used most commonly.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#157

Post by BlackFly »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #135
BlackFly wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, but it is an unmitigated good to incentivize companies to position their relationships with customers honestly. People approach free-to-play games and subscription based games with different attitudes than purchased games. A purchase carries a reasonable expectation of durability. On the other hand, if you sell cosmetic items in your subscription based or free-to-play game, then you have sold something with…

> it is an unmitigated good to incentivize companies to position their relationships with customers honestly. Yeah, good luck with that. these companies have wasted that goodwill for almost a decade now. The real unfortunate part is that most consumers don't care, so companies can keep doing it.

Well, I have personally had luck with this. It took a very long time after the initial laws on digital content for refunds to become widely available but it happened. I am doing my part, I do not share your cynicism here. To me it appears to be working effectively.

The saying is, the wheels of justice turn slowly but they grind finely.

Directive 2019/770 is still young and game companies haven't had much opportunity to interact with irate customers demanding remedy under this directive and its national transpositions yet. They still use the old terminology to clarify their sale as a "service" despite the new act defining what a service is and making that definition inalienable. As more and more people assert their rights, new norms will develop. More and more companies may be forced to register as gatekeepers under the digital markets act as well.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#158

Post by MrGilbert »

elmimmo wrote: post #156
oblio wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it this thing: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/f14... (scroll down to Spain)?

No, it is not. In Spain, national and regional administrations support different methods for digital identification by their citizens. One is the certificate embedded into the chip in the national id card, arguably in everybody’s pocket, but, effectively so cumbersome to extract that virtually no one makes use of. That's the one this website claims to supports. Others methods are certificates issued by The Ministry o…

Mhm, that's interesting. And quite unfortunate. :\

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#159

Post by LightHugger »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #141
NekkoDroid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you stop thinking about games as just entertainment but also as an art form you realize that a lot of art has already been lost to time. It's shit to regret down the line when you could have just prevented the loss of art at an earlier point in time. As much as I don't play a lot of AAA games due to how they either play or monetize, it is important to me to preserve them for future times considering I still play…

>When you stop thinking about games as just entertainment but also as an art form you realize that a lot of art has already been lost to time. I do think games are art. I don't think most of society thinks of games or even most media as art. So that's already one social hurdle to jump. There will be a few big artifacts, but most people won't care about preserving every single piece of media in existence. >it is impor…

The game mechanics implemented on a server binary are an art in themselves, you know.

In the future if we allow it, people will roam from old game to old game on private servers to experience each one. This can easily be planned out so that there is enough players in each event to give the game life.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#160

Post by XoXo2y0 »

I believe the source files for the game, without specific branding and stuff, should be released so another company can essentially make the game if they want to. As for forcing companies to lose money with unprofitable games or renew expensive licensing deals, it doesn't seem like a great idea to me.

Also, perhaps based on the time spent in the game, players should receive some kind of compensation such as credits for their next purchase.

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