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Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

citizens-initiative.europa.eu

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Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#41

Post by tossandthrow »

georgeecollins wrote: post #34
johnklos wrote: post #18

Common sense makes sense! I'd love to see something like this codified in to law. We need a complete rethinking of the actual terms, "buy", "own", "sell", and so on, so people can't use those terms incorrectly when they're technically just "renting". Case in point is "Redbox Revokes Access to All Previously Purchased Content After Bankruptcy": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41076807 How many times has Microsoft…

I think the real problem is platform holders like Microsoft, Apple and Google, that create a lot of rules (or APIs) it hard for software to continue working without constant updates. They will say it is to support new features or security, which is occasionally true. But mostly I believe it is because they like to have a lot of telemetry on users, want to keep apps sticky in their eco system and they like you go back…

In that case it is easy: don't sell ownership, allow people to rent

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#43

Post by Dalewyn »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #29
nerdjon wrote: post #17

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…

> If the game relies on servers for data, online play, or other things that is a completely different beast. That isn't just, "oh it was rendered unplayable". No it was an online game and the servers were shut down. It sucks but thats the nature of moving away from p2p online games. A non-exhaustive list of games I have operated servers for: Freelancer, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Counterstrike, Space Engineers, Mi…

>Companies don't want to, because they make more money out of lock-in live service games.

Operating servers paid with company budget makes more money than offloading the compute to customers' computers paid on customers' dimes? What?

No, the reason multiplayer games have moved away from peer-to-peer to hub-and-spoke is because it's easier for the customers. Most people frankly cannot and moreover do not want to be sysadmins when they just want to play their vidja gaemz. This becomes even more of a poignant issue with more "normies" and "casuals" becoming gamers.

Hub-and-spoke Just Works(tm) Out Of The Box(tm) so long as the hub exists, and that's something the majority of people desire and appreciate.

I'm obviously not speaking with regards to games that must be hub-and-spoke (eg: MMOs) or games that do so for no good reason (eg: Hitman World of Assassination).

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#44

Post by georgeecollins »

nox101 wrote: post #3
thmsths wrote: post #2

Video games is a good starting point, but this should basically apply to all software.

It should apply to all things period? If you buy an appliance (refrigerator, washing machine, Nest thermostat, TV), it feels like it should be required to function regardless of internet connection, availability of servers? I get that it shouldn't be required to provide communication between the device and some app but it should at least be required to do it's basic function? (can't be remote shut off, can't stop wor…

I have gotten to the point where I assume everything with a CPU and a wireless connection is going to self-destruct at some point soon. When we were getting a new oven we paid extra for the lowest tech one we could find! Please no touch screens!

Example: My wife gave me a google mini that I use as a talking alarm clock. That's all: what time is it, please set an alarm. Period. Recently it told me it no longer works because I didn't install "Google Home" on my phone. Nothing changed on the device or its circumstances. Someone at Google decided to make a change that broke it.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#45

Post by horsawlarway »

brigadier132 wrote: post #12
babypuncher wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not free if you weren't considering this when designing your game. It's 100% free if you keep this requirement in mind when making your game in the first place. Some publishers having to spend money today because they played with fire by eroding consumer rights seems like a worthwhile price to pay.

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 established rights.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#46

Post by ToucanLoucan »

nerdjon wrote: post #38
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the game relies on servers for data, online play, or other things that is a completely different beast. That isn't just, "oh it was rendered unplayable". No it was an online game and the servers were shut down. It sucks but thats the nature of moving away from p2p online games. A non-exhaustive list of games I have operated servers for: Freelancer, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Counterstrike, Space Engineers, Mi…

> Build games to be used after servers are decommissioned, or don't built games. To my knowledge you are talking about games that all of the core data is stored on the client side and don't rely on updates being able to be applied to servers on data required for the game to work. How would you propose WoW, FFXIV, or other MMO's continue to be run after? There are fan projects to make private servers for some of those…

> It isn't realistic to expect that these companies would release the source code for their servers.

Why is that not realistic? If the company is ending support, surely that code is ancient at that point. What's the risk? The company is ending support, by virtue of that fact, they are conceding they are not making any/enough money to continue the work. So leave it for someone else to do then, if they're inclined.

I posit the opposite question to you: why is it normal and acceptable for Blizzard to say "WoW is done and no one can play anymore" and an entire vibrant community and player-base just doesn't get to play their favorite game anymore, because Blizzard decided it wasn't profitable enough? Yeah sure Blizzard made it, fine enough, but that's not the sum total of all work involved. Probably millions of hours at this point of streams, guides, explainers, millions of wiki pages, guides, all kinds of shit that tons of people have invested thousands of hours into. What right does Blizzard have to simply take all of that and turn it off? What about people who make their own living in turn with WoW?

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#47

Post by n_ary »

nerdjon wrote: post #17

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…

How about NFS underground 1 & 2? Neither will start anymore because neither can reach the server(defunk) to check for multiplayer magics.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#48

Post by SkyBelow »

brigadier132 wrote: post #12
babypuncher wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not free if you weren't considering this when designing your game. It's 100% free if you keep this requirement in mind when making your game in the first place. Some publishers having to spend money today because they played with fire by eroding consumer rights seems like a worthwhile price to pay.

Is everything a right now?

That you own what you buy? Sounds reasonable. Perhaps they should rent the software instead of selling it if they don't want to support the owning part of buying while still supporting the getting paid part.

The core problem is government granting businesses copyright, which prevents players from doing what they want with the material they buy. This is for apparently reasonable reasons, but there is some downsides to it. So it is less that we are adding another right, but more that we are specifying the right given to the business to begin with to ensure they aren't being given something that shouldn't be a right.

Ending copyright would also solve this, but with many other side effects that we probably don't want to invoke.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#49

Post by rimunroe »

brigadier132 wrote: post #27
rimunroe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people (myself included) argue that this is a part of consumer rights ...hence the legislation we're discussing. You might disagree with it, but you can't pretend that a lot of people don't believe a company shouldn't be able to disable a game they already "sold" to you.

A lot of people thinking something isn't a good argument. Unless stated by the law your rights are what you agreed to when signing the terms of service for the game. Stop acting like people were duped when servers were shut off for a game that doesn't get played. Right now when you play games online you don't pay for dedicated servers (which are very expensive), with this law expect that to change. Expect to also hav…

> A lot of people thinking something isn't a good argument.

I don't think you can get to a much more foundational definition of democracy than "decisions are made because a lot of people agree they should". You might disagree with the results, but it's an excellent argument for something becoming law.

> Unless stated by the law your rights are what you agreed to when signing the terms of service for the game.

Laws make contract provisions unenforceable all the time. This is not a new thing, and I have a hard time imagining the effect of laws if you couldn't invalidate agreements with them.

> Stop acting like people were duped when servers were shut off for a game that doesn't get played.

But people do feel like they got duped when that happens. That's why people get upset. You might disagree with it, but just saying "don't feel that way" isn't a good argument. Why shouldn't I feel that way? It's how games worked in the past. Games that have been shut down in the past and rendered unplayable have been made playable by fans before. Why shouldn't we expect companies the companies who made them to make an effort to do so as well?

> Right now when you play games online you don't pay for dedicated servers (which are very expensive), with this law expect that to change. Expect to also have to pay for a team of software engineers to manage the games into eternity.

I'm not entirely clear why you're taking this as a given, but I trust you'll elaborate. But humoring your (I suspect flawed) premise: personally I think it would be great if we went back to player-run dedicated servers. Some of the games I've played the most lately (Valheim, Minecraft, V Rising) are ones I've rented dedicated servers for. Hosting dedicated servers these days is extremely easy and quite cheap. Further on this tangent: I think we've lost a lot of online community because most games pour everyone into the same matchmaking buckets. This means you don't get as many small communities centered around specific servers popping up like you did back in the late 90s or early 2000s.

> Expect to also have to pay for a team of software engineers to manage the games into eternity.

Could you explain which part of the legislation requires this?

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#50

Post by beAbU »

tossandthrow wrote: post #41
georgeecollins wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real problem is platform holders like Microsoft, Apple and Google, that create a lot of rules (or APIs) it hard for software to continue working without constant updates. They will say it is to support new features or security, which is occasionally true. But mostly I believe it is because they like to have a lot of telemetry on users, want to keep apps sticky in their eco system and they like you go back…

In that case it is easy: don't sell ownership, allow people to rent

This is what Gamepass does.
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