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Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

stopkillinggames.com

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Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#41

Post by sofixa »

Yeul wrote: post #18

As I understand it copyright on a videogame is 50 years but the vast majority of games- or all entertainment really- stops making money after a few years. It gets worse if your game has licensed music in it! I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. Publishers just aren't going to spend a dime if it doesn't make a buck.

> but the vast majority of games- or all entertainment really- stops making money after a few years

I don't think that's universally true. Paradox Interactive are a studio with grand strategy games, and even decades-old games still get new sales of the base game and the DLCs, with a strong user base.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#42

Post by Sakos »

worble wrote: post #28
Yeul wrote: post #18

As I understand it copyright on a videogame is 50 years but the vast majority of games- or all entertainment really- stops making money after a few years. It gets worse if your game has licensed music in it! I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. Publishers just aren't going to spend a dime if it doesn't make a buck.

> 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.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#43

Post by NekkoDroid »

tokai wrote: post #33

I rarely think the market is the answer to anything. But this is one of the times were letting the market solve the problem it the actual fix. In the end nothing of value is lost when the Nth ubisoft project is taken offline. And if people keep buying them it is what it is. Triple A slob are not competing actual good games out of the market.

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 a lot of older games and even some games from before I was born.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#44

Post by Sakos »

maccard wrote: post #23

Why does this only apply to video games? Why doesn't this apply to apps in general? I don't want to suggest that I'm in favour of sunsetting every game once a publisher or developer is done with it, but there's got to be a middle ground between "you must ensure that your game can have all online components replaced" and what we have right now. And I think the sheer amount of work involved in the former for every game…

> perverse incentives from a very small subset of users

This is to the benefit of everybody now and in the future. It doesn't matter if only an insignificant fraction of people recognize the importance.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#45

Post by exe34 »

maccard wrote: post #30
exe34 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

release the source and people will maintain it for you for free. you can't say it's not profitable anymore to keep maintaining something that people paid for and at the same time say it'd hurt your profit if you release it.

Again, why is this just for games? Why are Figma allowed to do this, but EA aren't?

you got to start somewhere. plus I don't actually use any proprietary software outside of Nvidia' drivers and cuda (and binary blobs in my phone and raspberry pi, and the minix in my cpus and a bunch of stuff I can't remember), so I don't know much about that.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#46

Post by user_7832 »

maccard wrote: post #30
exe34 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

release the source and people will maintain it for you for free. you can't say it's not profitable anymore to keep maintaining something that people paid for and at the same time say it'd hurt your profit if you release it.

Again, why is this just for games? Why are Figma allowed to do this, but EA aren't?

Curious, is there an option to buy and download Figma's software? AFAIK it's only an online server you connect to, right?

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#47

Post by coretx »

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.

Not only that, it's capital destruction too. It shrinks your economy. Not to be confused with creative destruction.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#48

Post by Moru »

worble wrote: post #28
Yeul wrote: post #18

As I understand it copyright on a videogame is 50 years but the vast majority of games- or all entertainment really- stops making money after a few years. It gets worse if your game has licensed music in it! I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. Publishers just aren't going to spend a dime if it doesn't make a buck.

> 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…

If you look on the thing you sign when getting a steam account, you don't actually own any of the games. Just like the MMO's, you cant play them when steam or producer decides to shut them down.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#49

Post by keybored »

Yeul wrote: post #18

As I understand it copyright on a videogame is 50 years but the vast majority of games- or all entertainment really- stops making money after a few years. It gets worse if your game has licensed music in it! I think piracy is the best method of preservation because it's removed from a financial incentive. Publishers just aren't going to spend a dime if it doesn't make a buck.

50 year copyright on video games is insane. A really good ten year old game could be considered a “classic”, certainly a twenty year old one. SNES games are like 28–33 years or something.

Now consider how many of the modern classic PC games are kept playable/relevant (a problem with some older games are things like terrible playing mechanics; graphics less so) by an enthusiast modding community.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#50

Post by tokai »

NekkoDroid wrote: post #43
tokai wrote: post #33

I rarely think the market is the answer to anything. But this is one of the times were letting the market solve the problem it the actual fix. In the end nothing of value is lost when the Nth ubisoft project is taken offline. And if people keep buying them it is what it is. Triple A slob are not competing actual good games out of the market.

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…

Not all art needs to be preserved. Everything will be lost eventually, and efforts should be withheld for the worthwhile. People that don't work with preservation usually have a kneejerk feeling that we have to save everything for all time, but it is not feasable nor is it commendable.
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