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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

#51

Post by horsawlarway »

brigadier132 wrote: post #37
horsawlarway wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the publisher has placed themselves into a position where labor is required to keep the game running... The obvious and clearest response is simply this: If you as a publisher are so convinced that your game is obsolete... make the remote server source available under a permissive license to your existing license holders. Better yet - plan for releasing a copy of it at development time. You don't even need to…

Giving away the source does not protect the game creator and actively harms them since they are giving up trade secrets. You are basically just saying "give up all rights to the ip you've sank a ton of money and time into"

You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????)

And again - there's no reason to allow commercial use by competitors...

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#52

Post by brigadier132 »

rimunroe wrote: post #49
brigadier132 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

> 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 create. They are a smaller group but vastly more important.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#53

Post by ToucanLoucan »

Dalewyn wrote: post #43
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…

>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 sy…

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

There's no reason to invest in in-game monetization if you can unlock it all via changing the server you play on, and have access to all of that content without paying. That's a huge part of how live service games are monetized and if people can change how their server works to just unlock it all and be done, the company loses revenue. Or at least, that's what they're going to say.

> 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.

Literally no one in this discussion is saying companies can't run their own servers. The obvious choice would be hosting their own servers with the server binaries they distribute, or perhaps more tuned versions for their hosting arrangements. We're just saying, if at such time a company shuts their servers down, there should be a way to make new ones so people can still play the game they bought.

> I'm obviously not speaking with regards to games that must be hub-and-spoke (eg: MMOs)

Any sufficiently powerful server could host an MMO. This is not black magic, it's computing.

> or games that do so for no good reason (eg: Hitman World of Assassination).

Yes. That's literally what this is attempting to address.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#54

Post by nerdjon »

n_ary wrote: post #47
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.

Thank you! I was not aware of this example.

I fully agree that the single player part of that should still be playable. (And multiplayer if its p2p but i assume it is not).

I don't quite understand why this petition did not list examples of this happening, since I assume some game caused someone to make this petition.

But I still stand by what I originally said that we need to distinguish between games that are offline for no good reason (Like NFS Underground) and games like WoW if/when that shuts down.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#55

Post by georgeecollins »

brigadier132 wrote: post #23
Lucasoato wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m compensating you with my money to buy a game and you want to retain a kill switch to turn it off anytime you want? Imagine if I did that to your pacemaker.

You probably pay a lot more for a pacemaker. Also, these kinds of analogies are not good arguments, pacemakers and video games are not in any way comparable. Pass this law, fine. Just expect to pay $100 for a game + a monthly fee to play it online

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 right to do so. But they do tend to pick whatever is cheapest to them up front.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#56

Post by nullsmack »

brigadier132 wrote: post #37
horsawlarway wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the publisher has placed themselves into a position where labor is required to keep the game running... The obvious and clearest response is simply this: If you as a publisher are so convinced that your game is obsolete... make the remote server source available under a permissive license to your existing license holders. Better yet - plan for releasing a copy of it at development time. You don't even need to…

Giving away the source does not protect the game creator and actively harms them since they are giving up trade secrets. You are basically just saying "give up all rights to the ip you've sank a ton of money and time into"

Get real. ID Software showed the way to do this in the 90s and early 00s when they released the source code to their early Doom and Quake games, sometimes only 3-5 years after they came out. They didn't give up rights to ip and they didn't give up trade secrets either. Not only have those games enjoyed a high level of support ever since, but it's also enabled new creative works to be created even to present day. (ie Selaco)

Just say you'd prefer it to be legal for these corporations to defraud customers as a regular business practice rather than it be mandated that they can't do that and move on.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#57

Post by brigadier132 »

horsawlarway wrote: post #51
brigadier132 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving away the source does not protect the game creator and actively harms them since they are giving up trade secrets. You are basically just saying "give up all rights to the ip you've sank a ton of money and time into"

You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????) And again - there's no reason to allow commercial use by competitors...

> You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????)

Code doesn't get thrown away because a game isn't being used anymore. The networking code for one game will not be completely different for the next game.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#58

Post by brigadier132 »

nullsmack wrote: post #56
brigadier132 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving away the source does not protect the game creator and actively harms them since they are giving up trade secrets. You are basically just saying "give up all rights to the ip you've sank a ton of money and time into"

Get real. ID Software showed the way to do this in the 90s and early 00s when they released the source code to their early Doom and Quake games, sometimes only 3-5 years after they came out. They didn't give up rights to ip and they didn't give up trade secrets either. Not only have those games enjoyed a high level of support ever since, but it's also enabled new creative works to be created even to present day. (ie…

> corporations

Scapegoating is always how these laws are justified. It's always "billionaires this or that" but the laws always include small to medium sized businesses and high income professionals that are not billionaires or mega corporations.

These laws hurt mega corporations but they are fatal to everything smaller.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#59

Post by brigadier132 »

johnklos wrote: post #33
brigadier132 wrote: post #5

My problem with things like this is that they mandate labor from others without compensating them.

No, it doesn't. Programs need to be designed to rely on specific servers, with specific DNS host names, checking valid TLS certificates. They can just as easily (and trivially, I should add) be designed to allow for configuration with other servers. If that's not desirable for a product because of the desire to make money, then allowing end user configuration should be something that comes with a fixed date (this pro…

> isn't considered "mandating labor"

It isn't? Who doesn't consider that mandating labor? It literally is mandating labor. Also, why do you use the word facilitate? Obviously that's illegal, what you mean to say is actively preventing the use of for that purpose, which btw is not mandated, companies do it to cover their own ass when they have the resources to.

Re: Stop Destroying Videogames – European Citizens' Initiative

#60

Post by horsawlarway »

brigadier132 wrote: post #57
horsawlarway wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????) And again - there's no reason to allow commercial use by competitors...

> You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????) Code doesn't get thrown away because a game isn't being used anymore. The networking code for one game will not be completely different for the next game.

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