Ross Scott's 'Stop Killing Games' Campaign

[Stack of Turtles]

The claims against Ross falls appart because it all hinges on being paid and not disclosing it which he wasn’t.

hint: they do not

[ManjuShri]

SKG plans coming to fruition / Ubisoft sued by consumer watchdog

[ManjuShri]

Should Video Game Publishers Be Allowed to Disable Games You Bought? European Parliament Hearing

[yangg]

I predict that this initiative will have a short life and will have been wasted on the wrong decision body. This is the last of the problems as it stands now, literally, and anyone who thinks differently, imo, is delusional.

[WhiteShark]

I predict that this initiative will have a short life and will have been wasted on the wrong decision body. This is the last of the problems as it stands now, literally, and anyone who thinks differently, imo, is delusional.

I hope it succeeds, and I'm happy to take a win anywhere we can get one. SKG has gone way farther than anyone expected it to. Scott has my respect whether it ultimately succeeds or fails, and I don't care who thinks game preservation isn't important.

[yangg]

I predict that this initiative will have a short life and will have been wasted on the wrong decision body. This is the last of the problems as it stands now, literally, and anyone who thinks differently, imo, is delusional.

I hope it succeeds, and I'm happy to take a win anywhere we can get one. SKG has gone way farther than anyone expected it to. Scott has my respect whether it ultimately succeeds or fails, and I don't care who thinks game preservation isn't important.

I'm not against, just that multipolar world is shifting away from EU, that is why I think this is the wrong body for decision on this issue.

[J1M]

Funniest outcome would be a law tying maintenance of an online game to the copyright of the product. So you have to keep it alive for as long as Disney decides to lobby for or give up rights to it when the servers go offline.

[Niggler]

I don't trust the EU

[asf]

save your pirated stuff

[sheet]

I try to stay legal because Steam is mega convenient, I own a Steam Deck, they support Linux pretty well, and it offloads my storage needs to them.
But yeah, once Gaben kicks it, I wouldn't be surprised if I end up regretting not just building a storage server and keeping my gaming on a Windows 10 box instead of Linux like I am now.

[logincrash]

We need to confiscate all the adrenochrome from the satanic pedo elites and pump Gabe full of it, stat.

[methoxetamine]

We need to confiscate all the adrenochrome from the satanic pedo elites and pump Gabe full of it, stat.

If Steam dies I can never buy a game again guilt-free though...

[Tinky Winky]

We need to confiscate all the adrenochrome from the satanic pedo elites

This gonna make you a TDS libtard.

[Xenich]

The thing is that no national supreme court is ever going to find that you can demand that corporations keep spending money to keep their games online indefinitely just because you signed a really stupid contract without negotiating any fixed term. At best maybe you can get a prorated refund for anyone who had the game for less than some easy low-IQ number like "five years". It would almost certainly end up with the situation becoming "worse" from his perspective because courts would pick some arbitrary time limit after which rug-pulling becomes an EXPECTATION.

If you want to preserve your ****** online games forever, campaign for a right to reverse-engineer, idiots.

That seems like the best option. IF they no longer support it, game goes into open license where people can make their own servers and the company no longer has legal standing to stop them. This would either force the company to continue providing the service, or simply abandon it leaving the public to do what they will with it. No more shutting down things and sitting on it. It might also cause more interest by individuals/groups and even companies to put effort into reverse engineering the products.

I think of games like Vanguard. Very small team of people volunteering their time, but it is always at the risk of it being ripped away from them if the company decides to. If they can't do that, and the product can be used openly, there might be more interest to invest in those projects to continue them on to completion, even striking out into new content development.

I am pretty sure Brad McQuaid would have done that the moment Vanguard was shut down. He was for a while actually looking into getting it back before he pushed on to create Pantheon if I remember correctly. I remember him talking about it, but he couldn't obtain it.

[Stack of Turtles]

The thing is that no national supreme court is ever going to find that you can demand that corporations keep spending money to keep their games online indefinitely just because you signed a really stupid contract without negotiating any fixed term. At best maybe you can get a prorated refund for anyone who had the game for less than some easy low-IQ number like "five years". It would almost certainly end up with the situation becoming "worse" from his perspective because courts would pick some arbitrary time limit after which rug-pulling becomes an EXPECTATION.

If you want to preserve your ****** online games forever, campaign for a right to reverse-engineer, idiots.

That seems like the best option. IF they no longer support it, game goes into open license where people can make their on servers and the company no longer has legal standing to stop them. This would either force the company to continue providing the service, or simply abandon it leaving the public to do what they will with it. No more shutting down things and sitting on it. It might also cause more interest by individuals/groups and even companies to put effort into reverse engineering the products.

I think of games like Vanguard. Very small team of people volunteering their time, but it is always at the risk of it being ripped away from them if the company decides to. If they can't do that, and the product can be used openly, there might be more interest to invest in those projects to continue them on to completion, even striking out into new content development.

I am pretty sure Brad McQuaid would have done that the moment Vanguard was shut down. He was for a while actually looking into getting it back before he pushed on to create Pantheon if I remember correctly. I remember him talking about it, but he couldn't obtain it.

The EU even has an applicable law permitting the digital distribution of certain "orphan works", but it's heavily limited (in typical Eurocrat fashion, you have to be a loicensed "educational institution" to do it) and has never been tested as applying to video games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Works_Directive
For the EU context, working on extending that into a genuine abandonware law would be smart. As it is, it's almost completely unusable, even for the designated institutions, because the copyright holder can show up at any time and retroactively charge you licensing fees. (You may not know this, but the EU is really, really stupid.)

[WhiteShark]

The thing is that no national supreme court is ever going to find that you can demand that corporations keep spending money to keep their games online indefinitely just because you signed a really stupid contract without negotiating any fixed term. At best maybe you can get a prorated refund for anyone who had the game for less than some easy low-IQ number like "five years". It would almost certainly end up with the situation becoming "worse" from his perspective because courts would pick some arbitrary time limit after which rug-pulling becomes an EXPECTATION.

If you want to preserve your ****** online games forever, campaign for a right to reverse-engineer, idiots.

That seems like the best option. IF they no longer support it, game goes into open license where people can make their own servers and the company no longer has legal standing to stop them. This would either force the company to continue providing the service, or simply abandon it leaving the public to do what they will with it. No more shutting down things and sitting on it. It might also cause more interest by individuals/groups and even companies to put effort into reverse engineering the products.

I understand not wanting to watch videos, but guys, please. Scott has been endlessly clear that all they want is the ability for the consumer to continue playing games after the developer has stopped supporting them, whether that be with private servers, an offline-play enabling patch, or some other form. He has been abundantly clear that SKG is not demanding that publishers maintain official servers at their own expense indefinitely.

[rusty_shackleford]

The thing is that no national supreme court is ever going to find that you can demand that corporations keep spending money to keep their games online indefinitely just because you signed a really stupid contract without negotiating any fixed term. At best maybe you can get a prorated refund for anyone who had the game for less than some easy low-IQ number like "five years". It would almost certainly end up with the situation becoming "worse" from his perspective because courts would pick some arbitrary time limit after which rug-pulling becomes an EXPECTATION.

If you want to preserve your ****** online games forever, campaign for a right to reverse-engineer, idiots.

That seems like the best option. IF they no longer support it, game goes into open license where people can make their own servers and the company no longer has legal standing to stop them. This would either force the company to continue providing the service, or simply abandon it leaving the public to do what they will with it. No more shutting down things and sitting on it. It might also cause more interest by individuals/groups and even companies to put effort into reverse engineering the products.

I understand not wanting to watch videos, but guys, please. Scott has been endlessly clear that all they want is the ability for the consumer to continue playing games after the developer has stopped supporting them, whether that be with private servers, an offline-play enabling patch, or some other form. He has been abundantly clear that SKG is not demanding that publishers maintain official servers at their own expense indefinitely.

What happens if a company makes a live services game, fails, and never releases a way to play it offline?

[WhiteShark]

What happens if a company makes a live services game, fails, and never releases a way to play it offline?

SKG wants companies who make live service games to design them with an end-of-life plan already in mind from the beginning so that there can be a smooth transition when the publisher pulls the plug. If that were made law, a company that failed to do it would be held accountable.

[rusty_shackleford]

What happens if a company makes a live services game, fails, and never releases a way to play it offline?

SKG wants companies who make live service games to design them with an end-of-life plan already in mind from the beginning so that there can be a smooth transition when the publisher pulls the plug. If that were made law, a company that failed to do it would be held accountable.

What counts as being able to play the game?

[Oyster Sauce]

That seems like the best option. IF they no longer support it, game goes into open license where people can make their own servers and the company no longer has legal standing to stop them. This would either force the company to continue providing the service, or simply abandon it leaving the public to do what they will with it. No more shutting down things and sitting on it. It might also cause more interest by individuals/groups and even companies to put effort into reverse engineering the products.

I understand not wanting to watch videos, but guys, please. Scott has been endlessly clear that all they want is the ability for the consumer to continue playing games after the developer has stopped supporting them, whether that be with private servers, an offline-play enabling patch, or some other form. He has been abundantly clear that SKG is not demanding that publishers maintain official servers at their own expense indefinitely.

What happens if a company makes a live services game, fails, and never releases a way to play it offline?

They get penalized in whatever fashion for not making this hypothetically mandatory step a part of their development cycle I would imagine

[rusty_shackleford]

I understand not wanting to watch videos, but guys, please. Scott has been endlessly clear that all they want is the ability for the consumer to continue playing games after the developer has stopped supporting them, whether that be with private servers, an offline-play enabling patch, or some other form. He has been abundantly clear that SKG is not demanding that publishers maintain official servers at their own expense indefinitely.

What happens if a company makes a live services game, fails, and never releases a way to play it offline?

They get penalized in whatever fashion for not making this hypothetically mandatory step a part of their development cycle I would imagine

Seems easier to just not sell your game in an increasingly shrinking and irrelevant market that is extremely overregulated.

[WhiteShark]

You mean there would be fewer live service games and more entirely offline games? Oh no! How terrible!

[rusty_shackleford]

You mean there would be fewer live service games and more entirely offline games? Oh no! How terrible!

Enjoy killing optional online modes

[rusty_shackleford]

Can you guys even name one game worth playing that is no longer playable?

[WhiteShark]

Go away.

[Oyster Sauce]

What happens if a company makes a live services game, fails, and never releases a way to play it offline?

They get penalized in whatever fashion for not making this hypothetically mandatory step a part of their development cycle I would imagine

Seems easier to just not sell your game in an increasingly shrinking and irrelevant market that is extremely overregulated.

Ok

[rusty_shackleford]

Go away.

I'm sorry I took one look at this idea and realized it has multiple stupid problems, starting with "What constitutes being able to play a game?"

[Oyster Sauce]

Go away.

I took one look at this idea

It shows

[rusty_shackleford]

Go away.

I took one look at this idea

It shows

OK, what constitutes being able to play a game?

[rusty_shackleford]

What if it's a PvP game? Are developers expected to provide a bot-only offline version?