cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28425976

Sign here to support the EU’s “STOP destroying videogames”

This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.

Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.

The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    6 days ago

    Many games have mixed experiences, some multiplayer, some single player. Take COD, for example, it has a SP campaign, but most people play it for the MP experience. if they disable the MP experience, the game is technically playable since the SP campaign still exists.

    This petition seems to focus on “phoning home”:

    An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or “phone home” to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.

    This sounds very much like it’s focusing on preserving the SP experience and forcing publishers to remove any artificial limitations on that experience once they stop supporting the game. Nothing in the petition sounds like it’s talking about multiplayer functions.

    Here’s the part about being “playable”:

    The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

    So they’re explicitly not asking for the publishers to provide anything new (i.e. the game server), it’s only asking for limitations to be removed (i.e. phoning home).

    This is still an important petition, but it doesn’t seem to say what you’re arguing it’s saying.

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      In a game like an MMO or most free to play games, multiplayer is all that exists. The game as it exists on your computer doesn’t even have everything that it needs to function. It’s asking for the game to continue functioning. As for CoD, the petition is not allowed to be prescriptive, so it would be to the government to determine specifically what must happen. In most cases, the shortest path to honoring what this petition asks for is to provide the server code, but I agree that plenty of games make that distinction very blurry.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Right, but the petition explicitly says it’s not expecting any additional resources.

        neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it

        If that was the intent, the petition should have been more clear, saying it expects any resources not part of the downloaded game but necessary for the full experience to be made available once the game is discontinued, perhaps specifically calling out server code.

        If this turns into a bill, I fully expect online content to be excluded since that would require more than just removing the “phone home” bit of games.

        • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          Once they discontinue it, they dust their hands clean and their work here is done. That’s all that means. Releasing whatever they have to do to allow it to continue to operate is up to and including the moment that it’s supported. Discontinuing support and leaving people with something they can’t play is what the petition is asking to fix. If they did the work to make The Crew playable after the server was shut down, then they are still not providing any additional resources once they discontinue it; that work would have been done in advance. Once again, the petition can’t ask for how they’d like the problem to be legally solved or how the government should define the rules. In the video that typically comes attached to this with a more verbose problem statement and what we should expect as consumers, you can buy a digital horse, but turning the game off removes your ability to access the horse you paid for, so it’s asking to retain the ability to use everything you bought. That’s more than just a phone home if your game client doesn’t contain the multiplayer mode where you would use the horse (or CoD mulitplayer skin).

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            6 days ago

            Is there a video? I don’t see it in this post or in the linked initiative.

            I’m not in the EU, so I’m really not familiar with this process, and I’m guessing a number of EU citizens also aren’t familiar. If there’s any related information, it would be good to link it.

            • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
              21·
              6 days ago

              Pardon me. That’s an assumption on my part that the people in this community are the types that are so ingrained in this stuff that you’ve seen that video, and a link to this petition, a dozen times at this point. This is a campaign organized by Ross Scott at Accursed Farms. The main video pitch is here, and the super short version is here. And here’s the video that came along with the launch of the EU petition.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                1·
                6 days ago

                Awesome, thanks! This is literally the first time I’ve seen this petition, so I appreciate the extra info. I also wasn’t sure if it was part of Stop Killing Games or a separate initiative (looks like it’s at the 26min mark of the first video).

                I’m in the US (looks like Ross Scott is too?) so I obviously can’t sign it, but I am very much interested on the outcome since it’ll likely impact me. If it’s strictly limited to SP games, that’s a lot less interesting since that can easily be region locked (so it would just be the same as piracy for me), but if it also forces release of server code, then I’m getting something I couldn’t before.

                For US people, there’s still hope. It looks like Louis Rossmann is pissed off about this as well, but from a regular software perspective (Odyssee and YouTube), so he might try something similar to what he did with Right to Repair. He has a bit wider reach and probably a very different audience, and maybe he can help get something going in the US.

                Thanks for the links, I’ll see what I can do to spread the word.

                • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  6 days ago

                  I don’t really follow Ross Scott outside of this campaign, but I believe he’s a US citizen married to a Polish woman, living in Poland. It sounds like it would take an act of Congress to change things here in the US. My e-mails to my representatives have gone functionally unanswered, which doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying.

                  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                    1·
                    6 days ago

                    Yes, but it can start at the state legislature, which is a lot easier. But you need a lobbying campaign to get anywhere. Louis Rossmann has made some progress this way by banding together with farmers, and while it’s painful and expensive, it does work.

                    So if we’re going to do something in the US, we need a lobbiest, a lawyer (to draft a bill), and a lot of people to show up and give testimony. But we only need to win in one state, and then it gets a lot easier. So:

                    1. Pick a state with good consumer protections and a market segment that’s somewhat rated to what you want (video games probably won’t work, but other software could)
                    2. Work with pissed off companies to put together a lobby
                    3. Find a few reps that care (e.g. the reps for those companies’ districts), and get them to sponsor your bill
                    4. Appeal to regular people saying this is a stepping stone to what they actually want
                    5. Get people to annoy their reps, show up to hearings, etc in support of the bill
                    6. Get the bill to the floor (crazy amount of effort)
                    7. If the bill passes, start the process over in the next state, which should go smoother

                    Once you have legal precedent, repeat the process with a small expansion to the thing you actually care about. This should be a lot easier, because you’re just expanding the same rights to more types of customers.

                    It’s much more of a long shot, but it does seem possible.