The signatures are still coming and it's already making an impact

I think people are overestimating what this petition is going to do. It will likely just end up in a response from the EU listing pros and cons but effectively saying "can't really do anything about it, sorry!". It's still good, even MMOs have server software gaming companies could release if legislation forced them instead of causing fandoms to die. Games are culture. They may also be entertainment, but that's culture as well. But I wouldn't hold out hope.

I think forcing MMOs to release software is a bit much.
Opted for large scaled systems. It's more than just simple software. There is a ton of infrastructure and proprietary solutioning that goes into it. That's likely used for other games as well.
It may not even be possible to release the software because it is not just software and the resources to prepare it for releasing may not be available.
However, if a game company shut down their servers, they should not be allowed to prevent other people from try to reverse engineer and make their own servers.
Single player and local games 100% though should not be allowed to be killed.
- Opted for large scaled systems. It’s more than just simple software. There is a ton of infrastructure and proprietary solutioning that goes into it. That’s likely used for other games as well.
  Doesn't mean it can't be released, just that it might be difficult to reproduce. It would still be much, much easier to reverse engineer that than to reverse engineer everything from the client and network communication captures.
  It may not even be possible to release the software because it is not just software and the resources to prepare it for releasing may not be available.
  In other words, so you don't know, and vague assumptions on a closed box because closed boxes allow you to make them.
  Most MMOs usually have multiple instances running, each which need to be maintained separately. That means they have usually gone through the process of encapsulating the server functionality in a way that can be reproduced and recreated into new instances. They have to be maintained at the same time, so they need to be relatively standard. At one point those supposedly absent resources to duplicate the instance of a server have likely existed, and just need to be packaged for public release. Proprietary portions can simply be excluded - an incomplete release is preferable to an absent one. Can't release databases, they can release schemas, etc. Incomplete > absent.
  You largely seem to be giving MMO companies the excuse that if their server solution could theoretically be proprietary and convoluted enough, even if it really isn't, that they not be subject to the Stop Killing Games initiative. MMOs, unlike single player games, have a far more notable sociable and persistence factor to them, a bigger cultural footprint within those communities, that makes the Stop Killing Games Initiative particularly applicable to them. There's one simply way not to be subject to its demands - don't kill the games.

"but black dynamite!....... i sell drugs to the community!"

Yup, that's correct. What about it?

Companies would still be cutting flour with chalk if they had their way. "It's limiting blah blah blah" that's the point you corpos, consumer rights are about the consumer not the bottom line

Not to mention that studios like Larian have proven that it's entirely possible to make a blockbuster game without teams of 400 heads, changing direction and leadership every few years and laying off the people who made the product in the first place. They really seethed at that one, so many salty comments lol.
- Larian has six studios and over four hundreds of employees. They are not as big as Ubisoft of course, but they are still very much an AAA game studio.
- Larian has close to 500 employees across studios in seven different countries. They're definitely the good guys (at least for now), but they are not an example of a small indie studio.
History taught us that corpos would literally burn the world for a few more bucks. And by history, I mean right now.
- Businesses would bring back slavery if we let them.

This is just pure fabricated bullshit. They themselves started limiting options. Remember the old days where you could host your own server with basically any game? They took that away, not us. So they themselves are 100% responsible for this 'uprising'. Besides they could just provide/open-source the backend and disable drm. Hardly any work at all.

But of course it's not about that. They just try to hide behind this 'limits options' argument. But they simply don't want you to be able to play their old games. They want you to buy their latest CoD 42.

Let's be real, open sourcing it isn't "hardly any work". All the code has to be reviewed to make sure they can legally release it, no third-party proprietary stuff.
- Oh but with the new rules they could do that before making their code work that way. The idea is not for the new laws to apply retroactively but for new games.
- When starting a new game, don't include that stuff. Not including proprietary stuff without meeting the licensing requirements is already a step in the process.
- It will be hardly any work once a law passes, because they'll make sure it is. Everyone knows where the proprietary code is. It doesn't just get merged in "by accident" unless you are a really shit developer (and to be fair some are).
  Besides, no one is saying they have to open source it. To be honest, the outcome from this petition that I would most like to see is simply a blanket indemnity to the community attempting to revive, continue and improve the software from that point forward. If the law says that it's legal once a software is shut down, for the community to figure out a way to make it work again and make it their own, and puts no further responsibilities on the "rights holder" at all, I think that honestly solves the problem in 99% of cases. It would be nice if they gave the community a hand, released what they could, and tried not to be shit about it, (and I know some of them will be shit about it, but we're pretty resourceful), as long as they're not trying to sue every attempt into oblivion I think we'll make a lot of progress on game preservation and make the gaming world a much better place.
- That's why i also said provide, not just open source. They can release a binary.
- Maybe they should have made sure their code was fully legal to use before releasing the game initially
- honestly with online only games i’d be “okay” (not that it’d be great but okay) with them just releasing a bunch of internal docs around the spec. you’re right that open sourcing commercial code is actually non-trivial (though perhaps if they went in knowing this would have to be the outcome then maybe they’d plan better for it), but giving the community the resources to recreate the experience i think is a valid direction
- It's just one possible solution. They can just release a proprietary server application instead.
I remember the "old days". That was when dialup internet was still popular and running a server usually meant it was on your 10Mb LAN. When we got DSL it was better and you could serve outside your LAN. This was also the time when games had dark red code booklets, required having a physical CD inserted or weirdly formatted floppies (sometimes a combination of these). You could get around these things and many groups of people worked hard at providing these workarounds. Today, many of these games are only playable and only still exist because of the thankless work these groups did. As it was and as it is has not changed. Many groups of people are still keeping games playable despite the "war" that corporations wage on them (and by proxy on us). Ironically, now that there is such a thing as "classic games" and people are nostalgic for what brought them joy in the past, business has leapt at this as a marketing opportunity. What makes that ironic? These business are re-selling the versions of games with the circumvention patches that the community made to make their games playable so long ago. The patches that publishers had such a big problem with and sought to eradicate. This is because the original code no longer exists and the un-patched games will not run at all on modern hardware and the copy-protections will not tolerate a virtual machine. Nothing has changed.
We can even go back as far as when people first started making books or maps that had deliberate errors so that they could track when their work was redistributed. Do the people referencing these books or maps benefit from these errors?
Why do some of us feel compelled to limit knowledge even at the cost of corrupting that knowledge for those we intend it for (and for those long after who wish to learn from historical knowledge)?
I'm speaking from ignorance but isn't the server backend often licensed and they couldn't release it if they wanted, even as binaries? Granted, going forward they'd have to make those considerations before they accept restrictive licenses in core parts of their game. And the market for those licenses will change accordingly. So there core of your argument is correct.
- lots of licensed or bought code in development in general, but knowing that you'll have to provide code to the public eventually, means that you'll have to take this into consideration when starting a project.
- Maybe so, but that's a decision they make. Surely I as customer shouldn't be taken away what i paid for because of that? And if so they should have mentioned clearly upon sale that they would take away my product after 3-4 years (though maybe that's the case in those dense ToS?) . Everything else should be considered illegal and fraudulent if they planned/knew it from the start. Which is the case if it's a licensing issue
  Besides, I'm pretty sure after those 4 years the code is outdated and they could renegotiate the license to be more open to release a binary.

Lol. We're gamers. We know that if we encounter enemies we're going in the right direction.

Still trying to find the right direction on animal crossing.
- Towards the bees!
- paying your debts. The game breaks as it cannot speculate anymore on your debt

"curtail developer choice" is such a weak argument because you could equally apply it to literally every piece of regulation ever passed. Of course it curtails choice, that's almost the dictionary definition of an industry regulation.

So does not allowing food companies to sprinkle lead and uranium in food. What's the point?

Yeah sometimes their choices are bad, that is like 1/3 of the whole point of government. To stop businesses from just doing whatever nonsense they want.
- Imo, that should be the primary role of the government

Why are publishers speaking for devs about how much choice devs would have? Why not get devs to speak?

Because sometimes publishers like to be the ones curtailing dev choices
Because most devs are just codemonkeys implementing what they're told to. This is pure manipulative propaganda from the suits who are already robbing wages from good devs.

The original article completely misrepresents the initiative:

We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
...

Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:

provide alternatives to any online-only content
make the game P2P if it requires multiplayer (no server needed, each client is a server)
gracefully degrading the client experience when there's no server

Of course, releasing server code is an option.

The expectation is:

if it's a subscription game, I get access for whatever period I pay for
if it's F2P, go nuts and break it whenever you want; there is the issue of I shame purchases, so that depends on how it's advertised
if it's a purchased game, it should still work after support ends

That didn't restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they're expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they're done).

I argue Stop Killing Games doesn't go far enough, and if it's pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.

And "would leave rights holders liable" is completely false, no game would have offline modes if it did
- Exactly, and that also includes online games like Minecraft. Nobody is going to sue Microsoft because of what someone said or did in a private Minecraft server, though they might if it's a Microsoft hosted one.
- The argument there is if a game is left online with no studio to care for it then they believe they would be liable for community content.
  I don't think it applies to offline games at all.
- I understood that from a IP and trademark stand point. It could be hard to retain your copyright or trademark if you are no longer controlling a product
Another part of it is that if they discontinue support, they can’t stop the community from creating their own server software.
There are so many ways to approach this. The point is ensuring consumers retain the right to keep using what they purchased, even if they have to support it themselves.
- Sort of. They need to have the tools as well. So I suppose they could release the APIs for their servers before shutting down their servers so community servers can be created, that would probably be sufficient. But they need to do something beyond just saying, "we won't sue you if you reverse engineer it."
Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers
I don't think this is what they mean. They say that of they provide the tools for users to deploy the servers, bad things can happen. So I think they understood SKG, they just lie about the consequences for gamers
- If that's their argument, then the counterargument is simple: preserve the game another way. If hosting servers is dangerous, put the server code into the client and allow multiplayer w/ P2P tech, as had been done since the 90s (e.g. StarCraft).
  What they seem to be doing is reframing the problem as requiring users to host servers, and arguing the various legal issues related to that. SKG just needs to clarify that there are multiple options here, and since devs know about the law at the start (SKG isn't retroactive), studios can plan ahead.
  It's just a disingenuous argument trying to reframe the problem into cyber security and IP contexts, while neither has been an issue for other games in the past.
Yeah... The abstract (sorry, will read article a bit later) is bunch of nonsense to me (in respect to what is written, no offense to you):
online experience commercially viable? The fuck they are talking about? Yeah, I know what is meant, but they would get fucking F in school for expressing thoughts in such a nonsensical way
protections against illegal content would not exist on private servers? Really? Like only your company's servers can run that? What, you write them in machine code directly? Or is it all done manually? Anyhow, just release source code and it will be up to community to find a way to make it run
- I basically quoted the whole thing, the last bit wasn't really relevant. And yeah, it's pretty much just BS.

Ah, the propaganda war has started.

That's good news. Means the initiative has a shot.
It was disquieting back when they were just flat out ignoring it.
- They were probably thinking that by openly opposing it before it collected enough signatures, they would have given it more publicity and hence made more people sign it.

This initiative sure would make things more complicated for the game publishers, yes.

Because they're currently not doing the bare minimum.

If they weren't so accustomed to not doing the bare minimum, maybe they would have different opinions! Just saying.

Edit: Just signed the petition. Didn't think this was necessary before because, as soon as I heard of it, Finland was already top of the list percentage wise. But I did sign it, just for the hell yeah of it.

It's not just for the hell of it!
Invalid votes will be removed when it's time for the final tally, so the initiative needs a solid buffer to still he over a million after.
There's been a talk of some people using bots to inflate the numbers in a misguided attempt to help the initiative, so every vote is still very welcome.
Also, I kinda want to see just how high Finland can go above the threshold.
Tell your friends!
- I wouldn't be surprised if the game industry isn't also using bots to inflate the numbers to make people procrastinating not feel the need to contribute and make the petition look less valid.
I agree wholeheartedly and I also signed late while being Finnish.

Whenever a large games company talks about "developer choice" you know they're referring to one of a few things:

Think of the shareholders!
Think of the rich CEO who adds zero value to the company!
The people don't know what they want and therefore we need to tell them exactly what they want and need!

Corporate jargon translation:

"It's going to limit innovation" = "We won't be able to use those new ways of ripping off our customers anymore"

If it means developers won’t make “live-service”/trash games anymore, we should hasten the SKG movement.

FPS games with community servers coming back is my dream
- Only server browser, no matchmaking.
They still will, this will just limit their ability to force you to move to the next one once the servers shut down.
- Most likely, if they are forced to allow public servers after they shut down the official ones, they will pull some other bullshit. Like claim the game is still available, but the 300$ cosmetics you bought are not allowed on public servers because they are separate from the game.

Copyright was invented so artists would be able to sell their art, and more art would be made.

When copyright is protected on a product that's no longer sold, less art is made.

When a copyright holder stops selling their art, copyright protections should immediately cease, and they should be responsible for copyright obligations - releasing the source code to the public. Use it or lose it!

Pretty sure it was so publishers (printing press owners) could have a guaranteed profit. Those two things (publisher and artist profits) were correlated at the time. Not so much anymore. Streaming/subscription mentality is like planned obsolescence for IP.
This is the most level headed approach to IP I've seen. If you're not willing to use the property you forfeit it. It's a common contact for licensing rights for movies that forces a studio to make a movie or lose rights. That way people can't squat on a licence to prevent others using it.
- The same thing should apply to private property, especially in cities.
- Sony has to make a Spiderman movie every few years even though DVDs of the old ones are still being sold, but Ubisoft can just delete games forever and they can never be played again.
- A good book on this is: Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig

Giant corporations have proven no amount of profit is too much. There needs to be some guardrails. And some form of preservation of the games your loyal customers have enriched your company to access.

It's almost like government was made to create and enforce those guardrails.

Curtailing developer choice is rather the point, no?

Yeah just the choices that fucks over paying customers. They are saying they would like to keep doing that and this laws would curtail that.
Will someone think of the poor shareholders? /s

they say "developer choice" because they know those words have positive connotations but what they mean is "publisher greed"

"Developers" are the ones who are passionate about the games they make, and definitely don't want their games dead.

"Corporations" are the ones who only want to profit from selling the game, and then ditch it once it's no longer lucrative enough.

Developer choice, ha-ha, very funny. I am not familiar with the industry and still feel safe to bet most of them (edit: actual software developers making games) just want to get enough money for doing what they can do without too much stress/disgust and also most of them don't have a desire to see their work die just because some manager decided it is time to make some other games instead

I bet they're really pissed off with ubisoft right now. They basically started this whole movement by being so egregious with The Crew. Less than a month before they shut the servers down the game was still on sale for the full price that it had launched with.
Granted it was shut down because it was the most mediocre game ever made but that still isn't an excuse.
- Tbh when I read of it, being an open world driving game where you can just drive around a very large area, I kind of wanted it. Not as a game, but simply for driving around. MarioKart is too happy for that. I just want to get lost in thoughts while driving.

Anti-murder laws are cuttailing my choice! What if I someday would like to make a choice to murder someone?

Yes! When I read that, I immediately thought "curtailing developer choice is exactly the point."

"... curtail developer choice" - This from a bunch of people for whom the term 'executive meddling' was created.

Sounds like they just put together a bunch of meaningful sounding words. I know what they want to say though: "Noooo! But mah freedumbs! NOOOO 😭 "

Uh, yeah, that's the point of all regulations. To make you not pick bad things.

Keep signing it! Don't stop!

Fuck developer choice! What about my choice as a consumer?

That's easy have some self control and only buy games that respect you
- True. That doesn't mean we shouldn't attack predatory behavior when we see it. If they want to sell me something, I need to own it, and that means I get to use it after they've stopped supporting it.
- I don't know how you could do that without staying exclusively on open source
  I'm old enough that the games I'm nostalgic for are on floppy discs on my shelf, but now the games I play are downloaded and rely on whatever company keeping a server up to authenticate me
  Who knows what Microsoft will do with Minecraft in 30 years
  Who knows what Steam will do with the licences it's sold me

"Won't somebody PLEASE think of the ~~children~~ devs!?"

The last refuge of a dying argument 😴

The devs would probably prefer if their work for several years wasn't thrown in the trash. It's the publishers and suits killing games.

From the mind of the one Free Man

Choice to do what?

These are their two points:

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

I feel like the first is fair enough at the moment, but with accompanying laws it could be resolved. Eg once a developer enacts an end of life plan, their legal culpability is removed. Plus give the right tools for moderation and the community can take care of it.

Second is just a cop out I think. "Many titles are designed from the ground up to be online only" - that's the whole point. It's not retroactive, so you don't need to redesign an existing game. But going forward you would need to plan for the eventual end of life. Developers have chimed in that it can be done.

once a developer enacts an end of life plan, their legal culpability is removed What legal culpability? If you are not hosting anything then you wont be liable for anything. It is not like if you create a painting and someone defaces it with something that you become liable for that... That would be insane.

Even if this would be true (which it isn’t, it’s made up bullshit): I do not give a crap.

No, I do not care about the publisher.

No, I do not care about the studio.

No, I do not care about the developer anymore too.

I do not give a single fuck about any of them anymore. I want to own the game I buy. I don’t want anyone being able to pull the plug. I also want to own the hardware or console I buy. I am ready to watch their existence to crumble as long as I get what I want.

These people lied and conned this hobby of mine into monetised shite. I hope a lot of them somehow crash and burn. Would laugh and dance when they croak. I can play Factorio and Terraria until the heat death of the universe. Your new Assassins Blood Pack: Revenge of the Fortnite 2 Deluxe Bundle MMO-Life Service Definitive Expansion Season Pass DLC Dark of the Moon Surprise Mechanic won’t be missed anyway.

I don't care about publishers.
I don't care about studios.
One of my friend is a game developer in a big studio, he basically breathes game mechanics. He develops new mechanics in his spare time, repurposing board game elements he owns. He would do that even if it wasn't his job. He's awesome
I do care about developers.

Yes, it curtails you from making absurd choices about how to fuck customers out of the money they paid for your games

Yeah, because the choices they have now is working great for quality games...

We saw the depths a nepo baby from Blizzard would go to for this initiative to fail, can't imagine what could happen with a body comprised of people from the biggest worms in the industry (Epic, EA, Activision, Microsoft, Ubi et al.)

I don't know why these companies think they can talk their way out of this. No one is buying your BS. Just STFU.

They can and they will just lobby commission or EU Parliament if needed.
It's to give talking points to the politicians they paid for.
Do you mean Buying = believing Or Buying = buying
Because I think the real problem here is that people actually are buying=buying and that's why they keep doing it.

You are being stopped from stopping people playing their games.

That's a double negative bruh, as in, it reduces overrall limitations in the world for what people are allowed to do.

Good so that means they won't pre plan bullshit games that are money grabs destined to fail. Go fuck yourselves companies that do that.

Backpedaling to "defending creators" - that's a bold move, Cotton.

Well when the choice is anti consumer, too fucking bad.

1.2 million as of now. So fucking proud to be European.

Lol publishers curtail developer choice, gtfo

Muh business model :'(

Of course it's limiting your options!

Screwing up the customer should not be an option you're allowed to take!

Good. Your choices are bad

When you work hard to create a consumer economy, the first rule is, don't piss off the consumers!

The only choice it really limits from the publisher is the choice to decide to stop supporting a game out of nowhere. This new plan would just make it so you have to eventually plan to sunset the game from its "live" elements.

It also means there will never be another F2P game. They have to make their money upfront from every user. They can't just turn it off when the profit slows and/or stops.
- Genshin Impact is a F2P game that makes stupid amounts of money. If it stopped making money, they could very well just stop developing for it and let it be as it is.

First of all, the devs don't have any choice, the Pencil-pushers do

It needs way more people, because I guess a lot of people from all over the world used VPNs to sign the petition and will get nullified.

So if you planned to do it, don't, you will hurt your goals more than you're doing an good.

Honestly I don't see it as the developers losing anything. They still make the same products, they still sell the same products, and when they're done with those products forever they have to give hosting capability up to the public.

What are they afraid of? That we won't play their new games if they can't shut the old games down?

So, a shitton of game developers just got laid off from Microsoft, another in a string of "restructuring" nonsense that's been rampant in the industry.

That's a lot of people with gaming expertise who could be put to work helping companies transition their games to single player experiences or at least making them accessible to customers after support stops. If the EU ends up pushing this forward, there's a decent business opportunity in there.

Cold Take has a counterargument video if anyone actually cares enough to take this seriously

Oh no?! It developer's choices vs purchaser's options. Who will win, it's a mystery only time can solve. Just kidding, we all know who the courts will side with, as it is never "the people".

All games become subscription only in 3..2..

Let them try. Most game will utterly fail with that approach and I would love to see that.
Subscribe to see how the countdown finishes!

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ya.....