EU won't force publishers to grant dead video games an afterlife The Stop Killing Games movement was dealt a blow this week after the European Commission decided not to propose a legal obligation to keep video games playable after they are no longer commercially available. Users of licensed software that depends on online components may also find this development of interest – more on that …
It's a fallacy to expect any publisher to voluntarily issue a EOL patch to allow offline running of games and not require online activation. It's not bitten me yet but could easily see how it could do so in the future.
Haven't played Destiny 2 in years for example but that appears to be staying online for the forseeable. I guess we'll see how long that actually remains up.
Presumably there's been a fair bit of heavy lobbying from certain parties to discourage this being made law.
Presumably there's been a fair bit of heavy lobbying from certain parties to discourage this being made law.
I would hope so. Why should you or anyone be forced to absorb running costs or disclose IP still used in other products just because one product has been discontinued, is no longer supported?
That applies to any product or offering. While I sympathise with gamers it was just wishful thinking they would ever get their desires fulfilled.
The only way I can see it working is if businesses are paid to keep games playable after end of life and I can't see that ever becoming a thing. If you want me to keep an end of life product running you will need to pay for everything needed; servers, staff, office space, energy costs, insurance, and more. And who is going to pay those costs - everyone through their taxes, maybe to benefit just one user?
No, as nice as it would be, it's not going to happen.
I was thinking more along the lines of some games that require online activation through phoning home to a server. Issuing a patch to switch those functions off at EOL and effectively declaring the game as "Abandonware" would be a positive thing.
Obviously far less easy with other games, especially those that completely rely on servers for content delivery.
No product or offering for sale should be designed in such a way that its functionality is contingent upon the perpetual consent of that product or offering's seller or designer. I view the fact that it is both possible and commercially beneficial to create designs that enforce this type of relationship as a detriment to society.
Why do companies desire the ability to unilaterally rescind the functionality of their products? Because they can sell you a non-dead remastered edition of a game later on. Because every working game that you have a license for is a game that you can play instead of buying the hot garbage they just released. Because it allows them to lock third-party services out of working with their products. Because decades of policy makers have given them permission to do it and nobody has ever contested it so seriously before.
Many at-risk games are single-player games that do not need a centralized server. The companies behind those games could preserve them by simply allowing the game to be played without needing to access the centralized server.
Many at-risk games are multiplayer games that use a centralized server for matchmaking purposes while the actual gameplay itself is peer-to-peer. The companies behind these games could preserve them by migrating the matchmaking to a peer-to-peer model as well.
Many at-risk games are multiplayer games that use a centralized server to coordinate events between players. The companies behind these games could migrate to a peer-to-peer model, release the server that they run, or expressly allow owners of the game to develop freely-distributed server software without threat of legal consequences.
Some at-risk games are MMORPGs that have massively complicated server architectures that require a ton of infrastructure to run. The companies behind these games could release server software and game data so owners of the game can foot the hosting bill if they care about it so much or expressly allow owners of the game to develop freely-distributed server software without threat of legal consequences.
None of these "coulds" are "shoulds" or "musts" because every game is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all way to not kill a game.
Stop Killing Games probably won't succeed because the world is controlled by people who either don't care about it or don't want it to, but it has a higher chance of success than doing nothing and hoping that things just work out.
No product or offering for sale should be designed in such a way that its functionality is contingent upon the perpetual consent of that product or offering's seller or designer
Games are just the start. Its going to be cars (lots of new cars rely on OTA updates), fridges, etc. soon enough. Its already true of phones.
I have never owned an appliance (fridge, washer, oven, etc.) that had network capability, and intend to keep it this way.
1. What's the point?
2. One more attack surface.
3. Allows manufacturer to reduce functionality or block capability that was previously allowed, like using non-OEM parts (looking at you, HP!)
I've never owned a car with network capability, either. While I'd like to keep that record going, eventually I'm going to have to replace one and then likely won't have a choice.
Why should you or anyone be forced to absorb running costs or disclose IP still used in other products just because one product has been discontinued, is no longer supported?
That's the interpretation the vendors would like you to take - that users are wanting something for nothing.
What users are wanting is fairness - that they don't spend what can be a considerable sum of money for a game, only to find it stops working at some arbitrary time when the vendors decides they don't want to permit it to run any more. As hinted at already, what really needs to happen is that there's a clear statement as to how long it will run for - then people can make a judgement as to whether it's worth paying out for something with that lifetime. Actually, I suspect that there's scope for legal action under existing consumer protection laws if someone had the resources to take that up (it won't be cheap.)
This is exactly the sort of enshittification Cory has warned about - vendors now reserve the right to decide how long you can use something for, regardless of what terms you "bought" it under. And they enforce that by making stuff dependent on some form of licensing or activation service even for stuff that doesn't need it.
"one product has been discontinued, is no longer supported?"
Because I bought it! There seems to be a deliberate fudging of the whole "own vs rent" thing. If businesses are daft enough to back a one-time-purchase with a continuous liability, they should not be shielded from the consequences of their poor decision.
Another way to think about this is to consider how the same legal framework being considered here supports other types of goods and services.
For example, many of the most beloved and classic "analogue" cars continue to be supported by third parties and enthusiasts many years after production is stopped by manufacturers. Anything from E-Type Jaguars to Morris Minors live on today thanks to that commitment from owners and enthusiasts. So when we see companies stating that a software product they created "is no longer viable" then, as many other technologies have learned, transitioning to a community support doesn't just allow that technology to live on, it can give rise to thriving ecosystems and communities.
In other words, what the Commission seems to be doing here is in fact making a "special case" exception for software. The refusal to act [by the Commission] is in fact creating a new legal framework.
Personally, I would like to see studios that release MMO games set up a "Community Inheritance Pledge", *before* a game is released. In other words, if you're intrigued when Bungie announces "Destiny 3" [or whatever it ends up being called], you can evaluate whether or not to commit funds and time to playing the game based on whether or not the studio makes an up-front pledge to release the back-end server code as an open-source project in the event that they decide to withdraw their own support.
If studios did that, then you would be free to make your own, informed, decision as to whether or not to support the studio by making a purchase. Especially relevant when we read of some players who have spent literally *thousands* of dollars on a game - think the pay-to-play variety, like Star Citizen or Eve Online, where players are given a choice between "endless grind" and handing over more cash...
Curiously, however, I also think that writing a compelling, stand-alone game not only requires more effort [because there is no scope for the community experience to augment anything the game lacks] but I think it can produce better games.
Caveat emptor, I guess...
I think the answer might be "Yes, but..." ... in that BMW, Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and Subaru have all implemented "Software Tiers". When the owner of a bought-from-new car trades it in part-exchange for another new vehicle, dealers of the above brands are able to disable functionality "in software", thus forcing the buyer of a used vehicle to pay extra for functionality already installed...
So... to answer your question, I think that companies like those above will continue to maintain the technology for as long as they are able to use it to extort even more money from buyers of used vehicles.
The other thing I think is important to point out is that vehicles that have this sort of functionality are also appearing with "wrap-around dashboards" and huge OLED screens instead of conventional dials... and I would just observe that these are all designed and built as bespoke items for specific models, which means that once production has ceased, there will be a limited window in which spares will be available before entire vehicles will have to be scrapped.
Which of course is going to ensure that the companies retain healthy profit margins for as long as privately-owned personal transport is a thing.
As someone who works in the classic car parts industry, I can safely say that even there it comes to a point where some marques and models of vehicles become obsolete because of unavailability of parts.
Before MG Rover went bust in 2005, they had an aftermarket spares company called XPart. XPart continued without MG Rover, buying in parts from original equipment manufacturers. They became part of Caterpilar Logistics, then the company I work for took them over in 2017. Whilst we are still able to supply many parts for the cars, there is almost total unavailability of new body panels for any of the MG Rover vehicles (Rover 25, 45, 75, MG ZR, ZS, ZT, MGF, MGTF) and so lots are being totally written off if they are involved in accidents. Most of the body panel tooling was scrapped, apart from the MGTF tooling which was transferred to Nanjing in China, but even they aren't making replacement parts.
Similarly, we are the largest distributors of TVR parts, and there are almost no body panels available for them either.
On the other hand, we can supply almost every panel needed for an MGB or MG Midget from the 1960s to1980s or a classic Austin/Leyland Mini.
Good description, but there's a detail - and it's about commercial viability.
For a body panel, it would be absolutely possible for someone to take an undamaged vehicle apart and 3D scan the panels - and then produce press tools to make replacements. That's because it's something physical that can't hide hidden functionality like software can. So it's possible to make replacement panels - the question (to which we know the answer) is "is it commercially viable".
Unfortunately, body panels are "almost certainly" outside the realm of DIY.
BUt with the software based systems in modern cars, while you could (probably, mostly) copy and replicate the hardware (if it doesn't use custom chips) - the software is harder. And over the years, manufacturers have deliberately made it harder - and like in other areas, the excuses are "safety" and "security". At one time it was (AIUI) relatively easy to remap ECUs, but over time the manufacturers have put effort into stopping that. Given the relatively small market for "DIY software", and the technical difficulty, it's no surprise that there isn't the vibrant DIY cottage industry in automotive software that there is in other fields.
Even the software for more modern cars can a bit of a problem. XPart used to sell a diagnostic system which MG Rover registered garages and dealers could use to "tune" the vehicles. It was even required for things as simple as adjusting the height the electric windows went to if you swapped the cabriolet hood with a hardtop on an MGF or MGTF.
The problem was this diagnostic system had its own operating system which it booted into from Windows 95, and the OS would only run on one specific model of Dell laptop, because hardcoded into the software was the driver for the specific network and USB chip in this one model of laptop. We had a company that used to source second hand models of this laptop and recycle them to create these diagnostic systems. We bought the last one they sold about 6 years ago.
There were a number of custom cables which went with the system, the company that manufactured them sold us the last of their stock again about 5 years ago and we now have none left.
Land Rover had a similar diagnostic system and their software would run on the MG Rover laptops, unfortunately for some reason the MG Rover software wouldn't run on the Land Rover laptops.
and the OS would only run on one specific model of Dell laptop
That and many other issues (such as "only runs in Win 95") effectively make such software automatically time expire sooner or later. Of course, the manufacturers have no problem with this - by the time anything expires, they no longer have to support it and it's not their problem.
No one was required to absorb running costs or disclose IP. They only needed a patch to disable online registration or DLC checks in-game.
Hell, I don’t doubt for a minute that the patches already exist for friends/family/staff, and would be the simplest thing to code for anyway - a patch that replaces the DLC check functions to simply respond “true”. Release it when you EOL the package.
> It's a fallacy to expect any publisher to voluntarily...
It is not a "fallacy".
It may be unwarranted, unlikely, unthinkable, unfair, unworkable, uncapitalistic... but it is not fallacious.
Although it is trivially easy: for straightforward activation server, that is just setting a single boolean "can I run now?". A patch to set that bit is hardly a struggle to create.
OR just release the registry value slash environment variable that the code is probably already checking, added in the moment the activation server code was in order that the game devs can carry on working even if their network connection went down.
The cost of doing that is trivial, particularly if it is done from day one (i.e. your EOL patch is generated by the build system every time) and there is no claim that "everyone has left, it would take months of work to figure this out".
But it would still take a legal requirement to make them spend that ten minutes on the task, as you can not rely on decency in business.
It's not dead yet. The European Commission route is as good as closed down but the European Parliament route is still moving forward, by asking for the Digital Fairness Act to be amended. Also the California Assembly route is moving forward. 15 minute video from Stop Killing Games.
Haven't played Destiny 2 in years for example but that appears to be staying online for the forseeable. I guess we'll see how long that actually remains up.This was always the question but I think it became a more interesting one when they had to dramatically increase server capacity the day it transitioned into maintenance mode, if Steamcharts is to be believed.
The content is still being sold on all platforms, although given recent live service debacles that's no guarantee it remains up, either. I think it all hinges on whether Bungie survives Marathon...
and since the US-American states can vary A LOT the federal level cannot simply enforce such a movement, and would first take a look at state level, and even then a top-down federal enforcement would not work that way so easily.
Now, for the European Union, the countries differ even a lot more than the US states, each having a higher level of independence, and he is pissed about "the ambiguity off to individual nation states"?
About "keeping games playable": That is nonsense. "Enforce allowing community to take over if publisher stops sale" would be one of the ways, and in case of Online-Only give us the server control information.
Even though Nintendo would disagree here and enforce something like "10+ years time between". Or even "Disney 75 years after last person working on the project died". Down to the level of "enforce publishing the source" would be a dream, but nothing for a petition.
> About "keeping games playable": That is nonsense. "Enforce allowing community to take over if publisher stops sale" would be one of the ways, and in case of Online-Only give us the server control information.
Live service games and games with DRM schemes that depend on Internet services are defective in their design because the developers and publishers of those games aren't required to think about a shutdown strategy for those services that preserves peoples' ability to use (even in a degraded fashion) the game that they paid for.
If the ability to brick every purchased copy of a game is unintentional, then companies should fix the flaw so they don't do that. If the ability to brick every purchased copy of a game is intentional, then the source of that intent is malicious and deserves corrective punishment.
the federal level cannot simply enforce such a movement
Actually, it absolutely can, because it has ultimate jurisdiction over inter-state commerce, so unless a publisher wants to be limited to selling only to customers in their own state (or Delaware), they have to be bound by federal rulemaking.
> "Now, for the European Union, the countries differ even a lot more than the US states, each having a higher level of independence, and he is pissed about "the ambiguity off to individual nation states"?"
while it's true that law differs quire a lot between each member states in the EU Yoh are not exactly correct when it comes to EU wide legislation.
There are Directives, which requires "implementation" in local law (which can further differ within certain parameters) but also you have Regulations which are EU-wide and are exactly the same in all member states...
once the company signals, by removing access to the servers, that it has no further interest in their software, DMCA and copyright is revoked for that software?
If there is no longer a commercial case for keeping an online game running, there is no damage done by others examining the code and making their own servers.
It probably wouldn't work and it would cause plenty of extra damage which would get that reversed or blocked. If you're willing to look online, you'll find people who are already doing that, DMCA or no DMCA, and in practice, the company that ended it is not trying to fight them because they EOLed it, they don't care too much. Those people don't always succeed, proving that you may need more if you want to force that to be successful. If the server's doing much more than activation, then you also need to reimplement that behavior on something else, and copyright isn't the limiting factor to doing it since you don't have any of the code that ran there or the docs on how they communicated with each other.
Meanwhile, there would be more angry people than the original game devs involved. Many programs include licensed code, assets, etc developed by other people, and if you don't remove that copyright, then you can't distribute those pieces. If you do, now you've stripped copyrights from someone disconnected just because someone who used their data took an action. That gives you many more people to fight against your proposal, and more sympathetic ones at that because they didn't choose to take away a game. That makes this suggestion even harder to pass.
"Many programs include licensed code, assets, etc developed by other people, and if you don't remove that copyright, then you can't distribute those pieces."
Sounds like a problem between you and the people you licensed your pieces from, nothing to do with me who purchased your product.
How is that? If that copyright is not also released, then it's a problem between you, the person who wants to distribute the unlocked game, and the authors of that library who want you to stop and have the legal means to punish you, whether or not I (following your lead, the person who made and then broke the game) care or whether my copyrights still exist or have weight. If it is, then you have angered a bunch of people who can convincingly explain that they didn't cause the problem and shouldn't be punished for it, and politicians are going to care more about the person who says they spent a lot of time building that over the person complaining about a game, so you'd better plan out the alternative rather than expect that to pass. That you don't care about them doesn't make problems go away. Are you proposing that the copyrights for things not written by the game developer lose or retain copyright? Either way, you'll have a problem, but you do, at least in this hypothetical, get to pick which one.
Well, if it is known that when a game goes out of support, DMCA and copyright are revoked, you factor that in when you sell or licence your copyright assets to the game producer. Maybe it takes the form of selling the copyright outright, maybe it takes the form of some kind of insurance that the game will be supported for X years.
I see, you're choosing the all assets involved lose copyright option. You can support that, but it's going to be much more difficult to pass than the original proposals are and you've just handed the evil game designers a powerful new weapon to aim at you. Before, it was the normal people buying games versus the companies that made them. Try as they might, the game companies were the unsympathetic side, because after all, it was them who sold you something and tried to take that away and it doesn't take much intelligence in a politician to understand that story. With this change, though, the game designers take a step back and find developers of physics engines, artists who earn all their money through game work, and people like that who will tell the politicians, honestly (if they only pick independent suppliers) that they did nothing to take your game from you, but you are doing everything you can to take their livelihood from them. Now, they're the sympathetic side and politicians, for whom game regulations are not high on the list, have more reasons to ignore you. There's already enough difficulty getting the original proposals passed. I'd suggest you don't make your life harder by asking for something extreme you're almost certainly not going to get when you could solve the problem without it.
Yeah, that is a good point. Even grandfathering in all the copyrights for games existing before my proposal, it would kind of screw the guys creating assets to licence to games companies. I had only thought as far as trying to remove the copyright stumbling block when reverse-engineering.
You offered to sell me a game, or any piece of software. Meaning it was fit for sale. If you can then later decide at some random future point in time that your responsibility as far as fit for sale no longer applies, well I guess that means more profit for you since it will be cheaper to put something on the market where you can pull the rug out whenever you feel. I don't think that passes muster. I think fit for sale should mean useable for at least a reasonable amount of time, and that putting any limits on that reasonable amount of time should have to be reasonable, which doesn't include if it showers cash on some corporation or not. "Think of the poor library coders!!!" is stupid and not my problem, as if any individual coder is still getting royalty payments and will have to adopt out their children in order to not startve to death. You are talking about inter corporational bullshit that doesn't affect any actual real people, and acting like it should make me happy to have something I purchsed as fit for sale be bricked because that saves starving Africans or something. Like what are you talking about? If you are going to offer something for sale, sort out whatever intellectual property issues there might be before it goes on the market, simple.
When you're considering what complaint to make, consider what discussion your complaint is being inserted into. I didn't say, nor do I believe, that this was the reason you should accept that games should stop working whenever their authors feel like it. I said this was a reason that trying to end copyright for a game was a bad way of solving the original problem. We agree that companies shouldn't be able to sell something as a permanent sale then take it away. I am willing, though probably others are not, for them to sell something they'll later take away but only if they tell you that and a minimum death date before you purchase it and in clear language. If you try to end copyright to solve this, it probably won't work technically or in the campaigns, but if you try to regulate accuracy in advertising and criminalize theft through unilateral contract changes, it's more likely to work.
I would not mourn the death of copyright, but that's not what I'm expecting, that's a whole other conversation. I'm just saying that it's not a reasonable shield for a corporation to hide under in order to abandon contractual obligations - any potential copyright issues should have been sorted out prior to going to market, making anything like that in any way the end user's problem should not be acceptable.
"regulate accuracy in advertising and criminalize theft through unilateral contract changes"
I think we can all agree on that!! Cheers :)
I think you'll find your assumption is often incorrect. There are a lot of things, in games and other software, which are licensed, the non-exclusive distribution license kind. Only some things are purchased and completely owned by the people creating the program. Many libraries and some assets are licensed the other way, and you don't need the creators of those things as extra enemies when, at the moment, most of them don't care and some of them are on our side*. If you were under the impression that most software is completely written in house and by direct contract work, you're underestimating how many tiny companies producing things you never see are part of this industry.
* Sometimes, they're on our side for selfish reasons. For example, if someone builds a game and licenses music that's already been written rather than hiring composers to write new scores, the person who licensed the music non-exclusively stands to make more if that license is perpetual or needs to be renewed than if they sell a few years and the game is canceled if it's not popular enough to cover the renewals. Although that's not the most sympathetic of reasons to support the idea that games shouldn't exist at the whim of their author, it does help obtain that point so is better than pushing those people to the game companies' defense.
and not buy games which require use of the game-companies' servers to function, and let those game companies know why you did not buy their game.
In decades past, companies which made online games provided a "dedicated server" option, whether as a command-line option to the game executable, or as a separate executable, which you could run on your own hardware.
I'm expecting downvotes here from 'boiled frogs' who have accepted company-hosted games as the new norm, and from Generation-Whatever people whom have never played a computer game not hosted on the game company's hardware.
This was not (or should not have been, IMHO) about forcing companies to keep their game servers active indefinitely long after it has stopped being profitable to do so
It should be about forcing them to provide the option for players to host their own games. e.g. by releasing the server-side binaries or source code for dead games.
> "EU court rulings consider them more than 'just' software due to all the copyrighted content contained within them and thus subject to more laws than just those that pertain to software."
But the server code really IS just software! - it does not contain all the copyrighted artworks that go into the game client...
Nevertheless I'm sure game publishers will argue that a centralised server is critical to the "game experience" or whatnot, so they couldn't possibly let random people host their own servers.
In that case, they should perhaps nominate a nonprofit entity to take over running of the server after they stop supporting it.
There's not a one-size-fits-all strategy for keeping games alive. Patches to introduce offline modes or switching from using centralized matchmaking to a peer-to-peer mechanism would also acceptable for some at-risk games.
The server code that the company is hosting may contain third party middleware that they are not entitled to redistribute.
If support is offloaded to a third party, the game has neither been killed nor preserved. It would still die if that third party were to cease operations.
Legislation that comes about as a result of the Stop Killing Games movement shouldn't apply to games designed (not released) before it goes into effect because it may not be possible to shoehorn a preservation plan into every at-risk game that currently exists.
It's always possible to "shoehorn" a preservation plan into existing games.
It wouldn't be free, but it also would not cost very much.
All single-player games that phone home for a can-run check can have that check patched out. That's absolutely trivial if you can still build the software, little more difficult otherwise but still entirely feasible.
Multiplayer is a little more complex, but it is always possible to publish the server (perhaps as a VM image) so anyone owning the game can run one at their own cost.
Freespace 1 & 2 is an example where this happened - the game asset copyrights remain closed, but the software and servers are now open-source and community groups have taken them on. Anyone who bought the game back in 1998 can download the patched engine and legally play multiplayer - nearly 30 years later.
Setting a legal minimum for how long necessary servers must remain accessible or available to any interested party is entirely possible. If a copyright holder wants to terminate early, then they publish a patch or formally hand the copyright and related code to fan groups, or the public domain so a fan group can patch it out without fear of legal action.
A backstop could be to require refunds for everyone related to the remaining minimum period. This should be so expensive that companies never actually do it.
Tying the minimum to the length of copyright seems reasonable. 70+ years is long enough for there to be no players left, or historically important ones to be identified and properly preserved. Also creates a disincentive for lobbying to increase the length of copyright.
It should be about forcing them to provide the option for players to host their own games. e.g. by releasing the server-side binaries or source code for dead games.
My "Just Say 'No'" post was based on the idea that it's far-better for the consumers if game companies provide consumers run-your-own-game-servers options from the beginning, rather than only after those companies shut their game servers down.
This is because game companies, if they choose to be dicks about it (and they already are being dicks about it), have all sorts of effective dodges they can use when they EOL a game under the proposed laws.
* They can have an "AI accident". "Oopsie, my dog ate my homework AI deleted our repo!"
* They can have a human "accident". "Our third party contractor wrote and deployed a script which unintentionally deleted ..."
* They can wind up their business (collapsable corporations). "Too bad, so sad, we've no money and no more liability. Ha-ha!" (Execs skip merrily away.)
* They can quasi-comply. "Here's a tarball of the server code. But our in-house build program is proprietary, and you don't get the server config docs."
* They can refuse to comply. The execs know that, effectively, they will not go to jail or have their personal assets siezed due to their refusal to comply.
In short, just as it's easier to ensure you'll be paid for a piece of work you do when you get the money up front, it's easier to ensure you can run your games on your own when you get the server executable and config docs up front.
What "protection" is there when the company has decided to not pursue hosting the game ?
I am fully for the ability to host my own server in order to play my local version of the game.
The only real problem with this scenario is that there will be local servers, local games and thus the possibility of hacked copies being used but, again, the company has lost interest, so, so what ?
It is not the old games that requires protection. It is the new ones. If gamers have one or several old games that they enjoy playing and can do so with their own servers then they might not buy the next game released. The obvious solution (/s) is to require all gamers to buy all new games so there is no reason for them to be upset by losing access to the old ones.
The question is who are the IP protections really for and what is the ultimate benefit they give society.
If we take patents, we know the circa 20 year protections are granted in lieu of disclosure. Hence perhaps we should be asking what obligations we should be placing on copyright holders in return for the massively extended period of protection, particularly where the copyright holder is a corporate entity.
> "The Commission considers that at this stage it cannot propose a legal obligation to keep video games playable after they stop being provided commercially. This is due, also, to existing intellectual property rights. Under EU copyright law, rights holders enjoy exclusive rights over their creations. In addition to copyright, other intellectual property rights may also be relevant as they may protect different visual and technological aspects of a video game"
do book authors and publishers embed a killswitch to their creation so that it would burst into flames after a couple of years because I'd "intelectual property rights"?
I worked in games in the '80s and '90s, when the whole point of the industry was in delivering great entertainment for players and having fun doing it, and I am ASHAMED - gutted and embarrassed and humiliated and heartbroken and above all disappointed beyond belief - at the soul-crushing, money guzzling juggernaut that it has become. If it can't behave ethically, then ethics should be forced on it by devastating legal smack down. Burn it all. Rest in pieces.
- (The dev formerly known as) Ubik.
Facts.
I now some OGs of the game world. Got their start as well in the 1980s. Even successfully published their own games. They were also top management at some well known companies. Saw the changes at the end of the century and were forced out. They all say the same thing.
It all become so corrupt that it's necrotic.
Just as a recap, here's Mode7's writeup on industry opinions on the matter a few months back. For better or worse, I'm quoted in it. (I make games with an online aspect).
https://modecollapse.substack.com/p/stop-killing-games-will-become-an
The pundits on the "gamers" side of the fence repeatedly show themselves to have an utter lack of understanding of even the most trivial technical aspects of handover and support. Let alone the legal framework under which this all has to exist. This is sad, because whenever someone who does actually know say, "yes, but you haven't actually thought about <area I am domain expert in>" the pro-SKG lobby does the argumentative equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "LA LA LA!" followed by, "And anyway you're LYING!" There are even people in this very thread who claim to know something about B2C services and online games or even games development just showing their utter ignorance of the massive infrastructure within which the whole ecosystem operates.
Readers, the people who make these games are not lying. They are trying to warn you that if the EU attempts to legislate any of this stuff, you will just end up with no online games any more, or hopelessly crippled games, or really expensive games. The actually very small proportion of players that want to continue playing a game many years beyond the point where everybody else has gotten bored of it and left - which is why the games are shut down remember - are just going to make online gaming, for everyone as a whole, much, much worse, in one or more aspects.
Fortunately the EU are, it seems, actually aware that if they try and meddle this time, they will probably break everything. If they're going to succeed in anything legislative, the only hope they can have of anything workable is by using existing contract law, and a legally binding service level agreement. In practice this means that they will maybe enforce a contract between the publisher of a game and a customer such that a game is guaranteed to function as it did at the point of the contract's execution for a minimum defined period of time. And that is *all* you can expect them to be able to do, without completely ruining it for everyone.
That post is based almost entirely on strawman arguments.
SKG have never have been asking publishers or software houses to run the servers, or to maintain the software indefinitely.
They simply want it to be possible to legally continue playing the games they had paid for after the publisher decides it's no longer viable to operate the servers themselves.
- Single player should have an end-of-life patch to remove any "phone home".
- Multiplayer should give me the ability to run my own server at my own cost. That might be a VM image or published server source code (without game assets).
There are several examples of these being done, so it clearly is not prohibitive.
There are also examples of games where the "legit" version stopped working, but the "pirated" version was fine. That's not exactly promoting paying for the game, eh?
The "legal consequences" part of the argument is entirely because voluntary compliance clearly doesn't work - if it did, there'd be no issue in the first place. The idea is that nobody ever suffers those consequences.
Agree, but:
- Multiplayer should give me the ability to run my own server at my own cost. That might be a VM image or published server source code (without game assets).
I don't even think it has to go that far, although it'd be nice if it did. All that needs to happen is that the protocol should be publicly documented and if the game's any good then people will make it work. Take a look at Pretendo Network which are for 3DS and Wii U online games or Wiimmfi for DS and Wii games as an example of what can be done without documentation.
There's a lot of other weird things in that Mode7 post too.
Planned obsolescence obviously exists. Running a server isn't free, there will always be a point where that cost exceeds ongoing revenue. Any publisher who doesn't plan for that is remiss in their duties.
The beef is, for the most part, with the publisher and not the developer. I would assume that most devs want their game to live (and sell) forever, but they also don't want to patch it forever as the platforms change under them.
The "easy way" referred to is voluntary compliance. That's already been proven not to work, or the campaign wouldn't exist in the first place.
That aside, the El Reg article has one very large omission.
The EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) puts rather large requirements on the publisher very soon. There will be a legal requirement to maintain for the games expected lifecycle, or five years, whichever is longer.
Possibly the Commission want to see what happens when that comes in before considering further action.
You say - if the EU attempts to legislate any of this stuff, you will just end up with no online games any more, or hopelessly crippled games, or really expensive games.
Since the current scenario is that the really expensive, hopelessly crippled games are no longer available online when the servers get switched off, that isn't much of a threat.
> you will just end up with no online games any more
Like Quake 1, 2, 3, Battlefield 2, DeltaForce 1 and 2 and 3 and (etc), Starcraft 1 (looooong List), command and conquer (several of them) which worked both LAN and online, and you can host your own game online too (for some you have to use helpers, or an entry in HOSTS, but they are there).
They should make the servers the games to connect available to the public, to the enthusiasts.
> hopelessly crippled games, or really expensive games.
No change on that front, had that for several decades already. Including a few decades before internet play was possible. But all combination exist: crippled and expensive, great and cheap, great and expensive, crippled and cheap.
Yeah, see, this right here. We simply don't believe the "You can't have online games without us!" argument because we're old enough to remember when we did have online games without dedicated servers that could be revoked with no comeback getting in the way.
SKG has never asked for eternal support. That strawman is wheeled out every time by the industry.
The lowest bar to clear for SKG to consider their campaign a win is a "best before date" clearly displayed on the shop page or box.
I work in IT, I support software that is so "cloud only" that we were shipped a set of VM-images to stuff into our environment and off it went. Not that I would like to run Broadcoms wares at home if I can help it, but if that is how running a game after the publisher shut it down, I will do that!
As for any argument on legalese weasle words: Seatbelts and Airbags did not kill the car industry, having to label contents of food did not end Big Bread, using non-Ozone-Depleting refrigerant gasses did not undo fridges, the list is long.
The online games no-more argument is cute. P2P online games existed and still do, Minecraft can do all three: Local P2P, self-hosted server or subscription cloud.
Legislate that for software, such as many games, that requires a propriatary online service to order to function, the service must be provided for a minimum time since last sold as new (not the release date).
Alternatively, when the service is a licensing system or similar, releasing an updated version that no longer requires said service within the minimum support time is also acceptable.
I'd suggest 7 years as a reasonable time (also matches the new EU spare-parts rule for phones & tablets).
My biggest challenge for old games is getting the damn thing to run at all on Windows 11 without having to spin up a Win95 box.
I think last time I had a nostalgia crisis and tried to play Doom 3 (2004) from the discs I still have, I gave up and paid £10 to Steam for the privilege. Same with Half-Life 2.
The headline makes it very clear which side the author is on, but video games don't "die". Publishers sell online games and at some point they decide they no longer want to pay for the servers. If your business can't afford to run the servers for the games you've sold you probably aren't very good at business. That's not your customer's problem, it's yours.
The headline could have been "EU won't force publishers to support the games they sell", which is just as accurate.
Let people run their own servers for "dead" online games.
Rye Games has covered several of these. They have some of the best communities!
Gulf War I veterans playing old Call of Duty Games, sandbox games where people have spent thousands of hours, even one where the developer game permission (Medieval Engineers) for the supporters to fork it and run their own development as they have gone onto Space Engineers.
