It’s been an ongoing issue for years now. People who buy video games, especially physical copies, expect to be able to play that game at their leisure, no matter how old their console gets. This used to be a no-brainer: think about the SNES or Genesis/Mega Drive from the late 80s and early 90s. You can still buy one today and play the games without any issues. Not so with many modern, internet-connected games that rely on communication with servers the publishers own, whether or not the online features are necessary for gameplay. Stop Killing Games is a new initiative in the EU and worldwide to get enough valid petition signatures to force the issue to be brought up in parliaments all over the world, including the EU Parliament.
An increasing number of videogames are sold as goods, but designed to be completely unplayable for everyone as soon as support ends. The legality of this practice is untested worldwide, and many governments do not have clear laws regarding these actions. It is our goal to have authorities examine this behavior and hopefully end it, as it is an assault on both consumer rights and preservation of media.
StopKillingGames.com
Why now? Well, Ubisoft recently killed a popular videogame called The Crew by taking down the servers that support the game. Without these servers, the game is completely useless. France and many other European countries have strong consumer protection laws which, in theory, should prevent companies from pulling stunts like this, but this particular situation has never been tested in court. Besides this, the group are also petitioning governments around the world, including France (where Ubisoft is based), Germany, Canada, the UK, the US, Australia, and Brazil, and also options for anywhere else in the EU/world.
If you’re a gamer, and especially if you play video games which use online components, it’s definitely worth reading through their website. The FAQ section in particular answers a lot of questions. In any case, we wish them luck as the preservation of media is a very important topic!
[Thanks to Jori for the tip!]
I mean, this is just licensed software, and revoking licenses is a well tested thing. “Sold as goods” isn’t legal nomenclature and just nonsense.
Don’t think so. If they pull the servers, you still have a licence and can run it – or have the goods and can run them – it just doesn’t do anything useful.
Has a EULA ever really been tested in court?
And that’s why they’re taking it to legislatures, who make laws. Their request makes colloquial sense, why not write laws to reflect that? This kind of action is exactly what legislatures are, in theory, for.
Maybe because governments don’t even understand how the Internet works and you want them to legislate gaming. lmao talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
We aren’t talking about them legislating gaming, we’re talking about them restricting corporate greed that invalidates a gamer’s purchase.
The European Union fairly well understands how software and digital services work and have created quite a a set of legal options that makes life better for the average digital consumer.
Lawmaking goes slow, but the EU has shown to pack quite a punch.
Being sold only a license is a US-centric idea, and the law doesn’t quite work the same in the EU and many other parts of the world.
And yet, the same corporate actions affect those gamers.
“Being sold only a license is a US-centric idea…”
Kind of how appealing to the king (whoever/whatever that might be) to solve all your life’s problems is a very Euro-centric idea.
I don’t disagree with the premise of the argument… yes, once again, the little guy is getting the shaft.
However, in this case there is any easy fix. Unlike water or food, a game purchase is a discretionary expense. Stop spending your life and money on this crap. Stop empowering the manufacturers who abuse you by giving them billions of dollars and then crying about it later.
Look what a pissed-off consumer base did to Bud light. Stop buying their crap and they will soon see things your way.
The crybabies could just move on to the next brand of watered down urine when their feelings were hurt, it’s not as easy with games.
Anheuser-Busch stock is pretty much fine, a bunch of hateful crybabies shooting cases of beer did approximately zero long term damage
Voting with your wallet is historically ineffective. Influencing legislators, on the other hand, actually works. Think about it: what do successful businesses do? Do they actually out-compete other companies? Or do they give donations to politicians instead, who then enact favorable legislation?
At best, they’ll pave the way for someone else to resurrect support after the parent has abandoned it. Kind of “digital salvage rights” —-but there’s no precedent that could compel a company to support something in perpetuity.
I would love a law that says “ open or support” for hardware and software. Don’t want to support a phone? Open the boot loader and publish the hardware specs so people can write drivers. Don’t want to support a game? Open the server software or publish detailed documentation of the api. I bet companies would IMMEDIATELY find that supporting things in perpetuity is not that expensive…
It’s good to see some attention being brought to customer rights. Unfortunately game publishers are still able to get away with a lot of abusive behavior. A vast majority of recent games have microtransactions, preorder bonuses, anticheat rootkits, and region locking. Despite all of this and more, hardcore fans and game journalists just make excuses about how the current situation is acceptable.
Yup, take away anticheat and people will start playing fair.
The f-?
Cheaters are ruining games, especially since the whole “SMO” bs, all kids from that garbage country are “fighting the west” by griefing them with cheats in all big multiplayer games
Anticheat belongs on the server, not the client. MMOs have had functional anticheat for years before the rootkit garbage by simply not trusting the client. Most checks for things cheaters would use are trivial server side. The problem is the current model of anticheat is baked into all the popular game engines which are pushed as the “proper” way to code a game. Reversing that and getting devs and ceos to accept a shift in coding style to do it server side, is the hard part.
I get your sarcasm, there is nothing wrong with anticheat protection. My issue is that giving your games kernel level access to your operating system is a step too far.
This, but unironically. Anticheat only matters because games have become grand-scale competitions where “winning” apparently means something to someone. If you remove that possibility by allowing everyone to cheat, games will go back to just being a fun pastime between friends.
There are clever ways.
https://youtu.be/SIyJB7H4ntI
is The Crew really a great example of this? it was always online only, lived a healthy 10 years, and was only killed after a SECOND expansion was released
But still had 12 million active players from what I’m reading. It’s a good opportunity precisely because Ubisoft is a French company and therefore subject to EU law.
The Crew has a lengthy single player campaign. The online features were mingled with the campaign but was not necessary for playing or completing the solo campaign. Just think of this as if a game had an online scoreboard that runs on a server. Once the server is down, you cannot play the game. It was removed from my library and players with discs now have some useless plastic.
Regarding player count, 12 million sold/gave away (I got my copy for free). Active player count was low last year, as the game already had two sequels. So initiative is more about game preservation, even with reduced features.
Situation is similar to when first Halo game was sunset. The difference is that Halo shut down online servers but you still can play the campaign even with a friend on couch coop. That is, if the console still runs.
in my opinion every piece of software has to have its source be released by law after 15 years or if it is no longer maintained, whichever happens first
While i agree with the basic idea i think that would be extremely diffcult in practice because software A contains code from company B that licenced it from company C and stuff like this. And while software A might be unmaintained some code might still be used in other products (from same or other company).
For myself i almost only use FLOSS. Less problems.
Why not make it a requirement that the entire source must be submitted to the government for the software to get a copyright, that way after 15 years the source becomes public no matter what the company says.
I’d be up for something like a VM image of a privately hostable server must be released to prevent this. Forced source release is a step too far for me to support.
Stop buying cloud-dependent garbage and you won’t have this problem. Get a deck of cards.
Or build games out of 555 timers.
We had cloud connected dices here recently, so i wonder if cloud connected cards are a thing?
ms is uploading a bunch of telemetry from solitaire, perhaps on day it will fail to load if the servers go down…
Cards? And be at the mercy of Nintendo?
Heh, I wonder how many people will get this?
(Nintendo was founded in 1889 originally producing hanafuda playing cards.)
How will this work out in games which don’t have servers but a single centrally connected server?
Also aren’t most games going the fortnite way, with constant updates and “content” in the form of new weapons, skins, etc etc. In a way, the constant updates are a part of the online game experience and without them it would cease to be as interesting.
That’s why I like games where I can open an executable and have a server hosted on my local machine. Unfortunately there are not many these days.
It’s worth reading the site to build your own understanding but mine is that games must continue to function after a company removes support and shuts down their servers but Ross Scott is leaving the level of functionality open ended. In The Crew’s case you probably wouldn’t have any multiplayer functionality, but you’d be able to load the game and drive around the world offline which you cannot currently do.
The current situation is awful where games are neither a subscription (pay $60, have access for 1 year ending on X date) nor a product (pay $60, have access for life). It’s more like a subscription with unclear terms so no explicit end date. You could pay for a product then lose access the following day because it’s really a subscription. Microtransactions are also products treated like subscriptions.
Yes, that is the problem. They need to not allow these stupid mixed models. Subscription or purchase not both.
I don’t see why you need cosmetic things and new weapons to keep a game interesting. Many abstract board games like chess work just fine keeping a player’s interest for years without any such thing. I can enjoy the original DOS Tetris still without any upgrade.
Most hackaday users are obviously not the target audience for microtransactions (skins and other stuff). I think its actually exclusively children, say 15 or younger which like to partake in this. I may be wrong.
I’m just thinking how any regulation would affect such games. I’m thinking pretty badly, since they depend heavily on their userbase purchasing in-game items to make money so they must continuously keep adding new stuff.
But I do agree, the idea is off to me as well. Buying things inside a game that you already paid for, that don’t do anything but change how things look. Why would anyone like to do that? And don’t even get me started on pay-to-win mechanics, why are you even playing at that point?
I hope some where there is a “If Chess was created by a modern gaming company…” thing.
Only playable online, in game purchases, special edition skins, power ups, treasure chests, battle royale, rocket launcher expansion pack, pre-order now and receive an extra pawn!
Is there any similar initiative for “stop clouding software”? Everybody hated the way online licensing broke Eagle’s wings.
If you think you can stop the beast of SaaS via EU petition, please be my guest
I’m glad I never upgraded from my C64 and Amiga (regarding gaming). I still have my C64, the funny thing is that there are now devices made that connect your C64 to the internet and load a game from there. All seems fun and great… untill….
…Guru Meditation?
(I was given an Amiga around 20 years ago. The not-so-good games just worked great. All the great classics didn’t. You could see grooves etched into the media from all the loading…)
And yeah. People look at some of the computers I own, especially the newest ones (which are like 15 years old) and ask if I have a gaming computer. I then show them one of my Commodore 64s.
(and thanks to a friend of mine who wrote a video player/converter, I can now watch entire movies on the C64)
But… my go to video game machine has become the NES.
Ready Player One……The Oasis
I think there’s a bigger issue to this, games can set a precedent for other software developers too. I love the open source tools but let’s not deny that some of them are not on the level of the commercial tools, FreeCAD and Fusion360 come to mind. Wouldn’t dismiss these news outright.
Adobe and Autodesk would literally nuke a European capital if it meant they could keep their cloud grift going
This goes back a long time too. Anyone remember Total Annihilation. At least they were nice enough to eventually offer a patch which bypassed their server check, in response to the uproar when their multi-player systems were shut off. That is the first local game I ever recall being unplayable due to these corporate tactics. I don’t count their disc presence check as such because it was defeated long before.
well… Yarrrrr !!!!
If the game company gets paid once per customer, and they have to pay their hosting and connectivity charges once per month, the servers aren’t going to keep running forever. Eventually the customer base for that game stops growing and there’s no money to pay the bills for that game’s servers (and of course the employees who know how to keep those servers running).
I could see game companies being forced to clearly state “Playable for at least 10 years” or something like that, but running servers in perpetuity just doesn’t sound practical.
Even with a subscription model, there will come a time when the cash flow turns negative.
And nobody is suggesting they can’t turn their servers off. We’re just suggesting that after they make that decision, there should still be a way to play the single player content in game. That’s truly what the petition is about:
Making a patch available that enable the game to be played without the server or optionally to offer server software that can be run by individual users or groups of users.
No one is saying they have to host it forever. They want the single player content available offline and to self-host the multiplayer.
You’re basically saying “the company can’t be expected to keep servers running on a 2×4 piece of wood forever, they have to install a killswitch alongside the internet connection that sets it on fire so they can safely shut down their servers, for a 2×4 to have an internet connection.”
IMO this has a simple solution. Server emulators are a well established thing. Make it so that when a company ceases support and maintenance of a game, they also give up their legal ability to go after anyone stepping in to continue support and maintain the game as a functioning product, and are legally compelled to remove anything the game has to prevent it, such as encrypted traffic or code, or client-server verification. Requiring a company to continue to support a game thats costing them money is no more reasonable than that company being able to prevent others from doing so when they stop.
There comes a time when you just can’t keep supporting a game that hasn’t sold a copy in 5 years.
Let’s take a popular piece of software as an example Windows 7. For a time, Microsoft made the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 free. Well, now Windows 10 is nearing its end of life in favor of Windows 11. I believe and not sure on this but Windows 12 is due out at some point in time. Starting from Windows 95 to present day, although there are new features, it’s basically the same piece of software with new eye candy. I’ve been playing Star Trek Online for what, 14 years now, and I do know at some point in time, those servers are going to go down. People will always have a game they love to play, but there comes a point where it’s time to find another game. How many people still play the original Doom? How many copies has ID software sold in the last 30 days? Answer: 0. You can play the original Doom in a web browser now. While nostalgic love for a game is a good thing and it’s always fun to play an old game, perhaps a game that requires someone to be connected to the internet should have in its planning stages for end of life where when a game no longer sells but is still popular with players, a patch should be released to bypass the online requirement.
Even if the game is not still popular it should get patched for offline play and self-hosting.
Since you mention Doom, people absolutely do play it from time to time and it’d be a crime against humanity if they hadn’t been allowed too.
You do realize Doom was just re-released again for the current consoles just a few days ago…
He could not have picked a worse example XD
Games? Indeed this sucks, however games are mostly intangible. What about electronic devices that depend on remote servers for updates or even to just work? All of them are doomed to be thrown in a landfill as soon as the manufacturer goes bankrupt or just decides to declare them obsolete to push people into buying the very last shiny model.
In a sane world, manufacturers that don’t document old devices and/or don’t unlock bootloaders so that they can be repurposed instead of thrown away, would be treated as accomplices of a disaster.