The EU petition for Stop Killing Games is now open!

[Ordnael]

Help me mods, you are my only hope!...I don't know where to put this but I think it's important to share

The EU petition for Stop Killing Games https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ is now open https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en

 

[Snowygerry]

"All other games" I would think ? Civ is a prime example of a game that has not been killed; all versions are still playable I think ?

 

[Ordnael]

This YT will provide some more context

It's the person behind the campaign

 

[The_J]

Help me mods, you are my only hope!...I don't know where to put this but I think it's important to share

Moderator Action: Moved to a separate thread.

This is interesting enough news that we'll also feature it on the main page .
@Snowygerry is right, that no Civ games have been "killed", as there are no life-service civ games (besides that FB CivWorld game once upon a time...), but you never know where this will go in the future. It's import to think about it, what happens with our digital content.
We should not forget that a big part of older games is already not available anymore (see here), and with these new developments this is unlikely to get better, unless there are coordinated efforts about it.

 

[Kyriakos]

In the recent past, where companies hadn't made a habit out of preventing any of their very old and no longer sold games from being shared, there were countless sites that did that.
Then came GOG and similar, whose very business is to sell old games.
Ultimately some old games don't attract enough attention to be sold, even for pennies, so they can (at least legally) stop being available.

 

[amadeus]

I watched about seven minutes of that video, I think, and one question I will put here is: why buy a game that requires you to be online in the first place? I don’t know if state intervention is needed, unless some genuine fraud is taking place, be it overt or a company being shady in listing the requirements for the games.

 

[The_J]

I agree, but you could e.g. be talking about a MMO .

 

[amadeus]

I agree, but you could e.g. be talking about a MMO .

If I wanted to interact with other people why am I playing video games?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I watched about seven minutes of that video, I think, and one question I will put here is: why buy a game that requires you to be online in the first place? I don’t know if state intervention is needed, unless some genuine fraud is taking place, be it overt or a company being shady in listing the requirements for the games.

Because it benefits the gaming companies greatly as they can both have full control over your purchase and harvest your data. And if it benefits them greatly and it is legal it's only a matter of time before it becomes more or less mandatory. We are already seeing a push for that today. And we need to cut it off BEFORE it becomes a full reality.

 

[Kyriakos]

It also leads to people who have bought the game, pirating it - to play without the intrusive drm.

 

[GenMarshall]

This is interesting enough news that we'll also feature it on the main page .
@Snowygerry is right, that no Civ games have been "killed", as there are no life-service civ games (besides that FB CivWorld game once upon a time...), but you never know where this will go in the future. It's import to think about it, what happens with our digital content.
We should not forget that a big part of older games is already not available anymore (see here), and with these new developments this is unlikely to get better, unless there are coordinated efforts about it.

From experience, a robust modding scene will keep older, single player games alive. I even see mods for Fallout 3, New Vegas, Oblivion, and even Morrowind still being made for the Nexus. If a game is moddable, it will have a long life and the civilization series is no exception so long as a modding kit is available (Civ 1 is the exception to my knowledge).

Modded multiplayer games are a bit tricky, though an example I can give is Minecraft with the use of mod packs and servers with the modpacks installed.

 

[Kyriakos]

It helps if the new edition of the game sucks. As with Pharaoh/Cleopatra definitive edition (though I am not sure if people still make scenarios for the old game).

 

[vorlon_mi]

I watched the first 8 minutes of the video; I especially noted the diagrams of servers and clients early on.
My job (full-time) is working in IT support for a large manufacturing company. Keeping servers running is, quite literally, what puts food on the table.

When a gaming company decides to devote servers to hosting a game, like an MMO, it is an investment. It's not free.
Even if the servers are located with a cloud provider, using someone else's hardware, it's not free.
Every company needs to decide about the useful life, the return on investment, for keeping X number of servers running to allow people to play an old game. So, what happens when a company decides to stop running the servers for a game after 5, 6, 7 years? The game dies.
More importantly, who gets to make the decisions about when to turn off the servers -- a government entity, or the company that owns the intellectual property?

Another category - sports games, where one can do online competitions with other players; other games have campaing modes. FIFA 20xx, NFL 20xx, Football Manager, The Show. What's the expected liftetime of those games? Is anyone still playing Madden 2010? Why should gaming companies be compelled to spend money running servers for a trickle of users?

In the video, the narrator speaks a lot about ownership of software. I'm glad he's talked to lawyers/attorneys/barristers, because that seems to be the core of this question. If I spend money for an online game, I'm paying for the ability to play it as long as the online infrastructure is working. If I spend money for an offline game, I'm paying for the ability to play it as long as *my* infrastructure is working. I'm not a legal expert, but those seem like two different scenarios to me.

 

[uppi]

I watched the first 8 minutes of the video; I especially noted the diagrams of servers and clients early on.
My job (full-time) is working in IT support for a large manufacturing company. Keeping servers running is, quite literally, what puts food on the table.

When a gaming company decides to devote servers to hosting a game, like an MMO, it is an investment. It's not free.
Even if the servers are located with a cloud provider, using someone else's hardware, it's not free.
Every company needs to decide about the useful life, the return on investment, for keeping X number of servers running to allow people to play an old game. So, what happens when a company decides to stop running the servers for a game after 5, 6, 7 years? The game dies.
More importantly, who gets to make the decisions about when to turn off the servers -- a government entity, or the company that owns the intellectual property?

Another category - sports games, where one can do online competitions with other players; other games have campaing modes. FIFA 20xx, NFL 20xx, Football Manager, The Show. What's the expected liftetime of those games? Is anyone still playing Madden 2010? Why should gaming companies be compelled to spend money running servers for a trickle of users?

In the video, the narrator speaks a lot about ownership of software. I'm glad he's talked to lawyers/attorneys/barristers, because that seems to be the core of this question. If I spend money for an online game, I'm paying for the ability to play it as long as the online infrastructure is working. If I spend money for an offline game, I'm paying for the ability to play it as long as *my* infrastructure is working. I'm not a legal expert, but those seem like two different scenarios to me.

If they don't want to spend money on running the servers anymore, they could always release the server software and allow the community to host it themselves.

 

[Ordnael]

One of the issues presented on the YT video is that the publisher/developer of such an always online game does not give you a timeline of when will the "service" be killed, so you could be buying in now without knowing you're coming really late to the party.
I am not directly afflicted by these issues as I don't buy such games and I RARELY play online multiplayer...but I understand that if the movement is successful we might see, at least, a break on the "always online product as service" stuff that various media are pushing on consumers, they should, at least properly, warn the consumer about what he's getting.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

In the video, the narrator speaks a lot about ownership of software. I'm glad he's talked to lawyers/attorneys/barristers, because that seems to be the core of this question. If I spend money for an online game, I'm paying for the ability to play it as long as the online infrastructure is working. If I spend money for an offline game, I'm paying for the ability to play it as long as *my* infrastructure is working. I'm not a legal expert, but those seem like two different scenarios to me.

Not quite. Infrastructure has nothing to do with it because nobody is demanding gaming companies keep their servers running forever. Rather what is being demanded here is that at the moment they choose to stop doing so for what ever reason they release the intellectual property required to the people who bought their product so that they can continue using it. This can be in the form of the server code needed to run your own server (at our own expense) or something similar for multiplayer games. Or in the case of singleplayer games where it's literally just always online DRM just publish an end of life patch with the DRM removed.

And if we do not choose to do it or can't for economic reason than that is our problem. But we as customers who have purchased a product have a right to that option.

I mean, imagine this sort of scenario in literally any other product category. Imagine if Apple builds a kill switch into their phones and tablets that bricks the last model when a new one comes out. Or if Samsung decided to send an update to your smart TV to have it shut down forever because a new model is out. Or your washing machine, car or anything else. In every other product category this would be considered a gross breach of consumer rights. What is being demanded here is simply that the same standards be applied to software.

So in short, nobody is asking for infinite support. Just for the right to support the products we bought legally on our own past the point where the original owner refuses to do so.

 

[vorlon_mi]

But we as customers who have purchased a product have a right to that option.

snip, snip

So in short, nobody is asking for infinite support. Just for the right to support the products we bought legally on our own past the point where the original owner refuses to do so.

I'm not sure that I agree with your sentiment. Have customers purchased a product, or have they purchased access to a service?

Example: I could spend money on a card that lets me see as many movies as I want at the local cinema. For months, or years, I see lots of movies, some more than once. Then, my local cinema goes out of business... or is acquired by another company... and my card is no longer honored. Did I buy a product or a service? What about all of those AOL CDs which seemed to be everywhere in the Aughts (2000's)? Were they a product or a service?

Both the YT video person and you are arguing that the client-installed software to access an always-online game is the same kind of product as a client-installed game that never leaves your box. Yes, both are a set of installable software. But one is designed and intended to be used as a service and has a different lifecycle than a standalone product.

For the record, I am saddened that so many older games are being lost, both due to server shutdowns and hardware obsolescence. I wish there were a better way to conserve/protect/prolong the life of games, so that my future grandkids could see and hear what they were like. Like the YT person, I think that video games do contain art, which is hard to preserve.

 

[Moriarte]

Have customers purchased a product, or have they purchased access to a service?

I am sure in vast majority of modern cases you refer to, legally, customer bought access to a service (by extension), even though he or she bought a product. This service component can indeed stop for many reasons listed in the user agreement, including the long list of "force majeure" reasons, along the lines of: "I didn't feel like paying for this thing anymore, because I want to be paying for those other things bringing me way more money".

Does it happen? Of course it does. But, whether this is an appropriate practice in the field of gaming - is a separate conversation worth having. If we can agree that works of art deserve to have continuity, provided there is a community, which is ready to pay for it's continued existence, then it's only fair that developers ought to foresee a mechanism, which, in case of monetary collapse, converts the existing software infrastructure into open source. With a clause that a share of future profits from the dead franchise should still go to the original developers if and when there was a revival of interest. That way fans have an option to carry the flag further.

It's extra work, yes, but also, it's an investment opportunity for developing studio.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I'm not sure that I agree with your sentiment. Have customers purchased a product, or have they purchased access to a service?

Example: I could spend money on a card that lets me see as many movies as I want at the local cinema. For months, or years, I see lots of movies, some more than once. Then, my local cinema goes out of business... or is acquired by another company... and my card is no longer honored. Did I buy a product or a service? What about all of those AOL CDs which seemed to be everywhere in the Aughts (2000's)? Were they a product or a service?

Both the YT video person and you are arguing that the client-installed software to access an always-online game is the same kind of product as a client-installed game that never leaves your box. Yes, both are a set of installable software. But one is designed and intended to be used as a service and has a different lifecycle than a standalone product.

For the record, I am saddened that so many older games are being lost, both due to server shutdowns and hardware obsolescence. I wish there were a better way to conserve/protect/prolong the life of games, so that my future grandkids could see and hear what they were like. Like the YT person, I think that video games do contain art, which is hard to preserve.

That is the crux of the issue. The gaming companies would have us treat everything as a service. Where as we the customers argue, and rightly so that this is highly detrimental to our rights as customers and that therefore as customers we have the right to fight it in order to better our position.

Furthermore, if the software companies are allowed to succeed and push their agenda through than always online and everything as a service will become the standard. Because that is the position most beneficial to them. And I say software because it is not just games. Productivity software like Adobe has been going in that direction for a long time as well. And of course they would as it makes perfect sense for them to do it.

But that is also a horrible dystopian future for us as customers. A world where software companies have complete and total control over what we get to run and how we do so. And where they can just shut down your library of games or your productivity software in order to "entice" you to buy their new offering in order to prop up their bottom line. Or where they can just force you to pay subscription to consumer singleplayer software on the grounds of propping up always online DRM that has no purpose being there in the first place.

Bottom line is that the very concept of software as a service rather than software as a product is customer hostile by design. And it must be opposed.

 

[REDY]

I have spent about many hours in the Crew solo and I got it free on uplay. So I do not feel robbed when I lost access.

I have problem with this on two levels.

First is that according that you really dont need any "crew" to enjoy game. Connecting to server is man-made problem and offline regime existed or would be very easily implemented.
Second is that we are losing something forever.

The Crew is perhaps not example of the highest value, but generaly I would like to have good games to be preserved.
Ubisoft is not some indie studio, it could save the crew without much effort, but they decided to not to do so.