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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Hey, fellow European GAF members. Recently, a European Citizen's Initiative for the preservation of video games has been opened for signing. It is a proposal to the European Union to introduce new laws requiring publishers to ensure that video games they have sold to customers remain in a working state at the time of shutdown.

If you are a EU citizen of voting age or older and are interested in this initiative, you can find more information at https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home (the whole process of signing it took me less than a minute).

Alternatively, you can also discover more details about this European initiative in this recent Accursed Farms video:



If you're not an EU citizen, spreading the word can also be a big help.

That is all. Thanks.

 

[mitch1971]

 

[Mr Hyde]

Signed and sealed.

 

[DaGwaphics]

Interesting, hopefully the move is a success.

 

[SomeGit]

Signed

What a tool

 

[spons]

I've also just signed this. Piss easy in the Netherlands as well, just login with DigiD and confirm your physical ID if you haven't ever done that. Minute tops.

 

[justiceiro]

I've also just signed this. Piss easy in the Netherlands as well, just login with DigiD and confirm your physical ID if you haven't ever done that. Minute tops.

I just moved to the Netherlands, can I do that too?

 

[spons]

I just moved to the Netherlands, can I do that too?

Don't even need DigiD, just do this:

Stop Killing Games

www.stopkillinggames.com

 

[Bojji]

Don't even need DigiD, just do this:

Stop Killing Games

www.stopkillinggames.com

Signed.

 

[MrRibeye]

Thor is being misrepresented in that Reddit clip, he posted a more thorough breakdown of why this is a bad idea on a technical level:


Thor's main points:
o EU Citizen Initiative requests that publishers keep online games in a functional state.
o Thor says that's not always possible. League of Legends has server-based game logic (otherwise you could cheat on your local client and teleport around the map and remove fog of war) and the entire game architecture would need to be changed in order to keep the game functional if the servers shut down.
o Thor says that "keeping online games in a functional state" is a too vague and should be narrowed down to very specific guidelines, as otherwise it would be damaging to live service games (see LoL server-logic example).
o Ross says The Crew has 12 million players, Thor says that's a misrepresentation as SteamDB shows less than 100 active daily players.
o The Crew licensed cars from car companies and those licenses expire. Ubisoft cannot be expected to replace cars in the game 10 years after the game released.

I probably missed other points Thor made, but these stood out to me.

 

[ReyBrujo]

Thor says that's not always possible. League of Legends has server-based game logic (otherwise you could cheat on your local client and teleport around the map and remove fog of war) and the entire game architecture would need to be changed in order to keep the game functional if the servers shut down.

I believe the community would be happy receiving the protocol specs being used between server and client. Before shutting the game down remove any kind of authentication and encryption logic (because they probably use that for several games), shut the servers down and release the protocol, let the community build their own servers without having to reverse engineer everything.

 

[Vlodril]

Thor is being misrepresented in that Reddit clip, he posted a more thorough breakdown of why this is a bad idea on a technical level:


Thor's main points:
o EU Citizen Initiative requests that publishers keep online games in a functional state.
o Thor says that's not always possible. League of Legends has server-based game logic (otherwise you could cheat on your local client and teleport around the map and remove fog of war) and the entire game architecture would need to be changed in order to keep the game functional if the servers shut down.
o Thor says that "keeping online games in a functional state" is a too vague and should be narrowed down to very specific guidelines, as otherwise it would be damaging to live service games (see LoL server-logic example).
o Ross says The Crew has 12 million players, Thor says that's a misrepresentation as SteamDB shows less than 100 active daily players.
o The Crew licensed cars from car companies and those licenses expire. Ubisoft cannot be expected to replace cars in the game 10 years after the game released.

I probably missed other points Thor made, but these stood out to me.

Sounds like a bunch of solvable issues. Not sure why is so against it but i don't really now him so. Not sure that it matters anyway. This is a great initiative. Signed it myself hope it gets some traction.

 

[Filben]

Damn, he seems easy to piss off and disgusted. I generally like Thor and his thoughts, but I prefer claritiy and consumer benefits. I don't shed a single tear for AAA(A)-studios being responsible for providing BASIC service after shutting down servers, like an offline patch. No one expects you to run a life service game until the end of times. Licence-issues can be avoided by stop selling games, as they do now, when they delist games. I can still play F1 97 on my PlayStation. I can still play F1 2016 on my Steam account although I can't buy it anymore on Steam. There's no issue here.

I'm not sure if Thor wants to create issues or have some others personal issues blinding him (I mean, I think he has, as he said so in one of his videos; was it ADHD? Autism? Not sure if it's true or if this plays a role or if it's something else entirely). However, the LoL example, it is clearly a multiplayer game. Make a bot-based game and you don't need server-side logic as anti-cheat. As I said, it's about basic service, as in 'a functioning' game; not a full feature-complete replication of the game that started like a decade ago and you expect to run forever in this active/supported way. Active player numbers of The Crew is also irrelevant because it is not about The Crew per se; this very game is just a catalysator that rises questions for the future, of publishers' control and what to expect, as a consumer, when buying product. Quality and active player of said product is irrelevant because it's about the concept the product is working by.

 

[Cobaiye]

Can't stand this guy, such a snob with a severe know-it-all attitude.

 

[StereoVsn]

Personally, I would rather see an initiative to force publishers to remove shitty DRM and always online reqs to SP games after a certain amount of time has passed.

Forcing pubs to basically rearchitect their online backend structure and more seems like an overreach for server based MP games.

Don’t get me wrong I would like to see that, but that’s not a trivial thing to accomplish. It’s probably easier to enforce if systems are developed with this use case in mind from the beginning vs trying to retrofit existing titles.

 

[ReyBrujo]

Forcing pubs to basically rearchitect their online backend structure and more seems like an overreach for server based MP games.

I'm afraid that this will just speed up gaas, or make newer products more expensive because they will also have to cover costs for old products forced to be available.

 

[Punished Miku]

Personally, I would rather see an initiative to force publishers to remove shitty DRM and always online reqs to SP games after a certain amount of time has passed.

That's all I want, personally.

 

[Cobaiye]

Thor is being misrepresented in that Reddit clip, he posted a more thorough breakdown of why this is a bad idea on a technical level:


Thor's main points:
o EU Citizen Initiative requests that publishers keep online games in a functional state.
o Thor says that's not always possible. League of Legends has server-based game logic (otherwise you could cheat on your local client and teleport around the map and remove fog of war) and the entire game architecture would need to be changed in order to keep the game functional if the servers shut down.
o Thor says that "keeping online games in a functional state" is a too vague and should be narrowed down to very specific guidelines, as otherwise it would be damaging to live service games (see LoL server-logic example).
o Ross says The Crew has 12 million players, Thor says that's a misrepresentation as SteamDB shows less than 100 active daily players.
o The Crew licensed cars from car companies and those licenses expire. Ubisoft cannot be expected to replace cars in the game 10 years after the game released.

I probably missed other points Thor made, but these stood out to me.

- By providing tools to host private server ?
- DayZ Mod on ArmA 2 had a community hosted "Hive" server keeping whatever was happening in all the user-hosted servers in check. As for cheating, anticheats exist.
- Just release server hosting tools and be done with it.
- I really don't see how a game's popularity has to do with any of this, games becoming unplayable will always be a bad thing.
- Then my copy of Gran Turismo 4 is illegal and I should be arrested for owning it.