It's also anti-capitalist, will increase government regulation of the games industry, and will ultimately drive up prices of games and systems.
Because the price of software and hardware has not increased already, right? Your reasoning is fallacious.
You are thinking too literally. Also I don't think that word is even used in the petition.
Q: Aren't you asking companies to support games forever? Isn't that unrealistic?
A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree that it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. Additionally, there are already real-world examples of publishers ending support for online-only games in a responsible way, such as:
'Gran Turismo Sport' published by Sony
'Knockout City' published by Velan Studios
'Mega Man X DiVE' published by Capcom
'Scrolls / Caller's Bane' published by Mojang AB
'Duelyst' published by Bandai Namco Entertainment
etc.
You can't just wish for change and expect it to happen!
Taking action != wishing.
As for the rest of your post, sure, let's say the petition goes through, it is discussed and then it's deemed unfeasible. At least something was attempted.
For how much I dislike how the EU is politically structured, I'm going to trust the European Commission any day of the week compared to what random mega corporations are deciding now.
Live service games specifically have a lot of stuff running server-side and client is "half-thin" - it draws graphics etc but a lot of gameplay calculations done elsewhere. And even if you got protocol specifications game will not be playable as it lacks core components. And those components for sure copyrighted.
This is not a problem, since it's been done already. And the initiative states that it doesn't have to be 1:1.
Q: Isn't it impractical, if not impossible to make online-only multiplayer games work without company servers?
A: Not at all. The majority of online multiplayer games in the past functioned without any company servers and were conducted by the customers privately hosting servers themselves and connecting to each other. Games that were designed this way are all still playable today. As to the practicality, this can vary significantly. If a company has designed a game with no thought given towards the possibility of letting users run the game without their support, then yes, this can be a challenging goal to transition to. If a game has been designed with that as an eventual requirement, then this process can be trivial and relatively simple to implement. Another way to look at this is it could be problematic for some games of today, but there is no reason it needs to be for games of the future.
Q: What about large-scale MMORPGs? Isn't it impossible for customers to run those when servers are shut down?
A: Not at all. However, limitations can apply. Several MMORPGs that have been shut down have seen 'server emulators' emerge that are capable of hosting thousands of other players, just on a single user's system. Not all will be this scalable, however. For extra demanding videogames that require powerful servers the average user will not have access to, the game will not be playable on the same scale as when the developer or publisher was hosting it. That said, that is no excuse for players to not be able to continue playing the game in some form once support ends. So, if a server could originally support 5000 people, but the end user version can only support 500, that's still a massive improvement from no one being able to play the game ever again.
Q: Can you really expect all features in an online-only game to work when support ends?
A: Not necessarily. We understand some features can be impractical for an end user to attain if running a server on an end-user system. That said, we also see the ability to continue playing the game in some form as a reasonable demand from companies that customers have given money to. There is a large difference between a game missing some features versus being completely unplayable in any form.