#StopKilligGames update: Finland just passed the threshold.

Comment105 , 1 hour ago

Few Eastern and Southern Europeans give a shit, Northern Europeans are all in, way more votes per capita. Sweden rallying together a whopping 0.13% of the country.

bread , 54 minutes ago

I don’t know whether it is the case, but it could be because those places have fewer English speakers, so they’re more difficult to reach.

Imprudent3449 , 3 hours ago

The amount of work he is putting into this is really impressive. Being from the US it kind of sucks to see his play out in every country but ours. Is 'merica just a lost cause or is there something else we can do here?

Beaver , 3 hours ago

Get ranked choice voting, breakup monopolies and overturn citizen’s united.

ubergeek77 , 3 hours ago

People need to understand what this will mean from a developer perspective before getting all up in arms. This initiative is more kneejerk emotional than it is realistic.

If you’re going to watch only one of these videos, watch the second one:

youtu.be/ioqSvLqB46Y

youtu.be/x3jMKeg9S-s

PonyOfWar , 3 hours ago

Really doesn’t matter whether the proposal as it is in the petition is completely realistic or not. The point is to get this topic into the EU parliament. It’ll be their job to work out a solution that works for both consumers and developers.

squidspinachfootball , 2 hours ago

The first video does address this idea - time stamped for convenience. Basically it’s starting the wrong conversation, without enough nuance to a group of people that may not understand the nuance of the gaming industry. Could end up with more bad than good, as gov’t has done by accident before. I recommend a watch of those two videos, I probably haven’t summed it up very well and out of context clips aren’t necessarily a good representation either. PirateSoftware’s a good speaker imo, easy to listen to.

PonyOfWar , 1 hour ago

I don’t agree with it starting the wrong conversation. Something does need to be done about companies denying access to a game you bought and that’s the conversation it starts. If this proposal lands on the EU negotiation table, I can guarantee you that the games industry will lobby against it, and heavily. There is no chance the EU will just go “OK sounds good, make it so!”. Heck, the chances are higher that if they pass an actual law, it will be so watered down that it won’t do anything at all. But then at least we tried.

I’ve watched his first video, but I really don’t agree with many of his points. He only barely acknowledges this being a proposal and then gets lost in the details. He’s clearly against any measures that have the slightest potential to be a disadvantage for game developers, which I guess is understandable from his perspective as a developer. But he doesn’t seem to particularly care about the consumer’s rights, basically saying the problem is solved as soon as the publisher makes it clear at purchase that people are only buying a temporary license. He’s also trying to discredit supporters of the initiative by saying they don’t know how the industry works, despite quite a few people in the industry supporting the initiative as well.

pupbiru , 3 hours ago

what this requires from developers: possibly documenting protocols in an open way when they choose to shut down games so that people can re-implement FOSS servers

“playable” is open to interpretation, and does not include trademarks, copyright, etc… nobody is asking for to allow assets to be traded (ie piracy), or open sourcing any code

but if you have purchased a game, and the servers for that game go away, someone else should be able to re-implement a method for allowing those games to continue being played

… also if DRM servers go away, you should disable the DRM somehow: you don’t get to just say that the DRM and therefor the game isn’t available any more

all of this is not at all knee-jerk, and very realistic

squidspinachfootball , 2 hours ago

Good videos, I enjoyed both of them. The initiative comes from a good place but could use a little more work before being brought to gov’t, if that’s the best place for it.

imnapr , 2 hours ago

Imo it doesn’t though. Thor misreads this as a legal document, but it is not, this is initiative, which is essentially to get the conversation started. If you’ll look at other initiatives, you’ll find they read pretty similarly. Stop trying to poke flaws in it like it’s a legal document, because it isn’t and isn’t meant to be!

chameleon , 2 hours ago

Eh, no. "I'm going to make things annoying for you until you give up" is literally something already happening, Titanfall and the like suffered from it hugely. "I'm going to steal your stuff and sell it" is a tale old as time, warez CDs used to be commonplace; it's generally avoided by giving people a way to buy your thing and giving people that bought the thing a way to access it. The situation where a third party profits off your game is more likely to happen if you don't release server binaries! For example, the WoW private/emulator server scene had a huge problem with people hoarding scripts, backend systems and bugfixes, which is one of the reasons hosted servers could get away with fairly extreme P2W.

And he seems to completely misunderstand what happens to IP when a studio shuts down. Whether it's bankruptcy or a planned closure, it will get sold off just like a laptop owned by the company would and the new owner of the rights can enforce on it if they think it's useful. Orphan works/"abandonware" can happen, just like they can to non-GaaS games and movies, but that's a horrible failing on part of the company.

kibiz0r , 45 minutes ago

It’s worth checking out Louis Rossmann’s take too: youtu.be/TF4zH8bJDI8

I rarely ever find myself disagreeing with either of them, so this is an interesting situation.

ImplyingImplications , 5 minutes ago

I’m a vegetarian. If I asked everyone to sign an initiative called “stop killing animals” that sought to make it illegal to sell animal products wouldn’t that make me a dick for trying to dictate what companies can sell and what people can consume? You think it’s morally wrong to shut down an online game. I think it’s morally wrong to eat an animal.

There’s nothing wrong with voicing your opinion, but trying to push through a law that conforms to your moral view of the world is weird. It’s exactly the same mentality of people who want it to the the law that the ten commandments are in every classroom.

I’m fine with having more consumer protection and making it clear if a company is selling ownership or temporary access. Right now it’s often not clear and that is definitely an issue. But completely making the sale of temporary access illegal is just strange. If you dont agree to temporary access, then don’t buy it. There are many games that are being sold DRM free, you own them completely, and they’ll work forever. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy something they don’t agree with.

AnEilifintChorcra , 3 hours ago

Even if your coutry reaches 100% and you haven’t signed, please still do incase some signatures are invalid

TIP – It is better to collect more signatures than required. Sometimes the national authorities might not be able to validate all the statements of support you provide.

citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works_en

Vittelius OP , 3 hours ago

Also just getting 100% in 7 countries is not ging to be enough to reach 1 million votes total.

So you should keep signing it either way. Every vote still counts

Banichan , 4 hours ago

Hubris

Vittelius OP , 3 hours ago

?

t3rmit3 , 4 hours ago

This would literally be my dream.

I’m so nostalgia-driven, I can’t bring myself to play most MMOs because I feel like they’ll die and I’ll losev access to that “world”. If I knew that I could run a private server once the official ones shut down, it would completely change my outlook.

Zorsith , 3 hours ago

Private servers and exportable characters, I’d be pissed if all the work I put into a character was gone.

rotkehle , 4 hours ago

let’s gooooo!

Boomkop3 , 4 hours ago

Heck yea! Getting closer! Keep up telling everyone