We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws. Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create. We welcome the opportunity to discuss our position with policy makers and those who have led the European Citizens Initiative in the coming months.
  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    69·
    11 hours ago

    So…here’s the thing, folks: What you’re REALLY going to have to do is stop buying live service video games.

    If I understand this, it is a petition to get the EU government to look into maybe thinking about making some laws to…do something about live service games becoming unplayable when the servers shut down. Okay, here’s how that’s going to go: “We looked into it and decided not to do anything.”

    Has anyone tried…not buying the damn games in the first place? If you pay for these games knowing that the soulless reptilian cloacal slits that run the AAA industry can just shut down servers whenever they want, YOU are the problem.

    • nibbler@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      141·
      11 hours ago

      You are basically saying that consumer protection is useless, as consumers should protect themselves.

      That would be true if all consumers would have the time and understanding to be perfectly informed all the time, which is not realistic.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        15·
        9 hours ago

        If the population at large is too stupid to make healthy video game purchasing decisions, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for protections to come from the representatives they elected.

        I can see a stack of ways that this isn’t going to work:

        • The government looks at the petition and says “No we’re not going to consider that.”
        • The government says “We’ve considered that and decided to do nothing.”
        • The government pulls an EU and the solution they come up with is to make every video game published everywhere in the world force the user to agree to the EULA every time the game launches, prompting a slew of “EULA auto-accept” mods to work around the annoying thing you now have to constantly click.
        • The government puts in a law that’s written decently. The industry, particularly those parts based outside the EU such as Japan and North America, ignore it, and shut down servers when they damn well please.

        But let’s indulge in the fantasy that democracy works for a minute and Stop Killing Games becomes a law that works perfectly as intended. The publishers will find some other way to be shifty greedy fuckpukes. Case in point: Live service games just shutting down their servers whenever they want is 100% legal right now. The government currently is not protecting consumers. It never truly will. The shadiness of business will always outrun government protection, 100% of the time.

        I still maintain, if you continue to pay for live service games, you’re the problem.

    • Toga65@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      11 hours ago

      I mean having devs turn over the games to players after they cease development is not crazy at all.

      Live service games can still absolutely be playable once development has ceased.

      Anyone can run a server.

      Stop killing games is a no brainer initiative

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        10 hours ago

        Sure. I remember when Id Software released Doom as open source. They had just released Quake II earlier that month, Doom was old news and not really a money maker for the company, so they opened the source code to let the community play with it. That was a cool thing to do, it should be done more often.

        I would say yeah, you should build a game in such a way that it can be played once its abandoned. The greed vampires who are actually in charge won’t let a law like that be passed. Or if it is, they’ll ignore it.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 hours ago

          Doom, Build Engine games, Marathon. I can still play those games, but even if Bungie faux-Marathon ever comes out, I wouldn’t be able to play it after a few years. One of the biggest turnoffs to these As-A-Service games is time limited events. I don’t want to feel nostalgic for something and not be able to replay it. Between the discussions on Hell Divers II events and the Sony fuckary, I’m glad I passed. Fuck, I remember my hype for Hawken dying when I saw it was going to be f2p.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            3·
            9 hours ago

            I strongly dislike the end-around that these “live service” games are trying to do around copyright law. I’m a strong proponent of the idea that intellectual property law is a compromise. You get some time to make your money on your idea, then it becomes the heritage of all mankind. Treating games as a service is an attempt to weasel out of their end of the bargain.

            So I don’t fucking buy them.

          • Toga65@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            9 hours ago

            I miss Hawken so god damned much…

            Perfect example of a game that could easily have been community hosted