Handing online servers over to consumers could carry commercial or legal risks, she said, in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
Commercial risks are something businesses have to consider themselves, it’s not government’s job.
Legal risks are exactly their problem to solve.
Company is a body of people, and its moderation can’t be more or less safe, in principle, than moderation by some other body of people with responsibility for that.
Excuses.
If digital ownership isn’t acknowledged, digital piracy doesn’t exist. It’s just copying something no one owns.
I mean I am a pirate as much as the next guy but this is missing the point. They acknowledge ownership. They just don’t agree that it transfers to you when you buy a game. So that argument gets you nowhere.
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft.
Yeah, no. You buy services all the time, without owning the thing or person providing the service.
If games are or should be a service is a completely different question. I wholeheartedly think that they are not, but that is irrelevant to the argument. But I can’t stand those polemic phrases that miss the point completely.
They force it on to us that we cannot own products anymore but instead they are “a service” where we are stripped of our rights, are costantly fed with restrictions locked behind more payments and broken products never to be finished as they don’t care about it: they already got their money. And since we don’t have rights, as stated in the user agreements, we can just go fuck ourselves.
So you may be right, that it doesn’t work “like that”, but that’s something those fucked up companies forced upon us without consent. Stop defend those companies dude.
Pointing out bullshit arguments isn’t defending anyone, it’s just being intellectually honest. Not sure what’s better, you being serious or arguing in bad faith.
Your argument is basically “according to their made up rules it doesn’t work like that, so your arguments are bullshit”.
That sounds a lot like defending them.
As a customer you basically have zero rights, when you sign their user agreements. Even when a restaurant kills your partner in a themepark, because they once signed the user agreement for their streaming service (Disney). As a pirate I have more rights than paying customers. You can say what you want but this is factually true. Legally it works like this.
So when I get angry about how they force people into their fucked up world with stupid rules and restrictions they made up, you may be right it doesn’t work like that when you follow their rules. I don’t pay them, I didn’t sign their agreements, so their rules do not apply to me. If I get busted for having an illegal copy of their content I’ll pay a fine and it’s done (happened when I accidentally downloaded something when I went to Germany once).
Back in the days a pirated copy of something was less than the real thing. Worse quality, missing the DVD extras, no updates etc. These days the pirated version has less restrictions and limitations than the real service. No ads, better quality, not lacking behind a season, never pulled from the platform, never broken because they stopped support and only even though it’s an offline game a connection to the now csncelled sever is mandatory, offline download is actual offline download, no locked content like DLC’s, etc.
You can save your breath, I am with you that corporations try to fuck us over at every turn. If you try to not see a villain in someone disagreeing with you, you could’ve seen that from the beginning.
There is also no need to put words in my mouth what my argument was, because it is really simple. The statement “I paid for it therefore I own it” is as false as “if I don’t own it after buying, then there is no such thing as piracy”. The question is whether or not games are a service.
I am probably as pissed off about the hyper-capitalistic encroachment as you are. you should try to not let your emotions impact your reasoning though.
Hang on, arent these the same fuckers who greenlit AI training on IP they don’t own?
As long as the button says buy, then its ownership and should be treated like physical goods.
“Digital ownership must be respected.”
Yeah, that’s what this entire thing is about.The same govt that saw the overwhelming support for petition against the Online ID verification Act & went nahhhhhhh we don’t listen to our citizens.
Unless it’s a referendum, apparently.
Most of the responses of the ministers(?) covered in the article seem to be pretty solid.
But then:
Responding to the arguments, the government’s representative, minister for sport, tourism, civil society and youth, Stephanie Peacock MP, acknowledged consumer sentiment behind Stop Killing Games, but suggested there were no plans to amend UK law around the issue.
“The Government recognises the strength of feeling behind the campaign that led to the debate,” she said. “The petition attracted nearly 190,000 signatures. Similar campaigns, including a European Citizens’ Initiative, reached over a million signatures. There has been significant interest across the world.”
She continued: “At the same time, the Government also recognises the concerns from the video gaming industry about some of the campaign’s asks. Online video games are often dynamic, interactive services—not static products—and maintaining online services requires substantial investment over years or even decades.”
Peacock claimed that because modern video games were complex to develop and maintain, implementing plans for games after support had ended could be “extremely challenging” for companies and risk creating “harmful unintended consequences” for players.
Handing online servers over to consumers could carry commercial or legal risks, she said, in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
On the subject of ownership, Peacock claimed that video games being licensed to consumers, rather than sold, was not a new phenomenon, and that “in the 1980s, tearing the wrapping on a box to a games cartridge was the way that gamers agreed to licensing terms.”
“Licensing video games is not, as some have suggested, a new and unfair business practice,” she claimed.
Yeah, full on corpo spin. Fuck her.
Some of the quotes are good, yes.
And I agree the more because entertainment involving social interactions is as important as political spaces. It’s not aristocrats complaining about bad cake when people don’t have bread. Most of my social interactions were, actually, concentrated around
The bullshit about it being hard to design anything without a kill switch is irritating. A kill switch is the additional expense and complication. Something without a kill switch might not be readily available to run after the company shuts down its servers, but nobody needs that really. Simplifying things, there are plenty of people among players capable of deploying infrastructure.
In any case, when the only thing you need is documented operation and ability to set the service domain name and\or addresses, where the former the company needs itself and the latter is trivial, it’s all farting steam.
On the subject of ownership, Peacock claimed that video games being licensed to consumers, rather than sold, was not a new phenomenon, and that “in the 1980s, tearing the wrapping on a box to a games cartridge was the way that gamers agreed to licensing terms.”
This is absolute bullshit and not at all how it works, now or back in the 1980s. You can’t agree to terms without seeing them first, and even then such agreements aren’t necessarily legally binding. For someone who is supposed to write laws, she should be removed from office for showing such gross incompetence.
I’m pretty sure (not absolutely) this has appeared in court and even click-wrap licenses, where one clicks to agree to a license with a higher word count than King Lear are not valid due to the end user high administrative burden (reading 20K+ words in the middle of a software install).
There was a period in the 1980s where end users automatically were assumed to agree to licensing, but also licenses were extremely lenient and allowed unlimited use by the licensee without any data access rights by the providing company. 21st century licenses are much more complicated and encroach a lot more on end-user privacy.
This is absolute bullshit and not at all how it works, now or back in the 1980s.
Nah, it’s absolutely how it has worked since the 1980s. You’ve never owned the game, just the physical hardware it’s on and a license to use the game. Go read any manual or back of the box or actual cartridge or disc.
That’s not the point I was making. She argued that opening the box was tantamount to agreeing to the terms, but the full terms aren’t on the box. You can’t access the full terms until after you’ve opened it, thus you haven’t agreed to them yet as you haven’t had the opportunity to read them. And, even then, the agreement is far from iron clad.
Handing online servers over to consumers…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but is Stop Killing Games specifically against this? This sounds like some Pirate Software bullshit. My understanding is we want the tools to host our own servers if the parent company decides to take theirs offline.
SKG doesn’t specify how companies need to solve the problem, only that games need to continue to function after the company stops supporting them.
For some games (e.g. Assassin’s Creed), that could be as simple as disabling the online aspect and having a graceful fallback. For others, that could mean letting people self-host it. Or they can provide documentation for the server API and let the community build their own server. Or they can move it to a P2P connection.
Game companies have options. All SKG says is that if I’ve purchased something, I should be able to keep using it after support ends.
SKG doesn’t specify how companies need to solve the problem, only that games need to continue to function after the company stops supporting them.
And that’s the friendliest to companies way possible, just people used to setting laws in their favor think it’s still rude to them.
Some solutions here are technically illegal to make laws about. The government cannot force a company to give away its copyrighted server code, not even in compiled form. Since there are alternatives that don’t require giving away copyrighted material, it’s better to keep it vague.
So it’s both the friendliest to companies and the easiest to pass as a law.
Hell just allowing people to build their own emulators of the server could be plenty.
Look to games like ragnarok online. While currently active, if and when it sunsets. All that would be required is the company not sueing the tits off people for running the game locally on a homebrewed server.
There’s an entire offline version of an mmo made from scratch!
Much of the time the biggest limitation is the legal ramifications of preserving the game after it’s sunset. Many companies just need to not do anything at all and they would be perfectly fine. But instead they choose to sue and litigate those who attempt to keep the games going.
They need not build it for us to come. They simply need to allow us to come on our own.
And ideally give enough forewarning that the community can build it before they shut the servers off.
If you don’t want to give the sever away (including the ability to use it) then don’t shut it down or otherwise make the game unplayable.
Or release API documentation for the server and help the community create a replacement. Companies have options here.
So if the developers of a game go bankrupt, or a single developer of an indie game dies, what do you suggest happens?
The code should go into escrow when the first game is sold. This is standard practice in industry - you don’t buy something without assurance that if the company goes under you have options.
This is standard practice in industry - you don’t buy something without assurance that if the company goes under you have options.
Which industries is this standard in? I can’t think of any. If Samsung went bankrupt who is replacing your S25 Ultra?
Consumer devices are not industry. they almost never get that treatment.
But the assurance you spoke about is consumer assurance? So you’re saying that your suggestion wouldn’t even apply to video games while suggesting it for video games?
There is no reason consumers cannot demand this even though they haven’t. There is no reason the law cannot demand it even though it hasn’t.
The important part is that the idea exists and is common enough in OTHER situations. When you ask for it there will be people who know what this means and there is a whole industry of “we escrow your code for you” that can handle the details. If you make a new law you have plenty of examples to look at and so are much less likely to accidentally create some unintended consequence that is worse than the current situation.
I think they mean in like B2B. Like if you buy of piece of software x thousand times with y years of support it’s standard practice to have a contract that covers what happens if the company goes under while you still have years of support.
Maybe, but that’s not at all relevant here.
usually in bankruptcy the game gets sold in order to help pay debts… whoever buys the game assumes the responsibility of contributing to run the online services, or provide options for others to… in the case that nobody buys the game (im not entirely sure what happens to the IP in that case) but it’s relatively minimal effort to release server source code or documentation OR even just remove the online parts that’s usually just for DRM which is now pretty irrelevant because you’re shutting it down anyway so why would anyone care if someone pirates it?!
None of that is “relatively minimal effort” other than releasing the source code, which is not something that should ever be mandated.
mandatory minimum warranties are also not relatively minimal effort and yet we have laws that require those… most consumer protection standards aren’t minimal effort: that doesn’t mean we don’t make laws to ensure consumers get what they are expecting when they hand over money
why shouldn’t handing over source code to a game that’s being shut down (and apparently that nobody finds any value in since it wasn’t even bought in bankruptcy auction) be mandated as a last resort?
Because then you’d have big companies going around actively trying to bankrupt other smaller companies to get their source code released, so they could then use it for themselves.
It’s nothing like product warranties either.
They don’t need to “hand online servers” just publish the API and do one last update to accept self hosting.
And new releases should always support self host.
These current politicians dont know a single thing about what you said but I agree
And they will make sure to continue to not know a single thing about what was said. Ignorance isn’t a valid legal defence, but it sure is a common deflection tactic these days. Law makers have a professional and ethical obligation to become informed on the issues their constituents care about, but it seems like it’s rare to find one that remembers that obligation.
Such a brain-dead stance on the matter. Nobody is asking for your garbage DRM servers, we literally want the opposite of that.
More proof that the current “Labour” government is in the pockets of rich companies and not on the side of consumers.
in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
Piss off. This just means they won’t be able to rely on companies to control what people get to say.
“digital ownership must be respected”
gets into bed with Meta and OpenAI
I think everybody agrees that “digital ownership must be respected”. But if you check, you don’t own the games. You own licences. You may keep the licence after servers shut down. It is total BS, but we allowed it.
I have to agree that killing online only games makes sense because they can’t be forced to run the server forever, not they can be forced to release the source code. But offline / solo / bots should keep working.
This has already been addressed by SKG. Nobody is demanding the source code. Developers have multiple ways to solve this and SKG deliberately leaves that part open so developers could choose whatever works best for them.
Whoever told you developers would have to release the source code is lying and is against the initiative.
You know, I have purchased around 200 games. I have no idea how many of those can be mine because they’re linked to a store, maintained (usually) by a corporation hellbent on optimised profits, subject to mandatory updates so I have no choice but to play the way they want me to, and I don’t have the space to store them all. I don’t feel like any of them are really owned by me (and I know this is true but I reject that notion), not until they’re transferred to an offline machine.
They’re not owned by you. You own a license to use them. Some stores, like GOG, give you a less restrictive license, but it’s still a license.
and the law is able to make license conditions illegal/unenforceable (like non-compete clauses in employment contracts)
Sure, but has the law made licenses for software illegal/unenforceable? No.
literally what STG is about
Cool, and no laws have been changed, and it’s debatable if any should.
this entire thread is about the STG petition, and thus about the theoretical possibility of how laws could change
Cool, not what the other person and I were talking about before you jumped in.
