The end of Stop Killing Games [Accursed Farms]
The end of Stop Killing Games [Accursed Farms]
- The EU Citizens petition to stop killing games is not looking good. It's shy of halfway where it needs to be, on a very high threshold, and it's over in a month and change.
- paraphrasing a little more than a half hour of the video: "Man, fuck Thor/Pirate Software for either lying or misunderstanding and signal boosting his incorrect interpretation of the campaign."
- The past year has been quite draining on Ross, so he's done campaigning after next month.
- It will still take a few years for the dust to clear at various consumer protection bureaus in 5 different countries, and the UK's seems to be run by old men who don't understand what's going on.
- At least The Crew 2 and Motorfest will get offline modes as a consolation prize?
yeah my opinion on piratesoftware was really cemented by his inability to do a charitable reading of the petition.
It really was a good ole' internet argument where he was just obnoxiously wrong in his interpretation and remained just as confidently incorrect the entire time.
It was nice to have some degree of hope for nearly a year. So I guess, thanks for at least giving it a serious attempt Ross.
Piratesoftware makes me so fucking mad, shit is so crazy people give him the time of day.
Ah you know, not the outcome I hoped for but it's exactly what I expected from humans.
paraphrasing a little more than a half hour of the video: “Man, fuck Thor/Pirate Software for either lying or misunderstanding and signal boosting his incorrect interpretation of the campaign.”
I agreed with Ross previously that Thor taking a really dumb fuck position helped get more attention on the issue that was, IMO, as hopeless as trying to get the masses to care about or understand Net Neutrality. That was what I saw repeated and upvoted at the time even before Thor revealed himself to be a gigantic narcissistic nepo baby bullshitter more recently.
If you watched the vid OP, what changed his opinion? I'll check it out once I'm home from work regardless.
what changed his opinion?
The metrics on signatures for the citizens' initiative. If it helped, it would have boosted those too, but it didn't. He also got word that at least one very large YouTuber/streamer that he did not name decided to stay quiet about SKG because it would have contradicted Thor.
I'll also reiterate that 1M signatures out of a population of 450M is an absurdly high threshold to have to reach, so getting 1/10th of that is still impressive, even if it's unsuccessful.
I am not following Thor very much, what did he do recently?
It's all incredibly online, but searching the keywords "piratesoftware WoW drama onlyfangs" will get the ball rolling if you want to see a prime example of how a narcissist acts when getting caught out very publicly. He also embellished his past a lot and that got parroted in every thread mentioning him for months, so that shouldn't be hard to stumble upon.
PirateSoftware is an enormous cunt.
And he makes no effort to hide it.
I genuinely don't understand why he has such a rabid fanbase.
Youtube shorts.
Imagine you're a gamer, one who is interested in game Design. Your view history has games, gaming, game design, but it's also full of algotrash talking heads, scam baiters, shit slingers. You open the YouTube app on your phone, and it immediately opens to shorts, you don't remember settings that as the default but it's fine, you recognize the creator and the 45 second clip was neat. Swipe up. Next video, it Nile Blue dropping a beaker of chloroauric acid. Next video, its Chris Boden yelling about some kind of electrical infrastructure you don't understand (and that's pretty cool). Next video, Thor, speaking softly, explaining an aspect of game design that you never thought of. This one catches your attention, its in your wheelhouse, its something you're genuinely interested in. You click the profile, swipe through a few more shorts. Your algorithm is permanently damaged. Your a pirate software fan now, whether you like it or not.
Or you can use freetube and never see algotrash talking heads in your feed and never enter into this cycle.
I really fucking hate that, too. The algorithm is so fucking vile and evil.
I cant even watch the content i want to watch on youtube, like fishing and guns (with the exception of forgotten weapons and InRange, which the algorithm doesnt seem to view as gateways to right wing indoctrination (cause they arent) and seem to be safe.. at least for now.), because if I so much as hover my mouse over one of the thumbnails of that kind of content, I immediately get blasted with 3 months of right wing extremist pseudo-intellectual diarrhea that I cant escape without completely resetting my browser.
but if I spend an evening watching retrogaming stuff? Oh fuck, Youtube just completely ignores that and pretends it never saw me show interest in that.
I've seen him described elsewhere as "a poor man's idea of a rich man" and I think it's accurate.
With that said, I don't think it's his fault the petition failed, people just don't care usually.
edit: To give more context, Pirategames literally does not know what the Stop Killing Games movement is about, he thinks it's only about single-player games being always-online (yes that's a component of it but not the whole thing) and converting multiplayer games to be offline-playable single-player games but it does NOT mention that anywhere because it is NOT about that. However, I guarantee you that Pirategames will not admit that he was mistaken about his understanding of the Stop Killing Games movement, he will instead double and triple down and insist that he had the correct understanding of it. lol
i don't watch him but i hope this isn't about what he did in wow because the sheer fact that anyone even gives a shit seems wild to me. but hey i hate MMOs so maybe that's why.
is there other reasons people don't/shouldn't like him or is it just vibes
edit: nvm got an answer on another content
big mistake bud, you just made the list
I think the initiative just ran out of steam. I remember seeeing it everywhere for the first month or so, and then nothing, and it plateaued around where it is now. Maybe the vast majority of EU gamers just can't be arsed to read and sign a petition like this. I mean most can't even vote with their wallet when a shit game releases. And of course it's fun to blame thor/pirateguy for this ( and they probably did have their share of fault ) but in the end it looks like 500k is the amount of gamers that actually give a fuck about the state of things.
It just didn't reach enough people, no one I know that is not on Reddit and Lemmy even heard about it or understood the problem to begin with, on top of that, most "gamers" are playstation players that don't know anything about these problems or care for that matter.
I mean I'm tired of signing online petitions that get summarily ignored
Yup, I don’t watch his content, but looking at his actual viewership numbers, he doesn’t even remotely have the impact to make or break a petition by himself.
Completely agree, I also noticed that every single notable person I see talking about this is from the US or Canada. I also get the impression that the EU simply doesn't care enough.
I am still of the opinion that they aimed too small and focused too narrow. Games are a "luxury" anyone can live without and it's hard to rally grassroots support behind protecting something that people only use for entertainment. Yeah it's low stakes to force them to let you continue to play it after servers shut down but the same low stakes also makes the petition itself pretty ignorable to anyone who's not a very invested "gamer".
Actual right to repair and right to continue to access to the software and services and devices you buy goes SO far beyond mere games, there are other huge impacts to society from exactly the same problem that leads to game servers being shut down, and this petition ignored them completely to focus exclusively on games. I know that was done purposefully, but I think it was a miscalculation.
I'm convinced it could have got a lot of support if it had broader aims. Yes if you go after the big boys who are locking down tractor parts and integrated electronic modules so they become obsolete and unrepairable and directly impacting farmers and our food supply, you're going to REALLY piss off some very big business interests who are going to try and kill your petition, but you're also going to help educate and hopefully get a lot of support from politicians who already know this is a problem and from the general public who doesn't care about games but does care about society (at least once they're properly educated about it, which is hard but also a necessary and positive step to even attempt).
that was sort of the point though. a big case with a narrow focus can later be used as a fulcrum for a wider scope, given that the original case has the right spin. it's also easier than going after the anti-repair people.
It was a shitshow start to finish.
First and foremost: it is an inherently adversarial "movement" name which actively shifts the blame toward developers. One of my gaming buddies was a community manager for one of the studios that got gutted over the past year or so (gotta "love" how that doesn't narrow it down at all) and he definitely had some Thoughts about getting constant social media spam about how they are "killing games" by not releasing offline versions of old games as they were doing layoffs on the regular.
There is a reason the only dev/"dev" who gave any meaningful feedback was thor the shithead. And while it may suck that he didn't have the same opinion as the people accusing devs of killing the games they spent the better part of a decade on... Yeah, pirate software is a dipshit who was just trying to put himself as a position of authority because his dad worked at Blizzard.
But most of the key points he raised were sensationalized but not actually wrong if you look at things from a developer perspective. Well, from the perspective of a developer who expects to get fired any second now because funding will arbitrarily dry up. Yeah, the end result will TOTALLY be that you get an extra six months of salary to make the offline client and not that you'll be held in breach of contract and lose your severance because you couldn't pound that out in a week.
But even without starting things off at "its just about ethics in game journalism" levels of discourse: Yes, yes, yes, I know that Ross et al intentionally were vague and shut the fuck up. If you push "We need legislature on X" to a governing body without an actionable plan? Schoolhouse Rock doesn't start blaring and Aaron Sorkin doesn't... okay, he still gets a boner but for different reasons. What happens is the lobbyists and Jack Thompsons of the world swoop in and make damned sure that those "details get ironed out" the way they want.
It sucks because treating this as part of a larger effort that included actual Game Preservation efforts and worked with policy groups and developers would actually have been awesome AND gotten widespread support even from the studios themselves. Instead it was a flashy campaign that started off by flipping the bird to people getting fired left and right and reveled in its ignorance of how legislature even works. And then managed to get dragged into a slapfight with some jackass who plays wow and sells mobile games.
It was overly narrow in most cases while positioning itself as speaking for some massive swathe of the industry it was actively antagonizing.
But most of the key points he raised were sensationalized but not actually wrong if you look at things from a developer perspective.
they were also not really relevant to the campaign, which was the biggest problem with his comments. there was no expectation that studios do extra work to keep servers up, or make offline clients. the expected legislation was to have publishers allow external use of the relevant source code of the product when the publisher deems the work no longer profitable, to spare people the effort of reverse-engineering protocols and building their own servers. a knock-on effect of that would be that future services would have to be built with eventual shutdown procedures in mind, which, let's face it, they should already have been doing.
thor was saying "this isn't feasible because it's a bunch of extra work for the developers", completely missing the point that this is not on the developers. it's on the company sitting on the IP. they can publish source trees no problem, no developer involvement necessary. and the legislation would have made sure of that fact.
Wow, somebody didn't watch the video.
Games are a luxury that happen to be the biggest market of the entertainment industry with more revenue than music and movies combined.
I feel like this needs to be spread as far and wide as possible, and for PirateSoftware to be mass reported for misinformation about an ongoing political initiative.
I understand why he's frustrated. EU citizens are just so damn lazy and won't help themselves. I've told all my friends and family, brought it up at parties and other gatherings to anybody who plays games. But there are EU gamers (streamers and consumers alike) who are chronically online, on every proprietary platform out there and who don't give 2 shits about the campaign.
Edit: Fuck Thor.
That's not true. The petition to ban gay conversion therapy achieved the same number of signatures within days. This is just much more niche.
Gaming is the biggest entertainment industry on the planet. Globally it generates more money than music and movies combined. Germany alone had an estimated 49 million players in 2022 (wikipedia), with France 45 million and Italy 36 million. Even if they were wrong by one decimal that would still make more than 12 million in those 3 countries alone.
The vast majority of European gamers are just too lazy to do anything in their own self-interest. It's embarrassing.
He's so polite!
Ross is pretty great, give the game dungeon a go.
One of my favorite youtubers for over a decade now.
I've always thought that the only solution to this problem is being able to reverse engineering central servers and thus being effectively being able to pirate online only games.
Reverse engineering the server is reverse engineering the whole game. It's going to require skilled engineers and a significant time investment. It may be possible, but not practical.
Also, the client will likely verify it is talking to a legitimate server by checking a certificate, so you may also have to hack the client too.
At some point you're better off making your own game with hookers and blackjack.
It's an unreliable solution, because there's no guarantee that even dedicated and talented individuals will be able to reverse engineer every online server, if that game has those individuals in its customer base in the first place. The solution seems to be either legislation, which this campaign is seeking, or for the market to outright reject online-only games, which it isn't doing. I don't even really have an alternative to online-only games in some genres, like FPS for instance, to send my dollars toward instead; sports games are in a similar position, since the sports organizations all signed exclusivity contracts.
Ross mentions reverse engineering towards the end of the vid so it's definitely top of mind now for the future of the initiative, bar rebooting it with someone else. Agreed that it's really the only alternative when the industry is as steeped in back alley deals and skeevy dishonest commentary as it is.
This is a PR issue. For some bizarre reason they decided that game preservation should be independent of the right to repair movement a movement that had fairly significant momentum by the time they started talking about games preservation. So for some insane reason they separated the two concepts in people's minds and that resulted in nobody caring.
Then they decided to whine about the fact that it was unsuccessful despite the fact that they'd essentially done everything they could to kneecap the movement.
What does game preservation have to do with right to repair? I support both, but if people don't care about preserving games, latching it onto the right to repair movement is just going to drag it down for no reason.