Signatures skyrocket for Stop Killing Games campaign after big youtubers take up the cause, resulting in 100k signatures in 48 hours. (Details on how to help in text body of post)
(Text below written by @treasure@feddit.org. Hope you don't mind me yoinking it for here!)
The European Citizens' Initiative 'Stop Destroying Videogames' is nearing its deadline on July 31st and is still missing quite a lot of signatures. To be precise, at the time of writing this post, only 560.000 of the required 1.000.000 signatures have been reached.
Another requirement has already been fulfilled: The minimum signature threshold has been reached in 10 countries, 7 were required.
If this is the first time of you hearing about this initiative, here's a short TL;DR for you (more detailed information can be found here):
Publishers that sell or license videogames should have to leave their videogames in a functional (playable) state.
This means: Remote disabling of video games (such as live service titles) without providing means of keeping the game functional without the involvement of the publisher should be illegal.
This does NOT mean that publishers should support their games forever, but rather that they provide tools (such as server binaries) to enable others to keep the game playable.
The initiative is slowly picking up speed again recently after its creator published a video explaining some of the background and why he doesn't want to continue after the initiative is over. The video has been well-received by the community and some big influencers have reported on the topic.
If you are an EU citizen and have not signed yet, THIS IS THE TIME! The month until the deadline is met will pass quickly. Use two minutes of your time to influence something that may improve your life forever!
Also, if you are a UK citizen, you can sign a UK specific legal petition that also carries legal weight (forces parliament to investigate the issue). You can sign that here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/
I mean, big YouTubers like Charlie and others covering Thor’s bullshit is what drove this huge spike in signatures so maybe we should be thanking Thor lol
It saddens me that my country (Italy) has such a low percentage of signatures. Most of us are either ignorant of anything happening outside of our borders, or straight up doomers who don't believe anything can ever change for the better.
Big congrats to my fellow northern cousins. I was expecting Poland, who has a healthy videogame industry, to gather a good enough number of signatures, but 160% is wild! It's refreshing seeing so many people joining the petition - It's not even about videogames: this initiative will have huge repercussions on the lifespan of other, unrelated products and, in general terms, planned obsolescence.
Everyone was calling it "stop killing games" instead of "stop destroying games" and I literally thought it was a petition to stop games with murder and violence lol never even got farther than seeing the title.
Definitely a good idea to switch over to stop destroying games if that wasn't the official title already...
I’ve been served PirateSoftware’s shorts long before all this controversy and it always bugged me how confidently wrong he was about systems and network things. He seems to be under the impression that he understands these things on an advanced level due to his experience as a checks notes QA tester for Blizzard, and a… indie software developer lol.
Just to clarify, this isn't a normal toothless petition, this is an official EU mechanism that allows citizens to bring problems to the attention of the European Commission, and force them to pass judgement on it legally. You can read more about it here.
It's good to be skeptical of anything asking for that personal info, but I'd suggest researching into it to confirm that it is indeed legit.
I hope the wording of the petition is very clear. The last time this was brought up in the UK the government of the time basically just brushed it off by intentionally misunderstanding the petition. You can't give them any leeway to do that this time.
I suspect they would've brushed it off regardless, they didn't want to deal with it. There's another 100k UK petition (The one linked to at the bottom of the OP text) that would force them to re-look at it with more depth which is also ending quite soon.
Yes I've already signed it, and I signed the original. Although even back then I suspected that the petition was simultaneously too vague and too specific.
It was vague in that it didn't really explain what it was asking to happen, and didn't really make the distinction between a product being technically still functional and a product not working because the servers have shut down. While at the same time being too specifically focused on games rather than server run software in general. What happens if Adobe goes down, does everyone lose access to photoshop?
I just feel that this has a better chance of succeeding if they were to de-emphasize the games aspect, and allow politicians the wiggle run to focus on the corporate business side of things.
As an American who can't bear to play most online games because they might go down or disallow Linux users, please please please please check. EU laws are our only hope of having usable fucking technology.
The thought of being able to mod and host my own GTA 5 online server when it goes down, without some weird custom server mod that also uses Windows-exclusive anti-cheat on most servers, sounds like a damn dream. I miss that game... but fuck Windows, nothing is worth installing Windows. I just realized I've been ranting about the lack of Linux compatibility of GTA 5 Online in reply to someone's comment about how this petition has gone on for a while. I swear I wasn't hijacking your comment, I just have strong feelings about Linux gaming and got carried away.
Yeah. It has rapidly turned an initiative that was already unnecessarily combative toward devs (fuck the publishers though) and associated it with harassment and review bombing games that are actually Doing It Right just because they worked with the wrong third party studio. Not to mention all the "Well, we don't agree with everything asmongold says, but let's call a truce so long as he is gonna let us play our video games"
And... honestly? I have disliked thor since LONG before all y'all realized he isn't the world's best WoW player or he has an opinion you don't like because he was considering things from the perspective of the people who would be doing the work to enact these "simple requirements".
But it feels REAL fucking everyday normal to watch people immediately go from "the harassment campaign that led to the death of Mikayla Raines was horrible" to "Let's fucking ruin Pirate Software's life and attack him and everything he has ever associated with because we are morally righteous"
I hope this petition succeeds. There are games and other digital media I want to experience, but corporations are dead set on just trotting out new things on their terms.
Not only do I not mind you yoinking the text, I want to thank you for your contribution to the cause. If everyone who has signed could get one more person to sign, the initiative would succeed!
This also has big implications for consumer rights and society as a whole in other areas of digital technology and right to repair, it is a foot in the door to start actually holding manufacturers responsible for the full lifecycle of their products (digital and real) that requires them to actually relinquish their control when their product reaches end-of-commercial-life, instead of turning everything into digital garbage out of what basically amounts to apathy and compulsive rights hoarding.
He actively misrepresented the campaign and spread misinformation about its goals. I don't know if he genuinely didn't understand or if he was too embarrassed to admit to a mistake but he did a lot of damage to the momentum and perception of the whole thing.
It sucks these big creators only now pick up the mantle but it's better than nothing. There's still some time left.
I don’t know if he genuinely didn’t understand or if he was too embarrassed to admit to a mistake
Worse, he actively lied. In his edited video about the petition he actively misrepresents the initiative, then goes on to edit out the the part of Ross' video that would have contradicted his misrepresentation.
This is not an innocent or negligent mistake on Thor's part, it's an active attempt at burial.
I haven't really been following it or him (I don't really even know much, other than the gist of not wanting games to disappear when devs decide it's too expensive to keep the servers). What did he do? Because normally he gives pretty good takes.