[ANSWERED] What's going on with some person seemingly called "PirateSoftware" and the stop killing games campaign?
[ANSWERED] What's going on with some person seemingly called "PirateSoftware" and the stop killing games campaign?
Saw people talking in comments at several places now, expressing animosity towards them to say the least, always presented as something that everyone seems to know about.
Many people have a misunderstanding of what the Stop Killing Games movement is about. It's about trying to get governments to pass a law that requires game developers to have a plan in place for when they shut down the servers of online games. In the current gaming landscape, games can be taken offline at any moment for any reason. And when that happens, you're shit out of luck. The Stop Killing Games movement believes that if/when this happens, the publisher needs to have a plan in place to ensure that those games can continue to be played. This can take on many forms: modifying the game to not require an online connection, or releasing the server binaries so that players can host their own custom servers, or something of that nature. Worst comes worst, if none of this is possible, then the movement demands that it's made clear in the game's advertisement that you could lose game functionality when the servers shut down. Essentially, the laws surrounding game licenses are vague, and the movement wants a clarification on what buyers are entitled to when they buy a game.
The primary reason why many people have a misunderstanding of the movement is because a large YouTuber named PirateSoftware made 2 videos where he outright lied about what the movement was about and trashed it. He also made multiple statements on his streams where he purportedly "disproved" the movement, where he continued to lie about the movement and trashed it. His videos and statements were the most commonly viewed coverage on the movement, and this disinformation supposedly severely hampered the momentum of the movement, such that even now, many people still believe that the movement is about forcing publishers to keep their servers online indefinitely (it's not).
PirateSoftware was a former developer at Blizzard and was making an online game at the time, so some people speculate that the reason he lied about the movement was because he had a vested interest in keeping the current vagueness of the laws. As more and more people attempted to call him out on his disinformation, he doubled down and refused to admit that he gave any sort of incorrect information, even when the information is provably incorrect.
Apparently, PirateSoftware has a history of this sort of behavior and has gotten himself into some previous scandals due to his seeming inability to admit that he was wrong at all. This has led otherwise minor, forgettable mistakes to balloon into giant controversies.
Taken together with this recent controversy with Stop Killing Games, his reputation has taken a significant nosedive and many people now believe that he's a narcissist who is willing to take down the movement for the sole purpose that he wants to be seen as the smartest guy in the room.
Small note: For the end of life. They don't have to release all server binaries. Just the API documentation and some binaries (without the libraries that they can't share) would be more than enough. (Basically extremely minimal additional work for the developer)
Alternatively, there should be visible disclaimer next to the price (We promise the game is playable until xxx). So the consumer would be informed that what they are "buying" is temporary.
Leaving this here for other people who maybe could get a bad impression about putting extra work for developers that could discriminate against indies.
From an interview on HealthyGamerGG with Thor. I think he actually has inability to admit to any wrongdoing. He always needs to be right and will double down. He displays very narcissistic behaviour that keeps fueling the fire of hate.
Thank you for the answer! I just came back home to all the answers, yours strikes me as the best summary of the situation. I had signed the petition myself a while ago, but after that, never looked into further coverage, so all this whizzed right past me. Seems like, no matter if he genuinely misunderstood it or maliciously misrepresented it - he handled the situation pretty horribly overall. Explains the hate I have been seeing.
The Stop Killing games campaign is an EU petition to prevent game developers from making games that people bought unplayable, for example by turning off the servers of always-online games.
Pirate Software is a youtuber and game developer who made several videos criticizing the campaign. He thinks it's unreasonable to expect game developers to do this and also asserts that people who purchase games don't own them. His videos supposedly had a measurable negative impact on the petition, which at this point looks like it might fail. Combined with the fact that he often acted quite rude and arrogant towards supporters of the campaign, he is now quite unpopular among them.
Beyond rude and arrogant IMO. He misunderstood and misrepresented the SKG campaign and, when called out on this, refused to engage or discuss it further.
and also asserts that people who purchase games don't own them
Isn't that a large part of what the petition is aiming for though?
To be more clear, PirateSoftware thinks the status quo of only owning a license for a game, which can be revoked at any time, is a good thing that should be kept.
Stop Killing Games would give consumers more rights, which would bring the purchase of a digital game license closer to actual ownership.
The idea from pirate software is that they shouldn't and that's the better scenario.
Dunno who you're referring to but the Stop Killing Games petition was started when Ubisoft announced that gamers would no longer be able to play The Crew, despite having bought it.
It's not new that online functionality is turned off after the player base dies down, but to be completely unable to play a game that can be played offline is crazy.
So now there's a petition circulating, but it's nearing its end. There are only a couple of days left I think.
It's a petition for the EU (or maybe Europe or the EER, I'm not sure), and every country needs a certain amount of signatures. I think some Mediterranean island nations are still lagging, but most countries have plenty now.
If you're in Europe, find the petition and sign it. Especially if you live in Malta or Cyprus.
Especially if you live in Malta or Cyprus.
That doesn't matter at this point. The country threshold has been reached. Now it "only" needs to reach 1 million total signatures before the end of july, currently sitting at around 600k.
Relevant fact... They charged regular price for a game they had already planned to shut down, people that bought it had potentially never knew the servers had such limited time left. It's as close to being scammed as you can get. Some would argue it is.
Saw people talking in comments at several places now, expressing animosity towards them to say the least, always presented as something that everyone seems to know about.
tl;dr It's YouTuber drama. Consider yourself lucky you're not so terminally online that you understand it.
Piratesoftware is a Twitch steamer/YouTuber who speaks his mind quite bluntly and doesn't back down after doing so. Because of that, he's often involved in streamer drama and has a lot of people who dislike him. Haters love to reference these past dramas whenever his name is brought up.
10 months ago, he was involved in drama when he was asked his opinion on the Stop Killing Games EU citizens initiative. His opinion was that he didnt like it and expressed himself in a crass and crude way as he normally does. Supporters of the initiative didn't like that and it spawned a lot of back and forth arguments before dying down.
Currently, the citizens initiative is short on having the required signatures to move forward and the deadline is in a few weeks. The lead guy behind the movement put out a video saying the initiative will likely fail, he will be ending his organization efforts when it does, and blamed it on Piratesoftware's video from 10 months ago. That has restarted the drama.
He's a game developer and Twitch streamer (game dev and playing) who's become very popular in the last few years.
The latest pile-on against him is due to him having some reservations about the wording and intent of the petition/movement and, because we're currently in a era where False Dichotomy is king: anything other than 100% unquestioning support is treated as 100% unequivocal opposition, and vice versa. 😒
My understanding is that he thinks it's a good idea in principle (as do I), but games are no longer simply compiled with only the occasional update or patch, but multi-server online complex systems with a lot of moving parts. Of you're going to legislate immortality on games, then you're going to need to make your argument for it clear and robust, who has responsibility for what, how deprecating technology is handled, and so on.
The latest pile-on against him is due to him having some reservations about the wording and intent of the petition/movement and, because we’re currently in a era where False Dichotomy is king: anything other than 100% unquestioning support is treated as 100% unequivocal opposition, and vice versa. 😒
His video's thumbnail is literally him throwing the petition into a dumpster. If we were not meant to see him as 100% in opposition, that's kind of on him TBH. He certainly communicates that way.
Of you’re going to legislate immortality on games, then you’re going to need to make your argument for it clear and robust, who has responsibility for what, how deprecating technology is handled, and so on.
Missing the point, as it's not a piece of legislation, it's a petition. Nobody expects it to be turned directly into law, but for the successful petition to start a process between various interest groups ultimately resulting in a law that's a compromise. Of course, if you tell people not to sign the petition, that process will never start in the first place.
Hmm, I would like to add on a couple of points to you reply (against your reply, now that I reread it):
- I feel that he really was 100 percent in opposition against the movement, no?
- About the movement, the creator of the movement also agrees that the movement can most probably not be applied to current games today, as it can be unfeasible for the exact same points you say, he wants it to be applied to future games being developed, by having the end of life of games be considered right from the beginning of games.
- Moreover, about the legislative part of it, doesn't a petition not need to deal with the exact legal wording? I belived petitions to be more like "hey, this is what the idea is, and this many people support it". More like a letter to like actual law makers that this is a problem, and we need laws regarding this problem. Then the clear and robust arguments for each of the (very valid, of course!) problems and caveats you mention will need to be clearly articulated by them.
He has literally said on stream that he's willing to actively campaign against SKG. While tbf he hasn't actually done so beyond the 2 (ish) video that he's done signalling his opposition. It's 100% fair to say he opposes SKG.
You have a better understanding of the movement now than the 2 top level commenters, OP.
Edit: it is PirateSoftware's spread of misinformation, as you've seen firsthand, and his refusal to redact any of it nor to talk with SKG's organiser that drew many people's ire. All these resurfaced again recently because SKG's organiser made a video on the imminent failure of the EU petition and mentioned in the video that unfortunately PirateSoftware was the biggest voice that mentioned SKG.
He's a youtuber who is a known game dev.
And he's pointed out the obvious issue that you can't just demand companies keep servers up and running, if you legally mandate servers can't be turned off then companies would stop releasing online games because that's stupid.
It often costs millions of dollars a year to keep servers up and running. If they are causing the company to lose money, then yeah obviously they're gonna turn em off.
Only naive, entitled gamers would demand such a wild thing. It's not going to get past any courts
Only naive, entitled gamers would demand such a wild thing. It's not going to get past any courts
Which is why the SKG campaign is specifically not demanding that. Pirate Software has misrepresented the stance of the SKG campaign consistently in his videos. Seriously.
I read the proposal.
As a software developer, yes you are 100% asking that, up to the limit of "within feasability"
And guess what, 100% of the time the answer will just be "no, its not feasible, fuck off" by every publisher ever, so its a total waste of time.
There's no feasible/safe/secure way to hand off your entire application stack for people to run locally, you just have to get over it. The publisher isn't going to give you any kind of access to even an old copy of their auth servers, and basically every "phone home" video game ever uses an auth server, so you are already dead on arrival with this sort of requirement.
There's no way to decouple off from the auth server when the entire online functionality is deep rooted in the concept of you having an account to auth with.
Lol, maybe learn about the movement, dork. This is absolutely not what's being demanded.
I am very aware of it, and I've read the proposal.
This is absolutely not what’s being demanded.
It is 100% what is being demanded, the proposal says:
This practice deprives European citizens of their property by making it so that they lose access to their product an indeterminate/arbitrary amount of time after the point of sale. We wish to see this remedied, at the core of this Initiative.
The ONLY way to do this is everything aformentioned. It's indirect in how it's asking for it, but in real life practice the only way the proposal actually gets what it wants, is by either:
A: Demanding (foolishly) that the game devs keep the servers up and running (not happening, get over it)
B: Demanding (even more foolishly) that the game devs release a copy of all the necessary backend technology for self hosting, which you can't demand because it's proprietary and some of it may still be in use, so it's a security and business risk to expose that sort of stuff, so no business will ever be able to feasibly do that.
Sorry but no, it's a foolish demand.
"Known game dev."
His "game" has been in limbo for what, a decade? And he "worked" at blizzard because of his daddy.
Dude doesn't know shit.
Thankyou for giving a perfect example as to why we hate pirate software. Because of his bullshit, this is what you think the Stop Killing Games movement is about.
Maybe try to not get your opinions on such things from narcissistic youtubers.
It skirts around the issue in its wording, but the proposal in actual real life practice is, indeed, effectively demanding this.
The proposal doesn't actually supply any specific solutions to the problem, it's just stomping its feet and throwing a tantrum about the problem, but literally doesn't actually give a real solution.
"Waaah, I don't like it when they do x"
"Okay well, what alternative do you propose?"
"I dunno, I just don't want them to do that cuz I don't like it"
Sorry mate but you have to actually genuinely be able to describe a practical solution to the problem if you wanna make any headway. Otherwise it's just gonna get tossed out as pointless.
Or...
If you indeed try and push something like this through, game devs will just go "okay fuck it, you don't get anything at all then because you demanded something functionally impossible from us, byeeeee" and congrats now you killed your local game dev industry, good job :)
That's kind of the biggest problem with this whole ordeal. The people who are talking about it aren't capable of reading the petition, the petition isn't asking for that. Same problem we have with near every controversy.
The EU already mandates minimal service life for things like security updates. I don't see why it won't make it past courts. Hell, under EU laws regarding warranty, games publishers are probably already forced to either run game servers for a minimum of two years (or offer alternatives such as full refunds). This concept is just extending the mandated warranty in a sense. As for the software itself, manufacturers are under tons of regulation when it comes to support and availability of replacement parts in various industries. Entitlement does play a role, but that may very well be in the fact that consumers are simply entitled to access to the goods and services they purchased.
Also, there's nothing stopping companies from releasing alternative servers when their main servers turn off. Games used to come with dedicated servers for free. Companies just decided not to do it anymore because they can make more money with their current strategy. While the games are being sold, these companies make hundreds of millions or even billions of profit. The cost of their servers remaining available is just part of their profit forecast.
None of this will fail because it would be impossible to make happen. The real question is probably if consumers have more power than the video games lobby. I doubt they do. The proposal goes against the financial incentives of video game publishers, so they'll try to convince lawmakers not to bother. If their attempts fail, there's a chance certain games won't make it into the EU if such a law passes, or that certain content won't be available, but it's not like nobody will make games anymore.
A more realistic scenario of a law like this will have game publishers state an expiration date on their software. They already have to when it comes to security updates, but they'll probably have to put a sticker on it like "this game/DLC will stop working after 2026" and let consumers decide whether to buy the product or not.
there’s nothing stopping companies from releasing alternative servers when their main servers turn off
Aside from the fact it's proprietary stuff they own... you can't just mandate that a company must release stuff they own to the public. They own it, they can do whatever they want with it.
manufacturers are under tons of regulation when it comes to support and availability of replacement parts in various industries.
This is the far better parallel to draw imo, and has the best chance of meaning anything.
Except for the fact for most games the online play is an extra feature and not the core game. And thus all game devs have to do is argue that "the game still works in offline play" and this won't apply to those games anyways.
Companies just decided not to do it anymore because they can make more money with their current strategy.
Oh god no, it's way more complicated than that.
Modern game servers for major games are simply just not designed to be run locally bare metal. They're often in the form of complex stacks of multiple moving parts, shit like entire k8s deployment stacks with like 12 distinct resources, many of which might be tightly coupled to implementation details.
Such that even if they release that part public, it still wouldn't work because it depends on other pieces that literally don't exist anymore.
A great example of this is simply any login process.
It's super likely they have an auth server they run that you login to.
They use that auth server for multiple things, not just this 1 game.
They release, say, v2.4 of their game server program in 2025, it's tightly coupled to the auth server v1.7 api.
It works for about 4 months before they update to fix some stuff on their auth server, now their auth server is v1.8 annnnnd...
Now that v2.4 copy of your game server stops working cuz it's not compatible with v1.8 of their auth system, so it's now just dead.
You can't mandate they keep updating their old code on a game they don't support anymore.
So... you're fucked anyways.
You can't mandate they release their auth server cuz it's still in active use and you really don't want to expose the inner workings of the auth system to hackers for them to inspect.
So yeah, it's just not happening, sorry.
Designing a server to be self hosted is a critical choice you make very very early on in development. If it wasn't designed that way from the start, its useless to ask for a copy of it for self hosting, it will stop working eventually when external upstream apis stop being compatible.