It actually is the most hilarious of ironies that despite what very real harm Thor might have inflicted upon the early stages of the movement through misinformation/mischaracterization; The fact is, I don't think this movement would have come near to exploding the way that it has recently if not for the perfect Rube Goldberg machine of drama surrounding this man in the past 6 months.
Seriously. He could not have Barbara Streisand effected the "Stop Killing Games" movement harder if he tried. It really is such poetic justice. It's a shame that I don't live in the EU or I would gladly sign the initiate myself. Here's to hoping that another EU regulation can have sweeping effects for the US. As a reluctant and very jaded US citizen myself, I harbor no illusions about any real and meaningful consumer protection regulations to ever make it over here. Mega-corpos have simply spent far too much money buying out every level of government, legislature, and regulatory bodies that exist.
Europe really is like a strange beacon of hope for US consumers, as odd as that sounds. Fight the good fight for us as well, brothers.
Now that Thor has helped us achieve our goal. Let us never speak of him again.
For those who don't know, this streamer is only tangentially related to the stop killing games petition because he made a comment about it being BS because he misinterpreted what it was supposed to do. He used his misinterpretation to spread false information about this petition leading to it not getting the support it initially should have.
When the guy behind the petition made a statement saying he didn't think the petition was going to get enough signatures in part because of the misinformation being spread about it, PirateSoftware doubled down on his false claims and all of this lead to people doing the research they should have done in the first place and deciding to support the petition after all.
What we should probably be learning from this is that we should do our own research, and find out things instead of taking the word of random people online.
Edit: electric has brought to my attention that it wasn't just one clip, but in fact a whole video dedicated to spreading misinformation that was made by Thor from PirateSoftware. Just wanted to be clear about that.
I feel like a tourist on a safari trip with this whole saga. A colleague of mine told me about this situation and now I can't look away.
When all is said and done, I definitely think it would be a good idea to have game libraries both physical and digital where people can play old games as they stop being profitable to developers.
I have vague memory of there already being such consumer made game libraries for old Gameboy titles back in the 2000s but those sites were taken down. It would be great to have some sort of system in place because this licensing bullshit is exactly why I ended up completely leaving streaming as a whole (for movies and shows) and went back to physical media in january/February of this year. I borrow dvds at the library now. It is fucking fantastic. I had forgotten how much I missed going looking for movies I'd like to see in places like Moby Disc and Blockbuster. It's so comfy and when you find a movie you've never heard of before and you bring it home and it's really good, it just feels so special.
I think games should have that too. I stopped playing games in 2015 because I just saw no end to having to fork out money all the time to keep up with the tech and getting new titles and gradually seeing how it was more and more an online thing instead of a physical thing so I just stopped. Didn't like the direction games were taking. Seems like it is reaching a breaking point finally.
Libraries are so important for culture.
My only real experience with this guy was that he helped fund a mario 64 romhacking competition that I entered. So I got some money from him because of it. Funny how that works out.
I know it's not going to happen, but I would love it if legislation could go as far as requiring companies to open-source their engines and servers after maybe a period of time, or on ending support for the game. It could be done ID-style where the company retains full rights of the content and trademarks, which would still require players to buy the game to legally play it.
I'm aware there are a lot of cases where games include middleware that's licensed from 3rd parties that complicate preservation efforts. But if open-sourcing the code is the path taken, there's a simple solution for that: just release what you can, even if what's released is in an unplayable state without the middleware. It then becomes the responsibility of any volunteers to take that code and bring it back to a usable state however they choose.
This drama highlights that there's still a great need for better computer literacy. Anyone with even a basic education in how software, source-code, and software licensing works can tell PirateSoftware is full of shit pretty much immediately. That is, anyone educated who are themselves not grifters.
Credit where credit's due
I've never liked the guy, he's always seemed so full of himself like he thinks he's smarter than everyone and can never be wrong.
Every good story needs a villain
Is this a real screenshot of him crying about the initiative reaching 100%?
