Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE
Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE
We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it d...
protections we put in place to secure players’ data
The player data that we are required to agree to share with 1643 trusted data partners in order to connect to your service? That player data?
Go fuck yourself, you ghouls.
People were upset when PirateSoftware was spreading disinformation about SKG, well get ready for incoming weapons-grade corporate Disinformation.
Luckily it's no longer in the hands of the public.
even though there are enough signatures now, they still need more to be sure. Some percentage of the signatures will be invalid(people unable to spell their own names and fakes for example) so there has to be big enough safetymargin. Ross made video about it too.
So until the time runs out, everyone should make sure the safetymargin is as big as possible.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable.
Incorrect. Only in a capitalist hellhole like America. In the rest of the world this would never be a problem. Just release the server code under MIT and let the community fix it. Also make sure you can manually setup a masterserver in the game itself, or implement direct connect functionality.
many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
Same answer as before. Release the online part under the MIT license. Not your problem anymore at that point. You can still require an original game license for the game itself. We're only talking about the server software here.
We welcome the opportunity to discuss our position with policy makers and those who have led the European Citizens Initiative in the coming months.
We, the people, have been discussing this for at least a decade now. Get over it and stop trying you capitalist pigs.
Is this a troll site? Or just lawyers?
Next step will be Stop Buying Games.
No No. NO! All of this is bullshit. Its not how any of this will work. Its all misinterpreted on purpose and then used as propaganda against the inititive because companies ARE afraid of it. They know this has the power to stop their predatory business practices. Moderation is the hosters responsibility so if anything, private servers would make it cheaper for companies to make games. This is also NOT RETROACTIVE as any other such regulation. Companies will only have to comply with future games. Having to remove proprietary network components from the server so they can release it at end of life IS A GOOD THING. It also makes development MORE ACCESSIBLE for small developers as everyone will have to use more open infrastrucuture. And at last this only affects the end of life of games which means it DOES NOT touch live service games DURING their life and only changes their last stage in their life cycle. For fucks sake this is getting annoying but i take this as a good thing because these stupid multi-national corpos are finally feeling the pressure.
protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist
Nanny State BS. If someone runs a private server, it's their responsibility to moderate it.
and would leave rights holders liable.
No it wouldn't.
In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only
Unreal Tournament games are online or multiplayer only games. Even though Epic shut down the master servers, you can modify the .ini file to redirect to a community server. "Online-only" translates to predatory monetization models.
just put the fries in the bag. stop making excuses. stop killing games.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable
Straight fucking lie, the ones liable are the uploader and the host, which after official support ends is no longer the rights holders.
lol. Games like The Crew aren’t super hard to be turned into a single player game. Nobody is asking them to add a 20 hour single player campaign with a fleshed out storyline. Just add bots and open up the game to be driven around in without an online connection.
“Just add bots”
Here are the board members of this organisation in case someone is curious about their relevancy/neutrality on the matter:
- Hester Woodliffe – Chair (Warner Bros. Games)
- Canon Pence (Epic Games)
- Kerry Hopkins (Electronic Arts)
- Ian Mattingly (Activision)
- Klemens Kundratitz (Embracer)
- Qumar Jamil (Microsoft)
- Clemens Mayer-Wegelin (Nintendo of Europe)
- Cinnamon Rogers (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
- Matt Spencer (Take 2)
- Alain Corre (Ubisoft)
- Alberto Gonzalez-Lorca (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
- Karine Parker (Square Enix)
- Mark Maslowicz (Level Infinite)
- Felix Falk (game)
- Nicolas Vignolles (SELL)
- David Verbruggen (VGFB)
- Nick Poole (UKIE)
You know, the people who "ensured that the voice of a responsible games ecosystem is heard and understood" (direct quote from their website).
My question is, what is this group as an entity, and why does their opinion matter? Are they an ngo-style advocacy group, or an actual governing body of some kind?
It's a group representing the biggest publishers in the industry, used as a front to pretend they're able to self-regulate when it comes to consumer laws vs business wants. So no, not a governing body but more of a cartel or lobbying group, I guess? One with A LOT of money on the line and enough lobbying power to push against things like the Stop Killing Games campaign the moment they feel threatened.
if gabe could come out with a statement that if steam had to shut down for some reason he'd try to make sure people get to keep playing their games they have downloaded he'd probly cause these guys to have an aneurysm, but I doubt even gabe would go that far
You can (could?) reach out to Steam Support, and this is part of the email they reply with:
"In the unlikely event of the discontinuation of the Steam network, measures are in place to ensure that all users will continue to have access to their Steam games."
Not sure if they ever expounded upon those details though.
“many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only”
So change your design? The corporate mind cannot comprehend this.
"many titles are designed from the ground-up to be rent seeking"
Or just let someone else host a fucking server and let the game get pointed to that one or any other they want. They could even sell the server software and make money on that. I'd love to host my own servers of some old online only games where I could play with just my friends and family.
Why could you turn a battle royal game into a local only split screen game for 2-4 people?
What "online only" means is the need to authenticate to a proprietary server. After logging in, you are then (potentially) directed to a random server to play on.
If you are not online, you cannot authenticate and therefor not be directed to a server. This means you cannot play the game. When the authentication server and infrastructure behind the game is taken offline, the game becomes unplayable, because it is online only.
If a final patch were to be made where either a private authentication server would be made available for you to self-host, or authenation to be completely removed, you could play the game either offline on your device locally or LAN, or online by anyone who cares enough to host a server with the game logic. It would no longer be "online only" since you would have a choice. You can choose to play offline, or choose to play online.
If a game actually needs servers beyond the authentication part, then those should be made available too, so that anyone, again, can play locally or online.
It's logical that if game servers are made available, a game can never be "online only" again, because you could host the server on your pc and connect to localhost.
Your whole argumentation about "online only" game design falls completely flat. You are mixing concepts that have nothing to do with one another.
A game can be a battle royale by design, gameplay wise, and have the ability to host your own servers by design, technical architecture wise.
Quake Live used to be online only. You could not host your own servers. They released for steam and made it possible to host your own servers. The old authentication system was taken down, logins are no longer required, and now you just launch the game and pick a server in a built in server browser. It should be the standard and Quake Live should serve as an example of how it should be done.
Why not?
Absolute trash statement, I really hope this bites them.
They're just repeating a lot of the same misinformation that Pirate Software had been saying, the exact things that had riled the gaming community and caused this latest wave of action. We're already primed to discount the points they're trying to make and it shows exactly how disingenuous they're being.
Positively, I hope this reflects some true fear on their end.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
As has been stated over and over and over again, private servers used to be an option until the industry decided they weren't any more. If the result of this is that it forces the industry to not make shitty, exploitative games, that's still a win for the consumers. I would rather have no game at all than something that psychologically tries to exploit my FOMO and drains my wallet.
It's also a strawman argument. Because yes, developers have less to no control over the operation of private servers. Yes, that means they can't moderate those servers.
But
This initiative only covers games, not supported anymore by the devs anyway. Meaning legally speaking everything happening to private servers would be literally not their concern anymore. And new legislation, should it come to that, would spell that out.
Same for the "online only design" argument. The moment they decide it's not viable anymore and they want to shut it down: what does it matter to them, what players do with it? As long as they offer the service themselves, no one is bugging them. (Although I would absolutely be in favor of also getting self hosting options right from the start, I am realist enough to accept, that this would indeed lower economical feasibility of some projects.)
For sure, 💯
- secure players’ data: there should be no sensitive player data being stored on a private game server like that anyways, you're connecting to a server, not logging into a service
- remove illegal content: not the developer's responsibility in this case, it's the responsibility of the private server (admittedly this could get messier with net neutrality and safe harbor stuff? unclear, but point remains, it's still not the developer's responsibility here)
- combat unsafe community content: ditto. Not the the responsibility of the developer but the private servers. It's often been argued that the smaller communities of private servers do a BETTER job of moderating themselves)
- would leave rights holders liable: HERE IT IS! We can't let you self host something like Marvel Rivals due to all the copyrights and trademarks and brand protections. How dare you!
Dear Video Games Europe!
Bullshit.
Best Wishes,
Do you want to know more?
I am doing my part!
STOMPS on EA's logo.
Beat me to it!
many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
<Oh no this would kill live service games
nah, it would not. it's just another lie. release the server code and leave, no worries.
"Our Board":
Epic Games, Take Two, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Bandai Namco, etc.
I trust these people with every cell of my body.
I don't know who are these people. And they have achieved in record time that I never want to really heard them anymore.
I 100% guarantee the people who wrote that statement don't know or care how much effort it would take to build the infrastructure to run their server-side components.
I'm fairly confident that any AAA production uses Infrastructure As Code to spin up infrastructure in their dev and qa environments, so it's literally just a matter of handing over the Terraform or BICEP and some binaries for any custom code they need to use. I also highly, HIGHLY doubt that the vast majority of game servers are hosted on-prem. They're most likely either using Azure or AWS.
Oh They are scare. That's Good.
Was this written by Thor?
Nah, way too polite
i predicted this
Predicted what?
This
this! /s
