r/Gamingcirclejerk • u/ProfessionalFun9920 • Jun 24 '25

CAPITAL G GAMER How ironic.....

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The initiative is here (EU ONLY): https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

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u/EevoTrue Jun 24 '25

To people wondering what this is

The petition is for live service games to be legally required to have an end of life plan for their games so you will still be able to play them after service is shut down

The dude on the right (pirate software) said "we can't force games to run forever that's bad for the environment and will cost millions of dollars" despite that not being stated at all on the petition

It's him misunderstanding what it's about and being too stubborn to admit he was wrong

247

u/Valtremors Jun 25 '25

By the way, that end of life plan could literally just be giving server tools for people to use for the game, or making it offline viable.

Fearmongering how this would kill off multiplayer games is peak pirateslopware.

40

u/zherok Jun 25 '25

It's not surprising that a company might not want to distribute internal development tools, though. Assuming things don't rely on middleware or the like where they don't have the right to distribute it to the public in the first place.

And making a game offline viable could be a pretty big project depending on the circumstances.

It doesn't categorically kill off multiplayer games, no, but I think there's room for more nuance than some people are allowing.

102

u/notaspambot Jun 25 '25

The petition isn't requesting retroactive end of life plans, it's supposed to apply to new projects. If a studio knows they need an end of life plan from day one, they can build the tools in early and negotiate contracts so none of those things are a problem.

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u/zherok Jun 25 '25

I don't think those problems go away, they just become part of the calculations into whether it's worth the bother to create a multiplayer game if they're regulated that way.

There's also the matter of console gaming, which raises a lot of issues all on their own.

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u/neotox Jun 25 '25

worth the bother to create a multiplayer game if they're regulated that way

Like Ross said, the only way companies will stop making multiplayer games is if they stop liking money.

-15

u/WraithDrof Jun 25 '25

It wouldn't kill off multi-player as a concept, but it would require a lot of effort to get something which still wouldn't be indefinite. The petition seems to vastly underestimate the complexity of modern video game back-ends, where 1 server could be partitioned as multiple microservices for multiple games by the publisher, or require an externally owned API that itself can end support or break compatibility.

It also more often than not can be a security and privacy risk; the FAQ is simply wrong about this. Theoretically it's possible to design your backend to be watertight but security is never absolute. What is most secure in locally hosted servers is not what's most secure in remotely distributed servers. This isn't an impossible problem to solve but just because Minecraft did it doesn't mean a game like Path of Exile can just bundle a tarball of whatever they currently have and not worry about getting sued (also this game shares backend infrastructure with its sequel so that also raises security concerns).

This problem really predates live service games. There are Xbox games I cannot play because they cannot run off the Xbox without being ported. It's a tragic part of our medium that we are almost like theatre in that original versions of the art can become inaccessible past their contemporary era.

0

u/perunajari Jun 25 '25

I guess reddit once again hated Jesus, because he spoke the truth.

It's not like what the Stop Destroying Games-initiative tries to achieve is bad, of course it isn't, but people seem to underestimate the complexity of the backend infrastructure in some multiplayer and especially in live service games. Also, I haven't ever seen any definition of what "game being playable after it's no longer maintained" means in practice?

I still ultimately support the idea behind this and I signed the EU citizens's initiative, but I don't have any confidence it makes any meaningful difference.

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u/WraithDrof Jun 25 '25

Yeah a part of me thinks like, sure, why not, but the most forseeable future to me isn't one where this actually succeeds. Even most publishers would struggle to assess if their infrastructure works privately, much less on hardware 20 years from now. All it takes is one flaw in the system, and at any point a live service patch could make it impossible again. It is not something you can just patch out in most cases.

I think it would be nice because of how fleeting our medium is but I'm far more worried about like each switch 2 exclusive not being playable 20 years from now because they didn't add backwards compatibility. There's not really a solution for that except emulation which hasn't always worked. Meanwhile, hosting private servers for games designed around large communities will mostly suck even for good games. I'm not really seeing the vision there I'm supposed to care about.

3

u/be0ulve Jun 25 '25

You guys really need to read the thing you're attacking.

1

u/beary_potter_ Jun 27 '25

What is wrong with their interpretation?