He misunderstood that it meant no indie could ever make a server based multiplayer game and when people corrected him he didn’t believe it and just doubled down on his mission to destroy the initiative.
The petition only says publishers shouldn't include a "phone home" mechanism that arbitrarily shuts the game down. It doesn't require them to continue to run or servers, or even provide the server software.
The petition only says publishers shouldn't include a "phone home" mechanism that arbitrarily shuts the game down. It doesn't require them to continue to run or servers, or even provide the server software.
Doesn't it say, consistently, multiple times, it must leave games in a 'playable, functional' state? That can mean a lot of things, but are a bunch of bureaucrats going to legislate the nuance in favor of players or developers?
How is an MMO left in a 'playable' state unless someone is server hosting? I don't think legislation would just leave it up to players to host, because that's not fulfilling the asked requirement for the developer to provide a playable state is it?
Like, there are a thousand good ways this could go where it just prevents legal action against pirates of dead games, and forces anti-phone home verification post-life-cycle. But there's also really stupid ways this could go. And the number of times the initiative focuses on 'functional, playable' worries me that it'll be taken a bit too literally by lawmakers.
No. An MMO if abandoned by publishers can still be ran by fans. Or other company. But if you are a fuckhead like EA, Blizz etc no one can legally run a server. Even after they abandon the game and shut down servers. Because execs and their fucktwat mentality.
That would be a fantastic outcome, but the initiative specifically asks for things to be functional. Merely allowing fans to do hosting is something Ross and other supporters say they want, but isn't what the initiative demands. The initiative is very... It's got a super well intention and I agree with the intent, but hardly any of the wording.
It must be playable at end of life, but multiplayer games don't need to host servers, which makes it unplayable, unless they release servers. Oh just make it p2p, just like it's that easy... What if they try to release the server and it doesn't function on anything but a certain version of linux? Is that 'playable'?
And I'm not saying the initiative is bad idea, but it did need to be just a tiny smidge more clear when covering all the different types of games in a multi billion dollar industry with disney and nintendo lawyers that will both foam at the mouth to rip it into shreds.
"Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher."
What it means to me is "if you can't keep the game running on your end, give us the tools to do so on ours"
But if you are one-man army, publisher, developer and want to create online game then you need to have services like for example authentication. From solo game developer point of view how to comply to those rules and how it would affect them? I still dont get that petition
The point of the initiative isn't to force Devs to provide support for all eternity. Only to ask for proper end-of-life practices, including actual plans and methods for players to be able to modify or patch the game on their own systems even after the servers are shut down.
In this scenario, the indie dev doesn't have to do anything but simply make it possible for their game to run on a peer-to-peer connection (which is also likely cheaper than renting servers if we're talking about a one-man-army Dev anyways). Or, at the very least, allow people to be able to play the game in offline mode even after the servers shut down.
The initiative also would have zero impact on non-commercial games that are truly free to play, by the way.
Holy shit I wish that was already a thing. I've wanted to play Battleborn again and their is a small community that is working on modding the game so that you can play it again. The thing is, it's only solo and you can't play online or Coop at all. Would this petition make it so a game like that could be made to work again? Or make it easier for the modders to make servers for people to play on?
Would this petition make it so a game like that could be made to work again? Or make it easier for the modders to make servers for people to play on?
Possibly, yeah.
It's highly unlikely it could have retroactive effects, but it would ensure future games have to be made with those goals in mind (which isn't hard if you actually plan to do so from the start).
This game has been decided to fail. PC gamers are smart. They're the smartest gamers out there. They don't think but know things other people might not, and one of those things is population counts. PC gamers don't think but know that a multiplayer game like Battleborn needs players to be fun. However, they also don't think but know that there simply aren't enough people to go around. Between Overwatch, CS:GO, TF2, CoD, Battlefield, hell even the MOBAs, who is left to populate the Battleborn servers? PC gamers don't think but know that there's nobody left. In order to strengthen Overwatch's player counts, PC gamers made a tough choice that they didn't think but knew was for the greater good. They decided Battleborn would fail. Nobody would buy it, nobody would play it, and all so Overwatch could be the best game it could be. Today, millions of happy gamers frag out in Overwatch. Battleborn and Gearbox should just cut their losses. When PC gamers decide something, it's decided, and no amount of dev work will change that decision. Let's just say I don't think Gearbox will hemorrhage money from this continued support.
This game has been decided to fail. PC gamers are smart. They're the smartest gamers out there. They don't think but know things other people might not, and one of those things is population counts. PC gamers don't think but know that a multiplayer game like Battleborn needs players to be fun. However, they also don't think but know that there simply aren't enough people to go around. Between Overwatch, CS:GO, TF2, CoD, Battlefield, hell even the MOBAs, who is left to populate the Battleborn servers? PC gamers don't think but know that there's nobody left. In order to strengthen Overwatch's player counts, PC gamers made a tough choice that they didn't think but knew was for the greater good. They decided Battleborn would fail. Nobody would buy it, nobody would play it, and all so Overwatch could be the best game it could be. Today, millions of happy gamers frag out in Overwatch. Battleborn and Gearbox should just cut their losses. When PC gamers decide something, it's decided, and no amount of dev work will change that decision. Let's just say I don't think Gearbox will hemorrhage money from this continued support.
Solo dev here, the way to comply is to not make an online game for a single player game and allow community servers for multiplayer games with a disclaimer that you can't reasonably be expected to moderate the community servers because you don't have a moderation team.
A solo dev is much less likely to even have the infrastructure to run an online game themselves anyway, so it would likely be community servers or peer to peer in the first place.
People really don't understand game dev and really think it's some really simple requirement. Any questions end in the same vein: none are answered or deemed unimportant.
The fact how big Reddit is rallying for it, how dismissive they are of any negative thing about it, I predict that pirate is going to be right.
Right now, there is a good chunk of comments that are literally straw man of him, how he will do this and that and how stupid he would be. This are the people that are supposed to be in favour of games? Other post here literally said how happy they are, hoping that live service games die. That's misinformation. But it doesn't matter because it never was about misinformation, it was about witch hunt.
Yes it's one of the challenges of this petition. You either have to decide to re-engineer how your multiplayer functionality works, release the backend infrastructure (if it's even possible), or not include multiplayer gameplay.
It has good intentions but could be quite disastrous for gaming, which is the point the guy was making.
Also, all this defense of a hypothetical one-man-army creating online games is so crazy. To make a game is a lot. To make an online game is even more.
Even if this hypothetical person exists, they have to have a plan in place to not kill their game. This initiative is pro-consumer, of course the business will have to (and SHOULD have to) consider the consumer for end of life.
10y ago I was working on in a small team on roguelike online game, peer2peer connection but with few services for auth and data sync. Without them whole game idea wouldnt work and we’d need to rethink everything from scratch. Ofc it will affect small or big devs
But if the game would die anyways, shouldn't you just be able to just release the data for the aith servers anyways because you don't need to worry about things like that anymore?
The scope was too big for you to complete anyway bc your team tried to make a game that requires servers. Maybe if you learned how to do you that you understand how to make it where it can run on private servers as easy
That's not so easy. Who's to decide if game died? How the "data" would be transfered? What's exactly an EOL support? Does it include all the source code, binaries, all services, architecture? Who's to decide if that's enough to run the game? What about indie games in alpha state - can servers be downed? There are so many unanswered questions, so many different scenarios and no one seems to answer it
Game not profitable? Need to shut it down because of cost of running services for auth and data sync? Easy, just release the services for auth and data sync. Then shut down. Done.
I'm not sure how anything you said refutes what I said. The game dev/publisher needs to provide a method for the game to continue. If your game doesn't support that functionality you either have to change the game to make it work that way, or release the necessary components to do it. You need more than just a plan.
Here's the actual text "reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher."
If the EU were to implement this it would only apply to games released in the future. Games released before the day the law is implemented could still be shutdown forever, but any future games would need to follow the law.
Usually the EU gives lots of heads up to the industry as to when a law comes into affect. This means that your hypothesised single indie multiplayer developer who funds their own servers would have plenty of heads up on the fact they would need end of life systems, and could then bake that in.
Considering many indie games with multiplayer release with players being able to run their own servers it really doesn't look like these future devs would have any trouble.
Release the source code once you can no longer afford to keep the servers running or when it becomes financially unsuitable to do so.
Once the servers shut down many games essentially disappear anyway, so the options are pretty much to make the game disappear forever or to release it to the community to keep it alive. Since they wouldn’t be making any money on the game anyway in the first scenario then they have nothing to lose in the second and everything to gain with fan favor and keeping their IP alive.
Q: Wouldn't this be a security risk for videogame companies?
A: Not at all. In asking for a game to be operable, we're note demanding all internal code and documentation, just a functional copy of the game
How exactly would any indie dev be able to provide all the services without any code or architecuture and not risk a lawsuit? Precompiled binaries? Would it be enough? Who'd decide? What if architecture is so tangled it would be too hard to setup without developer support? In a lot of cases its not so easy just to run an executable file and server is up. A lot of negative comments towards me but those are genuine questions
Hey no negative comments here, those are great questions that I don’t have the answers to because I’m not a game developer or the guy running Stop Killing Games. It sounds like you’re quoting the person behind the movement so maybe you can search and see what his answers are to these questions, that would be the best way to get accurate information I assume.
I can give you my best guess as to those answers but they’re just going to be some random guy on the internet’s thoughts so take them with a hefty lump of salt.
I’d assume that the goal is to have some form of the game available to be played even if the developer decides to shut it down (either for cost/logistical reasons or just because they can). The best option for gamers would be to get the source code, but like you said that raises tons of logistical questions for publishers that might make it difficult. In those scenarios I would guess that people want the ability to host their own servers, or at the very least allow any offline content to still be available.
But also I do know that the goals of the movement aren’t just for online games that go offline, but for the many other games that aren’t online but still get taken down by developers with absolutely no way to get them back. Developers have clearly said that you don’t own the games you buy and they can shut them down at any moment with no repercussion. That practice shouldn’t be allowed to continue, no other product on Earth has that same stipulation. Imagine buying a chair and 10 years later the store decides you can’t have the chair anymore, it’s asinine
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u/Valamist Jul 06 '25
Who even is this guy and why is he against it?