Absolutely not, we paid for something, and they can take it away. This is the fight for digital ownership.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Still think this is pure selfishness from players, but hey if you get a law passed then more power to you.
Phegan@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
We do love our pointless fights don’t we?
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want a game that I paid for to remain functional long term. In my case I have a copy of the Hitman trilogy in my Steam library, and as it stands when the servers for that game go offline it will become nearly unplayable just because the unlock system is reliant on the publisher’s servers. It would be easy for them to just release a patch as they decommission those servers to allow the unlock system to function offline, but right now there is no guarantee of that happening, nor any real reason to do so besides some consumer goodwill.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Thats an interesting example, what do you mean by the unlock system requiring servers?
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2 days ago
How do those boots taste like?
Phegan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You never win if you don’t fight.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
This is about maintaining the compromise that is intellectual property law.
IP law has been so perverted that I see a lot of the takietarians around here wanting to abolish it completely. That’s not a good idea. The US constitution empowers Congress to make laws that for a limited time give creators exclusive rights to their creations. FOR A LIMITED TIME. That’s the key feature. I know this is an EU petition, I imagine they have a similar concept of IP. That it belongs to the creator for awhile, and then enters the public domain as the heritage of all mankind.
Do away with copyright protection entirely, and you kill a lot of people’s jobs. The rate at which things will be created will drastically decrease. Throughout the 1980s, how many decade defining or genre defining video games came out of the United States? The nation known for a video game industry crash that decade? How many came out of the UK? How many out of Japan? How many out of the Soviet Union?
Okay so let’s make copyright permanent! Well no, because then you get Disney, a collection of stuffed suits who have MBAs instead of souls holding as much western culture hostage as they can in perpetuity.
So, we compromise. You create something, you get an amount of time of exclusive right of way, then it becomes public domain.
That length of time has gotten longer and longer to the point now that it’s more than 2 human lifetimes long. To an individual human, that’s as good as forever, so it has the problems of permanent copyright.
Especially in the realm of computer software and video games, where the life of a platform averages 10 years. There’s a whole body of software and games written for OLD systems that are still protected under copyright, but finding the copyright holder is damn near impossible. I’ll make up a game: Turtle Adventure for the Commodore 64, copyright 1985 by Bedsoft Inc. Bedsoft Inc was a sole proprietorship operated by Bartholomew Teethwick in Bristol, England. Mr. Teethwick published Turtle Adventure, a typing tutor game that didn’t really work right, and an advertisement for a Pacman clone to release in 1987 was circulated but that game was never made. The “company” was shut down in 1988 and Mr. Teethwick died of AIDS in 1991, unmarried, no children. Who’s going to sue me for posting Turtle Adventure on Github? Whose rights is copyright law protecting here?
Then you get into this model where video games don’t work at all without a central server somewhere. That’s just an end around of the deal. This software is supposed to end up in the public domain eventually. By copyrighting it, that’s the deal you made.
To patent something, you’re required to submit a technical description of your invention in sufficient detail for it to be replicated, because patent law is a similar compromise. You invent something, it’s yours for awhile then it belongs to humanity. You cannot have a patented trade secret. Why do we allow closed source software to be copyrighted?
The rules for software weren’t created for software, they were created for human readable works of literature, and they’ve been misused in ways that benefit large greed-based organizations like Microsoft.
Requiring game developers to publish their server side code when the game goes defunct is holding them to the deal they made when they installed that copyright notice. It is what they owe humanity.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Thats all a great argument for far shorter copyright lengths, sort of a pity this bill isn’t asking for that but maybe thats how it will shake out anyways.
RedFrank24@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I think you’re allowed to be selfish when it’s your game. I paid £80 for that game, I should have the right to play it for as long as I have the hardware to run it.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 2 days ago
How is it selfishness to want to keep the product you bought? To preserve things that contribute to art and culture?
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Of course things are so simple. I like the “everyone’s art” argument as well.
Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
You wouldn’t mind elaborating on “of course things are so simple”? It feels like an awfully vague answer…
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I think this movement is based on feelings. It feels bad that a game died, so we should fix it. Unfortunately the real world is more complicated than that, and overly broad rules are goint to cause unintended consequences for small developers.
The art argument is nonsense, although the other extreme is too. Artists need protections so they can earn a living, but the protections currently last far too long.
Either way, nothing is stopping a company creating a game similar to any number of often referenced “dead” games, and there is nothing wrong with letting something run its course and die off, to allow room for new creativity.