Hond@piefed.social 5 days ago
Most of the responses of the ministers(?) covered in the article seem to be pretty solid.
But then:
Responding to the arguments, the government’s representative, minister for sport, tourism, civil society and youth, Stephanie Peacock MP, acknowledged consumer sentiment behind Stop Killing Games, but suggested there were no plans to amend UK law around the issue.
“The Government recognises the strength of feeling behind the campaign that led to the debate,” she said. “The petition attracted nearly 190,000 signatures. Similar campaigns, including a European Citizens’ Initiative, reached over a million signatures. There has been significant interest across the world.”
She continued: “At the same time, the Government also recognises the concerns from the video gaming industry about some of the campaign’s asks. Online video games are often dynamic, interactive services—not static products—and maintaining online services requires substantial investment over years or even decades.”
Peacock claimed that because modern video games were complex to develop and maintain, implementing plans for games after support had ended could be “extremely challenging” for companies and risk creating “harmful unintended consequences” for players.
Handing online servers over to consumers could carry commercial or legal risks, she said, in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
On the subject of ownership, Peacock claimed that video games being licensed to consumers, rather than sold, was not a new phenomenon, and that “in the 1980s, tearing the wrapping on a box to a games cartridge was the way that gamers agreed to licensing terms.”
“Licensing video games is not, as some have suggested, a new and unfair business practice,” she claimed.
Yeah, full on corpo spin. Fuck her.
Handing online servers over to consumers…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but is Stop Killing Games specifically against this? This sounds like some Pirate Software bullshit. My understanding is we want the tools to host our own servers if the parent company decides to take theirs offline.
SKG doesn’t specify how companies need to solve the problem, only that games need to continue to function after the company stops supporting them.
For some games (e.g. Assassin’s Creed), that could be as simple as disabling the online aspect and having a graceful fallback. For others, that could mean letting people self-host it. Or they can provide documentation for the server API and let the community build their own server. Or they can move it to a P2P connection.
Game companies have options. All SKG says is that if I’ve purchased something, I should be able to keep using it after support ends.
SKG doesn’t specify how companies need to solve the problem, only that games need to continue to function after the company stops supporting them.
And that’s the friendliest to companies way possible, just people used to setting laws in their favor think it’s still rude to them.
Some solutions here are technically illegal to make laws about. The government cannot force a company to give away its copyrighted server code, not even in compiled form. Since there are alternatives that don’t require giving away copyrighted material, it’s better to keep it vague.
So it’s both the friendliest to companies and the easiest to pass as a law.
Hell just allowing people to build their own emulators of the server could be plenty.
Look to games like ragnarok online. While currently active, if and when it sunsets. All that would be required is the company not sueing the tits off people for running the game locally on a homebrewed server.
There’s an entire offline version of an mmo made from scratch!
Much of the time the biggest limitation is the legal ramifications of preserving the game after it’s sunset. Many companies just need to not do anything at all and they would be perfectly fine. But instead they choose to sue and litigate those who attempt to keep the games going.
They need not build it for us to come. They simply need to allow us to come on our own.
And ideally give enough forewarning that the community can build it before they shut the servers off.
If you don't want to give the sever away (including the ability to use it) then don't shut it down or otherwise make the game unplayable.
Or release API documentation for the server and help the community create a replacement. Companies have options here.
Hell, I’ll just take not getting sued into the ground by the company for a copyright infringement. Don’t even need the API. If a game is loved enough we will find a way. We just don’t have the money to fight lawsuits!
So if the developers of a game go bankrupt, or a single developer of an indie game dies, what do you suggest happens?
The code should go into escrow when the first game is sold. This is standard practice in industry - you don't buy something without assurance that if the company goes under you have options.
This is standard practice in industry - you don’t buy something without assurance that if the company goes under you have options.
Which industries is this standard in? I can’t think of any. If Samsung went bankrupt who is replacing your S25 Ultra?
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had marginally competent political representatives rather than the complete wastes of oxygen that we have right now.
Some of the quotes are good, yes.
And I agree the more because entertainment involving social interactions is as important as political spaces. It’s not aristocrats complaining about bad cake when people don’t have bread. Most of my social interactions were, actually, concentrated around
The bullshit about it being hard to design anything without a kill switch is irritating. A kill switch is the additional expense and complication. Something without a kill switch might not be readily available to run after the company shuts down its servers, but nobody needs that really. Simplifying things, there are plenty of people among players capable of deploying infrastructure.
In any case, when the only thing you need is documented operation and ability to set the service domain name and\or addresses, where the former the company needs itself and the latter is trivial, it’s all farting stream.
TBH this is just how petitions in the UK work: enough people sign it, it goes to parliament, they say a bunch of stuff about it that often sounds reasonable enough, then they do nothing about it. It’s just a way to give the public the illusion that they’re being listened to without having to actually do anything. It was the same with the digital ID petition, which I still signed but with 100% expectation that it wouldn’t actually achieve anything.
TWeaK@lemmy.today 5 days ago
This is absolute bullshit and not at all how it works. For someone who is supposed to write laws, she should be removed from office for showing such incompetence.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
I’m pretty sure (not absolutely) this has appeared in court and even click-wrap licenses, where one clicks to agree to a license with a higher word count than King Lear are not valid due to the end user high administrative burden (reading 20K+ words in the middle of a software install).
There was a period in the 1980s where end users automatically were assumed to agree to licensing, but also licenses were extremely lenient and allowed unlimited use by the licensee without any data access rights by the providing company. 21st century licenses are much more complicated and encroach a lot more on end-user privacy.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 4 days ago
Nah, it’s absolutely how it has worked since the 1980s. You’ve never owned the game, just the physical hardware it’s on and a license to use the game. Go read any manual or back of the box or actual cartridge or disc.
TWeaK@lemmy.today 2 days ago
That’s not the point I was making. She argued that opening the box was tantamount to agreeing to the terms, but the full terms aren’t on the box. You can’t access the full terms until after you’ve opened it, thus you haven’t agreed to them yet as you haven’t had the opportunity to read them. And, even then, the agreement is far from iron clad.