“many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only”
So change your design? The corporate mind cannot comprehend this.
Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Stamau123@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://www.videogameseurope.eu/news/statement-on-stop-killing-games/
Comments
Whitebrow@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Davin@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
“many titles are designed from the ground-up to be rent seeking”
paraphrand@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why could you turn a battle royal game into a local only game?
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Give players a copy of the server so they can host their own, or patch the game to allow direct connections like games used to have in the 90s and 00s?
lath@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why not?
InFerNo@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
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.
audaxdreik@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
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 rather than something that psychologically tries to exploit my FOMO and drains my wallet.
Vittelius@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
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.
aksdb@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.)
audaxdreik@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
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!
SoupBrick@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
aksdb@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Do you want to know more?
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
I am doing my part! STOMPS on EA’s logo.
whats_all_this_then@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Beat me to it!
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“Our Board”:
Epic Games, Take Two, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Bandai Namco, etc.
Aielman15@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I trust these people with every cell of my body.
Korkki@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
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
nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
nah, it would not. it’s just another lie. release the server code and leave, no worries.
Ksin@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
… as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist…
There are third party options for this.
… and would leave rights holders liable.
Liable for what? A service everyone knows they’re no longer providing? Are car manufacturers still liable for 50 year old rusty cars people still drive? Can Apple today be held liable for a software vulnerability in the Lisa or the Mac II?
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.
Then don’t design games that way. Don’t make games like these. This is good news, actually.
Toga65@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s crazy how they act like no one else could run a server for a live service game.
We used to fucking buy and rent servers to game on our own private servers.
Its wild how this disappeared and all server structure just got consolidated into shit like AWS and Azure.
black0ut@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Minecraft, the game that sold the most copies in history, has a huge infrastructure of community-hosted servers, some with tens of thousands of players playing at the same time. The community has created different flavors of the server software, optimized it, added mod support and even reprogrammed parts of it.
At this point, it’s hard for me to believe how someone could say a community can’t run game servers with a straight face.
nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I agree, the liability for user content in community hosted games is just pure bullshit excuses.
online-only is not bad, some mechanics just work like that. that’s totally fine. Just release the server code when you don’t want to host any more.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I know. I like online content as well. Some of the games I spent the most hours in (Warframe, Helldivers 2) are these kinds of games. But if a corpo lobbying group is forcing the choice between “Enshittified always online” or “never any online content ever anymore” I’ll choose the latter.
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
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.
NONE_dc@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh They are scare. That’s Good.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
RedFrank24@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
LorIps@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Dear Video Games Europe!
Bullshit.
Best Wishes,
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Just release the server code. nothing new has to be created. The industries claim of being liable for user content in this scenario is just bull
Shayeta@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Not even code, just the binaries and pre-baked libs. They already have those.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Don’t even need to release the code. Just the server binary of the game.
iamtherealwalrus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“Just add bots”
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
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.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Was this written by Thor?
Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Nah, way too polite
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
reksas@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
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.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I don’t know who are these people. And they have achieved in record time that I never want to really heard them anymore.
pyre@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
just put the fries in the bag. stop making excuses. stop killing games.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
So…here’s the thing, folks: What you’re REALLY going to have to do is stop buying live service video games.
If I understand this, it is a petition to get the EU government to look into maybe thinking about making some laws to…do something about live service games becoming unplayable when the servers shut down. Okay, here’s how that’s going to go: “We looked into it and decided not to do anything.”
Has anyone tried…not buying the damn games in the first place? If you pay for these games knowing that the soulless reptilian cloacal slits that run the AAA industry can just shut down servers whenever they want, YOU are the problem.
nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
You are basically saying that consumer protection is useless, as consumers should protect themselves.
That would be true if all consumers would have the time and understanding to be perfectly informed all the time, which is not realistic.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
If the population at large is too stupid to make healthy video game purchasing decisions, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for protections to come from the representatives they elected.
I can see a stack of ways that this isn’t going to work:
- The government looks at the petition and says "No we’re not going to consider that."
- The government says "We’ve considered that and decided to do nothing."
- The government pulls an EU and the solution they come up with is to make every video game published everywhere in the world force the user to agree to the EULA every time the game launches, prompting a slew of “EULA auto-accept” mods to work around the annoying thing you now have to constantly click.
- The government puts in a law that’s written decently. The industry, particularly those parts based outside the EU such as Japan and North America, ignore it, and shut down servers when they damn well please.
But let’s indulge in the fantasy that democracy works for a minute and Stop Killing Games becomes a law that works perfectly as intended. The publishers will find some other way to be shifty greedy fuckpukes. Case in point: Live service games just shutting down their servers whenever they want is 100% legal right now. The government currently is not protecting consumers. It never truly will. The shadiness of business will always outrun government protection, 100% of the time.
I still maintain, if you continue to pay for live service games, you’re the problem.
Toga65@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I mean having devs turn over the games to players after they cease development is not crazy at all.
Live service games can still absolutely be playable once development has ceased.
Anyone can run a server.
Stop killing games is a no brainer initiative
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Sure. I remember when Id Software released Doom as open source. They had just released Quake II earlier that month, Doom was old news and not really a money maker for the company, so they opened the source code to let the community play with it. That was a cool thing to do, it should be done more often.
I would say yeah, you should build a game in such a way that it can be played once its abandoned. The greed vampires who are actually in charge won’t let a law like that be passed. Or if it is, they’ll ignore it.
x00z@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
What they’re not saying is that THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO PLAY OLD GAMES. They make nothing from it.
The best case scenario after they kill a game is for you to forget it existed and buy the next one… Oh and engaging with the microtransaction ecosystem.
zecg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Just make people sign one of those “I understand there’s no guarantees this’ll work or won’t rape me” when they download the private server software, you fucking corporate snakes.
dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Is this a troll site? Or just lawyers?
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
i predicted this
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
Predicted what?
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
This
nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
this! /s
Blackdoomax@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Next step will be Stop Buying Games.
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
These are the board members of this organisation, in case someone is curious about their relevancy/neutrality on the matter:
You know, the people who “ensured that the voice of a responsible games ecosystem is heard and understood” (direct quote from their website).
Kowowow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
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
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He did say something similar years ago if I recall correctly but we never got any details and it was so long ago it’s hard to guess whether that’s still the plan. Reassurance or update on that wouldn’t be unwelcome, that’s for sure.
SlyLycan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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.
zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
Warner Bros games shouldn’t have any level of authority on anything
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
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?
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.