> many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only
that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control.
seems like 'video games europe' is gearing up to lobby/influence the lawmakers to distort this initiative.
the bare minimum would be to ban these kind of things from describing themselves as products instead of a service in their marketing.
no "Buy" or "Purchase", instead "Rent" or "Lease" possibly with a stated minimum guaranteed time online / expiration date.
EDIT: reminder, if you're from the EU and over the age of 18 it's still a good idea to sign the petition even though it passed the threshold since there could be invalid signatures (bots, underage people, etc ...) if the valid signatures are below the threshold after the verification is done this petition will get dropped.
PaulKeeble · 13h ago
The game that kicked this particular petition off was The Crew, a game that you could happily play single player which Ubisoft made always online purely for DRM reasons its a prime example of the abuse of power that legislators should be doing something ab0out.
robertlagrant · 1h ago
This isn't exactly an abuse of power - you can just not buy it. UbiSoft has transformed itself into a terrible, bloated company and it probably die soon, but the better way to do this is to have industry standards similar to PEGI that describe the game's future support, not to hit them with EU-specific regulations.
blargey · 47m ago
"Let the problem fester until the negative externalities build up so much it overcomes the coordination problem and companies are subject to the same coercion (but through 'market forces' so it's good), one day, eventually, maybe" isn't a meaningful argument against legislation.
Levitating · 2h ago
>> many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only
> that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control.
I think the criticism isn't centered around single player games at all, but rather MMORPGs and the likes.
maccard · 2h ago
> that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control.
That’s asking developers to make different games. That’s not the same thing as “stop shitting down games like the crew”
ykonstant · 12h ago
OK, I signed it. hopefully I entered the correct postal code for my address; I always have to look up the code online.
hmry · 14h 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.
No? How would the "rights holders" be in any way liable for someone posting illegal content on a community-hosted server after a game has gone end-of-life?
Also, community servers not having to adhere to the publisher's standards of what community content is safe vs unsafe is clearly a positive in my humble opinion.
tehbeard · 12h ago
Because parents and the general public won't see that it's Bob's private server for $game. They see $game_name by $developer/publisher.
Mojang (creators of Minecraft ) is an unfortunate good case study for this. It's sale to Microsoft is in part down to not being able to balance freedom for server owners and the PR issues caused by people scamming others, in this case children, while obscuring it under the Minecraft brand.
I don't agree that we should be coerced into being in the kid safe padded play area, but I ain't blind enough to not see why we are.
AnthonyMouse · 7h ago
> Because parents and the general public won't see that it's Bob's private server for $game. They see $game_name by $developer/publisher.
That isn't how liability works. The judge isn't going to let you sue the wrong person because you're confused.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 6h ago
$developer/publisher’s lawyer still has to show up and explain the confusion to the judge. Not a legal liability but a financial one. Then if one judge somewhere says something something trademark? they would also have to appeal.
delfinom · 7h ago
But the sale to Microsoft resulted in more scamming. In fact, the Xbox version of the game has in game currency added that requires dollars. And Microsoft allows servers free reign to scam children into spending that currency and buying more.
stathibus · 7h ago
Imagine if the kids were all hanging out on Bob's Private Club Penguin Server.
jjani · 14h ago
Don't you know? If I cmd+S the HN front-end and throw my own backend behind it, host my own instance, and post something illegal on it, then YC is liable!
Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!
dijit · 13h ago
It’s more complicated than that.
I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way.
The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying.
Some won’t allow the car to get dirty, or to deform in a realistic way because it harms a copyright (did you know that the front lights of cars are part of their brand and trademark in most cases).
I’m using a pretty obvious example, that by selling a product that contains these other brands, we are beholden to not represent them in a way they don’t like; it’s part of the transaction for having it.
I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic. The most annoying ones are the little background things; Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate.
It’s a quagmire. Honestly, I’m not even sure why we bother making anything, there seems to always be some random popping their head up seeking another slice.
jjani · 13h ago
I'm happy to be convinced, but so far this isn't really helping the point. What you've described applies to an extraordinarily small percentage of games. I'm looking at my Steam library with ~170 games. I see ~8 that have real brand names, 7 being shooters that contain gun brands - which have never cared about these things, given they're already appearing in the context of people killing each other in the first place - and the other 1 being Football Manager (an offline game).
> I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic.
Then please give us some proper examples we can learn from.
> Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate.
GTA is hardly a "fantasy game", its entire schtick is getting as close to the real-world setting as possible, going as far as to parody real-life brands. They're quite unique in doing so, an extreme outlier.
Take a look at the current top 10 games on Steam by player count. You'll see that indeed the only real-world brands featured are potentially gun brands, and none of them have things like famous buildings. DOTA, Apex Legends, Stardew Valley, Rust, Palworld, Elden Ring and a bunch of idlers and shooters (CS2, PUBG, Delta Force).
dijit · 12h ago
I can’t speak for them because I never worked on them, but you’d be surprised how often a piece of music or a graphic is copyrighted. One of thousands of your common textures gets a bit too close to something else and suddenly you need a license.
Fun fact: a lot of game audio is licensed too, sound effects and such.
Regardless, the issue of sublicensing goes beyond what you’re allowed to let people do, it also goes into the idea that you’re often forced to disallow people from harvesting those assets from the game, or allowing the game to turn into derivative works - and because you yourself do not actually own the asset, you’re forced to confront it.
To avoid these issues, games would have to be very small (2D? Chiptunes? idk how small), but it’s one of a million tiny issues that comes up in game development, and each one of those tiny issues risks not allowing you to release the game.
Games are really, really hard to make, there are so many issues waiting to kill it- and even if you manage to make it, there’s no guarantee it’s successful, so spending time on these things is stealing time from making it fun or viable.
surgical_fire · 11h ago
Again, what the fuck does the licensing of music or textures have anything to do with people playing the game offline?
Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter?
Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought?
Well, good news for you, maybe the regulations that will come out of it will make this sort of licensing contract illegal. Perhaps it will make it easier to make games for you.
meheleventyone · 10h ago
It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive. Or in the hypothetical the content could be removed and replaced with something bespoke or cheaper to licence. But both of these options will make the game more expensive to build overall across its surface area.
cwillu · 8h ago
If the law is that you can't do this, then those terms will just disappear from licencing agreements. It's not like there's a shortage of textures and sounds in the marketplace.
ryandrake · 35m ago
Yea, I think some people are acting like these "licenses" are physical constants, found in nature and can't be modified! They are made by humans and can be unmade by humans. Regulation could deem those licenses unenforceable. Regulation could force permissive licensing. Regulation could add or remove IP protection. It's all conjured up by humans.
Yes, it is unlikely that legislators, bought and paid for by big corporations, will ever change the rules to reduce help to big corporations, but it's at least humanly possible.
dijit · 7h ago
For some things.
For others you may not be able to license it.
Example: have you seen a street racing game with Toyota’s in it?
There’s a reason that Need For Speed games fell off after Most Wanted (original) and it’s because they themselves don’t get total artistic license on their works.
And part of the agreements is a reasonable expectation that you will not assist anyone else to violate the agreement - and, the agreements are not perpetual either.
So, depends on context. There are examples where licensing opportunities dry up.
archagon · 4h ago
Somehow game companies managed to deal with this when games were sold on CDs. They’ll figure it out again.
robertlagrant · 59m ago
Yes - they started including DRM software on the CDs. They'll figure that out again.
dijit · 4h ago
Yeah, it was easier then.
The presumption was that sales were not perpetual- and reselling isn’t leasing a license in the same way.
Maybe there’s a way though
meheleventyone · 8h ago
That entirely depends on the content, some is fungible and some isn’t. For the majority of general content developers are already getting a perpetual license so it’s really these special cases that will remain an issue and are unlikely to be resolved in the manner you suggest.
surgical_fire · 10h ago
> It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive
The current state of affairs is that the net result is such that consumers are stripped of their rights. I find it more unacceptable.
If the licensing costs without fucking over consumers is prohibitive, then maybe those games should not exist. If no one is licensing the brands/assets/music/whatever because the licensing costs are too high, it's likely that in time the costs will come down.
meheleventyone · 8h ago
> If the licensing costs without fucking over consumers is prohibitive, then maybe those games should not exist.
Wow, who is killing games now?
surgical_fire · 7h ago
Absolutely, games that strip consumers of their rights should not exist.
I am not going to defend predatory practices. You think you threw me a gotcha, but you are actually only exposing yourself.
meheleventyone · 7h ago
The framing was your own so it’s not the gotcha you feel it is. I also don’t know what you think I’m exposing because I’m broadly in agreement that games at their EOL, particularly single player should continue to work. I am interested in discussing where that breaks down but I think that’s probably where we differ. You seem more interested in being combative and making up gotchas.
surgical_fire · 7h ago
> You seem more interested in being combative and making up gotchas.
Only because you are being purposely obtuse, gesturing at licensing as something that makes game development impossible without making games previously purchased by consumers unavailable.
If you make cakes that are poisoned with lead, and regulations say that you cannot sell lead-poisoned food, you cannot say "but all egg suppliers only sell lead-poisoned eggs, this will kill the cake industry".
If regulations say that games should be made accessible for people that purchased them past EOL, licensing agreements will have to adapt for it. Differentiating distribution as in "new copy being sold" and "previously sold copy being available for download".
meheleventyone · 6h ago
> Only because you are being purposely obtuse, gesturing at licensing as something that makes game development impossible without making games previously purchased by consumers unavailable.
Please show me where I said that! If that’s what you think I’ve been saying it’s definitely not. And you accuse me of arguing against straw men!
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 6h ago
That is a separate issue from what the Stop Killing Games political movement is bringing attention to. Few people are bemoaning that they can’t play the game that was never made. The rest are complaining that games they’ve played for years are being made unavailable when the authentication servers are killed.
charcircuit · 10h ago
How is it more permissive? The product is the same as it was before the official servers went down.
Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.
meheleventyone · 10h ago
When you’re licensing content from third parties the more permissive rights you need the more expensive it is. Music is a very good example where it might not even be possible to get a perpetual license. A bunch of games have removed music as their license to it has expired for example. In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content, code and so on needs to have been licensed for that use. That is typically more permissive than licenses as mentioned up thread and so more expensive.
surgical_fire · 10h ago
> In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content
You start your argument from a presumption that releasing an offline game is almost an impossibility. Are you trying yo argue that offline games have zero things licensed? This sounds like a major argument in favor of offline games.
Sounds to me that the simple solution is just stop licensing things with such draconian requirements. If I play a racing game I care about it being fun. If the car I am using in-game is a BMW or a made up brand for the game is immaterial.
meheleventyone · 8h ago
It’s about the distribution of games, doesn’t matter whether it’s online or offline you need a license to distribute IP that you don’t own.
Never making a licensed product or using third-party IP is definitely one solution but I don’t think is the intent nor without adverse effects.
surgical_fire · 7h ago
> doesn’t matter whether it’s online or offline
Then the solution seems simple. Making the game available offline does not seem to have any impact in terms of licensing.
meheleventyone · 7h ago
I don’t think you’ve followed the discussion then.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 6h ago
If you’re saying that because they said the solution is simple, then it would seem you have not followed the discussion.
To them, it is as “simple” as not using the things that require onerous licensing. Whether the game is offline or online only matters as much as the licensor might prefer one or the other; obviating the onerous licensor (making your own assets and/or doing business with more agreeable people) is a simple solution. Simple meaning the complexity to understand it, not to implement it.
surgical_fire · 7h ago
Only in the sense that you are arguing against strawman versions of the idea in favor of the status quo.
foobarchu · 5h ago
This seems pretty easy. If the license to the music goes for X years, then build that expiration into the game. After X years, licensed music goes away, and the game is still playable. This is completely in scope of SKG. Everyone understands that not every feature has to be retained to stay the playable game.
That expiration date should, of course, be on the box. The consumer deserves to know.
dijit · 4h ago
That would be frustrating to code for.
Before anyone says that its as simple as a switch statement, it’s not, its date enumeration and a switch statement, and an alternative codepath for testing and more assets: on every hot path, when you already only get 8ms for your frame is an annoying cost.
The expiration date properly visible is not a terrible idea though; or at least a “this edition is valid for x years” after which, updates that fix issues may remove content. Hrm.
archagon · 4h ago
That’s absurd. I can still pop in my Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater CD from decades ago and listen to the original soundtrack. TTL licensing should be illegal.
ryandrake · 49m ago
Yea, nobody seems to be addressing this: Content never expiring was the default for many years, when games shipped on physical media. Industry defenders are acting like this is impossible, where it routinely happened for a long time.
charcircuit · 10h ago
Stop killing games is not about forcing developers to perpetually sell games. They can still stop selling games. They just can't leave it in an unplayable state.
If developers want to get the rights to distribute a song for 5 years with their game, they can still do that.
meheleventyone · 8h ago
No I’m talking about the distribution of games. With physical media that’s all fine because once the license expires they stop making new copies. People that own a copy are fine. With digital distribution once you’ve EOL’d a product you still need to make it available right? Otherwise how do people that have paid for it get it? But that means you can’t distribute elements you no longer have the license to.
surgical_fire · 7h ago
With online distribution games can be made unavailable for purchase. You are not distributing it anymore. Only people that previously purchased can still download the game.
There are multiple such cases in stores such as Steam or GoG. I own games that are not available for purchase anymore.
Those games were not killed. I can still download and play them.
meheleventyone · 7h ago
Offering the game for download but not sale is still distributing it and you’d still need licenses for all the content you’re distributing. In the cases you mention the games still hold the licenses which is common but not universal.
Fargren · 6h ago
That's a solvable technical problem. If your game needs a online server to work, either patch it to not need it, or distribute the server. IF your licensing prohibits you form doing it... well, don't enter that kind of licensing, negotiate different terms. There might be a small fraction of games that stop being financially viable. That's what we call a tradeoff.
surgical_fire · 7h ago
If the licensing agreement does not differentiate in between "customers purchasing new copies" and "previously purchasing copies being available" then therein lies the problem.
Looks like the possibility of regulations will fix that. That in the Year of our Lord 2025, when online channels are many times the only possibility of purchasing a game, licensing agreements do not cover that, it seems that proper regulation is very much necessary.
meheleventyone · 7h ago
That’s because distribution is seperate from sale. For example Spotify has a license to distribute music but not sell it.
I suspect if you’re expecting to undo decades of IP law with this then you’ll be disappointed. I also suspect that the requirement to be functional rather than complete could also mean as long as the game continued to work removing the content would be fine.
surgical_fire · 6h ago
> I suspect if you’re expecting to undo decades of IP law
No, I only expects regulations that dictates I get to own the games I purchase. As any other consumer good.
And if that is not possible, then the agreement should be that games are leased for a set number of years, no gotchas to the consumer.
For some reason I think that the second would be much worse for the videogame industry. I don't think many people would be super excited about leasing a game for a few years for 60+ USD.
wizzwizz4 · 7h ago
You've signed a pretty shoddy license agreement if it requires you to refund all your customers, in full, after a few years. That's just bad business.
meheleventyone · 7h ago
If you’re saying that a change like SKG would lead to developers needing to take a perpetual license then you should say that rather than alluding to it with a non-sequitur like this.
If that’s what you mean then I’d say maybe but doing so would definitely increase the cost and complexity in using licensed content. Which is likely to be passed on.
Interestingly though reading the EU petition and the petition authors views it would be fine to remove the content once the licence expired.
wizzwizz4 · 7h ago
Developers already need to license whatever they're licensing in perpetuity, since they need to sublicense to the people who buy their games (regardless of format). Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to sell you the physical media. Licenses aren't yes/no affairs.
Stop Killing Games doesn't change this in any way.
meheleventyone · 7h ago
No they don’t need perpetual licenses for physical copies. They just need to stop distributing physical copies when they lose the license. For example a reissue of a rhythm-action game (or a release on another platform) might be missing songs from previous releases of the same title. The issue with digital distribution is that you can’t redistribute the content once the license has expired. So if someone needs to redownload the game for whatever reason then they can’t provide content they no longer have a license for.
wizzwizz4 · 7h ago
They need the ability to grant perpetual licenses.
meheleventyone · 6h ago
We’re talking about distribution so maybe you’ve come in to the conversation in a weird way there. To be clear the developer cannot continue to distribute content they no longer have rights to. With physical media you don’t go back to the publisher to get new copies but with digital media you do. And hence falls foul of changes in distribution rights.
wizzwizz4 · 6h ago
"Distribution rights" aren't laws of nature. If you're making physical media, you get a license to sell physical copies of the game (containing the licensed material) for a limited time, to people who are allowed to keep them once your sales license has expired.
The digital equivalent would be: you get a license to sell digital copies of the game (containing the licensed material) for a limited time, to people who are allowed to re-download them once your sales license has expired. (And you are allowed to provide that downloading service, but not continue to sell the games, nor make them available to people who have not purchased them.)
It's not that hard – and the existence of Steam demonstrates that many people are already doing things this way.
charcircuit · 3h ago
Games already handled this today on Steam, Apple Store, Play Store, etc by taking down the store page preventing new copies from being sold. Users can still redownload it. That's how things work today, and is how they would still work if SKG gets what they want. This isn't a new problem and is already the industry standard for how expiring IP works for the digital distribution for games.
dijit · 1h ago
then why can't you buy Need for Speed: Most Wanted from 2005?
When you EOL the game and release the server, just strip the licensed content. Remove the logos. Nobody gives a flying toss anyway.
People want the community and the GAME. They don’t care whether the actual logo is there.
Heck, if the game connects to a community server, have it hide all licensed content. you’ve satisfied your contractual obligations. Whether people mod the game or not to re-add things has no bearing on you.
bpfrh · 13h ago
The licenced design seems to include the front part of the car per the above comment, that would mean creating seperate models for EOL games.
chithanh · 11h ago
No, even if the licensing agreement between the developer and the car maker ends, then according to first sale doctrine, the game buyers keep the licensed content. Removing it from user systems would be undue (but admittedly has happened such as with the in-game music in GTA).
meheleventyone · 8h ago
The reason for that is that the game is continuing to be distributed and the nature of digital distribution is ephemeral so contents like music are removed from the distribution when the license expires. If you own the game on physical media or remove the connection to the digital distribution service (never patch it) then as a consumer you’re fine as you note with the first sale doctrine. It’s just legally the developer can no longer offer the content as part of future distributions. The same would be true for another physical media release.
ryandrake · 46m ago
I don't think anyone is asking for developers to continue to distribute their games after they EOL them. They're just asking for a way to keep games that have already been distributed running.
Mindwipe · 8h ago
There is no first sale doctrine in Europe, and nor does the US one apply to digitally distributed content.
LocalH · 13h ago
The answer to that is simple, and has been used by other media (to the chagrin of fans of course). When it comes time to "kill" the game, make a final update to strip all such licensed material out of the game.
The companies that develop and publish games amortize plenty of things out into multiple years. That's why live service is so increasingly common. The same developers and publishers should also factor in that they might have to remove some assets when they want to stop providing active support.
Mindwipe · 8h ago
So if they strip the libraries out and the server cannot run id that okay?
surgical_fire · 11h ago
How exactly does this stop you allowing people to play the game offline?
Is your game not allowing the Mercedes logo to fall off intrinsically tied to it being online? Is the server code the only thing keeping the logo in place?
Or are you just making shit up because you find the initiative icky?
I find it bizarre how game developer companies try hard to antagonize the public that keeps buying their things.
4hg4ufxhy · 11h ago
You shouldn't blame consumers that you failed to negotioate proper terms for your licenses. Maybe having legislation to point at will help you out to get more reasonable terms.
AnthonyMouse · 7h ago
Honestly the "quagmire" here is created by dumb laws and/or dumb lawyers.
Mercedes is supposed to have a trademark for automobiles and you're making a video game. That's a different industry so you shouldn't have to license anything from them -- no one is going to be confused into thinking your video game is a motor vehicle and buy it instead of a Mercedes, and that's all trademarks are supposed to be for.
Make it clear that these things don't have to be licensed for video games -- which there is absolutely no sound for them to be -- and you won't have these problems.
braiamp · 13h ago
If this passes, then such stipulations become illegal, since they can't force you to create a product that would fly on the face of the law.
dijit · 13h ago
That probably won’t be true, or we will lose the ability to license altogether.
Here’s hoping though!
braiamp · 4h ago
The thing about licenses is that it's overratted. No licensor makes you unable to continue supporting the product, since the licensee will make sure to include a provision that all copies of the licensed software have the ability of use the licensed work.
db48x · 13h ago
How is the logo falling off (or not falling off) relevant to the end of life of the game? The logos don’t automatically fall off at the end of the game’s life, do they?
snickerdoodle12 · 12h ago
Why would you be responsible for what other people do? Your game can already be modded to e.g. have the logo fall off.
gausswho · 3h ago
I've often wondered why sports and sim games don't tell these trademark peddlers to pound sand and ship with robust modding tools. Eager fans can then add unofficial versions of Mercedes, Lionel Messi, and a jet in the shape of the Great Redeemer.
We had this a decade ago with Asetto Corsa, PES, and Skyrim, but it appears to be falling out of favor. Are the publishers or developers not doing this because of legal liability or because they want to get a financial piece of the mod pie?
LadyCailin · 13h ago
Sounds like that licensing issue is curtailing developer choice, which is apparently the worst problem the industry could possibly face. If your choice is going to be curtailed either way, I’d rather it go in the consumer protection direction, no?
delusional · 13h ago
I can easily understand why it sucks from your perspective, but European tradition dictates that we make it suck for you and then you have to make it suck for your counterparty. We don't directly intervene with your freedom to write whatever contracts you please, only what you release to consumers.
That's intensely frustrating to be caught in the middle of. At times you end up feeling that the politicians are coopting you and your work for their ends, that they are underhandedly enveloping you in the public administration. That is in a way exactly what they are doing, but you have to remember that it's what your customers want. You are still making for your customers, they have just made their wants known though a process other than the free market.
anon_e-moose · 12h ago
There is no such thing as a 100% free market, not in America, not anywhere.
What was passed was a petition for the EU to listen to the needs of a million EU citizens. It is not yet a law, but it might become one. Laws are the rules of the market. A 100% free market is anarchy.
xg15 · 8h ago
I guess the (media) battle is on now.
In some ways I think even this statement by the trade association is already a win - the initiative forced them to explicitly address topics such as private servers, which they'd rather not talk about at all. Their statement also made it easy to ask counter questions regarding offline single-player or actual player compensation on shutdown. (I love the "we understand it can be disappointing, but we give players fair notice" statement, as if players didn't pay money for this)
I don't expect a lot of support from EU politicians for the initiative, as the current Parliament is even more conservative and corporate-friendly than usual. But well, hope dies last, and at least the will of the public seems to be there. (And also the appearance of being a tech regulator has become more popular in Brussels)
So we'll see.
perching_aix · 13h ago
> 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.
How? Can't wait to hear them substantiating this tidbit, because from a regular enterprise operations viewpoint this does NOT pass the smell test.
Levitating · 2h ago
Imagine you're an indie game studio developing an MMORPG, both your server and client is likely under constant development and you may only have one or two actual production servers running your server code.
Now this proposal requires you to also continually release your server code.[1] While adding documentation, support for different systems, while ensuring safety as the server can now be reverse engineered and while possibly being liable to abuse created through those servers. Even though your game (and its clients) aren't tailored to working on any server other than the official one anyway.
At least that's my understanding of the issue.
This proposal is obviously aimed at big publishers like EA and Ubisoft, but it hurts small developers. I argue we should just stop playing EA and Ubisoft games, who are the only ones who continue to pull this crap.
[1]: As TheFreim pointed out, this isn't necessarily required. But the server program has to be released when the official servers are shut down. Which means this possibility has to be prepared for throughout development.
TheFreim · 2h ago
> Now this proposal requires you to also continually release your server code.
This is not accurate. From the FAQ:
> Q: Won't this consumer action result in the end of "live service" games?
> A: No, the market demand and profitability of these games means the video games industry has an ongoing interest in selling these. Since our proposals do not interfere with existing business models, these types of games can remain just as profitable, ensuring their survival. The only difference is future ones will need to be designed with an "end of life" build once support finally ends.
From my understanding, a company does not have to release a private server alongside the client while the official servers are live, what I said previously was inaccurate. But when the official servers are closed, they are required to provide them.
However, I don't see how a bankrupt studio can release their server code when they don't have enough money to keep their servers running. An MMORPG shutting down it's servers may not even have any developers left. It may also not have any players left.
The FAQ suggests that this won't burden developnent at all, but I believe that it will.
Regardless if they continuously release their server code or not, they still need to develop an "end of life" plan which means having the server code ready to release when they want to kill their servers.
I think one of the most relevant part of the FAQ is:
Q: Isn't it impractical, if not impossible to make online-only multiplayer games work without company servers.
A: Not at all. The majority of online multiplayer games in the past functioned without any company servers and were conducted by the customers privately hosting servers themselves and connecting to each other. Games that were designed this way are all still playable today. As to the practicality, this can vary significantly. If a company has designed a game with no thought given towards the possibility of letting users run the game without their support, then yes, this can be a challenging goal to transition to. If a game has been designed with that as an eventual requirement, then this process can be trivial and relatively simple to implement. Another way to look at this is it could be problematic for some games of today, but there is no reason it needs to be for games of the future.
I too want online games to be killed responsibly, but I don't think Stop Killing Games is being honest about how this will influence small budget game development as opposed to the big publishers they keep talking about.
aspenmayer · 4h ago
When I found out that Booking[.]com of all companies is moving major traffic, I started to look at what companies are even buying or selling anymore. I clearly had no idea.
In the following paper, CPs refer to content providers, as defined in the paper.
> Studying the Evolution of Content Providers in IPv4 and IPv6 Internet Cores
> Esteban Carisimo, Carlos Selmo, J. Ignacio Alvarez-Hamelin, Amogh Dhamdhere
[I have edited out some hyphens that made this really hard to read but were helpful due to the layout of the original document as typeset. If that bothers you, I'm sorry in advance. Links are included above.]
> Our goal is to investigate what role CPs now play in
the Internet ecosystem, and in particular, if CPs are now a part of the “core” of the Internet. Specifically, we motivate this work with the following questions: How can we identify if a CP does or does not belong to the core of the Internet? If the core of the network does indeed include CPs, who are they?As the overall adoption of IPv6 has been slow, do we notice that delay on IPv4 and IPv6 core evolution? As the AS ecosystem has shown striking differences according to geographical regions [15], do we also see geographical differences in the role of CPs and their presence in the “core” of regional Internet structures? Finally, as more CPs deploy their private CDNs, can we detect “up and coming” CDNs that are not currently in the core of the network but are likely to be in the future?
> We use the concept of k-cores to analyze the structure of the IPv4 AS-level internetwork over the last two decades. We first focus on seven large CPs, and confirm that they are all currently in the core of the Internet. We then dig deeper into the evolution of these large players to correlate observed topological characteristics with documented business practices which can explain when and why these networks entered the core. Next, we repeat the methodology but using IPv6 dataset to compare and contrast the evolution of CPs in both networks. Based on results, we investigate commercial and technical reasons why CPs started to roll out IPv6 connectivity.
> We then take a broader view, characterizing the set of ASes in the core of the IPv4 Internet in terms of business type and geography. Our analysis reveals that an increasing number of CPs are now in the core of the Internet. Finally, we demonstrate that the k-core analysis has the potential to reveal the rise of “up and coming” CPs. To encourage reproducibility of our results, we make our datasets available via an interactive query system at https://cnet.fi.uba.ar/TMA2018/
[…]
> Finally, we study the core evolution of nine other remarkable CPs that belong to the TOPcore but were not included in the Big Seven. Seven of the nine selected ASes are the remaining ASes in Bottger et al.’s [47] TOP15 list, except Hurricane Electric (AS6939) which we do not consider as a CP since it is labeled as Transit/Access in CAIDA’s AS classification [80]. These seven ASes are OVH (AS16276), LimeLight (AS22822), Microsoft (AS8075), Twitter (AS13414), Twitch (AS46489), CloudFlare (AS13335) and EdgeCast (AS15133). The other two ASes are Booking.com (AS43996) and Spotify (AS8403). Interestingly, Booking.com or Spotify are not normally considered among the top CPs, however, they are in both TOPcores.
aspenmayer · 3h ago
What else would these companies have to gain by making their games online only? Perhaps game developers even have contractual obligations to uphold, or incintives to include third party network interactions. The presence of Twitch, Cloudflare, and Microsoft on this list are interesting, because Microsoft drives a lot of threat intel and also makes a popular OS among gamers. If you want to reduce network traffic and reduce your reliance on third parties and internet access, migrating from Windows and using Proton on Linux would probably be a step in the right direction for many games that you would want to play single player.
nottorp · 17m ago
Nothing about "innovation"? Just "choice"?
But as probably many other comments say, if you buy something from Ubisoft you deserve it.
pjmlp · 13h ago
Of course, was anyone expecting they would react otherwise, especially with the changes after 32bit gaming across consoles and desktop platforms.
It is all about IP, and like Hollywood nowadays, how to repackaged it in remakes and emulation.
A bit hard if we're allowed to just play the original versions.
reactordev · 13h ago
Correct. The backends to these online games isn’t complicated, but it is protected. They want the ability to resell the entire service to another game studio to run.
This has happened a lot in the past. EverQuest, Pirates, Lots of mmos have changed studios and with that, the backend services needed to run them.
Now, that said, there are a few countries in the EU that you could reverse engineer the server and it’s totally legal. Some of the best fun I’ve had were on private WoW or Lineage 2 servers.
chithanh · 11h ago
I don't buy these arguments. If game developers don't want to sell games that way then don't. Sell subscriptions instead. Like instead of $60 for a game, $60 one-time fee for a two-year subscription, which afterwards renews automatically in 3 months intervals at no cost until further notice. Same applies to all paid in-game content.
That way the developers can continue offering both games and subscriptions where each type makes most sense. And everybody knows what they are signing up for. People who buy a game get a game which they can play indefinitely. People who buy a subscription know the earliest possible end date and everything beyond that is just bonus.
dmurray · 9h ago
I don't think this would have any significant impact on the industry.
Publishers would just advertise their games as coming with a 2-year subscription, or whatever. People would have the same expectations as now: the game will be supported for a couple of years, and it will be supported much longer if there's an obvious way that is profitable to the developer.
No publisher would unilaterally want to start advertising games as subscriptions, but if everyone was forced to do it, nothing changes. Perhaps an extra layer of clicking through for the user, like when we mandated all websites must have annoying cookie popups.
anton-c · 7h ago
Most games won't need it. When every other offline game says "buy" but the games as a service one has to say "rent" for the same price, consumers will notice I think.
ryandrake · 42m ago
I think what people are saying is the opposite would happen. If this initiative makes it into law, nearly every game company will overnight make their games say "Rent" instead of "Buy", so that they can continue with their shitty practice.
ozgrakkurt · 5h ago
The publishers that already apply the model can be forced. And some might decide to do another model instead of doing this model because it affects user’s view. This is the whole point.
watwut · 6h ago
I dont think this is true. If publishers advertized 2 year license, some people would decide to not buy the license. The exact reason why they insist on calling it "buying".
blamestross · 7h ago
> People would have the same expectations as now
If that premise was true, why would misleading advertisement be the norm right now? Why bother?
Changing it to a subscription WOULD change perception. Most people don't understand the current status quo. When they do know, it would create a market pressure for real game ownership.
glimshe · 1h ago
I agree with "Stop Killing Games"' vision of what games should be like. But I don't understand why people care to turn it into a movement...
There is SO MUCH choice in games nowadays, including decades of classic games, that people should simply stop supporting player-hostile companies.
LocalH · 13h ago
Of course it does. The whole idea of "Stop Killing Games" is that developers should not be able to summarily kill off a game that people have invested time and money into, just because it's not making them enough money going forward.
Developers should absolutely not have that choice. It's fine if you want to run a live service game where the optimal experience happens during active support. However, unless you as a dev are willing to refund every single purchaser of the game, in full, when you discontinue a game, then you are stealing from purchasers. Moreover, even if you are willing to give a full refund to all players, it's really shitty to just rip an experience away from people, never to be experienced again (whether in a watered-down or limited form, or not).
It's the same reason I don't agree with perpetual copyright, nor a copyright owner's right to suppress a work's availability. In almost all jurisdictions, copyright is intended to be a limited time right, with the rights eventually entering the public domain. If people can't access the work when it would become public domain, then that work is effectively stolen from the public in a way that mere non-commercial copyright infringement can never be theft.
LocalH · 13h ago
Also, part of the issue is the death of private servers. Game publishers have chosen to revert to centralized servers, rather than allowing private servers. Thus they have also taken on the additional cost of running those servers. Older games can be easily played on private servers to this day, as the community of any moderately popular game will almost always step up to provide the service. Even games you might not expect would be that popular or games that never had private servers - for example, Rock Band 3 only ever supported connecting to Harmonix servers in an official capacity. This support is also discontinued (they still operate the Rock Central servers, but only for Rock Band 4). Yet right now, thanks to reverse engineering, there is a fan-operated server that you can connect to with a slightly modified game. You can even download the fan-created server software (written in Go) and stand up your own server for your friends or for whatever other reason (maybe you want to run a small tournament and use a private GoCentral server to record statistics and have a private leaderboard).
chithanh · 11h ago
> Game publishers have chosen to revert to centralized servers, rather than allowing private servers. Thus they have also taken on the additional cost of running those servers.
I fail to see the principal difference between a "centralized" and a "private" server here. Just publish the code for running the "centralized" server, as you would do for the private server, and add a possibility to configure which server to connect to in the game?
I could see this becoming an issue when the server is hardwired to require some publisher SSO login, but given how everyone + their dog uses OIDC nowadays, a requirement to make authentication interoperable is only a very mild restriction.
xeonmc · 11h ago
> just because it's not making them enough money going forward.
sometimes it's not even that -- it's to prevent the older version from competing with new releases. See Overwatch 1 -> 2 or Counter-Strike 1 -> 2
msgodel · 10h ago
It's such a bizarre counter argument. The whole point of the movement is that developers are choosing to harm the medium and should stop.
dandersch · 4h ago
It's the publishers forcing their hand, to be fair. I don't think any developer who worked for years on a game is thrilled about it not being playable in the future.
surgical_fire · 11h ago
> many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only
No problem. Per "Stop Killing Games" initiative, you will only have to provide means for the users to still be able to play those games after you decide to pull the plug on it.
You can, for example, release the server code so that players can keep playing the game somehow, if they so desire. No need to keep supporting your online rent-seeking scheme ad-eternum after it outlived its usefulness.
We need to be frank about what those developers really want though. They want to be able to take away games they previously sold so that players move on to their shiny new online rent-seeking scheme. Allowing people to actually own the games they bought is bad for business.
Fuck this noise and fuck those developers.
niemandhier · 7h ago
An interesting side observation:
The usual inter country struggles in the Eu might actually play out in favor of customers this time. Game development is stronger in smaller EU countries ( measured in percent of the gdp ) so big countries will not block any initiatives.
anothernewdude · 14h ago
Oh no! Not developer choice!
This is the weakest argument I've ever heard. Compare:
"Stop burning coal? That curtails factory owner choice!" etc. etc.
I'm sure the people behind the movement would love to point out that, yes, that is the entire point.
eska · 14h ago
They claim to protect from illegal content and unsafe communities, but those sound like desperate grasps at straws that are easily disproven. They also misrepresent the basic demands of the petition, as online only games are still allowed.
slau · 13h ago
Just open CS2 and go to the community server tab. There’s a little notice telling you that you might be exposed to unmoderated and unsafe content.
Apparently in 2025 corporate lawyers have forgotten how to write a disclaimer. It’s all BS to protect their short term games.
I would spend way more money on games if they didn’t have a ~5 year life span.
tareqak · 14h ago
This movement seems similar to software licensing to me.
proprietary -> BSD/MIT -> GPL -> AGPL
aspaviento · 14h ago
How would a policy for this only affect EU games? EU has other policies that affect Apple, Microsoft, Google etc. as far as I know, any company that wants to sell/offer a service in EU will need to comply with its policies.
kergonath · 13h ago
That’s not how it works. The EU does not care about what Apple does in the US. It’s Apple’s choice to either tweak their products to adapt to the laws of their different markets or apply these changes across the board. We’ve seen that with recent iOS versions where EU regulations imposed changes, some of which were done only for devices in the EU.
For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows.
EULA sometimes differ depending on location because a lot of the bullshit software companies get away with in the US is illegal in other parts of the world.
Another extreme example is the hoops companies have to jump through to sell in China. Again, this generally does not affect the same products in the rest of the world.
It is a problem that we know how to solve.
chithanh · 11h ago
> The EU does not care about what Apple does in the US.
Well, partially they do. For example when it comes to the Right to be forgotten, there were attempts to apply this also to data which is stored and displayed outside the EU. Only after ECJ ruling (C-507/17) such attempts were stopped.
> For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows.
Microsoft does have the N (formerly called "Reduced Media") editions of Windows created in response to legal demands from the EU, but these are available worldwide. Other than that it is the same version of Windows, which just behaves differently when it comes to browser choice etc. depending on your location.
kergonath · 1h ago
> For example when it comes to the Right to be forgotten, there were attempts to apply this also to data which is stored and displayed outside the EU. Only after ECJ ruling (C-507/17) such attempts were stopped.
They care to the extent that the situation in the EU is resolved. They did not make any extraterritorial jurisdiction arguments like the US government did with Microsoft’s data centres in Ireland.
> Microsoft does have the N (formerly called "Reduced Media") editions of Windows created in response to legal demands from the EU, but these are available worldwide.
You are right, I got confused. The browser ballot screen was shown only in the EU, but it was not a separate product. Regarding Windows N, I don’t think the ruling forced them to sell it worldwide; it did not even stop them from selling their usual Windows versions in the EU.
braiamp · 13h ago
The EU doesn't have to worry about what happens in the rest of the world. The rest of the world can benefit of this anyways.
turtlebro · 12h ago
If anything even comes out of this, the furthest a law could possibly go is to impose a 2 year window (after sale) in which a game needs to work as described.
tossandthrow · 12h ago
A law can do much more.
Just like the law don't just require that you can return you toxic ham within 2 years of purchase.
4hg4ufxhy · 11h ago
That would already be great progress. For context Ubisofts the Crew shutdown only after 3 months of stopping sales.
It could also work as a deterrent on making dedicated servers only architecture. If you can disable dedicated servers instantly(instead of 2 years) but enable private servers that might be more cost efficient.
poisonborz · 13h ago
These are weak arguments but there are valid ones why I would not think this has a footing, even if I support the attitude. What about games where the world is fully generative, tied to a licensed engine? You can't just rip/disable licensed items out, they may form a significant part of business code. Code and APIs would be needed to be documented. Why just games? What about abandoned Saas offerings? These restrictions might creep over.
I hate live service games like the next guy but legal advisors can bend these to form powerful counter-arguments.
pointlessone · 12h ago
Saas offerings are safe as they don’t let you Buy a thing. They’re very transparently a service. Same with timed licenses. It’s clear what you’re paying for. Most of the time.
With games it’s often not the case. You buy them and then at unspecified moment you might lose a significant portion of functionality or the whole game. At the time you buy a game you don’t know if it’s for a time, what time, or what will stop working.
dgellow · 11h ago
When I bought WoW it was very clear to me I was buying a service. If blizzard decided after 2 years it wasn’t sustainable and to shut down the game at no point would I be entitled to own it. It was clearly a license to access their service, as long as it exists. Same for any other MMORPG
anton-c · 7h ago
You can host offline servers of older mmos easily. I had my own lineage 2 private server in middle school. Private online servers too. Wow classic became a thing because private vanilla servers were incredibly popular.
You should be able to do this for any game. I understand them fighting it during the games lifetime.
danaris · 7h ago
And what about a single-player game that relies on the company's server being online in order to allow you to play it?
pointlessone · 4h ago
The dev, having access to source code, issues the final patch that disables that feature. Better yet, the dev, having access to source code, never implements this feature in the first place as it doesn’t improve the player experience in any shape or form.
whaleofatw2022 · 1h ago
Well thats more or less what people are asking for with this.
swat535 · 6h ago
Yea I think the problem is that people don't realize how expensive the upkeep of live games are.
Most new releases rely on Multiplayer, the publishers have to come up with creative ways to monetize it.. so they introduce cosmetics, stores, etc in order to fund the ongoing development and cost.
This causes a backlash and eventually the game gets dropped because people don't want to pay a subscription.
mavamaarten · 12h ago
I also think many comments are a bit too eager in claiming "oh just publish the code" and "oh just let users host X". It's obviously not that simple. The biggest one for me is that single player games should still be playable offline after servers have been sunset.
I'm sure that with current games, licenses were indeed acquired for a certain limited time. But if you start development and you know you'll have to sunset it according to the rules one day, I'm sure you'll come up with other licenses or just a way to strip out content like that.
dgfl · 8h ago
What’s the problem with releasing a server executable? As far as I can tell that would be enough to get around this legislation. And I can’t imagine that to be prohibitively expensive.
meheleventyone · 8h ago
What is a server executable? With a lot of modern games it could be a whole stacks worth of systems that neither the game client or server side game runtime will work without.
Mindwipe · 7h ago
And which are not owned by the developer or available to be perpetually licensed.
Ukv · 4h ago
To my understanding the idea is that if a company licenses some 3rd-party component for their game, the component would either need to be severable from the game while still leaving it reasonably playable, or the license would need to permit people who have purchased the game to use that component. This is going foward, not applying retroactively to existing games.
I think that's still fairly favorable to game publishers compared to most other purchased goods. If you manufacture an office chair and license a patented swivel mechanism, the license you acquire cannot require you to break purchasers' chairs after the license expires, nor even to go around their homes swapping out the mechanism (which analogously may still be permitted for games).
Moreover if the rightsholder for that patent had been licensing only under the terms that the purchased chair is destroyed after 5 years but then a change in consumer protection law prevents that practice, they'd need to license it out under more reasonable terms (like you can only sell the chairs with the mechanism for 5 years, but there's no limit on how long people can use the mechanism in their purchased chairs) - otherwise they'd get no business.
maccard · 2h ago
> If you manufacture an office chair and license a patented swivel mechanism, the license you acquire cannot require you to break purchasers' chairs after the license expires, nor even to go around their homes swapping out the mechanism (which analogously may still be permitted for games).
The big difference here is that you’re applying B2C terms on B2B licenses. This would essentially ban enterprise B2B licenses for video game software which is insanity
Ukv · 1h ago
> The big difference here is that you’re applying B2C terms on B2B licenses.
Both are cases of B2B licensing with the latter business then selling a product on to consumers.
> This would essentially ban enterprise B2B licenses for video game software which is insanity
I don't see how. If for instance some company develops an audio processing library, they can still license it out to a game development company for a limited time - just that the license would be "the company can no longer sell games with this technology after the license expires", opposed to anything that would prevent functioning of the already-sold games. Or rather, they could stipulate the latter in their license, but then their market would be limited to game development companies willing to patch it out after the license expires.
mrob · 11h ago
If it's really impossible for you to allow a game to remain playable after you abandon it, the only reasonable option is to not sell it at all. Instead you can rent it, with the length of the rental clearly stated up front. Advertising a rental as a sale should be illegal.
maccard · 1h ago
Who defined playable? Take Diablo 3 and 4. They are shared world games, are they playable without them? Maybe to you’d but to me they’re not. world of Warcraft has a rich questing experience which doesn’t require playing with other people - is it ok if they just switch off multiplayer content? That’s a different game, IMO.
viraptor · 11h ago
> What about games where the world is fully generative, tied to a licensed engine?
It's ok, the engine will adjust it if big studios can't use it otherwise. It's just people having to talk to each other.
> Code and APIs would be needed to be documented.
Why? Nobody is talking about forced opensourcing.
4hg4ufxhy · 11h ago
Why not apply it to Saas? If you sold lifetime licenses and you don't want to run it anymore, just let your customers self host it. Even better if you can open source it.
that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control.
seems like 'video games europe' is gearing up to lobby/influence the lawmakers to distort this initiative.
the bare minimum would be to ban these kind of things from describing themselves as products instead of a service in their marketing. no "Buy" or "Purchase", instead "Rent" or "Lease" possibly with a stated minimum guaranteed time online / expiration date.
EDIT: reminder, if you're from the EU and over the age of 18 it's still a good idea to sign the petition even though it passed the threshold since there could be invalid signatures (bots, underage people, etc ...) if the valid signatures are below the threshold after the verification is done this petition will get dropped.
> that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control.
I think the criticism isn't centered around single player games at all, but rather MMORPGs and the likes.
That’s asking developers to make different games. That’s not the same thing as “stop shitting down games like the crew”
No? How would the "rights holders" be in any way liable for someone posting illegal content on a community-hosted server after a game has gone end-of-life?
Also, community servers not having to adhere to the publisher's standards of what community content is safe vs unsafe is clearly a positive in my humble opinion.
Mojang (creators of Minecraft ) is an unfortunate good case study for this. It's sale to Microsoft is in part down to not being able to balance freedom for server owners and the PR issues caused by people scamming others, in this case children, while obscuring it under the Minecraft brand.
I don't agree that we should be coerced into being in the kid safe padded play area, but I ain't blind enough to not see why we are.
That isn't how liability works. The judge isn't going to let you sue the wrong person because you're confused.
Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!
I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way.
The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying. Some won’t allow the car to get dirty, or to deform in a realistic way because it harms a copyright (did you know that the front lights of cars are part of their brand and trademark in most cases).
I’m using a pretty obvious example, that by selling a product that contains these other brands, we are beholden to not represent them in a way they don’t like; it’s part of the transaction for having it.
I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic. The most annoying ones are the little background things; Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate.
It’s a quagmire. Honestly, I’m not even sure why we bother making anything, there seems to always be some random popping their head up seeking another slice.
> I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic.
Then please give us some proper examples we can learn from.
> Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate.
GTA is hardly a "fantasy game", its entire schtick is getting as close to the real-world setting as possible, going as far as to parody real-life brands. They're quite unique in doing so, an extreme outlier.
Take a look at the current top 10 games on Steam by player count. You'll see that indeed the only real-world brands featured are potentially gun brands, and none of them have things like famous buildings. DOTA, Apex Legends, Stardew Valley, Rust, Palworld, Elden Ring and a bunch of idlers and shooters (CS2, PUBG, Delta Force).
Fun fact: a lot of game audio is licensed too, sound effects and such.
Regardless, the issue of sublicensing goes beyond what you’re allowed to let people do, it also goes into the idea that you’re often forced to disallow people from harvesting those assets from the game, or allowing the game to turn into derivative works - and because you yourself do not actually own the asset, you’re forced to confront it.
To avoid these issues, games would have to be very small (2D? Chiptunes? idk how small), but it’s one of a million tiny issues that comes up in game development, and each one of those tiny issues risks not allowing you to release the game.
Games are really, really hard to make, there are so many issues waiting to kill it- and even if you manage to make it, there’s no guarantee it’s successful, so spending time on these things is stealing time from making it fun or viable.
Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter?
Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought?
Well, good news for you, maybe the regulations that will come out of it will make this sort of licensing contract illegal. Perhaps it will make it easier to make games for you.
Yes, it is unlikely that legislators, bought and paid for by big corporations, will ever change the rules to reduce help to big corporations, but it's at least humanly possible.
For others you may not be able to license it.
Example: have you seen a street racing game with Toyota’s in it?
There’s a reason that Need For Speed games fell off after Most Wanted (original) and it’s because they themselves don’t get total artistic license on their works.
And part of the agreements is a reasonable expectation that you will not assist anyone else to violate the agreement - and, the agreements are not perpetual either.
So, depends on context. There are examples where licensing opportunities dry up.
The presumption was that sales were not perpetual- and reselling isn’t leasing a license in the same way.
Maybe there’s a way though
The current state of affairs is that the net result is such that consumers are stripped of their rights. I find it more unacceptable.
If the licensing costs without fucking over consumers is prohibitive, then maybe those games should not exist. If no one is licensing the brands/assets/music/whatever because the licensing costs are too high, it's likely that in time the costs will come down.
Wow, who is killing games now?
I am not going to defend predatory practices. You think you threw me a gotcha, but you are actually only exposing yourself.
Only because you are being purposely obtuse, gesturing at licensing as something that makes game development impossible without making games previously purchased by consumers unavailable.
If you make cakes that are poisoned with lead, and regulations say that you cannot sell lead-poisoned food, you cannot say "but all egg suppliers only sell lead-poisoned eggs, this will kill the cake industry".
If regulations say that games should be made accessible for people that purchased them past EOL, licensing agreements will have to adapt for it. Differentiating distribution as in "new copy being sold" and "previously sold copy being available for download".
Please show me where I said that! If that’s what you think I’ve been saying it’s definitely not. And you accuse me of arguing against straw men!
Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.
You start your argument from a presumption that releasing an offline game is almost an impossibility. Are you trying yo argue that offline games have zero things licensed? This sounds like a major argument in favor of offline games.
Sounds to me that the simple solution is just stop licensing things with such draconian requirements. If I play a racing game I care about it being fun. If the car I am using in-game is a BMW or a made up brand for the game is immaterial.
Never making a licensed product or using third-party IP is definitely one solution but I don’t think is the intent nor without adverse effects.
Then the solution seems simple. Making the game available offline does not seem to have any impact in terms of licensing.
To them, it is as “simple” as not using the things that require onerous licensing. Whether the game is offline or online only matters as much as the licensor might prefer one or the other; obviating the onerous licensor (making your own assets and/or doing business with more agreeable people) is a simple solution. Simple meaning the complexity to understand it, not to implement it.
That expiration date should, of course, be on the box. The consumer deserves to know.
Before anyone says that its as simple as a switch statement, it’s not, its date enumeration and a switch statement, and an alternative codepath for testing and more assets: on every hot path, when you already only get 8ms for your frame is an annoying cost.
The expiration date properly visible is not a terrible idea though; or at least a “this edition is valid for x years” after which, updates that fix issues may remove content. Hrm.
If developers want to get the rights to distribute a song for 5 years with their game, they can still do that.
There are multiple such cases in stores such as Steam or GoG. I own games that are not available for purchase anymore.
Those games were not killed. I can still download and play them.
Looks like the possibility of regulations will fix that. That in the Year of our Lord 2025, when online channels are many times the only possibility of purchasing a game, licensing agreements do not cover that, it seems that proper regulation is very much necessary.
I suspect if you’re expecting to undo decades of IP law with this then you’ll be disappointed. I also suspect that the requirement to be functional rather than complete could also mean as long as the game continued to work removing the content would be fine.
No, I only expects regulations that dictates I get to own the games I purchase. As any other consumer good.
And if that is not possible, then the agreement should be that games are leased for a set number of years, no gotchas to the consumer.
For some reason I think that the second would be much worse for the videogame industry. I don't think many people would be super excited about leasing a game for a few years for 60+ USD.
If that’s what you mean then I’d say maybe but doing so would definitely increase the cost and complexity in using licensed content. Which is likely to be passed on.
Interestingly though reading the EU petition and the petition authors views it would be fine to remove the content once the licence expired.
Stop Killing Games doesn't change this in any way.
The digital equivalent would be: you get a license to sell digital copies of the game (containing the licensed material) for a limited time, to people who are allowed to re-download them once your sales license has expired. (And you are allowed to provide that downloading service, but not continue to sell the games, nor make them available to people who have not purchased them.)
It's not that hard – and the existence of Steam demonstrates that many people are already doing things this way.
(small hint: https://www.reddit.com/r/needforspeed/comments/1ceaq0r/where...)
When you EOL the game and release the server, just strip the licensed content. Remove the logos. Nobody gives a flying toss anyway.
People want the community and the GAME. They don’t care whether the actual logo is there.
Heck, if the game connects to a community server, have it hide all licensed content. you’ve satisfied your contractual obligations. Whether people mod the game or not to re-add things has no bearing on you.
The companies that develop and publish games amortize plenty of things out into multiple years. That's why live service is so increasingly common. The same developers and publishers should also factor in that they might have to remove some assets when they want to stop providing active support.
Is your game not allowing the Mercedes logo to fall off intrinsically tied to it being online? Is the server code the only thing keeping the logo in place?
Or are you just making shit up because you find the initiative icky?
I find it bizarre how game developer companies try hard to antagonize the public that keeps buying their things.
Mercedes is supposed to have a trademark for automobiles and you're making a video game. That's a different industry so you shouldn't have to license anything from them -- no one is going to be confused into thinking your video game is a motor vehicle and buy it instead of a Mercedes, and that's all trademarks are supposed to be for.
Make it clear that these things don't have to be licensed for video games -- which there is absolutely no sound for them to be -- and you won't have these problems.
Here’s hoping though!
We had this a decade ago with Asetto Corsa, PES, and Skyrim, but it appears to be falling out of favor. Are the publishers or developers not doing this because of legal liability or because they want to get a financial piece of the mod pie?
That's intensely frustrating to be caught in the middle of. At times you end up feeling that the politicians are coopting you and your work for their ends, that they are underhandedly enveloping you in the public administration. That is in a way exactly what they are doing, but you have to remember that it's what your customers want. You are still making for your customers, they have just made their wants known though a process other than the free market.
What was passed was a petition for the EU to listen to the needs of a million EU citizens. It is not yet a law, but it might become one. Laws are the rules of the market. A 100% free market is anarchy.
In some ways I think even this statement by the trade association is already a win - the initiative forced them to explicitly address topics such as private servers, which they'd rather not talk about at all. Their statement also made it easy to ask counter questions regarding offline single-player or actual player compensation on shutdown. (I love the "we understand it can be disappointing, but we give players fair notice" statement, as if players didn't pay money for this)
I don't expect a lot of support from EU politicians for the initiative, as the current Parliament is even more conservative and corporate-friendly than usual. But well, hope dies last, and at least the will of the public seems to be there. (And also the appearance of being a tech regulator has become more popular in Brussels)
So we'll see.
How? Can't wait to hear them substantiating this tidbit, because from a regular enterprise operations viewpoint this does NOT pass the smell test.
Now this proposal requires you to also continually release your server code.[1] While adding documentation, support for different systems, while ensuring safety as the server can now be reverse engineered and while possibly being liable to abuse created through those servers. Even though your game (and its clients) aren't tailored to working on any server other than the official one anyway.
At least that's my understanding of the issue.
This proposal is obviously aimed at big publishers like EA and Ubisoft, but it hurts small developers. I argue we should just stop playing EA and Ubisoft games, who are the only ones who continue to pull this crap.
[1]: As TheFreim pointed out, this isn't necessarily required. But the server program has to be released when the official servers are shut down. Which means this possibility has to be prepared for throughout development.
This is not accurate. From the FAQ:
> Q: Won't this consumer action result in the end of "live service" games?
> A: No, the market demand and profitability of these games means the video games industry has an ongoing interest in selling these. Since our proposals do not interfere with existing business models, these types of games can remain just as profitable, ensuring their survival. The only difference is future ones will need to be designed with an "end of life" build once support finally ends.
I suggest reading the proposal or /at least/ the FAQ page: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
From my understanding, a company does not have to release a private server alongside the client while the official servers are live, what I said previously was inaccurate. But when the official servers are closed, they are required to provide them.
However, I don't see how a bankrupt studio can release their server code when they don't have enough money to keep their servers running. An MMORPG shutting down it's servers may not even have any developers left. It may also not have any players left.
The FAQ suggests that this won't burden developnent at all, but I believe that it will.
Regardless if they continuously release their server code or not, they still need to develop an "end of life" plan which means having the server code ready to release when they want to kill their servers.
I think one of the most relevant part of the FAQ is:
Q: Isn't it impractical, if not impossible to make online-only multiplayer games work without company servers.
A: Not at all. The majority of online multiplayer games in the past functioned without any company servers and were conducted by the customers privately hosting servers themselves and connecting to each other. Games that were designed this way are all still playable today. As to the practicality, this can vary significantly. If a company has designed a game with no thought given towards the possibility of letting users run the game without their support, then yes, this can be a challenging goal to transition to. If a game has been designed with that as an eventual requirement, then this process can be trivial and relatively simple to implement. Another way to look at this is it could be problematic for some games of today, but there is no reason it needs to be for games of the future.
I too want online games to be killed responsibly, but I don't think Stop Killing Games is being honest about how this will influence small budget game development as opposed to the big publishers they keep talking about.
In the following paper, CPs refer to content providers, as defined in the paper.
https://estcarisimo.github.io/assets/pdf/papers/2019-comnets... [pdf]
(more at https://estcarisimo.github.io/publications/ )
canonical link for above paper, which is the lead researcher's GH from what I can tell:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01403... ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2019.05.022 )
> Studying the Evolution of Content Providers in IPv4 and IPv6 Internet Cores
> Esteban Carisimo, Carlos Selmo, J. Ignacio Alvarez-Hamelin, Amogh Dhamdhere
[I have edited out some hyphens that made this really hard to read but were helpful due to the layout of the original document as typeset. If that bothers you, I'm sorry in advance. Links are included above.]
> Our goal is to investigate what role CPs now play in the Internet ecosystem, and in particular, if CPs are now a part of the “core” of the Internet. Specifically, we motivate this work with the following questions: How can we identify if a CP does or does not belong to the core of the Internet? If the core of the network does indeed include CPs, who are they?As the overall adoption of IPv6 has been slow, do we notice that delay on IPv4 and IPv6 core evolution? As the AS ecosystem has shown striking differences according to geographical regions [15], do we also see geographical differences in the role of CPs and their presence in the “core” of regional Internet structures? Finally, as more CPs deploy their private CDNs, can we detect “up and coming” CDNs that are not currently in the core of the network but are likely to be in the future?
> We use the concept of k-cores to analyze the structure of the IPv4 AS-level internetwork over the last two decades. We first focus on seven large CPs, and confirm that they are all currently in the core of the Internet. We then dig deeper into the evolution of these large players to correlate observed topological characteristics with documented business practices which can explain when and why these networks entered the core. Next, we repeat the methodology but using IPv6 dataset to compare and contrast the evolution of CPs in both networks. Based on results, we investigate commercial and technical reasons why CPs started to roll out IPv6 connectivity.
> We then take a broader view, characterizing the set of ASes in the core of the IPv4 Internet in terms of business type and geography. Our analysis reveals that an increasing number of CPs are now in the core of the Internet. Finally, we demonstrate that the k-core analysis has the potential to reveal the rise of “up and coming” CPs. To encourage reproducibility of our results, we make our datasets available via an interactive query system at https://cnet.fi.uba.ar/TMA2018/
[…]
> Finally, we study the core evolution of nine other remarkable CPs that belong to the TOPcore but were not included in the Big Seven. Seven of the nine selected ASes are the remaining ASes in Bottger et al.’s [47] TOP15 list, except Hurricane Electric (AS6939) which we do not consider as a CP since it is labeled as Transit/Access in CAIDA’s AS classification [80]. These seven ASes are OVH (AS16276), LimeLight (AS22822), Microsoft (AS8075), Twitter (AS13414), Twitch (AS46489), CloudFlare (AS13335) and EdgeCast (AS15133). The other two ASes are Booking.com (AS43996) and Spotify (AS8403). Interestingly, Booking.com or Spotify are not normally considered among the top CPs, however, they are in both TOPcores.
But as probably many other comments say, if you buy something from Ubisoft you deserve it.
It is all about IP, and like Hollywood nowadays, how to repackaged it in remakes and emulation.
A bit hard if we're allowed to just play the original versions.
This has happened a lot in the past. EverQuest, Pirates, Lots of mmos have changed studios and with that, the backend services needed to run them.
Now, that said, there are a few countries in the EU that you could reverse engineer the server and it’s totally legal. Some of the best fun I’ve had were on private WoW or Lineage 2 servers.
That way the developers can continue offering both games and subscriptions where each type makes most sense. And everybody knows what they are signing up for. People who buy a game get a game which they can play indefinitely. People who buy a subscription know the earliest possible end date and everything beyond that is just bonus.
Publishers would just advertise their games as coming with a 2-year subscription, or whatever. People would have the same expectations as now: the game will be supported for a couple of years, and it will be supported much longer if there's an obvious way that is profitable to the developer.
No publisher would unilaterally want to start advertising games as subscriptions, but if everyone was forced to do it, nothing changes. Perhaps an extra layer of clicking through for the user, like when we mandated all websites must have annoying cookie popups.
If that premise was true, why would misleading advertisement be the norm right now? Why bother?
Changing it to a subscription WOULD change perception. Most people don't understand the current status quo. When they do know, it would create a market pressure for real game ownership.
There is SO MUCH choice in games nowadays, including decades of classic games, that people should simply stop supporting player-hostile companies.
Developers should absolutely not have that choice. It's fine if you want to run a live service game where the optimal experience happens during active support. However, unless you as a dev are willing to refund every single purchaser of the game, in full, when you discontinue a game, then you are stealing from purchasers. Moreover, even if you are willing to give a full refund to all players, it's really shitty to just rip an experience away from people, never to be experienced again (whether in a watered-down or limited form, or not).
It's the same reason I don't agree with perpetual copyright, nor a copyright owner's right to suppress a work's availability. In almost all jurisdictions, copyright is intended to be a limited time right, with the rights eventually entering the public domain. If people can't access the work when it would become public domain, then that work is effectively stolen from the public in a way that mere non-commercial copyright infringement can never be theft.
I fail to see the principal difference between a "centralized" and a "private" server here. Just publish the code for running the "centralized" server, as you would do for the private server, and add a possibility to configure which server to connect to in the game?
I could see this becoming an issue when the server is hardwired to require some publisher SSO login, but given how everyone + their dog uses OIDC nowadays, a requirement to make authentication interoperable is only a very mild restriction.
sometimes it's not even that -- it's to prevent the older version from competing with new releases. See Overwatch 1 -> 2 or Counter-Strike 1 -> 2
No problem. Per "Stop Killing Games" initiative, you will only have to provide means for the users to still be able to play those games after you decide to pull the plug on it.
You can, for example, release the server code so that players can keep playing the game somehow, if they so desire. No need to keep supporting your online rent-seeking scheme ad-eternum after it outlived its usefulness.
We need to be frank about what those developers really want though. They want to be able to take away games they previously sold so that players move on to their shiny new online rent-seeking scheme. Allowing people to actually own the games they bought is bad for business.
Fuck this noise and fuck those developers.
The usual inter country struggles in the Eu might actually play out in favor of customers this time. Game development is stronger in smaller EU countries ( measured in percent of the gdp ) so big countries will not block any initiatives.
This is the weakest argument I've ever heard. Compare:
"Stop burning coal? That curtails factory owner choice!" etc. etc.
I'm sure the people behind the movement would love to point out that, yes, that is the entire point.
Apparently in 2025 corporate lawyers have forgotten how to write a disclaimer. It’s all BS to protect their short term games.
I would spend way more money on games if they didn’t have a ~5 year life span.
For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows.
EULA sometimes differ depending on location because a lot of the bullshit software companies get away with in the US is illegal in other parts of the world.
Another extreme example is the hoops companies have to jump through to sell in China. Again, this generally does not affect the same products in the rest of the world.
It is a problem that we know how to solve.
Well, partially they do. For example when it comes to the Right to be forgotten, there were attempts to apply this also to data which is stored and displayed outside the EU. Only after ECJ ruling (C-507/17) such attempts were stopped.
> For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows.
Microsoft does have the N (formerly called "Reduced Media") editions of Windows created in response to legal demands from the EU, but these are available worldwide. Other than that it is the same version of Windows, which just behaves differently when it comes to browser choice etc. depending on your location.
They care to the extent that the situation in the EU is resolved. They did not make any extraterritorial jurisdiction arguments like the US government did with Microsoft’s data centres in Ireland.
> Microsoft does have the N (formerly called "Reduced Media") editions of Windows created in response to legal demands from the EU, but these are available worldwide.
You are right, I got confused. The browser ballot screen was shown only in the EU, but it was not a separate product. Regarding Windows N, I don’t think the ruling forced them to sell it worldwide; it did not even stop them from selling their usual Windows versions in the EU.
Just like the law don't just require that you can return you toxic ham within 2 years of purchase.
It could also work as a deterrent on making dedicated servers only architecture. If you can disable dedicated servers instantly(instead of 2 years) but enable private servers that might be more cost efficient.
I hate live service games like the next guy but legal advisors can bend these to form powerful counter-arguments.
With games it’s often not the case. You buy them and then at unspecified moment you might lose a significant portion of functionality or the whole game. At the time you buy a game you don’t know if it’s for a time, what time, or what will stop working.
You should be able to do this for any game. I understand them fighting it during the games lifetime.
Most new releases rely on Multiplayer, the publishers have to come up with creative ways to monetize it.. so they introduce cosmetics, stores, etc in order to fund the ongoing development and cost.
This causes a backlash and eventually the game gets dropped because people don't want to pay a subscription.
I'm sure that with current games, licenses were indeed acquired for a certain limited time. But if you start development and you know you'll have to sunset it according to the rules one day, I'm sure you'll come up with other licenses or just a way to strip out content like that.
I think that's still fairly favorable to game publishers compared to most other purchased goods. If you manufacture an office chair and license a patented swivel mechanism, the license you acquire cannot require you to break purchasers' chairs after the license expires, nor even to go around their homes swapping out the mechanism (which analogously may still be permitted for games).
Moreover if the rightsholder for that patent had been licensing only under the terms that the purchased chair is destroyed after 5 years but then a change in consumer protection law prevents that practice, they'd need to license it out under more reasonable terms (like you can only sell the chairs with the mechanism for 5 years, but there's no limit on how long people can use the mechanism in their purchased chairs) - otherwise they'd get no business.
The big difference here is that you’re applying B2C terms on B2B licenses. This would essentially ban enterprise B2B licenses for video game software which is insanity
Both are cases of B2B licensing with the latter business then selling a product on to consumers.
> This would essentially ban enterprise B2B licenses for video game software which is insanity
I don't see how. If for instance some company develops an audio processing library, they can still license it out to a game development company for a limited time - just that the license would be "the company can no longer sell games with this technology after the license expires", opposed to anything that would prevent functioning of the already-sold games. Or rather, they could stipulate the latter in their license, but then their market would be limited to game development companies willing to patch it out after the license expires.
It's ok, the engine will adjust it if big studios can't use it otherwise. It's just people having to talk to each other.
> Code and APIs would be needed to be documented.
Why? Nobody is talking about forced opensourcing.