‘Stop Killing Games’ Finds An Ally In An EU Politician
from the progress dept
We just talked about Ross Scott’s Stop Killing Games initiative, started last year, which has found new life recently due to an online back and forth with some gaming industry veterans. As a short primer, Scott’s campaign centers around game preservation and ownership, two topics we discuss here regularly. It’s not a complicated set of rules that he’s advocating for. In fact, when viewed from the standpoint of the public, I’m surprised that there is as much pushback from the industry as there’s been so far.
The Stop Killing Games’ end goal is that governments will implement legislation to ensure the following:
- Games sold must be left in a functional state
- Games sold must require no further connection to the publisher or affiliated parties to function
- The above also applies to games that have sold microtransactions to customers
- The above cannot be superseded by end user license agreements
Simple. If you sell a game, you can’t unilaterally rip it away from your customers just because you designed it such that the company has to provide ongoing support and you don’t want to provide ongoing support. The technicals for gaming companies to make the above work are obviously more complicated to work out than four bullet points, but it’s certainly not impossible to do.
Well, Scott’s website included a petition for a law to be created to protect customers in the EU for all of this, and it managed to gather over a million signatures. That is the first hurdle to getting the issue discussed in the EU Parliament. And it seems like that debate might actually be one more giant step closer to happening, as a V.P. of Parliament has publicly signed onto the petition.
One of the Vice Presidents of the European Parliament, Nicolae Ștefănuță, publicly voiced his support for Stop Killing Games in a major win for the newly-minted EU Citizens’ Initiative. On July 12, Ștefănuță posted a video on his Instagram story announcing that he had signed the Stop Killing Games petition and plans to continue helping the movement.
Ștefănuță said in the video, “I stand with the people who started this citizen initiative. I signed and will continue to help them. A game, once sold, belongs to the customer, not the company.”
While Ștefănuță can only do so much for the Stop Killing Games movement at the moment, his support could be crucial if (or, rather, when) Stop Killing Games reaches the Parliament floor.
As PC Gamer goes on to note, it is very likely that most EU politicians haven’t even heard about Stop Killing Games, and they may not even have considered this to be an issue at all. But with Ștefănuță on board, and if the petition clears another hurdle of scrubbing and validating its signatures to make sure they’re legit, it’s likely this will make it to the floor for debate. And if that debate opens with Ștefănuță talking about the campaign and what it is seeking to accomplish, that will educate other members of Parliament and put a potential law to a vote. And, again, it’s quite hard to argue with the broad strokes of the campaign if you have any interest in the rights of the consuming public.
We’re a long way off from any actual vote on an actual law at this point, but it seems like this second bite of the apple for Ross Scott is beginning to bear some fruit.
Filed Under: eu parliament, nicolae stefanuta, preservation, ross scott, stop killing games, video game preservation, video games
Comments on “‘Stop Killing Games’ Finds An Ally In An EU Politician”
Wouldn’t this essentially ban any Game-as-a-service functionality, AKA network gaming?
His logic makes sense for games that are single player and games that are single device. As soon as you throw networking into the mix, and security patches, and server-side anti-cheat… that stuff’s going to break without constant maintenance, and it’s eventually not going to have that.
Or what about games where most of the content is online, and you just connect with a client? Sure, your client will continue to work, but without the server and all its content, it won’t be of much use.
I’d argue that a better solution is for no arbitrary limitations — that is, if you buy a game with an offline single player mode, there is zero reason why you should need to be online to run/play that game, and zero reason for anti-cheat to be running in the background.
DRM is also something that should be removable, such that after an agreed upon period, it can somehow expire (eg, by shipping a new un-DRM’d copy to each customer, or by the more insecure “push a de-DRM key over the network or enter by hand” method. Such keys should be held in escrow so that if a game company can’t afford to keep up its escrow fees for one reason or another, the key gets published.
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While the proposal still has to be transformed into a proper law, it applies to games that are sold (perpetually licensed), not to subscription services.
For network games, many games support “private servers” that any gamer can host. Mods where users can add content to the game. Add 1 and 1 and enthusiasts can keep games alive with alternative servers and alternative content. Best thing, it does not have to cost the original publisher a cent.
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I would highly encourage you to actually read the initiative and its FAQ:
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No, what it would ban is games where the only way to play them is through the publishers’ servers, it wouldn’t effectively ban online gaming through other platforms or where the publishers agree to literal lifetime support at all.
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That isn’t accurate, either. The initiative doesn’t ban anything; it simply asks for law that tells a publisher/developer that the game be in a “reasonable functional” state when they stop actively supporting it. Games that can only be played on the developer’s/publisher’s servers would still exist.
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True. Thanks for correcting me.
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As others have pointed out, no, it wouldn’t. But personally, I wish it would. There are so many interesting games and franchises that have had PVP or just MMO games that would have benefited from offline and single player modes. The latest Dune game sounds awesome if it were an open world single player game. World of Warcraft is awesome on a personal server.
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Not sure what you’re referring to. The initiative pushes for a scenario close to what you’re describing there, though the details would be up to the developer/publisher.
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This has been addressed endlessly already. Read the site or watch his videos. TBH, at this point, people who repeat this look like they are operating in bad faith.
That’s great. After a year of languishing, this seems to be finally getting some traction. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Also need this for the Internet of Things
We all need something of this nature for any connected devices that have advertised features that rely on the seller’s servers. Something like:
And these provisions must survive any merger, sale, or dissolution of the manufactuer.
Good for customers, and good for the planet due to less e-waste.
Re: 20 years rule?
A full refund after 19 years? (because the company didn’t support for the full 20) So how does a business make any money for giving you 19 years service? Surely some sort of pro-rating against the purchase date would make more fair sense. Perhaps a full refund after 1 year, degrading to 5% after 20?
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The internet is being destroyed. Our privacy will be killed by chatcontrol and AV.
This doesn’t matter one shred.
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Please choose another site on which to indulge in your defeatism. We don’t want it here.
Start a new shell company for publishing each new game. When no longer profitable enough for the stock market’s greed, silently gut it in such a way that nobody notices until it’s too late for anything but liquidation of the dregs.
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Is that supposed to some kind of loophole?
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Game studios (well the good ones at least) rely on their name and oast successes to sell games. I’m all for this if the enshittified game companies think this will let them dodge accountability; no one will hear of the game or buy it.