I never signed this kind of petition, but I am interested in it. what are the conditions besides giving your ID and name?
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In my opinion, the easiest way to sign is to just fill the form. You need your full name, postal address, date of birth or Personal Identification number and the type of document depending on your country..
You need to be 18 or 16, depending on the age in your country for voting in the EU elections.
In this specific page, we've gathered every country's conditions and instructions on how to sign.
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Is it the same thing as the existing, confusingly titled topic? https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/NlkrT/europeans-can-save-gaming
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Indeed it is. We basically agreed that he'll close the discussion now that I've opened this one. Since we're all online, it might not happen too quickly, but yep :D
But since I happen to be an official organizer and a part of the community, we felt like it was a good move for me to host the thread so I can avoid missing any questions and so on.
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Signed! It literally takes less than a minute if you don't mind using your ID card. :)
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ID Card? I'm in the UK what's an ID card? Don't worry we can't even sign it - not that'll do any good anyway
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In Europe, 15 countries require an ID card, 5 have it as semi-compulsory and 11 have it as voluntary. It's basically like a passport-lite. Some have NFC, so you can use it for digital signatures and so on as well.
The UK can sign their own petition, though the shutdown of the government has suspended the process for now. Luckily with a new government coming in, more sympathetic to causes like this, so signing it with the new government is likely the most a UK citizen has ever been able to do in terms of impact.
It definitely can seem daunting, but the progress of the petition has been around tenfold faster than I could've ever expected.
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Don't see why not, the EU fucking love breaking the backs of tech companies in wonderfully petty ways.
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I forgot that the UK is not part of the EU anymore so I can't sign it
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There was a push in the UK, the signatures were collected and an answer given, but it was considered to insufficient that another response was required by the petition commission. But then the UK parliament dissolved and now it's suspended. But the UK will likely have chance to sign soon enough. Kind of you to think of it :) Link to the UK petition that's suspended
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I don't live in Europe so I cannot sign this, but certainly the perenniality of video games is important to me. Are you aware of any other such initiatives, elsewhere in the world?
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Absolutely. Basically the website has basically every one of our angles covered. Whether it's what you can do in the UK, in France specifically, in the general EU, in the US, Canada, Germany specifically, Brazil and the rest of the world. Just choose whichever area you're in and you'll be presented with the options on how you could help, even with different priority lists to show what type of impact your effort could have.
Thank you for asking, by the way and here's the direct link to the selection of which area you're in as well.
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I just signed a petition in my country. Thank you so much for your work and for the quick reply, it's much appreciated!
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Signed from France, i didn't like what happened to the crew ubisoft should have released an offline patch, thank you and bump !
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Thanks for your efforts there, zeruel132! May I ask why Ross Scott isn't listed as organiser on the initiative's page? It's kinda surprising and might lead to doubts/questions among interested people. Is it just that he's British?
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Ross is American. He lives in Poland but is probably not a citizen.
To be (an official) part of an European Citizen's Initiative, you need to be a citizen of an EU country.
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As said before, Ross is American, so we've taken the mantle. Basically the initiative required 7 different people from 7 different EU countries to ensure that the initiative was something that the whole of EU has interest in.
We're all in active contact with each other luckily. Also, with the whole world being covered by the Stop Killing Games movement, there's a lot for him to handle too.
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It's honestly baffling to me since I'm always a bit of a pessimist, but I'm so proud of everyone who's taken a moment to save culture, people's money and access to these products for future generations :)
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I have a question to you as well as the other organisers in general.
Should it get the necessary votes to proceed, do you have a plan on what to do next? I watched Ross' videos on it and, as much as I like him, a lot of what he says is "let's do this" without explaining in depth as to what this is exactly. The goal is there, the way to get to the goal is there (ie. this initiative), but no methods of obtaining the goal. The FAQ has the most detailed information but even then it's not very specific.
Following from that, are the organisers expected to be involved after the voting is done? Do they need to explain what is happening and why it's bad, give their reasonings and options on how to tackle it, etc?
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The results of a petition aren't binding. So the EU could simply ignore it, even with sufficient signatures.
If PETI decides to move the process forward, they'll address the appropriate part of the EU commission. In the following political process the initiators of the petition have no meaningful part in. All a petition does is to raise awareness that some topic bothers the EU's citizens.
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Basically Golwar gave a good jist, but I'll add on top of it.
Organizers are generally expected to be available to any questions the EU representatives may have. However, the vast majority will be handled by our representative or the substitute speaker. If the initiative goes well (in this case it's going way better than I personally could've hoped for thanks to everyone being amazing about this goal), then the representative will actually travel to Brussels and address the parliament, answering necessary questions that might arise.
The EU will be obligated to make an in-depth response to what we're requesting and either accept it or if not, a well-explained reasoning must exist for it. Now, the reason we're actually optimistic in this leading to more than just raising awareness is because the general aims of this are very specific (to keep games in a functional and playable state post-support) and it's also in a field that's not regulated well at all yet. Therefore, a lack of clashing with other regulation and a general lack of controversy around the basic human right of ownership according to Article 17 (Part 1 and 2) of the UN Universal Declatration of Human Rights, we're actually quite optimistic about this being more than some other initiatives where the demands and requests are very sweeping and which clash with entire sections of legal code.
In terms of how the EU will approach this, we can't say with complete confidence, but I personally can attest to how surprisingly attentive and quick and transparent the process has been. They've kept doing more than expected to involve us and to cooperate with us.
But basically here's the official set of steps: link. Expect up to 3 months to verify the signatures, then we submit the initiative after we've received all the necessary national certificates from each country. Then we have 3 escalating levels of presenting the initiative and prepping over the course of 6 months and then if it gets decided that the proposal should be turned into legislation, there'll be a lot of cooperation between us and the lawmakers to figure out how to word it legally and so on.
Hope this helped a bit. If there's anything you might want an answer for, I hope to be able to have your back and make sure everything's as well answered as possible :D
Thanks for the question!
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Signed as an European citizen living in the UK 🤠 (my partner signed too)
I will be paying attention to when the UK parliament opens the Petitions Committee to also sign that.
I hope we don't stop here, and if there is enough momentum the next step should be to stop publishers forcing updates after the game is sold to you. For example introducing DRM, 3rd party launchers, or online account requirements (this part is controversial, since selling your data in EU violates GDPR). It is incredibly inconsiderate and shortsighted to do this with 10+ old games, like the Crapcom initiative. The law must require that the version sold to you, be always available to you with an easy install click. New versions can continue to co-exist, but you can simply choose to ignore it. Even if you upgrade, you'd always have the option to revert back easily to that release in time. Hopefully we can get there in the end.
Thanks a lot for your efforts, sincerely!
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I honestly don't know much about games that have done that, though I wouldn't be surprised either.
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Please don't advise such general law, because that also means that publishers can't publish patches, free updates, can't remove DRM (happens sometimes, not because they are generous but license reasons).
I agree with you that the changes in your examples are outrageous, but you need a more precise description what is allowed and what isn't.
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Yeah, I understand that. The point is to stop forcing updates on gamers, not to stop updates entirely. You should have a marked point in time (a release/patch) when you bought the game, so that you can always revert to that version easily.
I rephrased it to be more clear.
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Finland and Sweden leading the way with over 80% to minimum threshold!!
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In terms of total signatures, Germany leads with almost 40k signatures (and almost 60% to minimum threshold!!)
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It's absolutely amazing how many people have signed and especially with the thresholds being related to demographics, it's amazing how many people in these areas have signed. Baffling to think :D
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Why are your demands to the EU gov so vague and empty of legal terminology?
Do any of the organizers have experience with multiplayer networking infrastructure in the vide game industry?
How are you going to manage the legal actions directed from the users of X game that it's beeing hosted on a private server?
Have you considered the extra time and cost for the developers of the game?
Have you considered the licencing that goes inside of games? And the intelecual property of the developer of the game regarding the networking infrastructure?
The FAQ and petition are very misleading, you have to work better on your legal team.
Also, per your own response:
"Games that actually sell themselves as a service (like World of Warcraft), aren't in our crosshairs at all. We're talking of products that are sold without a known end date. Just like people don't demand a 1 month gym membership to be endless, we're not demanding a 1 month WoW sub to last forever."
Then, why in your petition you don't go against the actual problem and just made a vague and general statement attacking every single multiplayer game? On your webpage you say one thing and your official petition to the goverment says other, why did you decide to act like this?
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Which specific demands were so vague and empty of legal terminology? Our demand is literally a single precise sentence. On top of that, for context, an initiative doesn't get just injected into a legal system.
Yes, we have industry professionals on our team both on the end of video games and on the end of EU legislation.
As to legal actions directed from users of a game that's being hosted on a private server? I'm not sure what you're trying to aim at, so can you bring an example or two and I'll do my best to give an answer.
We have considered the extra time and cost and simply put, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from consumers for just even a single product, like The Crew is a bigger problem than the extremely minor costs of releasing either server software or patching in an offline mode (for context, game patches aren't created on public central servers). Or more importantly, there are almost no extra costs in total since the vast majority of the subjects for this law don't exist yet. Making a video game with consumer protections and literal basic human rights (according to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17) in mind is some of the most basic things a professional can do. Just like I expect a cannery worker not to pee in my can of beans just because a bathroom break costs money for the developer, we also expect game developers to not invalidate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of goods per major product just to save proverbial pennies on the hundreds of dollars they make.
Intellectual property simply will not be affected, just like it hasn't affected any other video game that is still in a playable function.
As to licensing, what you're referencing are likely anticheats and DRM (though add more context if I've missed anything specific you're thinking of), which can be removed if needed. But also contracts and running EULAs and ToS can be altered as time goes on since like with any law, some grandfathering in can be expected. Just like how people weren't retroactively charged for driving without a seatbelt after seatbelt laws were applied.
"The FAQ and petition are very misleading, you have to work better on your legal team." - Sadly I can't really answer about that since an opinion's an opinion, but also that's why we're actively answering questions about these things and why we actively reach out and also extend our FAQ actively. Even now, we're working on new additions to the FAQ, for which a video version will soon be uploaded to Ross Scott's channel, which you can find here: link
I understand that you're skeptical of the situation, which I totally understand since this happens with any new proposed legislation, our intentions here are to save customers from losing further billions of dollars of goods due to lax regulation that has actively destroyed culture, destroyed outcome of hundreds of years of combined labor, has actively destroyed goods and which even now threatens to spread to harm further games.
I think generally having good faith arguments is the key to understand each other's points. That's actually why we're answering these questions and are actively looking for feedback as well since we genuinely care about how consumers, developers, publishers and even polticians/legislators feel about this and to take on any constructive criticism. That actually quite literally includes your questions, which I've already forwarded to the team. So you've legitimately actively done a lot of good. Thank you for the questions.
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"Which specific demands were so vague and empty of legal terminology? Our demand is literally a single precise sentence. On top of that, for context, an initiative doesn't get just injected into a legal system."
·In your official Citizen Initiative - https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en# - It mentions viodeogames a lot, you talk about disable videogames remotely, but if they close the servers they are not disabling the videogame in any way, they are closing the servers, wich are a different thing.
"Intellectual property simply will not be affected, just like it hasn't affected any other video game that is still in a playable function."
·Well, if a developer is paid to program the network infrastructure of a game and you want the company to give said work it paid for and it's under their developer licence, then you want their intelectual property to be released for free.
There is also a bigger issue, imagine that a studio doesn't go financially well in their multiplayer game and have to close, but because they are obligated to make their network code open source, other people can set up private servers. Now, if you have a private server and start charing users to play it (becuase infrastructire costs money), now you have a defunct studio that had to close becuase elack of income, but a third party that didn't have the intelectual property or owns the game in any way is making money out of it.
Do you think that is a good way to act?
What are you going to do with every single propleb that people finds with the game and instead of going to the private server owner go to the game developer directly, because they are playing their game?
Also regarding "The Crew" problem, you claim on your webpage that the game had playerbase of 12 Million people, but the actual statistics recorded by steam show a peak of 12236 users on Steam release (it's impossible give exactly Ubisfot stats as they don't provide it) and then after that about 120 users playing it on average per year.
Where did the 12 Million playerbase come from?
Also "The Crew" services where closed recently, after the release of "The Crew 2" and "The Crew Motorfest", so a 10 year old game with two secuels, then closes the service of the first game. People had 2 iterations of said game before the service closed.
Don't you think that your move will lead to the problem of private illigal WoW servers?
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Where did the 12 Million playerbase come from?
Ubisoft themselves wrote it in a blog post on their site. It's hence deleted, but here is the wayback machine link.
You pretend to be arguing seriously and in good faith, but for every reasonable argument you propose you put at least one or two meaningless nitpicks, just to have more things to point out. Either focus on the important stuff or whine about wrong player counts or private WoW servers, don't do both.
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Thanks for your incredible help to the subject and personal attacks to me. It's really helpful.
But i'm talking to other person and waiting for their response. Thanks.
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Yeah, he's been doing that since his very first participation in the previous thread.
"Okay, but what happens if someone adds a detonation button, sneezes and hits the button. Who would be responsible for that??"
Just bullocks because he still can't accept that it is the job of the EU to find a reasonable approach and answers, not that of petitioners.
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I'm sorry, but I still legitimately can't fully understand what is so vague about mentioning videogames? If a dev/publisher requires a connection to a central server and that server gets shut down, then you can't play the game. The game is 100% shut down. Sometimes you can't even access the main menu, like in the case of The Crew. If you have a quote or even a set of quotes that contradict or are extremely vague even with the context of the rest of the text, please let me know since honestly, we've heard this being said by Thor from Pirate Software for example, yet he also was not interested in providing any quotes.
For context, here's our entire demand in the EUCI: "This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state."
This is a single sentence and everything afterwards is going into specifics for the lawmakers themselves. When I say we worked on this wording for a really long time, I'm not kidding. You're absolutely right in the skepticism too since there were so many wordings that would've left question marks in the air about definitions and so on.
As to the second question: If a company does happen to go under, then it won't be an issue since luckily the game will be developed with the legal requirement of keeping their products intact. Just like cans of beans don't have proprietary locks on them that can't be opened after Heinz goes bankrupt. It's an arbitrary lock as well since as we've said, we're not demanding for the game's source code, for the server's source code or for whatever else like that. What third party would make money out of a defunct studio? Are you talking of companies that host servers? I'm assuming not since they obviously get paid to host the servers. If you're talking of a company like Valve with Steam, then we're not demanding a game to be sold on storefronts indefinitely, so if a license (let's say car licenses for a racing game) runs out, then it's understandable that the game won't be on sale anymore.
"What are you going to do with every single propleb that people finds with the game and instead of going to the private server owner go to the game developer directly, because they are playing their game?" - I'm sorry but I simply don't understand this question. I tried to find definitions for "propleb" and was trying to fit terms like "plebian" or "problem" and even then, I don't fully understand? Is the problem presented here that people want to not go to private server owners (third parties) and instead want to go to the first party? If so, isn't that good? But more importantly, these are very removed from what we're asking. For context, that's not how a vast majority of servers are even hosted.
As to The Crew's playerbase, Filipi luckily linked to the article. This was just 2017. Steam's playercounts are not only extremely inaccurate because it's not a Steam game primarily and the game was not a PC exclusive, but also they're completely irrelevant because you don't have to actively use goods that you own to still own them. Currently there are barely any winter jacket users in Poland. Do Polish people now have less of a right to own the winter jacket as the good that they have purchased and own?
We don't think it matters how old or how many sequels a game has to be shut down. Culture isn't less important because it's old and products aren't suddenly owned in any lesser manner just because there have been newer versions of them.
To try and create a picture here, let's say your grandfather owns a Volkswagen Passat. He owns the 1981 edition of it. Now there have been over 100 new iterations of the Passat and 11 new generations of them. That Passat is now 42 years old. The car works and your grandfather enjoys driving it. Volkswagen doesn't support the '81 Passat anymore, so his terms of the contract actually state he has to destroy the car and before he even gets to do that, the car is gone from his parking spot a few days later. What is your reaction?
Now here's what's happening for us now. A fellow player owns a copy of The Crew. He owns the 2014 preorder edition of it. Now there have been over 40 major updates to the franchise, 2 new expansions and even 2 new games in the franchise. The Crew is now 10 years old. The Crew works and your fellow player enjoys playing it. Ubisoft doesn't support The Crew anymore, so his terms of the contract actually state he has to destroy his copy of the game (yes, that's in the agreement) and before he even gets to do that, the game is gone from his library a few days later. What is your reaction?
Both of these are products and goods that you can purchase that have no end date.
Do I think this can lead to piracy? It could go either way, but negligibly at most in my opinion. But with something as irrelevant as that, it's odd to ignore the millions in lost goods from consumers. Piracy is a service issue at the end of the day. And so yes, stealing everyone's copies and burning the entire game down certainly cuts down on piracy since it literally is a non-functional piece of software there. But to prevent that piracy, millions of euros had to be burned down as well from consumers, some of whom literally had to spend sizeable percentages of their salaries to get the product to begin with.
Thanks for the questions again and I appreciate the chance to talk :D
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It's good that you are giving more explanation on a forum that the official proposal presented to the EU, and again that should be done the other way around, present the full cases and waht you ultimately want to go against and then go from there.
When i mention a thrid party server, i'm not refering to the server host, but the owner of the private server or person who set it up for proffit.
As example, on Wow and Minecraft you can find private servers that have microtransactions or require you to pay to access to them. Now, do you think it's fair that if the studio has to close because it has no or low monetary income, it's good to let other users set up and charge for their private servers and make a profit out of it while the legal owner of the IP of the game is going out of busines?
How do you think the law should act in this matter regarding intelectual property? Woudn't be fair that if someone is making profit with other people work, the owner and creator of said work gets paid for it?
If you want a phisical example as you are showing.
You buy a water bottle, the specific shape of a water bottle is patented by a company/person and every other company that makes a water bottle with said shape has to pay the patent owner, because they are using their intelectual property.
Why do you think this is not needed when you talk about games?
If you buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, it doesn't mean that you own the patent for the bottle, or the recipe to make the Coca Cola itself.
Why do you think it should work the other way around when we talk about videogames?
The same way a bar or restaurant has to pay a licence to broadcast a football match, you would also need a licence to be able to set up private servers because of IP and copyright.
On the car problem you mention, sure your example might be good, but what if the company that manufacture the car doesn't exist anymore. They will have to give their patents for free?
I know what your intention is, and the intention to do it is good, but there are a lot of loops and blind spots that can be found and need lot lot of thinking so there is no misunderstanding of the law or objective of it.
Because if you present something to the EU like this and the politicians start to work on it, they will target every single game developer, no matter if it's indie or AAA, "good" or "bad".
I can think of other examples of legal problems that can happen when contradictinn with other local/country laws, like games that can't be sold in a specific country (like Wolfenstein in Germany).
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Do I think it's okay to have microtransactions in private servers? I honestly don't know and it definitely goes past the scale of the campaign. Questions like this would be the second wave of legislations since all we're trying to build here is a solid foundation to protect the very basic right of ownership. That's currently it. In my personal opinion, it's a really solid question and it's worthy of a hefty debate since I've seen private servers do that. Now, you also have to remember that all these games are still functional. Same with GTA 5 and Red Dead 2 and Garry's Mod, ARK, etc. There's tons of games that are still actively supported, but also have private servers. So in my opinion this is beyond the scope and scale of what we're talking about. But in terms of making money while the company is dying... I mean it's once again beyond the discussion. But yes, something which should also be looked at by people who then start building laws upon these foundations. We're not aiming and nor should we aim to write an entire full set of legislation on video games here. We're petitioning for an amendment, not a new legal framework.
No one's asking for a patent for or the source code of video games, so that example is unnecessary here. Unless you think that I own the patent for video games and Minecraft and own the source code to Minecraft because I can host a private server?
Also, note that bars get a service from the broadcaster. This is unrelated to our petition.
These loops that you've presented so far are a good set of thoughts, but most of these are quite literally unrelated to what we're proposing. We're not demanding legislation on third party software hosting monetization. We're not demanding IP rights to be transferred to the consumer. We're not demanding source code to be made public. We're not demanding anything like this. Thinking from a legal standpoint might help a bit more here perhaps since we're not talking about a set of rules that are being bent like in legal dramas. We're asking for a very specific rule and that's it. There's no "the rules don't say that a dog can't play basketball" moments in reality. We have a lot of vague rulesets in our legal system, but that's the problem. They're made with the goal of being vague so they can be molded when needed per use casis. Our demand, which you can still read here doesn't ask for anything like that and the set of laws you might be thinking of here are completely different with a different purpose.
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My point isn't about microtransactions, but more generic, like a third party making money out of the work of the orignial owner of the IP.
Everything comes down to the intelectual property and legal issues that clash against the freedom to make what you want with the game/licence you are sold once you set up your private server.
You make a work, you look to be paid for said work.
But now if you are required by law to let other people use of your work (wich you put money, time and effort to make) for free, it goes into a problem with your intellectual property.
In software development, if you work in a company and you make software for it, all the code you make during that company time belongs to the company, not the creator of the code. If you use the same code into other personal project, the company can sue you and it is in the companies right to do so, because that is stealing company property.
In this case would be the same, if you develop a game, the developers work is to make every single line of code adn this is owned by the company who made the game (or individual who made the game, as games doesn't necessary have to be tied to a mega-corporation) and owns the IP, so if any third party is using that code (not the game/licence that it was sold to you, but the code inside it), the company would be in it's right to sue for the use of said intelectual property.
How would you be able to protect both, the intellectual property and the right of the user to be able to use a licence indefinitely?
Becuase what the proposal is presenting it looks like it goes against the developers, the bad guys that are attacking your rights, and grant full ownership rights the final user, the poor guy that didn't read what you are buying (specified in the ToS that you are buying a licence and not a game) forgeting that there are more things to take into consideration.
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There seems to be a bit of confusion here at the end of the day. For one, our initiative has nothing to do with third party monetization for server infrastructure. That's a whole product type of its own and completely separate from what we're advocating for. It's like asking if artists should be paid extra for marking "Single-Player supported" on a box. Perhaps, perhaps not. I can only give my own opinions, but at the end of the day it's unrelated.
As to IP, once again, I have to say, we aren't asking for IP rights and developers don't have to give IP rights away. Single lines of code aren't actually unique enough to really license, though I guess one could try and go through the legal system, though even then, the EU isn't a common law country to begin with, which is why these types of questions are very America-centric and simply put, missing the point a little bit since all these questions would tangentially pertain perhaps to common law, which the EU is not.
I reiterate though and simply copy what we said in the abstract: "The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.".
I feel like perhaps a full dive into the 737-word proposal would answer why these questions are beyond the scope of the campaign and have basically zero impact on IP law and these licenses.
Though, once again, if there's anything I can try and clarify or if you have actual concrete examples of some licensed lines of code that have destroyed official private server software, then we'd definitely want to see them.
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The focus here is from people profiting from others' work. Do people who manage these servers currently own the IP of said games? I don't think so. Companies can enforce the illegal use of their IP outside of their legal terms, specially if other people are making money from it. This has happened with Blizzard, when they took down private servers for WoW classic before they released their official version.
The problem with this is, private servers will always exist. You cannot force people to not tinker with the things they buy. Many games have mods that directly compete with the developers' own DLCs. Are we going to prohibit mods too, because it is costing them money?
The same way you have a problem with your car. Instead of going to the original manufacturer for repair, you go to your local garage. The mechanic repairs your car with parts from somewhere (usually from the scrapyard, or another car they salvaged). You pay for it, and the money exchanged never touched the manufacturer. Are we going to ban second-hand/modified car parts because it is costing the manufacturer's money?
Companies like ID Software learned that a free game installed in somebody's computer is better than nothing at all. That is how they got DOOM installed in more computers than there were Windows installations. With the years passing, they released the source-code for most (if not all) of their games. It doesn't mean they lost the IP, as these games continue to be sold on Steam, GOG, etc. But having access to the source-code allowed modders/tinkerers to modify the games in ways the original developers never could have thought of. By using the passion of the community these games continue to sell well, and bring entirely new generations to it. It acts in the benefit of the developers.
Instead of Ubisoft screwing their customers by removing the game, they could've let the passionate community continue the efforts. There are always those who offer their labour for free, if it means the games they love continue to be enjoyed for years to come. I'm sure Ubisoft would have loyal fans, and many years of customers enjoying their games. Instead, players won't probably buy any more of The Crew games, if any at all from this company.
If the developer doesn't want to support a game anymore that's fine, but they have no right to take it from you (even if they gave it for free). And fortunately people are allowed to tinker and repair the things they own too.
As zeruel132 said, IP ownership is retained. Nobody is asking to change that. The proposal doesn't interfere with the issue you mentioned. It is a present situation that developers must adapt to survive, not a new one.
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I posted my comment without your edits being present at the time, so I'll quickly add this:
Can you point more precisely about those contradictions that you're eluding to? I'd gladly do my best to respond to your concerns :D
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Yeah sorry for that, i was editing on the go.
I added some more questions on the other response.
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Games that actually sell themselves as a service (like World of Warcraft), aren't in our crosshairs at all. We're talking of products that are sold without a known end date. Just like people don't demand a 1 month gym membership to be endless, we're not demanding a 1 month WoW sub to last forever.
I don't think anyone is asking for an offline version of WoW at the end of your subscription while the servers are still running, at least anyone making much sense. Though I do feel you should be able to play once the servers go down. It is not much different than other games, we don't know the end date of WoW unless you opt to stop paying and even that may be temporary as you can "always" re-subscribe later. Though that option to subscribe may no longer be there. You may have several unused subscription cards and are unable to use them as the servers went offline. We are nearing 20 years of the game, which may have cost you more than that of 60 AAA titles. Who knows what the final tally may end up, how many thousands of hours gone through no fault of your own.
Going to the gym analogy, what if you purchased a lifetime membership to access a certain part of the gym that they decide to remove. You are demanding that you should still have access.
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The way you've worded it is good. This campaign's got nothing to say about how a game's being run. The whole point is just that it stay playable after the official support ends. So if they want it to be online-only now, that's fine. If they want it to be online-only with an offline mode now, that's awesome. If they want to be online-only for just 6 months and then go offline? As long as the game is playable after support ends. How that playability is achieved and what method they take is up to them.
As to lifetime gym memberships, that's a good question. I think for one there's a very good reason why that's really rare since it tends to be a bit of a gamble. I think legally perhaps they'd say that it's the "lifetime of the gym" or whatever else. But honestly, giving legitimate terms should be important to protect consumers so that they aren't taken advantage of with empty promises. But all of this is just a set of my personal beliefs rather than anything else. It's a bloody good question though, so I appreciate the thought to ponder over :D
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Jumping in here to give my 2 cents about this :
Going to the gym analogy, what if you purchased a lifetime membership to access a certain part of the gym that they decide to remove. You are demanding that you should still have access.
It's a good example of when comparing physical goods with digital goods leads to contradictions.
In the analogy, the gym is the same physical room with shared access between subscribers.
In video games (and more generally software), the game or the program is duplicated on demand, and it can be duplicated a virtually infinite number of times.
So it's less like subscribing a lifetime membership and more like "duplicating" the whole gym room for your exclusive private use (which is not possible in the physical world, hence the contradiction in the analogy).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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The companies aren't knocking on your door to come and erase the game from your computer. They are shutting down their servers that help it run and those servers (hardware). aren't something that can just be duplicated on demand.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to see it so that games can continued to be played after the servers go down.
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That's not related to what I said.
...but anyway, I have another analogy to think about : very old cars where needing a crank to start. Rich people had servants to turn it for them. If the servant decided to "shut down" his service, would he be allowed to leave with the crank (making the car unusable) or would he be compelled to leave the crank to the car owner ?
That analogy is made to help to go further than the written definitions of things made by the game companies on the sole purpose to serve them and to ask yourself : what is really the "game" thing ?
The law may define it differently than them if appropriate. Why would you want the crank to be a part of the servant and not a part of the car ?
😜
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What I was trying to get at is a game shutting down doesn't remove your copy of the software, though it does impact its usefulness. Also some things can't be duplicated so easily.
Sounds more like a subscription service, having to constantly pay the servant, that Stop Killing Games doesn't want to support at this time, though I wish they would. Again, I would always want the capacity to play the game or have the crank as it were.
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For a political debate to lead somewhere, the participants of the debate will want to avoid letting the other define the perimeter of the discussion because it would forbid them to introduce their own ideas.
That's similar here : don't let game companies decide of the perimeter. They have the workforce and the skills to make offline games, or online games, or a mix of both, or many other combinations (like "serial multiplayer" in the 90s or whatever). The fact they decided to make any precise game a specific way is a fact and not a right as in something a law would have compelled them to do.
...this lead to an immense perimeter to debate about, much more vast than what they factually decided to create during the previous decades.
Feel free to imagine how it could or should be, think about the consequences, and voilà! ... you have a new idea of how the game market could or should look like. If that idea is out of their perimeter then it's a good idea to come with in a political debate.
...a game shutting down doesn't remove your copy of the software,
This is their perimeter. This the way they factually decided to make things. This is not a right as in there is no law compelling them to do it that way.
Find your perimeter. Think about how the law may or may not compel game companies to make games a way or another way(*).
For example, myself, I think that when a game company shut down a server it's the very same as erasing my local copy if it disallows me to play the game because the game is a playable thing in my mind and not the unusable raw set of bytes that makes its computer code. Then there are different consequences according to the game being single player or multiplayer or ...etc.
(*) for the comparison, several decades ago car manufacturers were compelled by law to continue providing replacement parts to customers even after they decide to cease to manufacture each model of their cars. The car manufacturers didn't disappeared. And yes, they were globally not providing enough replacement parts for a fair market before that law.
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The gym analogy is interesting, but they can always refund you the months you have left, from the point you lose access to that section. I'm sure it is on their terms.
Another way to put it: let's say you pay for a lifetime subscription to an email provider (say Protonmail). Are they not allowed to ever modify their service, their entire website because you paid in advance?
The communality here is that you are not paying for a product that you own, but for the access only. At any time it can cease to exist. Games on the other hand, wether bought physically or digitally are essentially a product. You should have access to it at any time, it is yours. They are art, as any movie, music, etc is. Art is part of history, and must never cease to exist.
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Their terms would likely include a provision along the lines of while those services are available. They can't be expected to always provide that service, what happens if the company would go under?
Any game with a major online component would be substantially changed by removing that online component. Even if the game were to still be playable solo it would affect the game. Take WoW for example, sure you aren't required to party with others or take advantage of trading or the auction house, however there is still interactions that take place. You still pass them by in the towns and they may be competing with you for resources. It would be like erasing part of a painting or sculpture, it just wouldn't be the same. Personally, I'd like to still have access even if it is limited.
I wonder if you have any pieces of art in your home and how you ensure that it remains in good condition in perpetuity. That is asking for a lot.
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Any piece of art I'd have in my own home is my responsibility to upkeep. I'd have a finish product that doesn't depend on the creator to use it (in this case viewing it).
What we are alluding here with this petition is, let's imagine I have a painting at home I paid for from the artist. I'd paid for a product, not a service. The creator, would then have the power at any time to make changes to said painting, so that any change will be not what I paid for. To be more specific, let's say I paid for a painting because I liked the red colours, but then they change all red to blue. This is effectively rendering it useless from my perspective. In the worst case they can remove it from my own home.
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I think there's two things here. For one, if I purchased a piece of art and the painter said they weren't interested in it anymore and completely destroyed it, that'd be a lawsuit. That'd be a criminal and a civil case right there. Ubisoft was not charged for 12 million individual cases of destruction of personal property.
But as to an online-only game not being as good in single-player... yeah, you're 100% right. But does it matter? We're talking about a compromise that we're trying to make with developers and publishers. We're not being unreasonable and demanding endless support and server maintenance. We know that we're still getting the raw end of the deal even when our human rights (right for personal property that a third party can't disrupt) stop being violated. But you're completely correct since this is a very flawed type of product to begin with. If the product expires, they absolutely should say when it expires. If they make a product that relies on systems that they choose to have rely on solely them, then they should have a backup plan when they inevitably stop supporting the product.
These are some of the most basic human rights, most basic consumer rights and most basic responsibilities. We're just asking for the absolute bare minimum here.
Thank you for your thoughts though since even if we might have disagreeing viewpoints, it's really helpful to see what people think, how they see products or video games specifically and so on. I appreciate the comment :D
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What if that artist charged you a base cost and a recurring monthly cost for that same art that they can revoke at any point they decide? What if you've invested in it for 40 years and suddenly they ask you for their art back? What if it was mostly a base cost and only charged you a penny a year as a subscription to avoid any actual ownership?
I am unsure if I am correctly getting my position across, I want protections in place for the consumer. I am very much for this as I am that very consumer. I just want it to include subscriptions as well...
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It definitely is much more of a gray area and generally an argument could simply be made that you purchase the good and then subscribe to a service in that case. That you buy a game, but then the subscription goes towards maintenance, servers, updates and so on. Though it's definitely a tough nut to crack, that's for sure.
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I wasn't even thinking about games like Wow, since those are subscription anyway. You don't expect a subscription service to last forever. One day it will be gone.
But there are games like this that you buy outright: https://store.steampowered.com/app/509580/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Adventure_Card_Game__Definitive_Edition/
It has a single player campaign. A really good single player campaign that you cannot play offline. That means once they take down the server, the entire game goes with it, not just the MP. This shouldn't be the case. I should be able to play the single player portion of that game..
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Isn't an account required only for online play? At least according to PCGW
Anyway, I hate when the steam game-page is not explicit on what the experience entails. I have to find out using other ways if a game requires online activation/DRM, etc. It should be straight-forward, and if it's not explicitly there, then steam should proactively force developers to make notice. Customers must be informed at all times on what exactly they are buying.
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Yes, but there is no offline play. That's the point I'm mad about. I haven't played it in a while, but you have to be online just to play solo.
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Bump! I'm trying to reach as many people I can, and I encourage you to do the same.
And... You follow a YouTuber/Podcast/Influencer that have a platform in other language beside English that belongs to the EU? Contact them as well!!
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Some years ago i called Ubisoft french support by phone, asking if i could restart Steep from scratch. A support guy laughed and replied that of course not because it's a game as service, and that one day anyway the game will be shut down.
Problem, in more and more game with single player campaigns, they add games as service aspects.
Also before the crew 1, Ubisoft already shut down one game despite it had a full single player campaign, and it seems people didn't notice it : Tom Clancy's HAWX. I could never finish the solo campaign. When you try to continue the campaign the game checks if servers are up, they are down, RIP.
And as you know, Ubisoft tried to shut down silent hunter 5 and an old anno. But it was given up, especially because the anno devs didn't want and went on strike, and ended up to take on their own time to release an offline patch.
Here before Ubisoft kills Watch_Dogs 1, Steep, and Splinter Cell Blacklist in the coming years.
Because if you don't care about The Crew 1, i think it can be understandable. But what will you think when WD1 and Steep will be shut down ? There is no equivalent actually to Steep.
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Absolutely. Plus, we've got to remember that a game can be mediocre or whatever. But these are products that were paid for and these are cultural items that should be maintained and kept. Imagine if we threw out a painting just because people said it's mediocre.
Thanks for sharing :)
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Exactly. Any game, or a piece of art deserves a place in history. Doesn't matter how bad it is (which is subjective).
Ubisoft is really killing games. New generations that are born after the games have been gone, won't ever have a chance to try them. Just look at the enormous community behind retro games. Not only old people are playing them, but young ones too. This is possible because the ROMs can be made available easily, since they were in cartridges once. Nowadays with all digital, it is really easy to kill it forever!
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Also, we have to remember that even if you get a physical copy of a game, it no longer guarantees that you have the product you physically hold. The data on that disk might be dead just because a switch has been pulled by a third party. Technically, when you look at most online game EULAs and ToS, then you're actually generally also obligated to destroy your own copy of the game, which is an extreme demand to make from a creator.
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Not sure how can they enforce you to destroy your own copy, but I agree that would be outrageous. I just remember even with physical cartridges, sometimes the game requires online connections which is the case with some Nintendo Switch games. Really sad.
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You're luckily right that they can't enforce you. But the point that it's there and technically not illegal of them to ask - that's what's so egregious in my eyes.
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If we go even further in the past, you can't play the original Assassins Creed today without (at least) modifying the (your computer's) hosts file to re-route the annoying pings to non-existant Ubisoft drm server to localhost, otherwise the game hangs and crashes a lot.
Why? Ubisoft left an always online drm in the game and then shut down the server. There's no one phoning home from the other side. And it's a singleplayer game for sure.
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I didn't even know Assassin's Creed had that as a problem. That's wild. Thanks for sharing that.
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Damn, Ubi support is super fun to talk to. They are not bots, but every time i talk to them it seems the best course of action is the one where they don't need to actually fix or admit game is broken or offer support resolving issues.
UNO used to function in a way that, if anybody had the dlc, the entire party would be able to play x amount of games (per week or month, i dont remember)
After a few messages back and forward, i went and straight up made a video showing how it works with other dlc and how this one dlc only works for some but not every player.
They immediately resolved my issue by pointing out that, the problem will go away if, i just buy the dlc myself...brilliant
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Finland has reached the threshold, why are you in other countries slacking?
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Hey there!
Caesar239 already made a thread, but he offered to basically let me make my own thread so I can answer any questions you might have more conveniently.
I'm one of the official organizers for the EU Petition for Stop Killing Games.
A link to Ross Scott, the head of the movement, explaining in a video some of the most basic questions and reasons why this petition isn't just slacktivism or why this isn't just a lost cause. Also, here's our official FAQ that answers most of the questions people have, but to make it easier:
For the most common questions I saw from the original thread:
No, we're not asking for games to endlessly keep their servers up. In fact, we demand nothing of how long a publisher has to support their game.
Yes, EU can do this solely because every right you can think of as a digital consumer has either been ratified by the EU once another government has introduced it or they've fully originated it.
Games that actually sell themselves as a service (like World of Warcraft), aren't in our crosshairs at all. We're talking of products that are sold without a known end date. Just like people don't demand a 1 month gym membership to be endless, we're not demanding a 1 month WoW sub to last forever.
Feel free to ask any questions that you might feel have been bugging you.
Proud to be an SG member that's trying their best to improve digital experiences for everyone. Hope you will be as well by signing here :)
Giveaway
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