Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

Posted by slymax 7 hours ago

Comments

Comment by hodgehog11 5 hours ago

As is stated in the article, but is not clear just from the headline, this was not an unexpected outcome from the initiative. The Commission did not seek discussions with SKG, and spent virtually all of their time with the gaming industry lobby groups.

SKG was prepared for this, and their intention has been to join up with the group putting together the new Digital Fairness Act, since the objective there is very similar, but much broader in scope, and most of the groundwork is already there. Much of the earlier recorded Q&A sessions in Parliament had representatives commenting on this already, so it's the natural approach. This way, legislation will almost certainly be put forward and voted on, and the lobby groups will likely have a harder time trying to wrestle with a larger movement and a parliament that seems sympathetic to the cause.

Basically, this is a battle lost that never really mattered. The climax of this war is yet to come.

Comment by p0w3n3d 1 hour ago

I'd say this shows how corrupted elites are. If the "democratic" entity spends all the time with lobbyists, and not the initiative which started the discussion, this speaks volumes.

Comment by jon-wood 49 minutes ago

They spent their time to talking to people who are willing to actually engage with the problem at hand rather than just heckling from the sidelines. Every time I’ve seen SKG mentioned I start with some sympathy for the perspective and rapidly remember they’re just not at all serious, and have no idea what they’re talking about.

If they kept it to single player games and a push for games which aren’t multiplayer not to have a clean kill switch for all online bits so that they continue to work after the servers go away that would be fine. Push for multiplayer first games to require a defined support period like the EU requires for consumer IoT hardware now. What isn’t realistic is stamping their feet and demanding that companies make it possible for people to run their own servers for live service games, just the licensing issues are going to be a nightmare to solve, and a lot of the time when servers start getting turned off the team that could do this work has been dissolved or are working on other things.

If you don’t like games that require a server to function don’t buy them, that’s a choice that can be made.

Comment by Ravus 28 minutes ago

> a lot of the time when servers start getting turned off the team that could do this work has been dissolved or are working on other things.

That is precisely why the SKG initiative mandates it - so that it's available from the start because it's a legal requirement. Without that, you have no financial nor legal incentive and you end up exactly like you mention - reassigning or dissolving the team.

Comment by casey2 25 minutes ago

The issue SKG tackles is that it's the video game equivalent of wildcatting & oil spoilation. A publishers contracting a small studio create a live service game hoping to strike it rich, often without doing any market research on the viability of their product, and then drop support shortly after launch leaving owners with a bricked copy.

They have this very cushy setup where they triple insulate themselves from risk while publishing games that have less snowballs chance in hell of matching their expectations (next HoK, Genshin Impact, PUBG, LOL, minecraft, fortnite, roblox, WoW).

I and a million others think the software industry needs to move past their infant stage and start taking their own products seriously. Frankly it's shocking regulation didn't come in the 00s.

>If you don’t like games that require a server to function don’t buy them, that’s a choice that can be made.

You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. People DON'T buy the game, they ARE voting with their wallet. You are doing the equivalent of telling people "If you don't like abandoned wells you shouldn't drive." We like the gushers, you should just pay the actual cost of drilling instead of passing those off on society. That all people would/should stop playing live service games because of the relatively small cost of dead games is just as ridiculous.

Comment by xeyownt 59 minutes ago

Seeing your comment, the base seems more corrupted than the elite. The corruption they suffer is to see everyone as being corrupted.

Think about it: how you would implement such directive and make it implementable... Now you see the problem.

Comment by one33seven 1 hour ago

what can you do? they have billions and we have signatures.

Comment by trinix912 26 minutes ago

You can vote for someone else the next time. Sadly the EU parliament elections turnout is still relatively low in many member states.

Comment by one33seven 17 minutes ago

okay so how do we convince enough people to vote correctly? And what is the correct choice?

Comment by p0w3n3d 1 hour ago

I perceive democracy as a company, where people are bosses because they choose their workers. If you're the boss, and your employee uses your money to buy themselves a car instead of representing your interest, you make them pay for this and fire them

Comment by isodev 1 hour ago

> how corrupted elites are

The commission is defined by councils and policy from each member state. Many member states send their right wing nuts so there is a bigger picture than just "corrupt".

Comment by HDBaseT 4 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by skotobaza 2 hours ago

> This sounds like cope

You can listen to Ross' explanation in his recent video [1], it starts at 12:12

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgoODQFrPgw

Comment by TylerE 3 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by spaqin 3 hours ago

Not sure about the technical reality here - until 2010s, singleplayer games didn't require an Internet connection, and for multiplayer ones you could download a dedicated server application, host it yourself. Only recently it became locked down for the corporate profit; the only party making it hard are the game developers themselves.

Comment by x______________ 3 hours ago

Because telemetry and advertising revenues did not plague the online landscape during those times. It has all been standardized since: "click OK to share data with our 13,285 partners", "always-online needed to prove your identity", "we need to force an upgrade of your software so we can ensure you get what's best for you, when we decide" ..oh and all of that after a 159 page legally binding and enforceable agreement that you can't negotiate or reject.

Are you sure we don't need all of this? Seems like we'd be going back to the dark ages of information technology if we did.. (/s)

Comment by hatefulheart 3 hours ago

What does telling your customers you plan to make a game unplayable if it doesn’t perform exactly as you expect financially have to do with technical reality, pray tell?

Comment by xingped 3 hours ago

(Not parent) It doesn't. It's just uninformed or bad faith commenting, astroturfing, and arm chair developers who've never written a line of code for a game in their lives. Always has been.

(Or maybe Jason Hall is going by "Tyler" now. XD )

Comment by Ritewut 3 hours ago

What SKG is asking for is not only technical reality but easy to do if you plan for it from the start.

Comment by gundamdoubleO 3 hours ago

Please actually read the proposed initiative.

Comment by danieltanfh95 1 hour ago

wrong, the commission did discuss with SKG, but the entire group had their head in the sand when reasonable people asked SKG to respect technical reality and resubmit a better, reality-focused proposal as SKG 2.0. They ban anyone not in their echo chamber.

Comment by Farbklex 1 hour ago

The technical reality is: - that singel player games don't need a persistent online connection - that it is not that complicated if you develop your game with offline playability in mind from the beginning - multiplayer games can very well have an offline playable LAN mode (Age of Empires 2 is currently sold as "Definitive Edition" which does not work offline in LAN unless you connect to Xbox online services first)

The gaming industry did way too much stupid shit in the last few years and just needs to take it a notch back.

Comment by ozlikethewizard 24 minutes ago

[dead]

Comment by reedf1 2 hours ago

From the perspective of someone with some experience in consumer advocacy via the EU is that SKG did not do this the right way, or at least the right way right now. The EU expects radical compromise. The right starting point for SKG was to enter talks with games industry lobby groups to discuss possible solutions. If that fails - you will need to be able to prove that it isn't because you were unable to compromise. Your next step is to find individual game developers and publishers who agree with your proposals and can back them at some (hopefully negotiated) level. Any one-sided proposal is a non-starter.

The EU will view this this from the perspective of balancing the rights of its citizen workers/producers (game developers) and its citizen consumers.

Comment by woolion 1 hour ago

1. The standard of compromise makes no sense because there "the video-game industry" is not a company with a representative. Any compromise you could find would be dismissed on the basis that it's one lobby groups among others anyway.

2. The statements made by somewhat representative groups like the ESA showed any compromise was impossible since their whole premise is "if you don't let us kill games (which we aren't doing) then it's going to kill the industry"; the typical propaganda of "our enemies are insignificant and stupid yet the greatest threat to humanity"

3. The ESA statements were disavowed by some developers, and SKG made a point to have longer videos with developers agreeing and debunking the lies in the ESA statements already. If that's not enough, refer to point 1.

>rights of its citizen workers/producers

The whole point is that the basis of commerce is that you can't sell something and destroy it just afterwards. Sure you can have limited time subscriptions but that's not how video-games are sold. They are changing the definition based on context so they can do the most unethical things as they see fit, and as a result they are entirely destroying the industry by breaking consumer trust.

Comment by eskori 1 hour ago

Completely agree with the first point; it would have been great showing a list of supporters from the game industry. Not that I am an expert in this matter, though.

However:

> The EU will view this from the perspective of balancing the rights of its citizen workers/producers (game developers) and its citizen consumers.

How could SKG be an attack on gamedevs? What changes in the life of someone in gamedev if the online game their company has them working on provides a self-hostable server or offline functionality once they finally stop working on it?

I guess we could argue that game companies may get less revenue because users will keep playing older games that no longer produce money, and I am not keen on "perpetual games," which could impact the workers of that company... But this is a highly abusive practice. Sure, gambling makes salaries for workers around the world, but that is no excuse to keep perpetuating such an abusive industry.

This is no attack; I am genuinely curious, and I might be wrong on everything :)

Comment by drorco 1 hour ago

If you're actually curious, to gate a taste of the cost of compliance, I recommend taking a look into the different standards for website accessibility, GDPR, etc. On paper it sounds great, who doesn't want a accessible websites or privacy? But in practice it's a total drain of resources, real legal risk even if you genuinely try and be compliant, and often you just pay a lot of $$$ for legal, compliance advisors etc. so you could tick off a box and have some sort of insurance in case you're being sued.

Now you probably don't have a lot of empathy for big corps, but those laws often apply for small businesses as well (why wouldn't they?) and now imagine the struggling indie dev now also having to deal with another legal compliance so they won't lose their house to a legal troll, when they just struggle to get a game out there they have no idea if it's even going to ever be successful.

Comment by acron0 1 hour ago

I don't really buy this. From my personal experience, indie devs are more likely to use methods which make their server tech distributable (e.g. Minecraft). Large game publishers appear to go in the opposite direction for control and lineage reasons: "Crew 1 is dead so you need to buy Crew 2 now".

Anyone who gamed before 2005 knows that games do not require magic, expensive, managed remote services. We all used to run our own servers! The GameSpy era!

Comment by drorco 37 minutes ago

Well I'm talking from experience as a mobile indie game developer.

Pretty much every year I'm getting warnings from Apple or Google, or 3rd party SDKs, that unless I make sure to update libraries, or comply with a new rule, they are going to take down the game.

One of the latest rules was some sort of a digital services act (again another regulation) that made it very difficult for indie devs not to share their personal address and phone numbers.

Comment by pdpi 59 minutes ago

The GDPR is almost trivial to comply with if you’re not harvesting data willy-nilly.

Likewise, the legal risk for small indie games here rounds to zero. Most such games will, at worst, lose access to online leaderboards if their developers shut them down.

Comment by drorco 39 minutes ago

I'm a developer of a mobile indie game and it's not true. Just to get started you need to implement tons of third part SDKs like Meta Ads, AdMob, Google Analytics, etc. These require actual handling of player choices, data sanitation etc. disregarding the loss of revenue with not being able to serve personalized ads, or even ads at all to large segments of players. And I'm talking about strictly optional rewarded ads.

These already harmed a lot of small mobile game companies, while the bigger mobile companies had much better means to deal with these.

I personally paid over $10K for different services just to comply, disregarding the loss of revenue over this compliance.

Comment by acron0 34 minutes ago

Maybe don't fill your games with ads and release them on restrictive, exploitative platforms?

Comment by drorco 16 minutes ago

Did you ever build a commercial project or any business yourself? The nature of your comment implies to me you haven't. I highly recommend you give it a try, it might actually change your mind!

Comment by hobofan 15 minutes ago

aka "don't make games that anyone has the chance of playing"

Comment by adrian17 15 minutes ago

> The GDPR is almost trivial to comply with if you’re not harvesting data willy-nilly.

I buy a VPS. I apt install nginx. Is it okay that by default, opening http://IP/index.html logs the IP address to /etc/log/nginx/access.log? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe yes but I need a privacy policy (for an empty index.html). Maybe I need to ask a lawyer (who usually errs on side of caution) because people have been arguing about it for 10 years (and please don't answer here). And in the end, even if I didn't need to do anything, it sure is _some_ nonzero drain of my resources to have think about it at all (completely ignoring whether it's justified or not).

Comment by pdpi 1 hour ago

Consider for a moment that end-to-end encrypted messaging protects criminals of all sorts. Surely that’s a bad thing and requiring back doors for law enforcement shouldn’t be considered an attack on anybody?

I absolutely agree that the practices SKG are fighting against are pretty abusive and that it is right and proper to restrict those practices, but I also understand why people see the appeal in anti-e2ee laws.

The thing is, I have a good-enough understanding of cryptography to see why those laws are a terrible idea, and I’m infuriated by how clueless their supporters are. I’m self-aware enough to realise that I might the clueless one here and that me not seeing any legitimate issue with SKG doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

Comment by blitzar 2 minutes ago

I thought regulations were leading to civilization erasure for the EU ...

Or is this one of the good ones(tm)

Comment by madanparas 5 hours ago

The ECI process forces the Commission to respond formally, not to legislate. The Commission said no, which SKG anticipated. They had already secured a legislative call signed by 45 MEPs and are pushing to amend the Digital Fairness Act through Parliament. The headline frames this as a defeat. Finishing the ECI process shifted the venue to Parliament, where SKG says they have majority support.

Comment by consp 2 hours ago

I'm not sure but it sounds like a skirmish to lure out the lobby groups talking points into the wide open by the voice of the EU commission.

Comment by bombcar 5 hours ago

Don't look so smug! I know what you're thinking, but The Commission was merely a setback!

Comment by kuerbel 4 hours ago

Did you honestly believe I would trust the future to some Commission? Hahahaha… Oh no, no, no, it was merely an instrument, a stepping stone to a much larger plan! It has all led to this…and this time, you will not interfere!

Comment by dopa42365 6 hours ago

Well, it's a million signatures for something to be brought up, not for something to definitely become law.

A decade or so ago I (among millions) signed to abolish daylight saving time. Still waiting for that heh.

Comment by Hamuko 2 hours ago

The daylight saving time shit is such a fucking fumble from the EU. We have an instance of direct democracy, we have EU politicians parading around saying “we’re gonna end it” and then absolutely nothing happens. Council points fingers at Commission, Commission points fingers at Council. “It’s their job.” How am I as an EU citizen supposed to be proud of being part of this dysfunctional mess?

Comment by consp 2 hours ago

It's easy talking points during elections but requires lengthy legal procedures and thus gets chopped immediately. Politicians gonna be politicians. Better to be talking about the time of day than some other dog whisle.

Comment by Volundr 4 hours ago

Trump's said he wants to end it. That's something I'd back him on. I wish he'd sign that executive order and tilt that windmill in the courts instead of the stuff he is pushing. I'd be rooting for him!

Comment by merpkz 1 hour ago

Ah, the same guy who promised to end wars, that sounds good

Comment by atoav 2 hours ago

Trump promises a lot of things, while also promising others their polar opposite or flipping 180° once in office.

If you'd back a politician with a track record that bad on any promise, that is probably something telling more about you than the politician.

Comment by yndoendo 5 hours ago

I would say lobbyist are continuing their take over of the EU. Copyright law is the excuse but 90's games proves this to be invalidated.

None of the games from the 90s and early 2000's required authenticating with a launder. They just worked and this is why those games are still playable to date.

Those same games that had multi-player allowed for downloading a self-hosted server.

Enemy Territory is a prime example. The game would still be playable even with out ID Software releasing the source code.

GOG is built upon legacy games that don't require a launcher. Politicians in the EU have been bought and paid for. President exists and is not being applied.

Comment by NooneAtAll3 5 hours ago

makes me envy of Switzerland's "enough signatures causes referendum which actually does create a new law" system

Comment by Symbiote 4 hours ago

Proportional to the respective populations, this would have needed roughly four times as many signatures to get to that level in Switzerland.

Comment by NooneAtAll3 1 hour ago

if so, making that failure more explicit would also be of great help

Comment by Barrin92 4 hours ago

the Swiss can only propose new constitutional amendments, not statutory laws. And precisely to avoid having what is supposed to be a technical decision into an overly broad popular vote, because those are still supposed to belong into parliamentary debate.

Because if people voted on every single regulation you'd be at the ballot box five times a day.

Comment by izacus 2 hours ago

You should check out Swiss constitution sometimes to see how true that is :P

Comment by phyzix5761 4 hours ago

So, mob rule?

Comment by necovek 3 hours ago

Some would more amicably call it democracy, but to each their own.

Comment by keybored 2 hours ago

Democracy is mob rule when I don’t like it. Democratic activity is populism when I don’t like it.

Comment by hobofan 1 hour ago

More direct democracy also makes it more attackable for misinformation campaigns (trying to offer a populist answer to complex problems).

Comment by nairboon 1 hour ago

For this argument to work, you'd need to show that a generic politician is somehow immune to misinformation campaigns/lobbyism.

Comment by hobofan 34 minutes ago

It's reasonable to at least expect that. It's their job after all, while for any single voter there is a lower standard you can realistically hold them too and less time available to verify/debunk claims.

On top of that, there are also instruments that help the voters track whether politicians are engaging in corrupt lobbyism like voting records + donation / campaign contribution records, though few countries do that to a degree that it forms a cohesive anti-corruption framework. None of those measures exist for individual voters.

Comment by suddenlybananas 16 minutes ago

Why is it reasonable to expect that? What mechanism makes politicians immune to disinfo?

Comment by keybored 1 hour ago

That more democracy is more attackable is not a coherent position. More democracy means more people power. But people being powerless to resist misinformation campaigns means that they do not have power. Which means that it is not really democracy. This is the same as saying that democracy is being undermined by wealth inequality. If money can buy political power and money is unevenly distributed then it’s not a democracy.

If one was actually interested in actual democracy one would fix that misinformation asymmetry.

Comment by bjelkeman-again 1 hour ago

And that, I would argue, is rooted in wealth inequality.

Comment by AgentMasterRace 1 hour ago

PirateSoftware must be so giddy right now.

Comment by TheTaytay 4 hours ago

As written, wouldn’t this result in fewer online games? Maybe dramatically fewer?

Comment by Farbklex 57 minutes ago

Less "unnecessary" online games. To give you one tame example: Age of Empires 2 released in 1999 and is fully playable offline either as a single or multiplayer game via LAN. It has received two re-releases as AoE 2 HD edition and AoE 2 Definitive Edition. The Definitive Edition does not work offline for multiplayer games anymore. It is still the same game with updated graphics and engine but it is still just Age of Empires 2.

In order to play an actuall "Local Area Network" game, you first need to connect to the online Xbox Service. Only then will "Multiplayer" be available as an option and only then you can actually select "Local Area Network" as the "server region" for the match.

All for an updated re-release of a game from 1999.

I was at the AoE 2 DE launch LAN event at a Microsoft Store with big YouTubers and everything. They could not play LAN because right at launch, the online servers crashed due to the load. No one played a multiplayer game at this LAN...

Comment by DexesTTP 2 hours ago

It would result in fewer online games that stop working altogether when the publisher wants to stop it.

All the publisher would have to do is to create a "mini self-hosted server" application and provide it and they would follow the law on this.

It's really not that complicated. Not "free", of course, but it's not exactly expensive either if you plan to do that from the moment you write your first line of code.

Comment by maccard 1 hour ago

Game developer here. If it were “just” that easy I’d love to support this.

> All the publisher would have to do is to create a "mini self-hosted server" application and provide it and they would follow the law on this

You’re making a huge assumption here both about the scope of the law, and about how straightforward this is to do. I’ve worked in games where we could drop a server binary over the fence an that would be fine. I’ve also worked on games that have required a bunch of different standalone services just for core logic - running it requires a combination of dynamodb, Kafka, a few microservices on lambda, and massive third party dependencies. Getting a “mini self hosted server application” out of this is a rewrite.

> but it's not exactly expensive either if you plan to do that from the moment you write your first line of code.

The vast majority of games use existing technologies. First line of code was 30 years ago for any unreal game, for example. This effectively bans any third party non redistributable libraries (of which there are many), using many open source licensed projects for the backend.

What if I rely on steam, or epic for P2P and they shutter the service? What if playfab discontinue their offering, or AWS decide to remove a service that our “mini self hosted server” relies upon. Games aren’t some magical piece of technology, they’re just software like everything else.

Comment by skotobaza 1 hour ago

> games that have required a bunch of different standalone services just for core logic

But you don't have to design the backend this way. Especially if you know that you will have to share the binaries when the support for the game ends.

> This effectively bans any third party non redistributable libraries (of which there are many), using many open source licensed projects for the backend

Some games that have been open sourced by the developers solved this issue by replacing such library calls with stubs. I think this is an acceptable compromise.

>What if I rely on steam, or epic for P2P and they shutter the service?

If you still support the game, you can replace those services to keep the game running. If you don't support it (or decided that you don't want to keep supporting it because of the service shutdown), then you just release it with those service calls, and the community will replace them (if they want to of course).

Comment by maccard 26 minutes ago

> But you don't have to design the backend this way.

You’re calling for legislating software architecture for a subset of software that is different to how it works everywhere else in the tech industry.

> Some games that have been open sourced by the developers solved this issue by replacing such library calls with stubs. I think this is an acceptable compromise.

The other commenter hit on the moving goalposts - I agree with him and not going to go into that more.

> If you don't support it (or decided that you don't want to keep supporting it because of the service shutdown), then you just release it with those service calls, and the community will replace them (if they want to of course).

I think this shows a misunderstanding of what’s actually involved here. If we can rely on the community to patch in missing calls, (and implement the logic behind those calls) then this law doesn’t do anything - the community are free to reverse engineer the service it relies on. If I make a chess game, and the community remake the matchmaker but without ELO that’s bordering on unplayable - in my mind it’s as bad as the game not existing anymore.

Comment by skotobaza 18 minutes ago

> You’re calling for legislating software architecture

Not really, it will be the consequence of requiring the game to be given to the community after the EOL.

> the community are free to reverse engineer the service it relies on

While that is true, it is much harder than receiving the code with the most logic intact. We already do reverse engineer the binaries, including the server protocols, so we know how hard it is. And that's why we know that it's not the way to go.

Comment by hobofan 55 minutes ago

So now you have shifted to goal post from "providing a simple runnable binary" (not feasible due to baked in third-party licensing) to "open sourcing the game code, so people can rewrite the game to patch the missing parts".

The few examples you point out as "open source released with stubs" are also usually games that are decades old and cultural landmarks, where there was economic incentive from the right holders (good PR) to release them (e.g. Quake). This isn't tennable for your typical game that has to shut down online services because it's financially unsustainable.

Comment by skotobaza 46 minutes ago

That's just one of the options, albeit the most beneficial for gamers.

> "open source released with stubs" are also usually games that are decades old and cultural landmarks

Not necessarily.

Comment by konimex 51 minutes ago

> What if I rely on steam, or epic for P2P and they shutter the service? What if playfab discontinue their offering, or AWS decide to remove a service that our “mini self hosted server” relies upon. Games aren’t some magical piece of technology, they’re just software like everything else.

Not really an apt comparison (since you mentioned P2P), but providing something like HLDS should solve this, no? Counter-Strike 1.6 has long ended its development but it has (or had) a prolific community servers to this day. If Playfab, AWS remove that service, just use your own hardware.

Comment by maccard 41 minutes ago

Droppijg a server binary works if that’s all you need. Playfab and AWS provide software services - how do you operate without playfabs player data, or matchmaking, or parties?

Comment by carra 2 hours ago

And would that really be a bad thing?...

Comment by 3 hours ago

Comment by sph 2 hours ago

90% of games have no online conponent, and run in perpetuity after purchase. The multiplayer games usually ship with a server binary you can place on any machine you control.

This only affects AAA game studios that produce micro transaction slop and live services. The exact same that are lobbying against any sort of regulation.

The gaming industry will be fine.

Comment by maccard 1 hour ago

> 90% of games have no online conponent, and run in perpetuity after purchase

So those games are unaffected regardless of this law.

> This only affects AAA game studios that produce micro transaction slop and live services. The exact same that are lobbying against any sort of regulation.

F2P live service games are specifically excluded from this though, which presumably is what you mean by micro transaction slop. This affects every game, from a 1 man developer who uses steam for p2p all the way up to activision and call of duty. The groups hit hardest by this are going to be small-medium developers who are just trying to build a game, not Ubisoft (who are the reason for instigating this whole thing).

Comment by skotobaza 58 minutes ago

> The groups hit hardest by this are going to be small-medium developers who are just trying to build a game

How so? Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public. That's mostly AAA publishers that do so (at least I can't remember the opposite from the top of my head).

Comment by hobofan 51 minutes ago

> Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public.

Yes, they do. Small developers disproportionally have to rely on online services to make their multiplayer games work to a playable standard acceptable to the users, as they can't afford to write them from scratch (and couldn't even afford to do the devops work that comes with a self-hosted alternative).

Example: PEAK, on of _the_ multiplayer hits of last year from a small studio is built on top of Photon[0] for their multiplayer. If you were to remove that component you might as well completely rewrite the game.

[0]: https://www.photonengine.com

Comment by skotobaza 37 minutes ago

> Small developers disproportionally have to rely on online services

I'm not convinced that that's the case. If you're talking about cloud providers then the cost can become very high very quickly, so smaller developers have to carefully manage the budget. To my knowledge, cloud services are usually used for simple stuff like logs and analytics, and games don't really need that to play the game.

Also, don't forget that it's not just multiplayer games. Singleplayer games suffer from this as well.

Comment by maccard 23 minutes ago

Most of the cloud providers have generous enough free tiers that small developers fit into them. Look at EOS, Playfab, Steam. You can run a backend for free for < 5k players with lambda and dynamodb.

edit:

> To my knowledge, cloud services are usually used for simple stuff like logs and analytics

Respectfully, you’re wrong here and this is the problem that me and many others have with this line of defense for SKG. No small developers who are managing their budget tightly are storing logs on AWS for analysis after the fact and paying for it. They’re using services like Sentry that do it for free or for $19/months. They’re using services like playfab for parties, vivox for voice chat, flex match for Matchmaking. Those services are free for small amounts of use that 90% of games would fit under.

Comment by skotobaza 8 minutes ago

The question remains - how does any of this prevent small developers from releasing either the binary or the code in the modified form? Again, that has already been done with variety of games (not just popular ones as you assume), so it's not something extraordinary. The developers definitely have the resources to do so since they were getting money for the game, and the least they can do for their game and its community is to give it to them after they stop supporting it themselves.

Comment by suddenlybananas 13 minutes ago

If the law were to be passed, surely Photon would be incentivized to make a self-hosting alternative, no? Something that uses the same API but is self-hosted.

Comment by hobofan 2 minutes ago

There is no indication that a self-hostable alternative that to what Photon is providing is even feasible, as a lot of what they are doing includes tuning network settings, setting up CDN-like structures, etc.. Even for their enterprise offerings they are targeting a managed cloud approach, and not an independently deployable binary.

If the law were to be passed, Photon would at the maximum be incentivized to produce a self-hostable API-compatible alternative that would be neutered to such a degree that Games still qualify as "playable" on paper but would be unenjoyable to actually play. More likely, they won't do anything, as they are not the game developer and not responsible for compliance.

Comment by maccard 46 minutes ago

Those games are unaffected whether or not SKG is written into law. If ojr of those games has an optional multiplayer component all of a sudden it can come under the purview. One of the things SKG has pushed down the line is what is “playable”. There is a very small but very active online community for a bunch of games that would call the online part of their game a requirement. The last of us and uncharted had very unpopular multiplayer modes off the top of my head.

Small multiplayer “friendslop” games - things like Lethal Fompany, Peak, Totally Reliable Delivery service. They’ve been smash hits, wildly popular but I can definitely see a world where those games just don’t get made when you add a new layer of liability, potentially in perpetuity.

Comment by skotobaza 28 minutes ago

Regarding the "friendslop" games - I don't see an issue, the companies that provide those game with online services will adapt to the new requirements to keep getting money from those game developers.

Regarding the optional multiplayer modes - the developers will probably not use some complex architecture for this, so giving it to the community will not be that hard. Also there are multiplayer games that do support community servers out of the box, so it's not an issue to make a game like this.

Comment by iLoveOncall 1 hour ago

The fact that the dude from Stop Killing Games completely fumbled his speach at the European parliament definitely didn't help their case.

Comment by Farbklex 1 hour ago

Which one exactly? I saw one speech and that was decent.

Comment by iLoveOncall 35 minutes ago

This one: https://youtu.be/oXcogLmxnJw?is=FJpTrhEpez_S6MzK

To be fair to him it's more bad coordination or bad prep but it weakened the argument so much in my opinion.

Comment by EarlKing 5 hours ago

If only those 1.3 million signatories pledged to never buy from a company that Kills Games again...

Comment by sdenton4 2 hours ago

Boycotts are the weakest form of protest.

Comment by Carbon1603 3 minutes ago

Yet, most people don't do even that much.

Comment by f4stjack 4 hours ago

Yes. Exactly. I, for one, am following this credo: If your single player game has an “always online” clause; I am not your customer. No ifs, no buts, no “but i like this franchise”s.

Vote with your wallet. Do not hesitate to boycott.

Comment by necovek 3 hours ago

I'd like to see legislation to require publisher to clearly state if game works offline, and if not, what is the committed, guaranteed operational life ("at least to June 2030" prominently displayed, for instance).

Comment by Hamuko 2 hours ago

This movement stems from Ubisoft’s The Crew, and judging by how Ubisoft is doing financially, maybe they have already.

>Ubisoft has released its financial results for the full 25-26 fiscal year, reporting a sharp decline in revenue and net bookings, down 21.8% and 17.4% year-over-year (YoY), respectively, due to the "softer new release schedule" and new operating model.

Comment by EdiX 2 hours ago

Days since last being disappointed by the EU: 0

Comment by yieldcrv 4 hours ago

> In its official response on June 16, the Commission said it “cannot propose a legal obligation” requiring publishers to keep games playable after they stop being sold commercially.

Control behavior by regulating the intermediary. Figure out what the intermediary publishers rely on is, and regulate the intermediary or transactions to that intermediary

This works within any legal system anywhere and just requires a little inspiration

at least, I can do it anywhere, so just reach out

Comment by Razengan 2 hours ago

When was the last time any law in any of the so-called democracies was influenced by common citizens?

Serious question not snark

Comment by nairboon 1 hour ago

Last weekend in Switzerland.

Comment by Razengan 32 minutes ago

Well that probably doesn't count as a "so-called" :)

But almost everywhere else it seems to be just corporations pushing for laws against other corporations, like with Epic/Tinder etc against Apple/Google etc

Comment by dyauspitr 2 hours ago

Is this cause even worth a movement?

Comment by swiftcoder 1 hour ago

Consider that basically every live-service game you have ever played will become unplayable sooner or later, and how many modern AAA games are live-service...

We can still play the NES version of Mario (1985), but we can't play Evolve (2015), Anthem (2019), Concord (2024), etc.

Comment by skotobaza 2 hours ago

Yes, absolutely! I personally want to be able to play games many years after they are released and after they have stopped receiving any support. Yet we see growing number of examples where this is not the case and you get locked out of a game permanently when its publisher decides it no longer wants to support it.

Comment by w4yai 6 hours ago

They are too busy passing freedom-stifling laws.

Comment by slopinthebag 3 hours ago

Thankfully the EU recognizes that forcing people to work is slavery.

Comment by modo_mario 1 hour ago

How is it forcing people to work?

Comment by PowerElectronix 1 hour ago

Laws were never going to be the solution.

Comment by pull_my_finger 4 hours ago

I'm curious to see if this will embolden game corps to continue mistreating consumers or if they will acknowledge consumers are aware of that ethereal state of their "ownership" of games and start selling more complete products instead of "clients" to servers that can be rug-pulled at any time. I think we all can guess the answer as consumers continue to buy, unfortunately, but this movement is at least a step in the right direction.

Comment by jstummbillig 2 hours ago

Why would 1.3M signatures be enough to secure EU law? That is entirely unreasonable and undemocratic, given the small section of the entire EU population that number represents.

The "despite" certainly creates an interesting expectation, though.