The11thPlague
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Stop Destroying Games, the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) against planned obsolescence tactics used to disable video games, closes on the 31st.
It collected over 1.4 million signatures, and if you are a European citizen, you can still add your own.
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
Please note that an ECI is not a simple petition, it is an official EU process to get a specific issue to the attention of the European Commission, as described here https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works_en
This is one of less than 10 such initiatives that were ever able to cross the minimum threshold.
After it closes, the next steps will be a presentation to the European Commission representatives, followed by discussions with all involved parties, including industry experts, game developers, publishers, etc.
Soderules
It's called Steam.
theskepticinme
The first time I heard of games needing a network connection to be played, I knew it was the beginning of the end.
rebuildingdrizzt3000
I'm in Canada...
eathotdog
Stop buying games from morally bankrupt corporations
jackal696
This^^^^
doctorId
Just this morning I had a headline in my news feed from a gaming site hyping up a new WB published DC game that was going to be live service and I told the headline, out loud, to go fuck itself.
FeminineBeeOnslaught
Would sign but can't. Best of luck tho!
aloharamada
Got a SNES which was bought in 1993 that still works fine, but I stand behind the message of this post 100%.
technicalfool
If it wasn't bought DRM-free and/or from GOG, it didn't exist anyway and will not be missed. Be more stubborn.
The11thPlague
GOG requires you to log into their GOG Galaxy client to play new multiplayer games. They refused to support this initiative or even mention it. They are better than most, but far from perfect.
Telemapus
Is there a list of games that have been destroyed this way?
RealPenguin
Just a quick google, and have no idea if this list is good or not, but a place to start I guess... https://stopkillinggames.wiki.gg/wiki/Dead_game_list
MidnaDS
Just last year, Nintendo released an offline version of their mobile animal crossing game without in-app purchases. I like the new version better than the original, even while it was actively supported.
More often than not, the "service" is not actually beneficial to the player. If this becomes the norm, games all over the place will become better. Even if you never play your old games, you should still support this to get better competition and thus better games in the future.
Navrodel
Planned obsolescence was obvious to see coming, and while I feel bad for all the people that got suckered into the hype of a game that was released on the gallows, I can't help but see the acceptance of games that were made with such blatantly anti-consumer practices as the fault of the consumers and critics that accepted them for all of this time.
I will be shocked if the petition actually accomplishes anything. Most likely, it will just invite some industry lobbyists to misrepresent it.
B3N15
I support this but I have a question: what does this say about people closing servers or games for financial reasons? I see to sides to it either businesses claiming something is unprofitable or some company being forced to keep a server running that gets few people on it everyday.
The11thPlague
Sure. The answer is "provide you customers with a way to host their own private servers". This used to be the norm 15 years ago. They even gave you the option LAN multiplayer which didn't even require the Internet! Unreal Tournament 2004 has it. Yet, now they keep the server portion of the game for themselves and make your game unplayable when they stop hosting it. There are no technical reasons for certain choices, only greed.
pineapplecatastrophe
Technical reasons this is a bad idea:
- One less tool for devs to use with anti-cheat technology
- Forces indie devs to expose most of their dev work, leading to loss of sales
- Won't fix the problem (big companies will simply put cutoff dates in T&C, like they already are)
- Publishers are putting millions into controlling this. The petition leaders are only volunteering time, they have no legal council.
The11thPlague
Answers:
- after a game is EOL, cheats are not a developer's concern
- BS, already commented on this
- law prevails on contract, always
- TIL having more money counts as a "technical reason"
pineapplecatastrophe
- what about during the games life lmao. They are only going to make the game once
- it’s not bs, especially for phone games (yes they count, sorry)
- as we’ve discovered elsewhere, you don’t understand law, skipping this one
- yes, publishers will be able to outmaneuver indie devs in this technical space. No real response here from you
Alienduck2
Noooo! It puts undue stress on companiesssssss - some irrelevant guy that used to work at Blizzard
TheBappin
As a classic wow player, I can say if you annoy the company enough they will eventually put your game back out, or at least an attempt at it
Frothington
GOG, Good old games. They have most stuff & its setup to run on modern machines.
The11thPlague
GOG requires you to log into their GOG Galaxy client to play new multiplayer games. Look for the words "Please note that GOG GALAXY is required". That requirement for multiplayer is written in light gray and hard to find in their product description. They refused to support this initiative or even mention it. They are better than most, but far from perfect.
whatthewoda
This would kill part of their business model.
Rhynn
Yes, but it shouldn't take third party effort.
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
It shouldn't but I am glad they make the effort anyways.
mooseablethenok
Games that require server support from the publisher are born dead. It's just when the publisher decides to pull the plug.
howunfortunate9
When it's broken down like this, you can tell it's intentional. Something still working 60 years later is a scary campfire story to business execs. Meanwhile, 60 and 70 years ago, it was exactly that reputation of a product that made it successful. The greed of a handful of men fucked over the entire US, and it ain't a uniquely american issue by a dman sight. The shareholder model should fuck itself in the face til well and truly deceased.
darcion
Norway is not a part of EU - i would sign if i could
The11thPlague
If you are Norwegian, there's another option. You can submit a (politely written) comment to the "Digital Fairness Act" and ask them to include the destruction of games in the list of malpractices of the digital industry. More info here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6vO4RIcBtE
cruisecontroloffacliff
Same.. :(
weirdnorwegianguy
SJÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆL
The11thPlague
If you are Norwegian, there's another option. See my comment above ;)
MioTaalas
I've been watching this guy who hacks old games to make them run on modern hardware and operating systems.
The solutions and issues are ultimately so simple, like "this API call fails because it's expecting this specific 32bit library, but only 64bit is available" or "this old API has changed and returns unexpected value" and often about piracy protections...
He proves that they CAN BE FIXED, but laws prevent people from doing that. Tools are available and free, people with skill are there...
The11thPlague
Companies are working extra hard to make sure it CANNOT be fixed. There is a malicious intent in the design and implementation of products that are hard to repair. It was not like this when there was real competition and a bit of decency.
PunkRage
"Wait, they're still playing records from the 60's? How can we profit from this?" -Corporations
cellardoor42
And F PitateSoftware
thisisnotfineffs
You mean Jason, king of the narcissists?
naught101
Just reduce copyright to 20 years and be done with it.
DutchBoeremeisie
I honestly can't remember if I signed it before or not, and they make you swear that you hadn't when you try and do it (again?). So, fingers crossed I don't get carted off.
wolas
It said already signed to me.
Darkorth
Hey, there's a new thing to do if you are in the EU
You can add a comment suggesting adding a new thing to this act https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act_en
Darkorth
Ross Scott made a video about it, here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6vO4RIcBtE
doctorId
For punishment you're going to be forced to beta test an EA game
The11thPlague
This got an honest laugh out of me!
TheGreatAtomsk
after you sign, you get a pdf as a recipe with a unique identifier.
The11thPlague
Other people had the same issue. If you try to sign twice, it should detect that and tell you that you can't sign twice. Anyway, the organizers asked the technicians and the answer is that if duplicate signatures are found, one is kept (they only discard the extra ones).
RavenVG
Wonder how it handles all the john Smith's then
LavaDiver1312
I think I signed it very early, before it gained traction, and forgot about it. On the day it took the threshold, I went to sign (as I had forgotten I helad already signed it) and I got a "You already signed this petition" message immediatly, as if it was a "malformed input" error message.
DutchBoeremeisie
Great, thank you very much.
Zalm
I hope this doesn't fuck over indie devs, but it sounds like it could.
pineapplecatastrophe
Indie devs don't do a lot of server-side hosting, but this could put a large burden of 'proving' it will work in 30 years on them. So maybe
The11thPlague
Sounds very unlikely. Minecraft started as an indie game and it has private servers for that reason. Most indie devs work hard to make games that can survive as their legacy. Destroying their work when they can't support it anymore is completely out of character for the vast majority of them.
Zalm
Minecraft doesn't have private net code like other games. That netcode is only used for Minecraft most likely. There likely isn't 3rd party companies running server side programs.
The11thPlague
It's a matter of design. Saying "you don't know what it's like being in a hole because you didn't dig yourself into one" is not a good comeback, you know...
IrrelevantIrrelevant
It won't. Indie devs aren't making MMO's or always online juggernauts like God of War Ragnarok.
SKG is pretty much explicitly about games that are online. While there may be one or two indies who want to experiment with online, very few of them are making online *mandatory*, because they aren't usually running servers themselves.
The potential damage of this movement is exceedingly minimal, people just get weird about the idea of telling ubisoft to stuff it.
Zalm
1. I didn't know God of war required being online, but I also haven't played it.
2. It sounds like it's trying to screw over MMO games, like Final Fantasy 14.
3. And like you said, some.indie devs do make online only games, and that's going to screw them over, one of which I play and have a blast in. And would like more games like it, but this would deter them from making them. Which is my problem.
IrrelevantIrrelevant
It's not going to screw over 14 in the slightest. The only time these demands would become relevant to the game is when Square decides to shut the thing down. By then, they don't plan to make money off of it anyway, so letting players run servers on their own is irrelevant to them.
It's not going to deter people from making online games, because the objective in making an online game isn't "We are going to make it vanish afterwards".
Zalm
Unless they go to make a new MMO, and use a proprietary net code, the same they use for FF14. Then they either have to take time, money and resources to make new net code for the whole game, or they have to deal with the fact that the net code might have a vulnerability that could be exploited on their new game.
And while that's not the objective, that eventually is the outcome, and indie devs have to contend with that with much more limited options and resources than a major studio.
IrrelevantIrrelevant
Providing tools for people to run their own servers with is not remotely the main cause or setup for the outcome of code vulnerability. People are already probing those even without dev help.
Their code is already public by virtue of the fact that people have to access it to play the game. The people trying to exploit that don't care about anything this movement is asking for.
zuken
Indie devs will simply have to design their games from the start to support user hosted options, the way games like v rising and satisfactory do, or else allow peer to peer options as an alternative to the company hosted ones.
It isn't perfect but it is preferable to games that simply vanish after a scant decade or so and can never be played again.
GemsAreOutrageousTrulyTrulyTrulyOutrageous
I'm just over here in the US, waiting for PirateSoftware to go and put both feet in his fucking mouth again talking about this initiative without knowing the first goddamn thing about it.
PineappleUpvoteMachine
He really is living rent free in your head hunh
GemsAreOutrageousTrulyTrulyTrulyOutrageous
Shockingly, nope. I just think it's funny how much BS he spouted for so long but it wasn't until this ( and the WoW streamer fiasco) for people to realize that he was indeed spouting BS.
SirVG
Did you know he's the first 2nd generation Blizzard employee who makes totally uncrackable code? He's the best you know. TOTALLY. /s
GreaseMonkeyOfLove
I support this, but I can’t sign it (I’m American)
crypticorb
darcion
I'm European and can't sign it, we're not part of EU.
Shmick
Fucking David Cameron amiright
abc987
Petition like this in USA would probably get you tried for treason or FBI'd. You really shouldn't attack billionaires like they do in shit hole countries in EU. I guess i drop /s just in case
Patrone26
Sorry to hear it. (I'm Canadian)
AbelardSnazz
Me too because of bloody Brexit
whathavewehere
Dreadful how your education system has collapsed to the point where people can't even write their own name. (s/)
Vydrach
ProbablyPoe
Not only that but the average person in America has no influence in politics. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B (stuck behind paywall, copy DOI address and then go to SciHub to read. May need to be on PC to work properly)
ignotoCiResto
or, if you dont have a pc, you can ask for help from someone willing to do it. Here you go, the link work for three days https://we.tl/t-t4NG76aUem
PheelsLikePhakePhD
You could say that our influence in politics is stuck behind a paywall of sorts
forelle
There ought to be ways of lobbying for similar legislation in the US right? Right to Repair was also pioneered by you guys.
Rongeong
There is but it requires lots and lots of money. Most lobbying in the US is done through bribes. Thanks to congress both making and enforcing the rules about bribery, it's not surprising that very few congressmen ever run afoul of bribery laws. Right to repair has taken an extremely long time and is still not implemented for most tech.
Ulthirm
There are but the US is in effect a corporatocracy. It'll be the people vs the corps and rn the corps have a lot of power in the very institutions necessary to get it to pass.
clarkWhogotsanity
Yea but you need over $1bn to have a shot at it
LazerSpacePirate
We're a bit busy trying to fund research out of our own pockets atm 🫠 lobbying the government that science is a good thing actually and we kinda need it is unfortunately ahead in the queue. Plus we've got hella petitions and they laugh at us every time (and probably put us on a list)
IHaveGreatKittenRecipes
Y'all mind handling this one though? We kinda got this big orange fishy smelling fucker to deal with. We can always copy your homework later.
BroWtfMann
Hahahaahaha.. not if said guppy has his way (and he is getting his way)
forelle
Gotcha, I mean US consumers do profit from stricter EU regulation already. Just: Don't let the fascists overwhelm you, pick your corner of the world and clean it up. If that corner happens to be preservation of old games go for it. Not everybody needs to safe the whole world.
INeedMoreGifMeMoreJustOneMore
Just tell him you'll forget aaaaallll about the Epstein files if they pass a law on this. (But don't forget about Epstein, obviously)
skbadwolf5772
Want to add a link for the UK folks! https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/
qwertdeep
I get you’re trying to be helpful but please look at links before you post them and waste peoples’ time. It’s just basic due diligence when you post links, for all you know it could’ve been anything in that link
Nikolai5
The link correct, but the time period for the petition has ended.
qwertdeep
Yeah, 2 weeks ago. It’s a dead petition that the UK gov responded to 5 months ago. OP was trying to tell people from the UK to sign that petition hence me saying that it doesn’t seem like they’ve even looked at the link. The petition being closed is the main thing you see when you click on the link
Nikolai5
It's not dead, it had a 10K response, but it's still waiting for the 100K debate date to be set, but yes, you can no longer sign it.
qwertdeep
It’s dead in the sense that you can’t sign it and it’s pointless to the British people. We’ve had many petitions make it past the 100K mark and they usually achieve nothing. They probably achieve as much of the things that people want as voting does here . Especially compared to the EU that’s still live.
ExTechOp
This unfortunately sounds very much like "we're going to ignore this":
Government responded This response was given on 3 February 2025
There are no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games. Those selling games must comply with existing requirements in consumer law and we will continue to monitor this issue.
surprisinglynotmyrealname
Remember the cultural genocide when flash player went out
technicalfool
https://flashpointarchive.org/ enjoy.
qwertdeep
Please don’t misuse cultural genocide in that way, it’s incredibly disrespectful to actual cultural genocides.
It was a loss of culture for people less apt with technology but you can still emulate the flash player.
Here’s the Wikipedia page on cultural genocide so you can familiarise yourself with actual examples: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide
Here’s a way to use flash today: https://github.com/darktohka/FlashPatch make sure you read the readme
pineapplecatastrophe
I was just reading through the actual petition, check this out: it calls out video game LICENSES to be available indefinitely. A license, by default, has an expiration date, or other T&C, that is an illegal request. It's unfortunate the runners of this petition are unaware of uh... simple legal operations.
Downvote away, I know how this works.
The11thPlague
A "license" means "a permission". It does not, by default, have an expiration date. Software license agreements are contracts that give you the permission to use a piece of software at certain conditions. The license terms usually specify you can not freely redistribute said software. When you sign a contract it does not expire unless stated otherwise.
pineapplecatastrophe
I work in software, over 90% of licenses include a expiration date, it is literally a legal standard practice. To get a license without an expiration costs a ton of $$$ and is typically outlined in the license. It is unfortunate both the petition writers, and proponents like yourself, have very little understanding of that legal space. A contract is not a license btw.
The11thPlague
You said they included it "by default". If they have to write it, it's not by default. Keep moving those goalposts, they were in the wrong place, like you are. On the wrong side.
pineapplecatastrophe
Yes any legal license, by default, has terms of use including periods of time, of which “indefinitely” is still an option. That is still correct. And you’re acting like this is some grand crusade you’re on, rather than a comfortable bandwagon that you’ve done nothing but post a couple links for.
It’s a well intentioned idea that is not going about change the right way. A much less destructive and more reasonable goal would be for games to be forced to say if they work offline. Like esrb
IncognitoEnthusiast
Yeah, the petition has a lot of legal holes in it, as does the current overall movement. Someone brought this up into the light but uh, it's not going very well for them right now.
pineapplecatastrophe
He will be proven right and not forgiven for it :)
RemlapBor
I'd happily sign it, but I'm English and therefore not EU.
Imadethisaccounttopost
There is an UK petition, just for people like you!
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/
qwertdeep
“People just like you!” Is dude a time traveller or something that can go and sign a petition that’s been closed for 2 weeks? I wish people would at least look at the links they post before wasting the time of others. (And someone else already posted the same link on this same thread before you)
Imadethisaccounttopost
My apologies, I've been spreading both the EU and the UK petitions for months. (Check my comments!)
I didn't realize the UK had ended before the EU.
I'm just happy both surpassed their thresholds, despite set backs and opposition.
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
Its alright, Nige I'll save you! /s
SirRichfield
It's OK, you've got other fights to fight at the moment. (Talking about age verification)
EvPointMaster
similar legislation is already in the works for the EU and the US.
skbadwolf5772
If you mean UK, there is a separate petition for the same cause https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/
qwertdeep
Thanks for sharing but that’s a closed petition which has been closed for 2 weeks. You can see the date it closed underneath the big grey box that says “This petition is closed
All petitions run for 6 months”
Someshithead241
Although our government is cunts and just briefly look at the petition, go "lol nah" then toss it to the side and thats the "discussion" they promise.
Or literally laugh at it in Parliament instead of genuinely discussing it. Which is a thing that has happened for serious petitions.
Same is happening with the "online safety" shit that they introduced that means we need to give all our info to random american companies to look at anything they deem "adult"
qwertdeep
It’s true, petitions do fuck all apart from give people an estimate of how many people support a cause.
Youwouldntstealatoaster
honestly, even if all they do is laugh at it, at least they were forced to hear about it, meaning the next time they hear about it, it won't be the first. It is infinitely better than doing nothing.
Someshithead241
I mean, as much as the difference between 0 and 0.000000000001 is technically infinite, but sure.
ionlyregisteredtosavelinks
What do you guys do with all the money you're not "sending to EU" anymore? The piles of cash must be massive!
Alaaraaf
The previous government mostly gave it to their mates.
Michelle Mone got a smashing yacht!
qwertdeep
Send them to Israel to help with their genocide. I think our government also spent it on US debt to become the second biggest holder of US debt whilst the rest of the world takes steps to de-dollarise. It definitely didn’t go to the NHS like the leave buses claimed.
ionlyregisteredtosavelinks
Money well spent!
qwertdeep
Tbf that’s only after 2024. We spent a LOT of money putting refugees into ferry hotels so they weren’t technically on our soil. We gave the rich other tax breaks and shit as well. It hasn’t been good since Brexit but things weren’t good before either. The rich have been making money and GDP has gone up, so they don’t give a shit about actual changes for the average person
TeddyBruhsvelt
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if the UK ended up in a net deficit after brexit. I don't know enough about economics to find out but it wouldn't surprise me
JohnSmithterms
I have 20 years of game dev and web dev experience. If your game is disabled because it cannot connect to the internet then that is 100% by design or due to pure lazyness. Remote updates are super useful for so many reasons but at the point where you close up shop and stop adding features it is not difficult to create a build that users can download and play forever (including multiplayer). Local servers creating the host connection to clients has gotten easier to do over the last 20 years.
Uselesstoy
I have no way to prove it, but I believe it's entirely intentional and not laziness. I think they crunched the numbers decades ago. Every person who games on the planet has a set amount of free time.. If these folks were allowed to fill that time with nostalgic games.... They won't be spending ANY money for new games...
whereismymind86
This, there are very few games that couldn’t get an end of life patch to allow private servers or p2p connections.
rudejohn
I love how I can still play Tribes2 online. I bought it 24 years ago.
Imadethisaccounttopost
I loved Tribes.
I should check how 3 is doing
Imadethisaccounttopost
THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE
https://www.toontownrewritten.com/
tl;dr a bunch of fans of the original game reached out to Disney to see if they could get all the files and such for the game so they could bring the game back as a passion project sort of thing.
Disney agreed provided that they never receive ANY money or donations to support it. Has to be all out of their own pockets and such.
They've added new Toon Species, new clothes and outfits, new end game stuff, and have even more in the works!
KingORedLions
I had hell getting Viva Pinata (2006) to work a little while ago and one of the hurdles was disabling a fucking phone-home DRM that obviously couldn't phone home any more because the service had long since been disabled. Thanks Microsoft, my disk is a paperweight, but the dodgy pirate version still works if you can actually find it.
whereismymind86
This was a huge issue with games for windows live games after the service was shut down and rolled into Xbox live, thankfully almost all the games were patched to remove it eventually
KingORedLions
A number of games migrated to other services like Steam and you could redeem your CD-keys there which was great, but some didn't get patched at all :(
jridley
Even way back in the TRS-80 days, I didn't buy a game with DRM until I already had a confirmed-working pirated copy.
JohnSmithterms
As a software engineer and game dev I just could not bring myself to use pirated games due to the risk of infecting my computer with aids. I dont think there is a solution for that without having a standalone PC that you do not mind having the bios infected.
jridley
Yeah back then BIOS was in ROM and the I don't think anyone ever infected NEWDOS-80
JohnSmithterms
Well was it even ever connected to the internet :D haha
pineapplecatastrophe
Clearly you didn’t work for Riot or Epic lol.
I hope gamers realize the real fix will be to not buy games without offline mode, if this is truly critical to them. An EU petition is not going to shape American policy, I’m sorry.
Imadethisaccounttopost
It's easier and cheaper to make universal changes, than to change things for one territory.
Apple is a good example, EU forced them to change their rules and proprietary nature.
Now they have USB C and 3rd party support world wide.
Not to mention the ruling on game software will affect all future digital media and software going forward
whereismymind86
You do realize game development happens all over the world right? Sure this might not affect call of duty of madden, but Ubisoft is French, cd projekt is polish, rare is British, genshins dev is Chinese, battlefields dev is Swedish etc
pineapplecatastrophe
And they will publish wherever is easiest for themselves I’m sure.
JohnSmithterms
Tell that to Apple and USB-C ... you are simply woefully wrong to think that the EU does not have the power to change this. Americans could also change it if they could be arsed to get up and protest.
pineapplecatastrophe
With every single publisher working against the petition, we’ll certainly see :). I’ll follow up here in a few months
JohnSmithterms
It might take years but I think it will happen. Set something in your calendar for 2 years and lets see :D ... I will do the same oh pessimistic one.
pineapplecatastrophe
It’s not going to happen for licenses, that is an impossible request and on the first line of the petition. The petition runners are going to have to give that up, for many legal reasons, and then the big devs will start making it clear in T&C that the game is a license.
This is a well intentioned but poorly informed idea.
pineapplecatastrophe
And I agree Americans should do something besides sideline an EU petition that isn’t going to help them. But alas
Imadethisaccounttopost
All we want is an offline mode for most games, (Games that are almost entirely client side) and ones that need a cental server like MMOs, give us the ability to host our own Severs after the game ends
JohnSmithterms
End of life for a single player or local multiplayer game is criminal. Those are childs play to get working locally. Existing MMO games though would I admit be quite a pain to do retroactively. But easy if built in from the start.
whereismymind86
It’s easier than you think, a lot of mmos do get revived on private servers (and plenty of private servers exist for stuff like wow, the biggest issue is just having a server available to run it, but even a small fan community can get that without too much trouble
FetteredJuvenescence
The law isn't retroactive, so that's not an issue. But also, City of Heroes proves that giving the public an option to host even an MMO server is absolutely feasible (The server binaries and code were leaked by an anonymous employee, and they'd had very little notice about the shutdown, so...)
SmoeAhsolse
Fans rebuilt the Star Wars Galaxies' server code from scratch.
FetteredJuvenescence
Now, it's not trivial to run a City of Heroes server, but it doesn't have to be. To be technically in compliance with the proposal, it just has to be *possible*.
Zalm
What happens when that company has to be forced to release the server binaries and code to the public, but they use it on another game?
JohnSmithterms
Sure the law is not retroactive. But does that apply to games currently in development? Or for expansions currently in development. I imagine its a bit murky. But yeah I would not expect games in development to be forced to do it. They should if they know whats good for them.
sanguium
It's not a law, it's a request to make a law, when (and if) it ever gets made into law those details will be decided, i can see it ending into something like 'every game starting developent from next year', as companies will push it as far back as they can and would want enough margin to take the law into account for the projections of next games.
FetteredJuvenescence
Technical compliance would be achieved by just releasing the server binaries at end of life, even if it's mostly unfeasible for people to actually run them.
whereismymind86
Anything currently in development can have it patched in at some point.
JohnSmithterms
I should add that it would be a little difficult to convert an existing large MMO to be hosted locally as they almost certainly would have routed the logic to multiple server types and systems like GOG/Steam/Epic and what not as well as have that logic hook up to the gameplay and things like crash analytics and their own servers to gather data so there would be a shit load of interconnectivity to unravel. But if built with local hosting in mind from the start this is not difficult to do.
Xenarion
Yeah. I looked at how much time it took a fan-group to have a server-emulator for LEGO Universe to allow anyone to run their private server, it took several years. Granted they didn't have the original server code, that doesn't help.
whereismymind86
Difficult but not impossible, that’s the key. If a dedicated fan community wants to host their own servers to keep a dead game alive they should be allowed to do so
FetteredJuvenescence
A law like they're proposing would still be technically satisfied even if they released the server binaries in that situation. It would make it possible, if extremely difficult, for a member of the public to run a server. And that's all they need to do to comply.
JohnSmithterms
I also do not have much experience with security and OWASP stuff in relation to game dev. But I imagine that is a whole can of worms too if you are not using Steam to handle it all for you and want to host locally. I imagine there are many vulnerabilities with that if it is not done properly.
KingORedLions
It's easier than you think. People have completely reverse engineered some MMOGs like World of Warcraft by analysing network traffic, and now there are 3rd party run servers, some of which have their own unique content and everything.
JohnSmithterms
Yeah that is true. But it would still require work for login and verification to be pulled our for example. Cant give a bunch of randos the existing verification/login database and save games data and many other pieces of logic. So its still quite a lot of work to uncouple. I despise companies for not thinking about this from the start. But I also would not expect many of them to do it retroactively. We just need to change the law so its clear to any new games being developed.
FetteredJuvenescence
I mean, some anonymous employee at Paragon Studios managed to leak the binaries for City of Heroes at the eleventh hour, and we're playing that again, so...
JohnSmithterms
Yeah I would expect it depends how interconnected the game is. Perhaps that game only had a few small requirements for server side access. But yeah in principle it should be possible to spoof just about anything if you can change where the destination IP is meant to be located.
dyc3r
I think this is a huge limiting factor that folks outside of the software industry overlook. (And folks inside didn't always effectively plan for). I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the larger games simply aren't optimized to run on a personal machine. I'm all in on the idea in theory (My kids would love to keep playing Knockout City). While I'd agree it's not "hard" to do, I also suspect it wouldn't be entirely "quick".
JohnSmithterms
Retroactively converting yeah that might not be quick. Depends on the game. Some could be done in a matter of weeks. For sure.
dyc3r
It's worth the effort in the long run (probably), but what's the impact to cost? More time means more expensive production, which arguably means a more expensive MSRP (or more micro transactions). I wouldn't be at all surprised if enforcing this caused other pain points (at least for a little while). If it's an EU thing, what does that mean for foreign publishers? Do they have to choose between supporting it, or just skipping distribution in the EU?
JohnSmithterms
No this is where I disagree completely in terms of new games starting from scratch. Its just booleans. In the locations where non essential stuff is called like analytics. If local = true then do nothing. And you build that in from the start it would imact development cost virtually not at all. In fact it would most likely improve development as they could test features quickly locally without having to wait for Ci/CD operations to run through. I worked at a massive company which 1/?
JohnSmithterms
took at the very least 2 hours to deploy one line of code to production as it had to go through so many steps to get it live. Just like you have mobile first web dev we should have "local first" game dev methodologies. I think we will because I think game devs will push this concept on the execs and they should be persuaded by petitions like these that it will happen eventually 2/2
dyc3r
Would online retailers Amazon have to block listing products that don't adhere to the new EU standards? (Im spiraling 🤣). Again, I'm not sure any of these things are inherently bad. Largely more curious than anything to see how this shakes out and what the long term impact is on the industry
JohnSmithterms
I think it will be positive long term. I think it will happen eventually. Once it reaches critical mass and that will happen over time as the number of gamers grows and they have been growing continuously year by year.