Stop Killing Games (EU edition) - Moldman vs. Publishers

[Telephone]

To the fags shitting up this thread, A&N is just seven subforums below this one.

The petition reached 100k signs
View attachment 6266914

Hope this goes somewhere.

 

[Egregore]

I 100% agree with this initative when it comes to singleplayer games. Having your game stop working if it can't call home is just shitty business practice. I avoid buying or playing such games as much as I can, since I'm aware of this risk. However, multiplayer and mobile games are different beasts altogether, since their core gameplay usually revolves around online activities. To reiterate, multiplayer games range from simple games with short round-based matches on dedicated player-run servers, to complex persistent MMORPG/FPS/RTS/WHATEVER games with centralised company-run servers. Crafting a fair one-size-fits-all legislation regarding multiplayer games could prove difficult. Not to mention that merely having such laws doesn't mean developers won't figure out ways to circumvent them.
In an ideal world, people voting with their wallets would solve this problem. We do not live in such a world, unfortunately.

 

[The Tall Man]

while I respect the intent and sentiment behind this, I doubt it will ever gain enough traction, as there are many edge cases that make it simply unreasonable. most live service games are built from the ground up with the assumption of constant interaction with a publisher's game server. imagine a game like Apex Legends reaching end of service under this law - what constitutes a "reasonably working state" for this game? removing all network features makes the game effectively unplayable even if they allow you to start it and load into a map without connecting to their servers.

And why should I, or anyone, respect devs planning to screw me over?

They should have to pay you back the money you put into the game or create an end-of-life plan.
If the product I bought, with no clear indication of when it would expire, suddenly stops working solely due to the fault of the producer, I should get my money back.

The only reason it's a little bit of work right now for devs to hand over online capability to the players at the end of service is because it's planned this way.

If car manufacturers were to build cars in a way that they broke down after a month, should I not try to change that just because it was planned this way?

are they to implement LAN or client-side hosting to restore the game's network functionality? release a public server application to allow users to host their own games? implement a server browser or some kind of matchmaking protocol that works independently of the game's originally intended infrastructure? that's how developers used to do it - which is why games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory are still around despite their creators scattering to the winds and/or being eaten by the chinese - but that's not how they do it now.

And Microsoft claimed it was impossible to remove Internet Explorer from their operating system.
The whole thing that needs to be changed is how they do it now.

now, online games like this exist in a perpetually locked-down state with draconian account management to ostensibly fight cheaters, but more realistically to enable a microtransaction system to milk more money out of the game. reverting it to the older style requires additional development effort and funding that publishers have already widely signaled they're simply not willing to put forth. it's far more likely that a law like this would cause a bunch of loophole-seeking behavior, like publishers simply emptying out and closing down the studio in whatever way avoids the assumption of legal liability for the end-of-life development.

The cost of an end-of-life plan, when already considered during development, is practically zero.
This poses less financial risk than trying to skirt around the law and risk getting fined by bureaucrats.

it's true that a small handful of games, such as Wayfinder and Mega Man X Dive, have fully realized the separation of online services, but those were entirely at the grace of the developers, and they will forever be exceptions rather than examples.

You are basically repeating the same point that publishers force their devs to make it so that once support for a game ends, the game dies. That is how it is right now, and it would take a little bit of effort to separate some of these games from a centralized server. I don't care if this would cause Sony, EA, or Ubisoft to go bankrupt; I only care about games not getting killed.

However, multiplayer and mobile games are different beasts altogether, since their core gameplay usually revolves around online activities. To reiterate, multiplayer games range from simple games with short round-based matches on dedicated player-run servers, to complex persistent MMORPG/FPS/RTS/WHATEVER games with centralised company-run servers. Crafting a fair one-size-fits-all legislation regarding multiplayer games could prove difficult.

Players host their own private WoW servers.

This is about leaving the game in a reasonably working state, not providing endless support or the exact same experience as with a centralized server run by the devs.

Let’s take WoW as an example: unless you have a proper server, you can’t host thousands of players, and it’s not reasonable to expect Blizzard to make it possible to host thousands of players on a regular PC. However, a reasonably working state is if you can host it on your own PC for 20-50 people.

Name a single game where it’s impossible for the players to run it without the publisher’s continued support.

A server is just someone else's computer.

 

[Another Random]

Does anyone know who's the dumbass being mocked in this video?

Apparently he's Thor something? Never heard of him before, but a comment or two on this video says that he's got enough of an audience that it might make people think he has a point and Ross's campaign is doomed to fail or is utterly stupid. The dumbass even says 'this might destroy live service gaming', which, you know. GOOD? But not to him, apparently!

 

[BarberFerdinand]

Does anyone know who's the dumbass being mocked in this video?

Apparently he's Thor something? Never heard of him before, but a comment or two on this video says that he's got enough of an audience that it might make people think he has a point and Ross's campaign is doomed to fail or is utterly stupid. The dumbass even says 'this might destroy live service gaming', which, you know. GOOD? But not to him, apparently!

Pirate software.

https://www.youtube.com/c/piratesoftware

https://x.com/PirateSoftware

https://store.steampowered.com/app/567380/Heartbound/

Overall the dude has previously had fairly decent takes. He's smart enough to read and comprehend the actual subject matter, so he ought to understand this. The fact that he is arguing in the way that he is seems like he is being intentionally disingenuous. He used to work at blizard and has worked on aspects of wow in the past, so maybe this hits close to home for him or something?

Seeing him act like an asshat is a bit discouraging.

 

[The Tall Man]

Does anyone know who's the dumbass being mocked in this video?

Apparently he's Thor something? Never heard of him before, but a comment or two on this video says that he's got enough of an audience that it might make people think he has a point and Ross's campaign is doomed to fail or is utterly stupid. The dumbass even says 'this might destroy live service gaming', which, you know. GOOD? But not to him, apparently!

This is what I found about the guy.
Xitter

Apparently a twitch streamer and a game dev.
Here are screenshots of his early access game Heartbound some kind of Undertale like.

Pirate software.

You had to ninja me


Seems like what I have witnessed itt multiple times already.

 

[BarberFerdinand]

Here is a link to the clip mentioned above where thor responds to ross' message. https://www.youtube.com/live/4cJHw09gzQo?t=12230s

I suck at clipping videos, but if someone else wants to do it for the sake of archiving that would be kino.

 

[MIC Shill]

I love his tone at the end. "Yea, if Euros are a buncha fuckin nigger cattle I guess there's no point but I'm hoping not".

 

[I'm Retarded?]

And why should I, or anyone, respect devs planning to screw me over?

They should have to pay you back the money you put into the game or create an end-of-life plan.
If the product I bought, with no clear indication of when it would expire, suddenly stops working solely due to the fault of the producer, I should get my money back.

The only reason it's a little bit of work right now for devs to hand over online capability to the players at the end of service is because it's planned this way.

If car manufacturers were to build cars in a way that they broke down after a month, should I not try to change that just because it was planned this way?

I agree with this, and I wouldn't lose any sleep if the live service model disappeared tomorrow, and I'm not saying nothing can or should be done. but this solution in particular, I feel, is likely to result in unintended consequences. publishers who have spent literal decades developing today's systems for maximizing the profit extracted from game consumers will not be simply commanded to change their religion overnight to pro-consumer. the behavior of any company of sufficient size will always tend anti-consumer since - when a company becomes devoted primarily to profit, as a company of scale must be - it is in direct competition with the consumer for their money. you will never reverse that tendency through outside pressure alone; you can only hope to pull them back a little further towards sanity than they would otherwise see fit to be on their own. my own personal solution for this problem is to simply not buy from those companies because their games suck ass anyway. but we unfortunately live in a world where the majority of consumers are retards and happily gargle the balls of viciously anti-consumer companies like Ubisoft and Activision, who will happily do scummy shit like activate their lawyer brigade to stall it indefinitely in court or find workarounds that violate the spirit of the law, just to maintain control over their ability to extract profit from consumers. making a direct strike against the interests of these companies like this requires the ability of an outside force acting in favor of this law to overpower them (improbable) or the law to be written in such a way that there is no way to escape penalties costly enough to be effective deterrence (borderline impossible).

And Microsoft claimed it was impossible to remove Internet Explorer from their operating system.
The whole thing that needs to be changed is how they do it now.

sure, good example. they said the same thing about the Kinect with the xbone when it launched. but there's a reason Microsoft tried to make that retarded argument, just like there's a reason publishers design their shitty games without regard for what happens after they cease support. and that behavior won't be stopped simply by getting the government to tell them no. the reason the Kinect eventually died was simply because it failed as a product - the consumer uproar alone would never have forced them to abandon it. likewise, the reason Microsoft eventually untangled Internet Explorer from Windows was because they replaced it with Edge, which is now similarly baked in to Win10 and 11; the antitrust actions intended to pressure them into scaling back IE integration never made any real progress.

The cost of an end-of-life plan, when already considered during development, is practically zero.
This poses less financial risk than trying to skirt around the law and risk getting fined by bureaucrats.

sure, assuming there are not options to skirt both the law and the fine.

I don't care if this would cause Sony, EA, or Ubisoft to go bankrupt; I only care about games not getting killed.

I agree. however, Sony, EA, and Ubisoft do not, and they unfortunately don't care what any of us think.

 

[FloydsFeedandSeed]

You can play Quake on dreamcast to this day, you gorilla nigger

Yes, there's a few online servers like DreamArena for Dreamcast, PS2online, but these are servers that have to be built game by game (the games have online functionality, not the console) so are fairly basic. Then you get into more modern centralised systems like the OG Xbox which while are back online now, is a huge undertaking that has been probably going on for 8+ years and they still aren't even half finished. Let alone modern, far more complex ones like PS3 and Xbox 360 which will eventually have their final day,

 

[The Tall Man]

@I'm Retarded?
I mostly agree, and I don't think this will fix the gaming industry.

There are two things to consider.
First, it can't really get any worse than a game you paid for and like getting remotely destroyed at any time.
Second, an end-of-life plan would cost publishers nothing.

So it doesn't matter if this initiative goes totally wrong and gets twisted by EA lobbyists, because publishers destroying the game you paid for whenever they want is rock bottom.

Unless there is some hidden agenda behind this 'games as a service' nonsense, the resistance from publishers and devs shouldn't be too big because the costs are so negligible.

 

[John Shedletsky]

are they to implement LAN or client-side hosting to restore the game's network functionality? release a public server application to allow users to host their own games? implement a server browser or some kind of matchmaking protocol that works independently of the game's originally intended infrastructure? that's how developers used to do it - which is why games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory are still around despite their creators scattering to the winds and/or being eaten by the chinese - but that's not how they do it now.

I think this is a pretty reasonable request. It's not outside the realm of possibility to do, since it's very clear that games of the past and now have done the same thing for years. Generally speaking, it sucks to see games that were once enjoyed by people being shelved because the developers can't maintain it anymore, and instead of letting players choose what they want to do with the product they bought, they're being constantly raped by the lawyers of the companies for usually trivial shit.

Sure, they don't do it nowadays because games are built around being a limited-time service, but I feel as if older games should be given the easier opportunity to live within their niche community. And making the process easier just makes things better for everyone else. Maybe I'm just too old, but I miss when the product you purchased was something you own, and can do whatever you want. And I think it's possible for us, as the consumer, to bridge the gap between old standards and new standards by providing the tools necessary to maintaining games.

Wishful thinking I suppose.

 

[BarberFerdinand]

Louis Rossmann responds to thors comments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF4zH8bJDI8

 

[Terror Sandwich]

 

[Baron Reginald]

Pirate software.

Overall the dude has previously had fairly decent takes. He's smart enough to read and comprehend the actual subject matter, so he ought to understand this. [snip]

Seeing him act like an asshat is a bit discouraging.

Nah fuck this guy, he's always been a hypocrite when it suits him. He can make good anologies and explain as if he was talking to a baby so that average internet browser can understand (thus popularity), but he will always change his mind or lie by omission when it paints him in a positive light to do so and thinks it will make the audiance seals clap. He ALWAYS contradicts himself. A rat, if you will.

 

[Spud]

Louis Rossmann responds to thors comments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF4zH8bJDI8

Copy and pasting his comment that's pinned.

I'm aware of the process for an initiative to be turned into legislature much farther down the road after many edits. If people want me to back it then the technical and monetary hurdles of applying the request need to be included in the conversation. As written this initiative would put a massive undue burden on developers both in AAA and Indie to the extent of killing off Live Service games. It's entirely too vague on what the problem is and currently opens a conversation that causes more problems instead of fixing the one it wants to.

If we want to hit the niche and terrible business practice of incorrectly advertising live service games or always online single player only games then call that out directly. Not just "videogames" as stated in the initiative. Specifically call out the practice we want to shut down. It's a much more correct conversation to have, defeats the actual issue, and stops all this splash damage that I can't agree with.

 

[BarberFerdinand]

Copy and pasting his comment that's pinned.

It's fucking rich of him to talk about there needing to be a conversation when he outright dismissed Ross Scott's rather polite offer to discuss things.

 

[That Other Dude's Persona]

Surprised at the retardation of Thor's take. Obviously if such legislation passes, licensors would have to adjust their contracts or risk losing their biggest clients. Goes to show how entrenched anti-consumer practices have become over the last decade amongst game devs, even the "good ones".

The embedded Rossman response for those that hate links.

 

[Miller]

Here are screenshots of his early access game Heartbound some kind of Undertale like.

Of course... how original.

 

[Edgy But Dull]

Copy and pasting his comment that's pinned.

So he hearted his own comment and deleted Ross's comment. How mature.