Comment on Th EU iniative for Stop Killing Games has reached the goal of 1 million signatures!!
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks agoI think the commission will take action in some form. The worst case scenario in my mind is that they will only require clear labelling. Similar to what they did with smart phones recently. While this not exactly what I am hoping for, having “This game will at least be playable until XXXX” on the package or store page would still be a massive improvement over the status quo.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I dont understand how such a broad requirement would work. They just have to pick some arbitrary date, and then after that they can continue as things currently are? Can you give an example of a game where this type of labelling would have helped?
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
‘The Crew’ by Ubisoft was sold for several months before they decided to shut it down. This would have at least forced them to communicate that before taking peoples money. I am also pretty sure that publishers don’t want to put this information on the package because it could seriously hurt sales. So the effect might be that publishers build the game in a way that enables self-hosting.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
If you are saying they knew it was closing and they sold it for months anyways, that sounds like fraud. Has there been proof ubisoft decided to do this anyways?
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Yes, I think calling it fraud is a fair conclusion but what do you mean with “they knew it was closing”? This decision is completely in the hands of Ubisoft. Something doesn’t stop being fraud just because someone only decides to defraud you 2 months after they sold you something.
Kelly@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crew_(video_game)
People who paid around us$40 for the game on December 13 were being sold a lemon.
Given that it was released in 2014 it seems likely that their licenses were given a 10 year duration and they always intended to shutdown in 2024 at the latest (of course if its user base failed to reach critical mass they could have pulled the plug earlier).
Does selling a game in 2023 when you plan to kill it in 2024 legally qualify as fraud?
Sonicdemon86@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes if we would have known that Concord only lasted two weeks then those that bought the battle pass wouldn’t have bought them. Know eol timing help consumers.
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Sony actually issued full refunds to everyone who bought Concord.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
The game still died. One that was in development for five years, and it lasted two weeks.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
They didnt know it would only last two weeks. They probably knew it was a possibility but I doubt they planned for it.
This is what I mean though, if concord had to say the game would be live for a guaranteed amount of time, why wouldnt they just say something low like 6 months. Why wouldnt every company do that unless they knew for sure it would be successful? Its too risky to choose longer periods of time, and we just have the same situation as now.