Go check the petition text and www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
Leaving the servers online endlessly has never been what is being asked.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
No, it’s unreasonable to expect the servers to stay online forever. Instead, they should be required to hand the keys over to the community if they stop providing the online service.
Xyloph@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Romanmir@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Or simply release a patch that disabled only the online portion.
coughTheCrewcough
jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I never play games that are pure online with no LAN.
blindsight@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Cool, that’s great, but that’s also kinda the point.
Live service games suck because you can’t depend on being able to play them. This is trying to fix that. So you (or anyone else) can play these games offline—eventually. Once they shut down the servers, customers should still be able to access their purchases. This campaign is trying to force companies to design around releasing a patch to strip out the online portion/online DRM or face significant financial consequences.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Moreso, I like to be able to have control of the game. If I play a game with my friends that I like, I don’t want the game to be changed into something else (live service) so I can’t come back and play the version we once did.
Zworf@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Yeah I agree, it’s a better solution. But something that meets the requirement too.
After all if they stop selling the game, why bother with activation? Just patch that shit out.
frog@beehaw.org 2 months ago
A requirement to leave a game in a “working state when support ends” doesn’t mean continuing support (ie, running the server). It means the game should still work when the server is gone, which means either fully offline play, or a means for players to run their own servers. That’s the whole point of this campaign, which is taking place across multiple countries.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I mean, I’d accept “release the source code” but this doesn’t.
frog@beehaw.org 2 months ago
“Release the source code” isn’t going to be considered a reasonable thing to ask a government to legislate on. “Make sure the game can still be played after support ends”, which in practice means patching it so it doesn’t require an internet connection to servers that no longer exist and/or allowing players to self-host their own servers, is far more likely to succeed. It’s a reasonable request that someone who has bought something should be able to continue using it for as long as they want, no matter what happens to the company that sold it to them.
It’s a request that stands a decent chance of success if a politician can be made to understand what the problem is, because it is an easy extension of existing consumer rights law. Requiring game studios to hand over their source code to gamers would be considered excessive and unreasonable, and is therefore much more likely to be denied outright.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. For the majority of gamers, the changes proposed would be more than sufficient, so that’s a good reason to push for it even if it isn’t what an open source idealist would want.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I wouldn’t require source code, no. I would just consider that one acceptable form of allowing the game to continue being playable. However, it requires intervention from the user, so it wouldn’t be accepted under this proposal.