Comment on Louis Rossmann's response to harsh criticism of "Stop Killing Games" from Thor of @PirateSoftware

ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  He’s showing his true colors here. He’s either doubling down so his initial reaction doesn’t make him seem foolish, or he really has a soft spot for mega corporations due to his ties with Blizzard.

  Ross wrote a response to Thor’s in the comments of this video, but it’s a bit buried. I’ll include Thor’s for context as well:

  Thor:

  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.

  Ross’s response:

  @PirateSoftware I actually wasn’t planning to write to you further since you said you didn’t want to talk about it with me and I’ll still respect that if you’d like. But since you brought up what I said again I’ll at least give my side of that then leave you alone:

  • I’m 100% cynical, I can’t turn it off. I wasn’t trying to appeal to legislators when I said that, I doubt they’ll even watch my videos. I was trying to appeal to people who are are kind of doomer and think this is hopeless from the get-go. I wanted to lay out the landscape as I view it that this could actually work where many initiatives have failed. Did it backfire more than it inspired people? I have no idea. I’ve said before I don’t think I’m the ideal person to lead this, stuff like this is part of why I say that; I can’t just go Polyanna on people and pretend like there aren’t huge obstacles and these are normally rough odds, so that was meant as inspirational. You clearly weren’t the target audience, but you’re in complete opposition to the movement also.

  • I’m literally not a part of the initiative in any official capacity. I won’t be the one talking to officials in Brussels if this passes. The ECI could completely distance itself from me if that was necessary.

  • In my eyes, what I was doing there was the equivalent of forecasting the weather. You think it’s manipulation, but I don’t control the weather. I can choose when I fly a kite based on my forecast however.

  • It was also kind of half-joke on the absurdity of the system we’re in that I consider these critical factors that determine our success or not. So yes, I meant what I said, but I also acknowledge it’s kind of ludicrous that these are perhaps highly relevant factors towards getting anything done in a democracy.

  Anyway, I got the impression this whole issue was kind of thrust upon you by your fans, you clearly hate the initiative, so as far as I’m concerned people should stop bothering you about it since you don’t like it.

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  • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    He’s showing his true colors here. either doubling down so his initial reaction doesn’t make him seem foolish, or he really has a soft spot for mega corporations due to his ties with Blizzard.

    I don’t think he have any soft spot for mega corp, is just online figures/influencers can’t never be wrong type of thing.

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  • atro_city@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

    Spoken like an idealist. Video games is probably the biggest thing that will gain traction. Sure, it would be great to tackle the entire issue, but the people making this initiative aren't using other software that does that shit. Saying "care about all the people" dilutes the issue.

    Hard disagree with Thor on this one.

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  • Tattorack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    … to the extent of killing off live service games.

    I mean… Nothing of value was lost? In my opinion, so far, the only decent live service game to have ever come out is still Warframe. Everything else that cane after is either a pale imitation or straight up cow milking garbage.

    We could certainly do with a lot less “live service”.

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• tehmics@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I’ve been a big fan of Thor since his first shorts boom, but this take is a massive fucking L from him that I’m very sad to see.

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  • CaptainEffort@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Honestly him calling Ross a “greasy used car salesman” really hurt to see. I didn’t take Thor as the type to insult someone like that simply for disagreeing with him.

    Kind of makes me wonder if his whole nice guy thing is an act. Either way it calls into question the person I assumed he was.

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    • tehmics@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I’ve heard reference to that and Thor backpedaling calling it ‘car salesman logic’ or something. Do you know where the clip is?

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      • CaptainEffort@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        It was on stream, so hopefully someone recorded it and uploads it.

        In this video though, at the very end, this guy shows another clip that I haven’t been able to find of Thor reacting to one of Ross’ comments and… well I can’t think of a better word than melting down tbh.

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• ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Yeah, that’s why he says it’s stupid. It seems like he’s fine with the idea of removing DRM that makes single player games unplayable but forcing devs to make online multiplayer games playable forever is ridiculous.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    To clarify, your position is it’s ridiculous, or you’re stating that his position is ridiculous?

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    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      My position is it’s ridiculous. I agree with Thor. Saying all games must exist forever is too vague because I don’t think all games should be forced to exist forever.

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      • Cowboy_Dude@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Per the official Stop Killing Games FAQ: www.stopkillinggames.com/faq (apologies if formatting ends up looking weird)

        Q: Aren’t you asking companies to support games forever? Isn’t that unrealistic?

        A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. Additionally, there are already real-world examples of publishers ending support for online-only games in a responsible way, such as:

        ‘Gran Turismo Sport’ published by Sony ‘Knockout City’ published by Velan Studios ‘Mega Man X DiVE’ published by Capcom ‘Scrolls / Caller’s Bane’ published by Mojang AB ‘Duelyst’ published by Bandai Namco Entertainment etc.

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      • Icalasari@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        They all should still be preserved. The code can be stored without needing servers to be kept open, for example

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      • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Well, it wouldn’t be retroactive. As a consumer, I don’t think it’s ridiculous to know what I’m buying. If anything, this petition is way softer than my stance. You could get around doing the honest thing of providing the customers the ability to host the servers themselves by just clearly informing the customer at the point of sale how long services will be up for, if you truly want to try to convince people that it’s a service and not a product that they just made worse for business reasons. But they don’t want to do that, because then they can’t sucker people into buying something that isn’t long for this world.

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      • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Many consider games to be works of art in the same way that music, books, movies, and paintings are. In the same way that historians use the creative works of yesteryear to guage how people during events like World War I, historians of tomorrow need access to games to study the events of our lifetimes.

        Book burnings have occurred throughout history and they have been devastating, but many works can still be studied because other copies exist elsewhere. The problem with games is that they’re deliberately designed to self-destruct. Historians 50 years down the line can’t study Fortnite’s mechanics or its evolution because as soon as a new update releases, the servers for the previous chapter of the game are gone. Even if we wanted to preserve just the final release, we can’t because it is far easier for Epic Games to hide or throw away the server source code rather than properly archive it when they inevitably kill the game. This is a huge deal because Fortnite has genuinely had an impact on our culture, for better or worse. Even if it didn’t, it is a technical feat to get a game like that to work well, and programmers need to be able to study the game after the industry inevitably moves on.

        To be clear, companies shouldn’t need to maintain their games and software forever. However, there is simply no way to play many games because there are no usable servers for them, which is entirely unacceptable. The initiative simply wants us to be in a world where someone can put in a reasonable amount of effort to play abandoned games, and I don’t think that’s a huge ask.

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  • Archelon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Only if you think the campaign means that companies must pay for the multiplayer servers forever which Ross has said on MULTIPLE occasions is not reasonable and not what he wants.

    Giving players the tools to host their own servers or adding LAN functionality, though? That’s entirely reasonable seeing as that’s how multiplayer always used to work. I mean, there are still plenty of Unreal Tournament servers active today without any involvement from the developer in decades.

    Especially since, if this initiative works, developers will make games with that functionality in mind.

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