The end of Stop Killing Games [Accursed Farms]

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Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ampersandrew@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

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

The EU Citizens petition to stop killing games is not looking good. It’s shy of halfway where it needs to be, on a very high threshold, and it’s over in a month and change.
paraphrasing a little more than a half hour of the video: "Man, fuck Thor/Pirate Software for either lying or misunderstanding and signal boosting his incorrect interpretation of the campaign."
The past year has been quite draining on Ross, so he’s done campaigning after next month.
It will still take a few years for the dust to clear at various consumer protection bureaus in 5 different countries, and the UK’s seems to be run by old men who don’t understand what’s going on.
At least The Crew 2 and Motorfest will get offline modes as a consolation prize?

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Comments

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lime@feddit.nu ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
yeah my opinion on piratesoftware was really cemented by his inability to do a charitable reading of the petition.

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- Tyoda@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It really was a good ole’ internet argument where he was just obnoxiously wrong in his interpretation and remained just as confidently incorrect the entire time.
  
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QubaXR@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It was nice to have some degree of hope for nearly a year. So I guess, thanks for at least giving it a serious attempt Ross.

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TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Piratesoftware makes me so fucking mad, shit is so crazy people give him the time of day.

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- MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  What happened ? I’m out of the loop on this one
  
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  - Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    He’s opposed to it. He speaks with a very clam, professional voice, so people like to believe him. I get skeeved out by it personally. Honestly, we shouldn’t be taking advice from former Blizzard dev anyway. Nothing that comes from that company has ever been respectful to players or even human decency.
    
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  - TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Sorry, I went to sleep not long after I made that comment. I see I was beaten to it but, he was just so dramatically crass and rude when introduced to the movement, and said mean shit about Ross, the guy behind the movement, calling him gross, a greasy used car salesman, saying “he can eat my whole ass”. And after all of that, he refused to speak to Ross and continued to make 2 entire youtube videos, and some livestreams about shit talking the movement, fuck that snotty little prick.
    
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Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Ah you know, not the outcome I hoped for but it’s exactly what I expected from humans.

paraphrasing a little more than a half hour of the video: “Man, fuck Thor/Pirate Software for either lying or misunderstanding and signal boosting his incorrect interpretation of the campaign.”

I agreed with Ross previously that Thor taking a really dumb fuck position helped get more attention on the issue that was, IMO, as hopeless as trying to get the masses to care about or understand Net Neutrality. That was what I saw repeated and upvoted at the time even before Thor revealed himself to be a gigantic narcissistic nepo baby bullshitter more recently.

If you watched the vid OP, what changed his opinion? I’ll check it out once I’m home from work regardless.

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- ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  what changed his opinion?
  
  The metrics on signatures for the citizens’ initiative. If it helped, it would have boosted those too, but it didn’t. He also got word that at least one very large YouTuber/streamer that he did not name decided to stay quiet about SKG because it would have contradicted Thor.
  
  I’ll also reiterate that 1M signatures out of a population of 450M is an absurdly high threshold to have to reach, so getting 1/10th of that is still impressive, even if it’s unsuccessful.
  
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  - Stamau123@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Fuck whoever stayed quiet then
    
    “Oh no, I might contradict the annoying moron who is wrong! I can’t be seen as being on the opposite of that!”
    
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  - p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    He also got word that at least one very large YouTuber/streamer that he did not name decided to stay quiet about SKG because it would have contradicted Thor.
    
    So, Asmongold. Got it!
    
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- tja@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I am not following Thor very much, what did he do recently?
  
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  - Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s all incredibly online, but searching the keywords “piratesoftware WoW drama onlyfangs” will get the ball rolling if you want to see a prime example of how a narcissist acts when getting caught out very publicly. He also embellished his past a lot and that got parroted in every thread mentioning him for months, so that shouldn’t be hard to stumble upon.
    
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A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
PirateSoftware is an enormous cunt.

And he makes no effort to hide it.

I genuinely don’t understand why he has such a rabid fanbase.

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- ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Youtube shorts.
  
  Imagine you’re a gamer, one who is interested in game Design. Your view history has games, gaming, game design, but it’s also full of algotrash talking heads, scam baiters, shit slingers. You open the YouTube app on your phone, and it immediately opens to shorts, you don’t remember settings that as the default but it’s fine, you recognize the creator and the 45 second clip was neat. Swipe up. Next video, it Nile Blue dropping a beaker of chloroauric acid. Next video, its Chris Boden yelling about some kind of electrical infrastructure you don’t understand (any that’s pretty cool). Next video, Thor, speaking softly, explaining an aspect of game design that you never thought of. This one catches your attention, its in your wheelhouse, its something you’re genuinely interested in. You click the profile, swipe through a few more shorts. Your algorithm is permanently damaged. Your a pirate software fan now, whether you like it or not.
  
  Or you can use freetube and never see algotrash talking heads in your feed and never enter into this cycle.
  
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  - Nikls94@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’ve been downvoting all of this trash for 3 months now. I still get this trash. It has nothing to do with algorithm anymore. This is Homogenisierung
    
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  - seralth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Hey don’t talk shit about Chris he’s a fun dude who shares his passion and cool knowledge and that’s pretty cool.
    
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  - A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I really fucking hate that, too. The algorithm is so fucking vile and evil.
    
    I cant even watch the content i want to watch on youtube, like fishing and guns (with the exception of forgotten weapons and InRange, which the algorithm doesnt seem to view as gateways to right wing indoctrination), because if I so much as hover my mouse over one of the thumbnails of that kind of content, I immediately get blasted with 3 months of right wing extremist pseudo-intellectual diarrhea that I cant escape without completely resetting my browser.
    
    but if I spend an evening watching retrogaming stuff? Oh fuck, Youtube just completely ignores that and pretends it never saw me show interest in that.
    
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- ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’ve seen him described elsewhere as “a poor man’s idea of a rich man” and I think it’s accurate.
  
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- pyre@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  i don’t watch him but i hope this isn’t about what he did in wow because the sheer fact that anyone even gives a shit seems wild to me. but hey i hate MMOs so maybe that’s why.
  
  is there other reasons people don’t/shouldn’t like him or is it just vibes
  
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  - HereIAm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s not because he did anything wrong in wow that people are upset/memeing about, it’s because he’s unable to say “I’m sorry, I could have done better” without including any buts or “the others also messed up”. It has just exposed him as an incredibly self obsessed person.
    
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- FarmTaco@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  big mistake bud, you just made the list
  
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absquatulate@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think the initiative just ran out of steam. I remember seeeing it everywhere for the first month or so, and then nothing, and it plateaued around where it is now. Maybe the vast majority of EU gamers just can’t be arsed to read and sign a petition like this. I mean most can’t even vote with their wallet when a shit game releases. And of course it’s fun to blame thor/pirateguy for this ( and they probably did have their share of fault ) but in the end it looks like 500k is the amount of gamers that actually give a fuck about the state of things.

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- TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It just didn’t reach enough people, no one I know that is not on Reddit and Lemmy even heard about it or understood the problem to begin with, on top of that, most “gamers” are playstation players that don’t know anything about these problems or care for that matter.
  
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- HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I mean I’m tired of signing online petitions that get summarily ignored
  
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- mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yup, I don’t watch his content, but looking at his actual viewership numbers, he doesn’t even remotely have the impact to make or break a petition by himself.
  
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- Default_Defect@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Completely agree, I also noticed that every single notable person I see talking about this is from the US or Canada. I also get the impression that the EU simple doesn’t care enough.
  
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cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I am still of the opinion that they aimed too small and focused too narrow. Games are a "luxury" anyone can live without and it's hard to rally grassroots support behind protecting something that people only use for entertainment. Yeah it's low stakes to force them to let you continue to play it after servers shut down but the same low stakes also makes the petition itself pretty ignorable to anyone who's not a very invested "gamer".

Actual right to repair and right to continue to access to the software and services and devices you buy goes SO far beyond mere games, there are other huge impacts to society from exactly the same problem that leads to game servers being shut down, and this petition ignored them completely to focus exclusively on games. I know that was done purposefully, but I think it was a miscalculation.

I'm convinced it could have got a lot of support if it had broader aims. Yes if you go after the big boys who are locking down tractor parts and integrated electronic modules so they become obsolete and unrepairable and directly impacting farmers and our food supply, you're going to REALLY piss off some very big business interests who are going to try and kill your petition, but you're also going to help educate and hopefully get a lot of support from politicians who already know this is a problem and from the general public who doesn't care about games but does care about society (at least once they're properly educated about it, which is hard but also a necessary and positive step to even attempt).

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- lime@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  that was sort of the point though. a big case with a narrow focus can later be used as a fulcrum for a wider scope, given that the original case has the right spin. it’s also easier than going after the anti-repair people.
  
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  - echodot@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    But politicians will actually be prepared to get behind right to repair. But they regard games as a bit infantile, and don’t really want to be involved. A point that was made right at the start of all of this and was then completely ignored.
    
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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It was a shitshow start to finish.
  
  First and foremost: it is an inherently adversarial “movement” name which actively shifts the blame toward developers. One of my gaming buddies was a community manager for one of the studios that got gutted over the past year or so (gotta “love” how that doesn’t narrow it down at all) and he definitely had some Thoughts about getting constant social media spam about how they are “killing games” by not releasing offline versions of old games as they were doing layoffs on the regular.
  
  There is a reason the only dev/“dev” who gave any meaningful feedback was thor the shithead. And while it may suck that he didn’t have the same opinion as the people accusing devs of killing the games they spent the better part of a decade on… Yeah, pirate software is a dipshit who was just trying to put himself as a position of authority because his dad worked at Blizzard.
  
  But most of the key points he raised were sensationalized but not actually wrong if you look at things from a developer perspective. Well, from the perspective of a developer who expects to get fired any second now because funding will arbitrarily dry up. Yeah, the end result will TOTALLY be that you get an extra six months of salary to make the offline client and not that you’ll be held in breach of contract and lose your severance because you couldn’t pound that out in a week.
  
  But even without starting things off at “its just about ethics in game journalism” levels of discourse: Yes, yes, yes, I know that Ross et al intentionally were vague and shut the fuck up. If you push “We need legislature on X” to a governing body without an actionable plan? Schoolhouse Rock doesn’t start blaring and Aaron Sorkin doesn’t… okay, he still gets a boner but for different reasons. What happens is the lobbyists and Jack Thompsons of the world swoop in and make damned sure that those “details get ironed out” the way they want.
  
  It sucks because treating this as part of a larger effort that included actual Game Preservation efforts and worked with policy groups and developers would actually have been awesome AND gotten widespread support even from the studios themselves. Instead it was a flashy campaign that started off by flipping the bird to people getting fired left and right and reveled in its ignorance of how legislature even works. And then managed to get dragged into a slapfight with some jackass who plays wow and sells mobile games.
  
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  - lime@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    But most of the key points he raised were sensationalized but not actually wrong if you look at things from a developer perspective.
    
    they were also not really relevant to the campaign, which was the biggest problem with his comments. there was no expectation that studios do extra work to keep servers up, or make offline clients. the expected legislation was to have publishers allow external use of the relevant source code of the product when the publisher deems the work no longer profitable, to spare people the effort of reverse-engineering protocols and building their own servers. a knock-on effect of that would be that future services would have to be built with eventual shutdown procedures in mind, which, let’s face it, they should already have been doing.
    
    thor was saying “this isn’t feasible because it’s a bunch of extra work for the developers”, completely missing the point that this is not on the developers. it’s on the company sitting on the IP. they can publish source trees no problem, no developer involvement necessary. and the legislation would have made sure of that fact.
    
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  - p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Wow, somebody didn’t watch the video.
    
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  - ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There was plenty of off-the-record talk from devs who wanted something to show for the years they put into a project that was shut down in less time than it took to make the game in the first place.
    
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DeusUmbra@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I feel like this needs to be spread as far and wide as possible, and for PirateSoftware to be mass reported for misinformation about an ongoing political initiative.

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- FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Toxic behavior. Silence people for their opinions
  
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  - DeusUmbra@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s not about having a dumb opinion, it’s about actually spreading false information. He lies consistently about what the movement is about and what the goals are.
    
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Speiser0@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
He’s so polite.

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- ThunderclapSasquatch@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Ross is pretty great, give the game dungeon a go.
  
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  - SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    One of my favorite youtubers for over a decade now.
    
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daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’ve always thought that the only solution to this problem is being able to reverse engineering central servers and thus being effectively being able to pirate online only games.

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- normalexit@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Reverse engineering the server is reverse engineering the whole game. It’s going to require skilled engineers and a significant time investment. It may be possible, but not practical.
  
  Also, the client will likely verify it is talking to a legitimate server by checking a certificate, so you may also have to hack the client too.
  
  At some point you’re better off working a job and coming up with the $50 or making your own game with hookers and blackjack.
  
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- ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It’s an unreliable solution, because there’s no guarantee that even dedicated and talented individuals will be able to reverse engineer every online server, if that game has those individuals in its customer base in the first place. The solution seems to be either legislation, which this campaign is seeking, or for the market to outright reject online-only games, which it isn’t doing. I don’t even really have an alternative to online-only games in some genres, like FPS for instance, to send my dollars toward instead; sports games are in a similar position, since the sports organizations all signed exclusivity contracts.
  
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  - ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The solution is legislation, as without that, we can’t expect companies to decide to release either the executables or source code for running the servers, other than a handful looking to get some attention and goodwill.
    
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- chrislowles@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Ross mentions reverse engineering towards the end of the vid so it’s definitely top of mind now for the future of the initiative, bar rebooting it with someone else. Agreed that it’s really the only alternative when the industry is as steeped in back alley deals and skeevy dishonest commentary as it is.
  
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veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m quite lost (disinterested) on MCU stuff as of late, what’s going on about Thor? Is there a game?

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- lime@feddit.nu ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  thor is a tech youtuber. it’s just his actual name.
  
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  - veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Huh. The things I miss out of these days!
    
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  - Default_Defect@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Its not his actual name. Its Jason.
    
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echodot@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is a PR issue. For some bizarre reason they decided that game preservation should be independent of the right to repair movement a movement that had fairly significant momentum by the time they started talking about games preservation. So for some insane reason they separated the two concepts in people’s minds and that resulted in nobody caring.

Then they decided to whine about the fact that it was unsuccessful despite the fact that they’d essentially done everything they could to kneecap the movement.

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- gamer@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  What does game preservation have to do with right to repair? I support both, but if people don’t care about preserving games, latching it onto the right to repair movement is just going to drag it down for no reason.
  
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  - Maalus@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Nothing, one was simply trendy and OP doesn’t know how movements work so they just lumped it together
    
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