Are we sure we want this? Here is an indie game dev I trust going through why this petition is a bad idea.
EDIT: OP has shown me that Code Monkey has a counterargument to Thor’s argument. I don’t find it super convincing personally, but I highly recommend people watch both and make up your own minds.
Yeah I voted kind of blindly, and then read how vague the proposal was.
I agree that live service games should have an end of life plan, being it providing backend binaries and/or protocols and documentation.
This all started because of The crew, a game which, as far as I am aware, advertised itself as mainly a single player and was closed because of Ubisoft shenanigans.
Maybe starting small and make sure this so advertised as single player experiences, work even after the publisher marks the game as dead, and build upon that instead of trying to go all in but idk.
Everyone agrees live service and Singleplayer games are distinct and marketing should be very specific about those
I disagree with Thor about archiving. The game files and server files should be given to a national archive after servers are shutdown and the game in it’s core function becomes unplayable.
I think there is value in protecting private servers from getting sued if the official servers are shut down. That way, no one has to just eat the cost if there’s no interest in the game and fans will not get sued into oblivion.
I know this is only a petition, but: giving this to politicians who have no clue about games will be akin to rolling a d20 and hoping for a 19 or 20. We need to be specific about what we want and only then should we introduce it to ppl who have the power to change it. And if it stays outlined as is, I can not support it.
Thor fails to understand what kind of legal shit the live service game devs got themselves into - since they offer licence for unspecified amount of time, and committed thmselves to provide server side of things, this could be challenged in court as obligation to upkeep servers forever. What were they thinking?
At least this stop killing games initiative proposes a graceful exit from that shit.
The guy who started it and other people helping push it have also responded and talked about how Thor doesn’t entirely get it/missed the point.
The biggest thing being:
It doesn’t accidentally include live service games because the wording is vague…
It purposely includes them because they are also games that you spent money on and therefore you deserve a product out of it. If you spent money on a thing… It’s your thing… Don’t let companies tell you otherwise.
Edit: I found the comment and I’m going to paste it here
“I’m afraid you’re misunderstanding several parts of our initiative. We want as many games as possible to be left in some playable state upon shutdown, not just specifically targeted ones. The Crew was justa convenient example to take action on, it represents hundreds of games that have already been destroyed in a similar manner and hundreds more"at risk” of being destroyed. We’re not looking at the advertising being the primary bad practice, but the preventable destruction of videogames themselves.
This isn’t about killing live service games (quite the opposite!), it’s primarily about mandating future live service games have an end of life plan from the design phase onward. For existing games, that gets much more complicated, I plan to have a video on that later. So live service games could continue operating in the future same as now, except when they shutdown, they would be handled similarly to Knockout City, Gran Turismo Sport, Scrolls, Ryzom, Astonia, etc. as opposed to leaving the customer with absolutely nothing.
A key component is how the game is sold and conveyed to the player. Goods are generally sold as one time purchases and you can keep them indefinitely. Services are generally sold with a clearly stated expiration date. Most “Live service” games do neither of these. They are often sold as a one-time purchase with no statement whatsoever about the duration, so customers can’t make an informed decision, it’s gambling how long the game lasts. Other industries would face legal charges for operating this way. This could likely be running afoul of EU law even without the ECI, that’s being tested.
The EU has laws on EULAS that ban unfair or one-sided terms. MANY existing game EULAS likely violate those. Plus, you can put anything in a EULA. The idea here is to take removal of individual ownership of a game off the table entirely.
We’re not making a distinction between preservation of multiplayer and single player and neither does the law. We fail to find reasons why a 4v4 arena game like Nosgoth should be destroyed permanently when it shuts down other than it being deliberately designed that way with no recourse for the customer.
As for the reasons why think this initiative could pass, that’s my cynicism bleeding though. think what we’re doing is pushing a good cause that would benefit millions of people through an imperfect system where petty factors of politicians could be a large part of what determines its success or not. Democracy can be a messy process and was acknowledging that. I’m not championing these flawed factors, but rather saying think our odds are decent.
Finally, while your earlier comments towards me were far from civil, don’t wish you any ill will, nor do encourage anyone to harass you. I and others still absolutely disagree with you on the necessity of saving games, but I wanted to be clear causing you trouble is not something I nor the campaign seeks at all. Personally, I think you made your stance clear, you’re not going to change your mind, so people should stop bothering you about it."
Thanks, I’ll add that link to my comment too. I think it’s important for people considering signing this to have all available information. Those arguments did not convince me, but I think it’s only fair to make it clear there are counterarguments.
Wish I did, because I’d play with you, but if those companies aren’t taking moderation seriously, I’d personally choose to do something else. There’s lots of other games out there, after all!
By tf2 are you referring to Team Fortress 2? I feel like every shooter these days is a class-based shooter, what sets tf2 apart from something like Overwatch?
xDefiant has a class with an invisibility skill (which lets one do plenty of shotgunning losers in the back)? Apex Legends has Mirage with various decoy and invisibility skills? idk, I don’t know every single one of these shooters, but I will grant you that the way the Spy works in TF2 is pretty unique.
a big issue is accessibility as well, a lot of those are organized around headshots and are much less clear visually, as well as requiring much stronger computers to play
so while tf2 has a fascist problem, it also has a lot of people i aint gonna leave behind
Deep Rock Galactic has been pretty cool (single purchase, no subscriptions). Nice community, devs who listen. Great solo experience, too.
Another good F2P game is Warframe. The community is generally nice, especially to new players.
Competitive games, though, seem to attract the alt-right tryhards who find pleasure in causing others misery. I quit those several years ago for my mental health, just because I was tired of listening to toxic people lose their shit. They can scream at each other, for all I care.
I’m a pretty big fan of Dark and Darker! Will admit, the randoms from the Discord are… Questionable at best lol. Would definitely be happy to roll with ya whenever you’re not streaming, though! PM me your deets!
My favorite soundtrack ever, of course, is that of The Secret of Monkey Island (MT-32) by Michael Land. A lot of nostalgia there.
I also very much like the soundtrack to Dune by Stephane Picq. There’s an edition that combines the Adlib, Adlib Gold, and MT-32 versions which is “chef’s kiss”. Alternatively, I can recommend the Space Opera edition.
Strike Commander by Nenad Vugrinec on MT-32 is also great.
For chiptunes, I really liked Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 by Alex Mauer.
Or, for a real classic, Earthbound by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka.
I (occasionally) like the frantic style of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s Zero Punctuation game reviews. Together with the wacky animations, they’re quite something.
Pico8 carts are just a special flavor of png. I would try running it directly or if it won’t run them with the png extension just rename the file from .png -> .p8 without converting and see if that works
I’ll try renaming. Thing is I play carts outside of pico8 and don’t have a copy. A machine I got has a pico emu so I got some carts. It just cannot read the raw ong and instead sees it as boxart.
Starwars Knights of the old Republic 1 and 2 they are on steam and kotar 1 can be played on a phone. AC blackflag. Dragon age origins. If you want a more specific recommendation based on a old gaming system let me know.
Super Metroid because it’s amazing, and Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the same reason. I may be biased because those are two of my favorites ever but I swear they legit hold up.
As someone who didn’t play them back in the day, I feel like SotN holds up but Super Metroid doesn’t. Just as another opinion. I couldn’t really get into metroid fusion either. To me it feels like the moment-to-moment action gameplay is too clunky in the early metroid games I’ve played, even if the exploration element is neat. I did enjoy playing SotN for the first time a couple of years ago though. It’s been a while since I played either, so they’re not totally fresh in my memory - I guess it’s possible that I’m just more forgiving of clunky melee combat than clunky shooting.
Tangentially related, always amuses me how “metroidvania” has become the genre name, when originally it was just a way that reviewers poked fun at the big change between SotN and earlier castlevanias. They were like “this isn’t what I expect from a castlevania, it’s a great game but maybe they should have named it metroidvania”, and the name stuck. Another odd fact about that terminology is that according to interviews, the SotN designer never played metroid - they were inspired by the non-linear exploration with different routes opened up by items/upgrades in Zelda games (although obviously adding that to castlevania’s platformer gameplay makes it more closely resemble metroid). So it should probably be considered a zeldavania.
Ummm do not know who would disagree with you about Super Metriod but that is my go to game when I am sick of the stupid shit that is being pushed out today.
I must admit I’ve never seen or played these. They might be a bit too new for me. I listened to an interview with the game designer on the retro hour a while back. It sounded intriguing.
Would you care to give an elevator pitch on why these are must-play?
The story is found and told through other characters. A lot of the story is shown rather than told.
Thief 3 has the most horrific level design ever in the orphanage. A game review had a review (really more of a worship piece) just on that one level. (I think this is the review: pcgamer.com/journeying-into-the-cradle-in-thief-d…)
The stealth mechanics actually require stealth and are multivariate. Most stealth games stealth systems now are actually less advanced.
God I remember having to actually disable enemy AI to get through The Cradle as a kid.
Thief 1 and 2 have incredible community made mods that completely overhaul the graphics and make it quite a beautiful game. Said community is still alive and well over on the TTLG forums, making fan missions for the game to this day (including the highly regarded Black Parade, which is basically an entire game made in the dark engine).
The only stealth games I’ve played that come anywhere close are Dishonored 1 and 2 (which, unsurprisingly, had a lot of Looking Glass veterans working on them).
I came here to say this! These games are highly underrated. Amazing story and world building, actually having to be sneaky even with low level enemies, amazing music, these were always my top faves.
They only care as far as going after large targets running rom sites (archive is much more than that, so they skirt by) and emulation of modern consoles (they go after the devs). They will never go after an individual just direct downloading and emulating shit.
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