While I like and appreciate the campaign, the issue IMO is bigger. IoT devices for example even have environmental impact when services behind them get discontinued.
I would therefore like a more general rule: whenever a product is discontinued for whatever reason, all necessary documents, sources, etc need to be released to allow third parties to take over maintenance (that also includes schematics for hardware repairs).
I think many people who are responsible for pushing the campaign forward would agree it’s a much bigger issue. It’s just that the bigger issue is big enough that there are multiple fronts one could fight on, and this is a politically useful opportunity to push forward. A victory from this campaign will be unlikely to lead to the larger developments without more of a fight, because achieving the general rule will take a few instances of arguing the specific case.
For now, I’m excited to see where this leads, even if the answer might be “nowhere”
I really hope that something gets done about games not being playable anymore. This is really important for the sake of our hobby and clearly not acceptable.
I could understand how multiplayer games would be harder to maintain 20 years after their release, but there is no excuse for solo games.
Wouldn’t be surprised if stop servicing/selling a game came with a tax write-off (small due to deprecation). If that were the case, I strongly believe they should, at least, release the server and remove all DRM. Let the community make it work again.
Who preserves historical artwork? Who makes sure it is available for all to enjoy?
I think governments and nonprofits (like museums) need to consider that archival of an interactive artwork means allowing it to continue being accessible and interactive. That’d be the real preservation.
Laws that say if you create something like this and it reaches some metric, then you are required to turn over all resources regarding it to open source public consumption once you are done actively maintaining it.
Art restoration is actually sort of similar to cracking games. (A difference being those games are still protected by copyright so it’s technically illegal.)
Going by US laws (life + 70 years), all of Picasso’s art is all still copyright protected in the US until 2043, so it’s even less of a difference than you may realize.
I don’t know where the line is because with art restoration you’re actually modifying a physical object. I guess a better comparison would be modifying an arcade cabinet or something.
It’s not the most robust analogy, but I actually really like your comparison to painting restoration; to do it well, one must understand the techniques and materials used in the original (even stuff below the visible surface).
Not a lawyer, but I think the original work is still copyrighted, and that restoration wouldn’t (or certainly shouldn’t) constitute a new artwork. Though now I’m wondering about that terrible Jesus painting restoration from a few years back — it’s certainly different from the original, and whilst it might not seem reasonable to call it a new piece of “art”, it’s certainly inspired a great many people(to make memes)
Whats funny is that most 20 year old multiplayer games today (at least on PC) are still perfectly playable because the server tech was given to the community, at launch. Battlefield 2 hasn’t been available for purchase anywhere officially in well over a decade, there’s still a dedicated, albiet small community.
I understand that with large, persistent worlds, it’s hard to release that server tech, but at least some form of it should be published. Ie, a smaller variant that maybe just lets a couple people join up as a co-op party, rather than dozens of people running around a large map at random, like in The Crew.
Even though you dislike online play, you can still play online with the PS3. Some servers are still up and running, and for other titles there are custom servers created by some fans. And the best part: you don’t need to pay the online fee that Microsoft created during the 360 days, which Sony and Nintendo followed after.
Let me tell you, over more than a decade I’ve played a lot of Battlefield Bad Company 2, like a lot a lot.
Last year, in December the servers for it got officially shut down by EA. And you know how I felt? I barely cared. It is still one of my favorite games of all time, and while there are private servers still active, I have no intention to play. And the reason for it that is simple. I’ve played enough of that game, I feel fully unsatisfied with the time I’ve spend with it. Its like 2 people growing apart over time.
Just to play devils advocate here. What is the benefit of forcing developers to provide access to old games that require online functionality indefinitely, instead of just hard limiting them to say 10 years wich is essentially indefinite in terms of non-live service games. If you haven’t managed to get enough joy out of something during a decade of you life, then maybe the developer isn’t responsible for your personal issues.
By this time The Crew 2 would’ve been 6 years old. I agree that’s fairly short time to turn of the servers, but would people be still as frantic about the server shut down in say 2028? Wouldn’t 10 years be enough? Why straight up go for indefinite access.
I mostly play new games, but I respect admiration for old games. It’s fun to see people speedrun old SNES games - but it’s disturbing to think an entire generation will just become inaccessible to history, even if a lot of the games in question were kind of bad.
I actually agree with you in the case of online multiplayer games - I don’t think the devs can keep them available forever. But when a game is singleplayer, like The Crew, it feels like planned obsolescence.
I think Destiny is a good argument. If D1 ends, then playing starting D2 won’t be the full experience. And new players can start many years into a game. D1 is also stuck on a console, while D2 is so big they removed content from it. You literally can’t play the base campaign in D2, a huge part of the story is no longer there. A great game that “you had to be there” to play.
It’s the extreme case but leaving games to die instead of having at least the chance for private servers is sad and a loss for everyone long term that don’t get a chance to play it.
This isnt about the official servers being online forever, this is about being able to host your own server without having to crack the game in weird ways.
Pure principle is the answer. People who buy a game should be able to play the game as long as they wish, sell it, give it their grandkids for all I care.
The problem with your argument is „doesnt affect me, wont bother“.
Think of anything you like or even love. Now think of it being taken away, because someone else doesnt care about it. You think thats fair?
What is the benefit of forcing developers to provide access to old games that require online functionality indefinitely, instead of just hard limiting them to say 10 years wich is essentially indefinite in terms of non-live service games.
In a choice between “you can play online until 2035” and “you can play online forever”, the answer is pretty obvious. All things being equal, the indefinite option is better. I think the problem is that all things are not equal, and making it a legal requirement that all games with online features come with a guarantee those features work indefinitely is incredibly vague and can lead to situations that outright hurt developers.
If the devs need to provide a server binary for players to host a server, how do they ensure these servers only allow players who have purchased the game to play? If they can’t ensure it, then the law is forcing companies to allow pirate servers to exist
How do they ensure people running these community servers aren’t charging money for people to play? If they can’t ensure it, then the law is allowing people to use a company’s IP to generate money without a licence.
If the original version had an in-game shop where you can unlock things with real life money but the offline version doesn’t have a shop, thus making parts of the game forever unobtainable, did they follow the law? If not, then devs would have to give out paid features for free.
Unless these kinds of details are accounted for, this vague idea is doomed to fail because no government is going to force a company to give up their copyright/IP for free. I know a lot of people have also said “fuck these giant corporations” but this also affects indie developers as well. Copyright protects small creators as much as it does large ones.
Lol, getting downvoted into oblivion because you offered a different viewpoint. Classic lemmy.
The thing is, nobody really expects the companies to keep the servers online forever ( at least according to the petition ), that would unreasonable. People ask that online games are either patched to allow offline play after delisting, or provide protocol information to allow non-official servers, again after delisting.
Normally I’d agree with you, it’s the developer’s prerogative to schedule games in order to maximize their profits, but for the past decade there have been A LOT of online only games, even single player games that require a connection just because ( see the recent forza motorsport, or simcity 2013 ). There’s a clear tendency in the industry to force this as a form of planned obsolescence and that needs to stop.
And yes, I realize that even if the petition materializes into something the developers will find a loophole. This is why I’d advocate more towards educating gamers to recognize and avoid abusive patterns. See the crew 2, where even if they basically give it away now, it’s still chock full of mtx and dark patterns, and a lot of games that are designed to be online only have those patterns ( I for one learned to recognize these and avoid the game and/or the developerr altogether ).
Good for you! You played a game so much you personally stopped caring. But that’s just you and you alone.
There are whole communities out there that are all about retro games. You’re throwing them all under the bus for being perfectly fine about something no longer being playable due to an arbitrary and otherwise avoidable reason.
This citizen initiative, if successful, has the power to change the way games are built from the ground up, and is the sort of “tide lifts all boats” thing that’ll only end up benefiting everyone.
Guy had Pierre Poilierve energy. Acting like the free market is perfect and that corporations will never screw people over and that by holding them accountable games will become unprofitable to make and that would the end of the game industry /s
I appreciated his take on it. Don’t trust politicians to come up with a good solution, always present the issue when you have a good solution ready. And the solution proposed by that petition was weak at best and outright dangerous for the industry at worst.
If you want to force specificity on buying v getting limited time access, that’s fine, but that’s not what the petition focused on.
If you wanna force devs to plan ahead with huge infrastructure cost to make sure servers will be online for a specific time, this might result in online games being unjustifiable for smaller studios.
If you want to shield independent people hosting unofficial servers to games, now that’s a different conversation that we first need to have to figure it out, before proposing an exact solution through a petition. Mind you this is a more complicated topic, as this gets into licensing and IP law.
And I really don’t think stop killing games is clear on those, and that makes this endeavor a lottery with the entire multiplayer games industry in limbo.
Give me another more precise initiative and I’ll join, but until then I’ll definitely not sign anything. If we change things, we should change them for the better, so let’s do our due diligence first.
I personally do not care how a policy would damage a company. I am playing the games, not developing them. If a company shuts down servers, they can at least provide players with the server binaries (difficult in the case of MMOs etc, but still better than doing nothing).
The EU can suck, but sometimes they put some pretty neat policies in place to protect consumers (e.g. the difference in USA vs EU MS Windows), so I trust them to hold publishers responsible to not cut off access to a sold product. Let’s say the EU prohibits putting Gacha mechanics in games, would you defend companies then, claiming the EU is cutting their profits (sorry, kinda strawmannish, but it feels to me this way)?
About pirate software (finally looked him up): He just seemed annoying as hell and every time YouTube pushed a short of him it was just ramblings in which huge parts were just untrue. Idk if he even codes, I only see him rambling about some shit with the voice you make when you are 14 and want to sound deeper. People on YouTube said he is a nepo baby but I don’t care too much about him to go down that rabbithole.
They’re not listening to consumers. Consumers are not complaining to the corporations, they’re complaining to the government. They’re only doing anything because the writing is clearly on the wall and passing new legislation will make shit way worse for them so they’re being proactive.
They’re doing this because they’ve lost so much money investors are angry and the executives want to win people back. They aren’t worried about law changes, they’re worried about their stock price and reputation.
If ECIs are to become a useful tool for civil society, campaigners would benefit from a better understanding of how to craft their demands in a way that is likely to lead the Commission to actually propose a legislative initiative. There have now been 133 ECI attempts, millions of signatures collected, a significant amount of money spent, and little to show for it.
Sadly I doubt this was thanks to the petition itself. More likely ubi is trying to claw back some goodwill ( and make some cash too, by promoting the title that was full of mtx instead of the retired one ). They’ve also done this offline fix thing in the past ( with anno 2070 for one ) and also after a healthy dose of player backlash.
Well, and because 2 is fucking abysmal as a game. The starter car shouldn’t feel like it’s on rails regardless of speed, mostly - it’s a fucking racing game, get it right. (modern nfs is in the corner giggling but that piece of shit is always trying to force me to drift, again with an un-upgraded starter car with like 150hp, so it’s no better)
I was a closed beta tester for 1 and 2, and was very excited for both, but going from 1 to 2 is a huge step backwards in handling alone. Whereas I pre-ordered 1 and got several others to as well, I told everyone I know to avoid 2, bought it on sale a while after launch, was immediately disappointed they never addressed this, and it sits with… 13 hours on the clock. As a reference, I have 4,048 hours played in Forza Horizon 5.
I have no idea how they fucked up so badly. It’s a travesty.
(I play with keyboard/mouse out of preference but also because of physical disabilities, so while I /could/ use a controller and maybe mitigate this, grab a controller and try playing with one hand, see how great that experience is x_x) .
You worded it incorrectly. It should be any single player game that requires online to start to game should be fined. They can have multiplayer option. But single player should be able to be played even offline.
It’s amazing how companies only do things after a “gobernment” scare, the fight does not stop, this isn’t just about The Crew, it’s about every game that won’t work without internet.
I figured there was enough already to complain about, but if this is now what we’re complaining about, I start to think the game isn’t as bad as it’s being made out to be.
I’m 7 hours in and having a blast (pun intended). It’s an alright game if you’re not into SW, it’s an awesome game if you are. Reminds me a lot of Hogwarts Legacy, the game didn’t bring anythinbg new to the market, but it’s fun if you’re into the theme.
There have been a few technical difficulties but nothing as bad as games I played before, which got much higher ratings and didn’t get blasted for it as hard as people do with this game.
People just really let their hate for Ubisoft take over and jump on that social bandwagon for internet points, even though the game plays barely like any other Ubisoft game I’ve played in the past 30 years.
I bet later today Metacritic user reviews will be flooded with people who haven’t even played the game and just base their entire opinion on a few buggy game clips.
Why do you assume that any bad review is from someone who hasn’t played the game? People are allowed to have negative opinions just as much as people are allowed to have positive ones.
Just because you are enjoying the game doesn’t mean that everyone else has to too.
I never said I assume that every bad review is from someone who hasn’t played.
But you can’t ignore the insane amount of hate Ubisoft is getting for the most insignificant non-issues just because they’re Ubisoft. It takes like a few seconds to notice how the troll armies are linking stuff from various clickbait YouTubers and streamers on social media, and no doubt a vast majority of negative feedback is coming from there.
I’m not ignoring the legit issues this game has, because they are definitely present. And I’m doing my part in reporting them to Ubisoft, instead of making trollposts about it on social media, so we can all enjoy a better game. Sadly that isn’t part of the majority’s crusade against Ubisoft, they’re just out there farming internet points, banking on the circlejerk hate.
I can almost guarantee that the upcoming Metacritic user reviews are a prime example of “Hue hue Ubisoft bad”.
It takes only a minute to check on Metacritic what the majority of negative reviews are about.
There are a few legit ones, but most are just trashtalking Ubisoft. Or saying horsecrap like “looks like PS3 games”, which it clearly doesn’t. Or every positive review is “paid by Ubisoft”, and people even complaining about it being a woke political agenda, fucking lmao.
I strongly doubt these trolls even installed the game.
Ubisoft has clearly made a name for itself by making mediocre content and this game has only reinforced that image but being upset about that is wrong apparently.
The game clearly doesn’t appeal to the majority of players and that makes you upset. Blaming the “ubisoft haters” or the “anti woke” just sounds like you’re trying to find a convenient scapegoat for why the game isn’t doing well. If the game was good people would play it regardless of who the publisher is.
Honestly, about 5 hours in and I love it. More depth than I expected. Actual stealth with multiple mechanics around it. The gang rep system. It’s great. I have mixed feelings on Kay as a person, but I’m curious to see where it goes.
Fun fact, you can still shoot on the speeder once you fill your adrenaline by driving a bit crazy, then you do a red dead slow down, target selection style shooting.
I want to go back and play through the whole series again, but the nuances of the older games that were fixed in the more recent games always throws me.
I play on PC and it’s very very obvious that kb/mouse was an afterthought for some of the games… I just hate doing fps with a joystick/thumbstick.
Either way, I’ve redeemed this for all of my copies of Borderlands. So the next time I log in, I should have golden keys for days.
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Aktywne