Handing online servers over to consumers could carry commercial or legal risks, she said, in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
Hang on, arent these the same fuckers who greenlit AI training on IP they don’t own?
in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
Piss off. This just means they won’t be able to rely on companies to control what people get to say.
“digital ownership must be respected”
gets into bed with Meta and OpenAI
If digital ownership isn’t acknowledged, digital piracy doesn’t exist. It’s just copying something no one owns.
I mean I am a pirate as much as the next guy but this is missing the point. They acknowledge ownership. They just don’t agree that it transfers to you when you buy a game. So that argument gets you nowhere.
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft.
Yeah, no. You buy services all the time, without owning the thing or person providing the service.
If games are or should be a service is a completely different question. I wholeheartedly think that they are not, but that is irrelevant to the argument. But I can’t stand those polemic phrases that miss the point completely.
They force it on to us that we cannot own products anymore but instead they are “a service” where we are stripped of our rights, are costantly fed with restrictions locked behind more payments and broken products never to be finished as they don’t care about it: they already got their money. And since we don’t have rights, as stated in the user agreements, we can just go fuck ourselves.
So you may be right, that it doesn’t work “like that”, but that’s something those fucked up companies forced upon us without consent. Stop defend those companies dude.
Pointing out bullshit arguments isn’t defending anyone, it’s just being intellectually honest. Not sure what’s better, you being serious or arguing in bad faith.
Your argument is basically “according to their made up rules it doesn’t work like that, so your arguments are bullshit”.
That sounds a lot like defending them.
As a customer you basically have zero rights, when you sign their user agreements. Even when a restaurant kills your partner in a themepark, because they once signed the user agreement for their streaming service (Disney). As a pirate I have more rights than paying customers. You can say what you want but this is factually true. Legally it works like this.
So when I get angry about how they force people into their fucked up world with stupid rules and restrictions they made up, you may be right it doesn’t work like that when you follow their rules. I don’t pay them, I didn’t sign their agreements, so their rules do not apply to me. If I get busted for having an illegal copy of their content I’ll pay a fine and it’s done (happened when I accidentally downloaded something when I went to Germany once).
Back in the days a pirated copy of something was less than the real thing. Worse quality, missing the DVD extras, no updates etc. These days the pirated version has less restrictions and limitations than the real service. No ads, better quality, not lacking behind a season, never pulled from the platform, never broken because they stopped support and only even though it’s an offline game a connection to the now csncelled sever is mandatory, offline download is actual offline download, no locked content like DLC’s, etc.
You can save your breath, I am with you that corporations try to fuck us over at every turn. If you try to not see a villain in someone disagreeing with you, you could’ve seen that from the beginning.
There is also no need to put words in my mouth what my argument was, because it is really simple. The statement “I paid for it therefore I own it” is as false as “if I don’t own it after buying, then there is no such thing as piracy”. The question is whether or not games are a service.
I am probably as pissed off about the hyper-capitalistic encroachment as you are. you should try to not let your emotions impact your reasoning though.
As long as the button says buy, then its ownership and should be treated like physical goods.
I’m unconvinced anyone will really legislate this, and if it is, it’ll just lead to that country being scratched off the list of where the game is officially supported.
Realistically, we need to stop buying online only games where the servers will eventually go offline, and support those that release open servers.
Most of the responses of the ministers(?) covered in the article seem to be pretty solid.
But then:
Responding to the arguments, the government’s representative, minister for sport, tourism, civil society and youth, Stephanie Peacock MP, acknowledged consumer sentiment behind Stop Killing Games, but suggested there were no plans to amend UK law around the issue.
“The Government recognises the strength of feeling behind the campaign that led to the debate,” she said. “The petition attracted nearly 190,000 signatures. Similar campaigns, including a European Citizens’ Initiative, reached over a million signatures. There has been significant interest across the world.”
She continued: “At the same time, the Government also recognises the concerns from the video gaming industry about some of the campaign’s asks. Online video games are often dynamic, interactive services—not static products—and maintaining online services requires substantial investment over years or even decades.”
Peacock claimed that because modern video games were complex to develop and maintain, implementing plans for games after support had ended could be “extremely challenging” for companies and risk creating “harmful unintended consequences” for players.
Handing online servers over to consumers could carry commercial or legal risks, she said, in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
On the subject of ownership, Peacock claimed that video games being licensed to consumers, rather than sold, was not a new phenomenon, and that “in the 1980s, tearing the wrapping on a box to a games cartridge was the way that gamers agreed to licensing terms.”
“Licensing video games is not, as some have suggested, a new and unfair business practice,” she claimed.
Yeah, full on corpo spin. Fuck her.
If you don’t want to give the sever away (including the ability to use it) then don’t shut it down or otherwise make the game unplayable.
So if the developers of a game go bankrupt, or a single developer of an indie game dies, what do you suggest happens?
The code should go into escrow when the first game is sold. This is standard practice in industry - you don’t buy something without assurance that if the company goes under you have options.
This is standard practice in industry - you don’t buy something without assurance that if the company goes under you have options.
Which industries is this standard in? I can’t think of any. If Samsung went bankrupt who is replacing your S25 Ultra?
I think they mean in like B2B. Like if you buy of piece of software x thousand times with y years of support it’s standard practice to have a contract that covers what happens if the company goes under while you still have years of support.
Maybe, but that’s not at all relevant here.
Consumer devices are not industry. they almost never get that treatment.
But the assurance you spoke about is consumer assurance? So you’re saying that your suggestion wouldn’t even apply to video games while suggesting it for video games?
There is no reason consumers cannot demand this even though they haven’t. There is no reason the law cannot demand it even though it hasn’t.
The important part is that the idea exists and is common enough in OTHER situations. When you ask for it there will be people who know what this means and there is a whole industry of “we escrow your code for you” that can handle the details. If you make a new law you have plenty of examples to look at and so are much less likely to accidentally create some unintended consequence that is worse than the current situation.
