Most of Thor's arguments can be rebutted with "that's not my problem." If you don't have the resources to make a live service game, don't make a live service game. Random people are not obligated to fund your passion projects. That is not being unfair, that is making smart financial decisions. If the only remaining option is to fleece a loyal fanbase for all they have and then kick them to the curb when the wheels fall off, then that model is rotten to the core and the people in charge are not good people. Also, private servers and their owners have proven many times that they can manage themselves just fine, so all the arguments about how they can't falls apart instantly.
It's honestly hilarious that his argument is literally "won't someone PLEASE think of the corpos". He'd rather see thousands if not millions of customers defrauded than inconvenience the game companies.
Kinda glad that somebody else said this. My philosophy on the matter is: Devs' issues are devs' issues, gamers' issues are gamers' issues. I don't "support" games so much as I just buy games that look fun, and don't try to bankrupt me or monopolize my time with FOMO. I've played a few MMOs in the past, and while I've had some good moments in them, the one thing I came to realize was that those stand-out moments had nothing to do with the *_game._* It always had to do with just hanging out with and talking to people. Most of these games, I probably lost interest in, months before finally leaving, because the social aspect blinded me to how much they weren't actually fun. Not past a couple of months, at most, of playtime anyway. So I'm not particularly fussed if we lose MMOs or other live service style games. Great games were made long before their existence, and will continue to be made long after. The company may not be able to milk money off the players for cheap costume garbage, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, since, as you said, it's not my problem.
As a game dev too this is my stance yeah. I appreciate Thor's POV, especially as someone more on the design side who doesn't interact much with server side on a technical level, but I also think most of his arguments kind of miss the core point of "these products we purchased have no clear end of life attached to them, and we're getting screwed out of access". Even as a dev I'm of the opinion that if a game is going to get shut down, you need to make this clear BEFORE purchasing. Many people point out the ToS/EULAs, but if you're like me and mainly buy physical still the EULAs you get are the ones in the game, after buying it and booting it for the first time. It's incredibly fucking shady to hide the fact that you'll lose access to a game at some undisclosed point in time in a ToS you get after buying it, and that you have to sign to actually make the game playable in most instances. For all the legal arguments I'm sure there's something to be said about customers essentially getting handcuffed into signing unfair terms after already paying full price for a game.
From Thors YT Short called Say no: "Saying no and offering a new solution than the task that was asked of you is incredibly powerfull"....paraphrasing later words here: "i wont write what you asked on the wihte board but i will sit with you and talk about what parameters you have so we can work it out verbally with each other and go frome there." Literaly talks about offering better solutions and TALKING to the people on the other side of the conversation And i fell like posting something like this AFTER refusing to talk to people behind the initiative is tone deaf.
I wouldn't even be mad if he didn't put on the nice guy "I see all sides" type act. Which, no one should act that way. Everyone has a breaking point, at which they won't even discuss a subject, but some people seem to think they're above standard and principal. The hypocrisy just makes the bad situation, worse.
ToS and Eula shouldnt even be seen as legitimate informative disclaimers They're literally bloated text purpousely displayed in such a way to divert attention from it all the while save themselves from legal reprocussions in the current state of affairs. Win win. Player doesnt read it, no loss of costumers, and if players get angry over it, it was always there, though luck It's scummy
More than a decade ago a videogame company ran experiment to check how many of their customers read EULA by adding the "we own your soul BTW" clause. They found that pretty much noone read it. Fun anecdote. On a more serious note, EULAs are typically purposefully written in a way a layman can neither understand nor be bothered to read. Noone is reading through 80 pages of legalese.
@@MrHitmancheg Good thing in the EU those types of EULAs that are just meant to inconvenience the consumer can be rendered null and then actual costumer protections law will kick in.
It annoys me that Thor is going on an useless tangent rather than acknowledging the problem. The entire narrative of the client-server re architecturing is blatantly misguided if not outright misleading. People are NOT asking for games to be redesigned like that, they are asking for the server side to be released when companies are no longer interested in running their live service. Be it because they are closing the developer or just don't find it profitable enough to bother. Taking away the game and functionally destroying it violates their end of the monopoly under copyright law. Government regulation is long past due in the gaming industry no matter how much it scares their insiders. They dodged it for years with the ESRB which is largely a puppet entity funded by the industry with zero enforcement power. The industry needs to be hostile to predatory business practices but since its instead protective and increasingly less accountable/reactive to player/customer outrage actual government regulation needs to happen.
Thats not how it works XDDD You cant give the server side to public domain thats straight up NOT how servers function. You literally need to design the damn game to have this function, and its not easy to apply to every kind of game. Especially if we're talking about making LAWS that will end up applying to games that currently exist as it is. Yeah you WOULD need to redesign the game to serve this function of publicly hostable servers and some games DO have this, but its not possible for every kind of game such as thors examples. He made a important point that you prove right with your statement, there are levels of nuance here that falls on deaf ears of fellas like you outside the industry of DEVELOPING and creating the games that creates unreasonable standards. You dont understand why its unreasonable because developers have been so lazy and scummy lately that you want to hold them accountable for literally anything at this point. They've been making bad games lately, and treating their customers like garbage, you got every right to wanna hold AAA studios responsible but dawg this isnt it. This would just harm future games in development, restricting how people make games in the future, which sucks.
take it from a software developer, making a video game backend not only portable but also able to works on different infrastructure is incredibly hard if not impossible without restructuring the whole backend, most game backends have deployment pipelines and complex infrastructure with different resources that supports it, that can only works on a specific could provides (aws, gc, etc) and won’t be portable. it’s only possible for simple games that only require server instance to support it
@@moustafamohsen you don't need to make it work "on many infrastructures". nowadays most game servers just use an already established codebase/libraries with some personalization. if it works on one normal server, it works on most. it's why you see private servers of games without the publisher releasing the source code. the difficult part has always been load balancing, performance and global infrastructure support, things that should be of no real concern for community servers.
Thor's arguement with League of Legends falls apart instantly because DOTA on Warcraft 3 has been a thing for DECADES now and the community is able to handle cheaters just fine. So the point is vapid and empty. His arguement against MMO's is also empty because private servers exist and yes some make money, others keep the game alive for the love of the game.
a) League uses LAN clients on turnaments b) Thor can't use mmos like an example because not even week before this video he cried how during his time at blizzard he was flooded by support tickets about private servers
While he has points, he delivers it so closemindedly while also forgetting that there are several reasons why petitions are vague, that I can't take his take seriously genuine.
I think the main problem with The Crew, is that, something like The Crew 2, most races you do are offline, and the "bosses" you race against are also offline, so you do have a simple and fair way of racing completely offline. If they left you with the option to do only those races, the game would be fine. Besides, they removed the game from everyones library simply to not have someone create modded or unofficial servers, which is very scummy imo.
His argument that developers need to recode the entire game to be client only when game is made to be online only is ridiculous. There's no reason for there to not be law to request of developers to release server binaries. Also there's an online only game that I've been playing for 15 years and it has exited for 20 and at most it had like 100 player online at the same time, the servers are still running even though there's only like 0-5 players on at the same time. The cost for servers of a game that has almost no players is so cheap and if developers want to keep server code private they can keep hosting, they won't be losing almost any money so they can make a decision If it is worth doing or should they share the code for players to do that themselves. If I buy a a game, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to play it 30 years down the line when im 59. Nostlagia is very addictive and I often go back to play old games. There's a reason beyond new games being worse p2w trash but a lot of players play older games without the bullshit. League of legends can be hosted by players, we just need server code otherwise how was garena able to host servers before riot decided to cancel the partnership? I don't want to see league of legends become unplayable 10-20 If years down the line when league of legends 2 or another game takes over and for some reason riot decides to stop running the servers because there is almost no players.
People aren't disliking Thor because of how he represents his argument. They dislike him because he's just plain wrong. The initiative doesn't aim to make developers support servers infinitely. At best, it would probably suggest that after the live support period for the game is over, other players can reverse engineer and run their own servers, and the original devs can't come after them for petty reasons. Online only experiences are mostly a cancer anyway. I haven't played FF14, but most of what I've heard praised about that game is the story, which I assume, based on my time in other MMOs, is almost entirely a single player experience, whereas the multiplayer aspect would be raids, dungeons, etc. that is all side content from the main plot. You can do that in a single player, offline game. It doesn't _NEED_ to be online. The only reason they made it so was to consistently milk you, for the same game. The part with Ross explaining how he thinks the initiative would pass, is simply an acceptance of reality. Politicians DO like easy wins (most everyone does), and they do like distractions. Is that a good thing, morally? No, but that's not what Ross is trying to change. Political morality is a different conversation. He's discussing how he can get the initiative to not just be some throw away thought that they never even talk about. Jason seems to think Ross approves of how politics works, and I don't think he does. Ross is just staying on topic. And lastly, just because some things are standards, doesn't mean they're right. Licensing that keeps the game from running, or arbitrary time limits that stop you from playing past a certain point. I would argue that neither of these should be practiced in the first place. Of course it's great, for the _company,_ but for the _customer_ it's practically abuse, and spits upon the very notion of ownership. Which, I don't understand why we can't own video games anymore. As far as I know, each purchase generates a unique key anyway. Not sure why it's made out to be some impossible task to say "You _own_ this key. No one can take it from you, not even us." But anything to line a big tech's pockets, eh? Moral of the story is: Jason has connections to someone making a live service right now, so I don't believe he's even arguing in good faith.
I like a lot of Thor's takes on other issues, but he really doesn't seem to want to actually have an honest conversation about the initiative. Lots of people have asked him to talk with Ross, to maybe even work together to improve the consumer rights side that he has acknowledged has issues, but it's fallen on deaf ears. Thor just seems to want to slap the entire thing as, "I don't like the wording, therefore bad, no dissent allowed!" Hell, he even contradicts himself in that second video, saying that the people don't get to decide what other people play and what should and should not exist, then turning around and arguing that preserving a MMO that only has a handful of players left isn't preserving anything since it's past it's prime. Thor himself breathed some more life into a "dead" game when he found out that Global Agenda had servers up again - he logged in, he relished in the nostalgia trip, he got his community to download it and play... but by his own logic, the plug should be pulled and nobody should be able to have that experience. The tiny community that arranges times for people to get on and queue up enough people to have matches, too bad for them. Game preservation isn't about preserving the community at its prime, that's impossible, it's about preserving the world and the experiences that world offered. It is true that there may be things that couldn't be done solo, but it's also true that almost all live service games have large numbers of players who primarily handle the majority of content solo. Games like The Crew can be played with AI drivers in races, League of Legends has bot matches as an option, MMOs like World of Warcraft has massive swaths of single-player story content spanning numerous expansions... very few games require multiple players in order to function at all and those are explicitly social games that aren't typically live services. Legislation that would require game creators to put out an end-of-life patch to render the game still playable would be something that the games of the future could be developed with that in mind. These patches could include the bot behavior and change the player data hosting to being local instead of remotely authenticated. If the developers are feeling particularly charitable, they could also provide server hosting software, much like you find with other games that thrive based upon privately hosted servers (Ark, Minecraft, etc). The core initiative isn't asking for the tools to run full-fledged private servers, it's asking for the games to be accessible for those who still wish to access them, even if the worlds preserved will be lonely... at least they will exist for those who cherish them or wish to see what once was.
He pulled for Global Agenda, despite making this video? I'm convinced that his connection to Rivals 2 (no idea what the hell kinda game it even is) is clouding his judgement. Not that I'm giving him a pass, his opinion on this is divisive and rather moronic. It just helps me understand how he got there.
@@GamePlayuh9510 Yeah, he brought up the game on stream and talked about how he loved playing it years ago and how he missed it. Someone in chat informed him that the servers were brought back up for internal testing and the community found out, so Hi-Rez left it running and allowed the players back into the game. He down loaded the client and logged in, streamed it, etc. It's a game long past its prime, dead by almost every definition, but preserved by the love of a small community and kindness of a studio. It's making them no money, but buying good will. By Thor's logic in his second video, it shouldn't be preserved like that, yet it brought him joy to find it still existed.
what PS isn't getting is that ross is asking for the server files, not to change the whole game or keep hosting it. change the realmlist and give them dedicated server software
If you see mirrors and clips of his initial reactions to the initiative, it's very clear he actually feels vitriol towards it even going so far as to insult Ross and the fact that he refuses to talk with him to clear things up it's enough of an indication that he's hard stancing against it. The videos he uploaded to the channel are less harsh but still do a poor job representing the movement and its goals, many of the points he raise are pretty much non-sequiturs meant to cause fear and cast doubt and then if you read between the lines his actual solutions are "Gamers being comfortable with the fact they don't own the games, they bought a license that can be revoked", "Gamers accepting games aren't forever and move on to more products" and lastly "It's not worth preserving a multiplayer game if there's only a fraction of the players." None of those are real solutions.
I personally feel Piratesoftwares points are all built upon wrong ideas or misunderstandings and now that he has put them up on front, he doesn't want to go back on them. Most of the example games he gives are of games that wouldn't be affected. He keeps demanding for the petition with a word limit to be extensively detailed. And even mentions monetization of private servers like this new thing to be afraid of when it already happens with WoW. I really encourage anyone living on Europe to support this. What is being presented in Stop Killing Games is NOT a definitive solution, it's a formal presentation of consumer worry to the European goverment. They will later on have the responsability of regulating the matter after addressing different information sources in the topic
@@WisteriaNerium 1: Who cares? It's me and 5 of my mates, who gives a shit about hacks? 2: It didn't make enough money, before he wanted to pull the killswitch, why would he think it'd make money, just being kept alive by the community??? 3: So what? If anything, that's a plus, because now me and my mates can play without some dipshit ganking us.
He must be misconstruing it on purpose. I don´t doubt he is knowledgable, i think however, that he is, for whatever reason, disingenuous. My respect for him has massively diminished, because he acts like a blockhead in this this whole ordeal. And he must be doing it on purpose. Like, AS IF he doesn´t understand that people don´t play The crew anymore, sure, but they still paid for it, and thus it doesn´t matter if they don´t play as much, or barely at all anymore. A Paid Product, MUST AT ALL TIMES remain property of the customer, PERIOD! We can have a discussion about HOW that is done, but not about IF IT HAS TO BE DONE.
Rarely comment on vides, but this seems to be a nothing burger no? Why care about servers for a game if nobody is using them. I just checked the crew and the number of players is 0 right now.
@@ggs4869 You're missing the point. As the other person pointed out, Ubisoft blocked access to people who have already payed for it. Thats the problem.
I believe the license argument is stupid. Owning a copy of the game doesn't make a user immune to a ban. Especially when there are both public and community run servers.
Idk why Thor thinks that this initiative should bend over backwards to be pro developer. This is like fossil fuel industry getting mad at green industry activism and policy proposals. Yes we know live service games are insanely profitable for devs, there are very few very small advantages for consumer tho with a lot of downsides. Being associated (or even helping develop them from what I've heard) with live service games and working at Blizzard anti cheat team is totally clouding his judgment. Like right now I can go and play CS1.6 on private server even if valve got deleted from reality. Are there cheaters? sometimes yeah, but somehow its not much worse than any current "live service" game. They get banned and the server admins work on countermeasures. I played Lineage II on totally unofficial servers and it was amazing. You can still do it. You can organize people to play on it and vet them one by one if you are so worried about cheaters.
Damn thor is really good at trying to sound smart while saying: all your ideas are shit, there is a solution but i dont know what it is so we should just let it keep getting worse
I can't follow Thors arguements... the real problem is that the people who "buy" something aren't told that in reality they are buying nothing? So a bad practice is ok as long as people are told that they are doing something to their detriment? So e.g. something that causes an addiction is ok, as long as I tell people that what they are consuming is getting them addicted (I'm exaggerating)? That view seems extremely US centric and I am borderline certain that most tos/eula aren't as simple to use in conjunction with a lot of european contract laws as Thor makes it out to be. I hope that the practice of live service games of the last 15 years goes the way of the dodo. I would go further and say this isn't simply about licenses or preservation, but what we, as a society and consumers want. For example (european citizen here): A lot of people voted for better environmental laws to protect nature and got it and if you want to e.g. build a company in the EU you have to adhere to these rules. In my country smoking became heavily regulated and taxed and I think that it was for the better. So should developers be forced to make games a certain way? No, they can make the games they want. This petition wont force them to anything of the kind. BUT if they want to sell it in the EU or offer their "service" in th EU they would have to adhere to the rules of the EU, it's their choice. Call it tyranny of the masses, but if the people vote for it, this will be the new rules to do buisiness in the EU. And lets face it. It's nothing new. Wolfenstein and other games had to be censored in germany. Ohh how we all remember the outcries of devs and publishers how their artistic visions got destroyed and all the work that was necessary to change the games... oh wait, most of them changed their games, because money is king. The same goes for China and the depiction of Skeletons or how you have to adhere to certain regulations to do buisiness, change it or don't do buisiness with them... I am prettty sure there will be enough companies that will make live service games under these new conditions, if they will ever come to fruition. This all reminds me somewhat of "Thank you for smoking" and I am aware that I am heavily simplyfying a lot of things here. But in the end I think that this initiative will do way more good for the consumers than bad and Thors argumentation showed me why I support "stop killing games". In a way his videos are a prime example why everyone should support this initiative, so thanks to Thor. We may not necessarily be able to change how games are made or handled by devs and publishers (nor necessarily should we), but we very well can set the ruleset under which they are sold to us, as we do with a lot of things , if that makes any sense (e.g. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive anyone?).
The licensing argument is a bit nebulous. If you have any game (racing/sports) that existed before the internet connectivity era, it probably still works, provided you have the hardware to play it.
Licensing is only valid between the seller and the license owner, so for example, if you bought GTA SA on the PS2, Rockstar/the license owner from the songs that play in that game can't go to your house and break your CD because the license deal expired. The license deal is between the Seller and the license owner, if said deal is over, the seller can't sell new copies of his product that have said license attached to it. Again, when GTA SA was remastered, Rockstar removed the original songs from GTA SA. Thor is 100% wrong on this issue and/or how the law works.
Thor/PirateSoftware DOES NOT want to help with videogame preservation. Especially since he's making the game himself right now xD Instead of bashing the initiative he could've actually watch Ross' fairly recent video and then he would get his answers to his (not real) questions. I'm calling them "not real" because they're not Thor's genuine questions and he avoids all the conversations with Ross for some weird reason. Well, we kinda know for what reason, it's just that Thor doesn't want to say it.
@@YouBoo-hx9hz Rivals 2 by Offbrand Games, an always-online fighting game that's only always-online so the devs can kill it if they get in a Twitter argument.
Thor is literally trying to lobby in favor of his soon to be finished live service game, because if a law like that passes, it directly affects him and his bottomline, and we can't have that, can't we?
@@NaderinZim sorry, but I don't quite understand your comment. Are you for game preservation or against it? Just asking 😅 I, for one, am FOR game preservation 😄
My issue with this is that his take presents the initiative in a PURPOSEFULLY twisted way to make it seem what it's not. As well as removing the comment from Ross that explained those points which Thor misrepresented. I've unsubscribed from Thor and stopped watching his content because of it. This is extremely disingenuous and is very harmful to the Consumer Rights.
He removed Ross's comment?! I had an opinon on Thor, it seemed like a "he can't be wrong" feeling emanating, I always (from the like 5 clips I've seen (apart form his vampire survivors take)) agree with him but after this I've completely lost respect removing a comment to support your claim is scummy if true.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo That is the thing, Thor is not a bad guy, he says a lot of good things on most issues. That said he is reacting negatively to the threat of regulation from the perspective of a programmer. That warps his worldview on government's regulatory power.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo There has been quite a lot of talk about comments supporting Ross get's instant nuked on site. Whether it's Thor or him setting up googles auto banning bot or whatever i don't know. However a ton of people have brought up their comments, kind or aggressive don't matter. They get yeeted with the instant.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo There was another short he put out a while back, that wasn't as bad as this one, but it was pretty dumb take. Basically, he tried to argue that timed exclusivity is good for gamers. He clearly got push back on that one, because he made a comment on the video, doubling down on his own take, and providing some really poor examples. Which was, he just showed a cherry-picked list of steam games that used to be epic exclusives, that have high review scores. Doesn't account for the people who would choose not to buy the game at all when it came to steam (which is necessary to be allowed to make a review), not does it account for Hades 2 being steam early access instead of epic exclusive again, or Kingdom Hearts releasing on steam in the same buggy state that it was in on epic, despite one of his arguments being that the devs would use the cash injection to improve/fix games. Anyway, that was my little early warning that the guy was far from being some kind of gaming messiah.
@@GamePlayuh9510 I didn't know about that, thanks, I've only probably known about him for 4 months and never seeked out his content so I really don't know anything about Thor, it really seems like he only gets devs opinions, super self-serving, and is against leveling the playing field for the consumer and instead defining what a live service is rather than making it better for the consumer. Which are the problems I had in that 2nd statment, it's really baffling, unless you think of him as a dev.
Thor is great for some r/iamverysmart content. I don't think that he realises that Stop Killing Games isn't writig a law, they're trying to start the conversation and let the relevant and qualified people figure out the specifics of a law to put into practice.
The crew was mostly single-player, and it was NOT a live sevice game. Not by a legal definition, nor a loose game dev definition. In the code there was found an offline menu btw... A sequel is NOT a replacement for the old game. You can't know how long a game is gonna be alive, so we can't give you an "expiration date" ... Yeah, thats the whole point! You shouldn't. Sell it as a good, not a service! "If the sequel doesn't suck, most players will move over" ... Sounds to me like a massive IF. *cough* Overwatch 2 *cough* Warcraft 3 reforged *cough* Licensing only accounts for selling the game, not running servers. Also, the way the market works, that you need to "license" the look of a car to put it in a videogame, is r3t4rd3d to me! I can still officialy buy "Need for Speed Most Wanted". I have serious doubts that there are licensing issues with that. Accursed farms has explained the reason why the innitiative is vague in nature. A little bit of a reality check... EVERY game you buy on STEAM, it comes with a EULA (end user LICENSE agreement)... EVERY game is technically live service. And it shouldnt be! The reasons Ross has listed are "Why the innitiative COULD pass", not that those are reasons for the innitiative to exist! You may complain how it might not be the right way to push this through with a statement "politicians like easy wins", butt that doesnt change the facts that it's true... "Some people met their spuse or married in live service games" ... Now wouldn't that suck so fukin hard if you couldn't visit the place you met your loved one, just because a game publisher said FVCK YOU?! ... Yeah... "Wasting hours upon hours playing gacha games" ... There is not a single reason why those need to be a live service game... Most are running entirely on your computer as they are, only updating a server with your account whenever you do an action. When the publisher decides to shut down the servers, there is no reason why those updates would need to still exist. Just let me play offline. Looking through youtubes catalog on this issue, I found only 3 developers (including Pirate Sofware) that are agains this innitiative, and found several game devs and software engineers that 100% support it. Saying that Thor is speaking on behalf of developers is the disgusting thing here... 2nd video All those exploints he said are already viable today. Nothing changes. Its funny that he mentions TF2... The game that at launch did not have official servers and players needed to run their own. The game that is still thriving ONLY thanks to private servers, because the official were overrun with bots and Valve didn't give a shit about it until it hurt their bottom line... Yeah, funny... EVERYONE would get those server binaries! No, you wouldnt monetize it, cuz there would be someone else who would run it cheaper, or on donations, so no profit for you! Congrats! You've just put yourself at risk by hacking and digitaly abusing a company, possibly facing huge consequences, for NOTHING! ... Not to mention, if the game is live service, the game should only be getting better with continuos updates by the developer. Why the fvck would you wanna kill it, just so you could privately run version 1.00.0 ? So how does it work now, when the studio/publisher is dead, and I run and monetize their long gone live service game?... Did he seriously said that if the initiative passes, then DDOSing, BOTing, hacking and all other digital abuse would be legal? O_o... The fvck is he smoking? "You don't get to define what players get to play or not play" ... Heh... Can you tell that to the companies that are saying I no longer can play certain games please? Like the OG Warcraft 3? His father still works at Blizzard I think, so this shouldnt be an issue, right? "You shouldn't be able to tell devs what they can and cannot build" ... SNAP BACK TO REALITY! Gaming market is full of stuff you can't put into videogames, the fvck are you talking about? What was the last game that I could kill children in? Oh yeah, OG warcraft 3... Every industry is packed with all sorts of regulations, game development included. He has NO IDEA what hes talking about... I have serious doubt that you can put "ethnic cleansing" on steam. "There is no incentive to build live service games anymore" - BRUHHHH! The live service genre is overflowing with money! Thats the reason everyone wants to get in! Implying that coding the game from ground up to accommodate for "end of life plan" would cost more that what those games are bringing in is ridiculous... "You're not preserving those games in their peak" ... Guess we should tear down the pyramids, all ancient castles, any history memorabilia really... What? Your grandpa can no longer walk, and needs to be tied to a wheelchair? Why "preserve" him in that "sorry" state? Just end him... No, he specifically said he won't talk to Ross...
Yea like most games, theres not a single thing about the crew that required it to be a live service game. Games like flight simulator are live service games because the file size for the world map is literally over 2 milling GBs and so it has to be streamed in (which is live service) for the best seamless experience. Of cause being able to download sections of the game would be possible and good but forget that part. The crew nor any other game has this issue which makes their “live service” pointless. It’s only there for control which is what they used it for in the end
Wildstar isn't necessarily *thriving*, but there's a lot of people who miss it, and the people working on Nexus Forever still seem to have a long way to go with their hard work.
His argument about liscensing has one solution that could solve 2 really large issues I have with humanity, simply get rid of copyright as a law. Copyright has no reason to exist in this day and age except as a way to let monopolies control culture and remain stagnant and lazy. If we get rid of copyright and patents, then companies of every type will NEED to innovate to stay afloat, we need less laws that protects monopolies and this will help lower prices and lower monopolies grip on humanity.
The cool thing is licensing isn’t an issue. The worse thing it can do is stop a game from being sold, and whatever the licensed material is could just be removed. So there isn’t a issue with it at all
It's taken 3 tries to attempt to watch Thor's honestly kinda braindead take on this. The wording is vague because you have to be with politicians and it's aimed at single player games. The Crew can EASILY be an offline game but to track things it needs the servers. This is aimed at games that pretty much already run entirely offline besides server checks and it's also leaving a loophole for publishers to give server code for the people who want to keep playing the game like is done with most battlefield games. I play battlefield 3 (2011 title) now because players can make their own servers
Friendly reminder that PirateSoftware is Director of Strategy of Offbrand Games, publisher of Rivals 2. Rivals 2 will be an always-online live-service game. Stop Killing Games is a conflict of interest for him. That's the real reason he is so against it and he will make up any bullshit to justify that.
35:15 this is funny moment he doesnt want discussion with Ross (because his aguement is card house) He point that developers cant speak, he cn, but he doesn't want too Rpthis how you know he has no stance but some strage interest
You can take a dev out of Blizzard, but you can't take the breast milk out of him. Thor's stance against game preservation is ignorant at best and actively malicious advocacy for anti-consumer practices at worst, and I'm leaning towards it being the latter.
The crux of my issue, is that I think Live service is a terrible model, and if we aren't learning this lesson NOW, after the first big generation of live service games in the mainstream are dying off, then we are setting ourselves up for another decade of live service trash. I think pirate had a shit argument out of the gate, because at it's core, he is defending the live service model. And I think it's it's failure is undeniable for anyone paying attention.
I thought this was gonna be silly and not serious stuff so my dumb ass got 5 minutes in before I realized what was actually happening, adding this to my watch later for when I actually have the mental capacity (just got home from work on one of the busiest days of our year) to actually give it the attention it deserves. Just wanted to say I love what you do man. I'll edit this post (without changing OP) with thoughts later/as I go if I remember to get around to this (ADHD go brrrrr)
I'm gonna repost my comments on his vids as replies to this one (Don't mind me, Im kinda dumb very often) Edit: also love the vids and keeping this active/in the public eye is good
I don't think it should be enforced but rather normalized I wanna see defiance resurrected and many other older live service games like it also I don't think functional means fun or fully playable like giving league of legend LAN support, rather than having people open dead servers
If an attack on a game were to happen and server architecture become public how could someone profit off of it given that anyone could make a server that doesn't have the same monetization also I think there are far more cases of this working for games favor than harming it or the company behind it This happens with Realm Of The Mad God private servers when someone attempts to monetize it, the server usually dies quickly after then someone else rises to take it's place
It feels like a lot of devs take issue with this initiative because it seems limiting or crates needless work. But rhs industry failures are not problems that needs a technical solution. Like the bare minimum outcome would be for studios to disclose that a game might become unplayable at some point. The sum of work for a studio would be a single line of text on store pages. No big redesigned server-client architecture or hundreds of extra work hours needed. And if those games sell worse when that fact is disclosed, then its something to consider when planning future products.
there are also many devs in the comments from Thors videos that are entirely against his view on things. one dev who workes for a company basically said something along the lines of "i worked many years on this and it feels awful for it to not exist after a few years. i can't even look at my own work anymore." so it's difficult for me to take devs serious if they are against that initiative. Like there is not enough pride in your own work that you put out in the open for people to experience.
I only agaree with his poits of licences if it were some kind of subscription. And charging a really low amount of money per month. But a live service game with a single player price, should be considered buying the game.
My problem with live service is that i could wake up the next day and can't play the game because I can't get a psn account or the game gets taken down for legal issues
i understand pirate software to an extend love the guy great advises 80% of the games that are "live service" are convertable to single player only (the only problem with that is do i need other ppl i my game or not ) and yeah the costs for converting but whats so conplicated about that look at server copy code from server to game change values so it make sense without real money currency with 20-30 ppl maybe a month or two and done but yeah its money always money only take money my 0.02$ 😢 p.s.: only exemple i know of is marvel avenger live service game was shutting down devs converted it to single so ppl dont feel ripped off
@@BulletSponge71436 He is not bad, he is just very childish specialy with the demeanour he had towards the subject and does a full straw man falacy that helps him even less.
The sheer number of comments rebuking thors horrible take on this is filling me with hope. I liked thor and his takes on a lot of stuff. But i had to unsubscribe after this shit. Its SO clearly driven by greed and boomerisms, it's disgusting. And although people ALMOST have it right by saying he's getting defensive over it because of him being a dev. But no. Its because he's a PRODUCER now. If he were JUST a dev, he would still be on our side. But he agrees with the sentiment that you should be allowed to throw away whatever your customer buys just so you can resell it later, he just isnt saying that part out loud for obvious reasons.
I only have 2 points taken from all of the discourse around this 1. The devs/publishers should not be able to remove the game from your library regardless of whether the app is still functional or not. 2. From those who says Thors points are not the users concerns then fine, I would say the best outcome is that the devs completely wash their hands of the games after sunsetting it and any potential problems/legal issues from private servers are entirely on the players and they also will not provide ANY help to make it possible, let the playerbase figure out how to make it all from scratch themselves, in exchange the devs should not be able to stop them from trying to make their own private servers so if they succeed, great and if they fail then too bad there werent enough people interested
To truly preserve something that's what a Museum is for. So what about Games like Law Breakers, Gigantic, Battleborn or the other failed Live Services/Online Focused Games that got shut down.? Do you not understand just how many games would get resurrected and like his point where the fuck is that money going to come from. The government isn't going to create a Videogame development studio to preserve the game for you that's why people started creating Emulators. I understand as people why the idea of preservation is so strong and it's because eventually we die and would like to leave something behind but again for videogames. the truth is that I agree with 4 eyes on the whole that the proposition overlooks so many things and doesn't count for the future and that's what he's worried about.
People can create their own servers. That's how it's been done for decades. Shouldn't you be in school, since you're clearly not old enough to be on RUclips if you don't remember that?
Honestly, I kinda see both side have very valid points. Player don’t want to see their favourite game gone and developer have the right to make their game the way they want. However, I actually agree with him. The language of the movement is so vague, it actually feels incredibly insulting that think they can win with that proposal. The fact they think it a “easy win” is crazy as hell, it make us gamer look like mob of idiot
It has been explained ad nauseam why the initiative was worded the way it was (something which PirateSoftware refused to explain or understand), not to mention that some of what Ross said was a bit of cynical humor. The initiative is designed to be a simple explanation of their goals while citing some EU directives to prove they have jurisdiction of what it's being asked of them, because it's for citizens of the EU to voice their concerns it doesn't have to be complex and in fact they have set a word limit to it, it's NOT law. Once enough signatures have been collected a "second phase" will start on which the people behind the initiative, law makers, and other experts in the legal field and within the industry will have to discuss and narrow it down so if you go into specifics you run into the potential problem of writing yourself into a corner. PirateSoftware has misrepresented the movement several times, refused to explain how EU law works in general and many of the points he raised are pretty much fearmongering. Will this shake up the industry a little bit? Yeah, but things will adjust. We're not asking developers to shell out millions to keep servers running, or to give out IPs or trade secrets. In many games, end-of-life support would be as simple as allowing games to only play their offline components once support runs out. Since if this initiative passes, it would only affect the end-of-life/support part of a game. Meaning many, many years down the line.
The initiative isn't vague, you're just repeating something Thor said to feel included in the conversation that's going over your head and you don't have the mental capability to understand. Case in point: Thor said the initiative says it'll force developers to work on the same game forever. *Does it actually say that?*
It’s vague at all. Thor has not once explained how it is vague, and you have not once explained how it is vague. So do the world a favour go sign, and not speak again
Two reasons why it's "vague". 1: It's a European Citizen's Initiative. There's a word limit (actually, a character limit). 2: IT'S A EUROPEAN CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE! It's not a law proposal, it's not a draft, it's literally just a conversation starter. Nevermind the fact that, any "specificity" at this stage would just be needlessly tying the consumers hands behind their backs. Also, what the heck does Thor need specificity for? He's the programmer, not us, why should we provide him with a roadmap for anything?
Most of Thor's arguments can be rebutted with "that's not my problem." If you don't have the resources to make a live service game, don't make a live service game. Random people are not obligated to fund your passion projects. That is not being unfair, that is making smart financial decisions. If the only remaining option is to fleece a loyal fanbase for all they have and then kick them to the curb when the wheels fall off, then that model is rotten to the core and the people in charge are not good people. Also, private servers and their owners have proven many times that they can manage themselves just fine, so all the arguments about how they can't falls apart instantly.
It's honestly hilarious that his argument is literally "won't someone PLEASE think of the corpos". He'd rather see thousands if not millions of customers defrauded than inconvenience the game companies.
Kinda glad that somebody else said this. My philosophy on the matter is: Devs' issues are devs' issues, gamers' issues are gamers' issues. I don't "support" games so much as I just buy games that look fun, and don't try to bankrupt me or monopolize my time with FOMO. I've played a few MMOs in the past, and while I've had some good moments in them, the one thing I came to realize was that those stand-out moments had nothing to do with the *_game._* It always had to do with just hanging out with and talking to people. Most of these games, I probably lost interest in, months before finally leaving, because the social aspect blinded me to how much they weren't actually fun. Not past a couple of months, at most, of playtime anyway. So I'm not particularly fussed if we lose MMOs or other live service style games. Great games were made long before their existence, and will continue to be made long after. The company may not be able to milk money off the players for cheap costume garbage, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, since, as you said, it's not my problem.
As a game dev too this is my stance yeah. I appreciate Thor's POV, especially as someone more on the design side who doesn't interact much with server side on a technical level, but I also think most of his arguments kind of miss the core point of "these products we purchased have no clear end of life attached to them, and we're getting screwed out of access".
Even as a dev I'm of the opinion that if a game is going to get shut down, you need to make this clear BEFORE purchasing. Many people point out the ToS/EULAs, but if you're like me and mainly buy physical still the EULAs you get are the ones in the game, after buying it and booting it for the first time. It's incredibly fucking shady to hide the fact that you'll lose access to a game at some undisclosed point in time in a ToS you get after buying it, and that you have to sign to actually make the game playable in most instances. For all the legal arguments I'm sure there's something to be said about customers essentially getting handcuffed into signing unfair terms after already paying full price for a game.
From Thors YT Short called Say no:
"Saying no and offering a new solution than the task that was asked of you is incredibly powerfull"....paraphrasing later words here: "i wont write what you asked on the wihte board but i will sit with you and talk about what parameters you have so we can work it out verbally with each other and go frome there."
Literaly talks about offering better solutions and TALKING to the people on the other side of the conversation
And i fell like posting something like this AFTER refusing to talk to people behind the initiative is tone deaf.
I wouldn't even be mad if he didn't put on the nice guy "I see all sides" type act. Which, no one should act that way. Everyone has a breaking point, at which they won't even discuss a subject, but some people seem to think they're above standard and principal. The hypocrisy just makes the bad situation, worse.
ToS and Eula shouldnt even be seen as legitimate informative disclaimers
They're literally bloated text purpousely displayed in such a way to divert attention from it all the while save themselves from legal reprocussions in the current state of affairs. Win win. Player doesnt read it, no loss of costumers, and if players get angry over it, it was always there, though luck
It's scummy
More than a decade ago a videogame company ran experiment to check how many of their customers read EULA by adding the "we own your soul BTW" clause. They found that pretty much noone read it. Fun anecdote.
On a more serious note, EULAs are typically purposefully written in a way a layman can neither understand nor be bothered to read. Noone is reading through 80 pages of legalese.
@@MrHitmancheg Good thing in the EU those types of EULAs that are just meant to inconvenience the consumer can be rendered null and then actual costumer protections law will kick in.
I'm sorry your mother gave you FAS
It annoys me that Thor is going on an useless tangent rather than acknowledging the problem. The entire narrative of the client-server re architecturing is blatantly misguided if not outright misleading. People are NOT asking for games to be redesigned like that, they are asking for the server side to be released when companies are no longer interested in running their live service. Be it because they are closing the developer or just don't find it profitable enough to bother. Taking away the game and functionally destroying it violates their end of the monopoly under copyright law. Government regulation is long past due in the gaming industry no matter how much it scares their insiders. They dodged it for years with the ESRB which is largely a puppet entity funded by the industry with zero enforcement power. The industry needs to be hostile to predatory business practices but since its instead protective and increasingly less accountable/reactive to player/customer outrage actual government regulation needs to happen.
I mean. He is part of an industry. Maintaining the status quo is to his benefit.
Thats not how it works XDDD
You cant give the server side to public domain thats straight up NOT how servers function.
You literally need to design the damn game to have this function, and its not easy to apply to every kind of game. Especially if we're talking about making LAWS that will end up applying to games that currently exist as it is. Yeah you WOULD need to redesign the game to serve this function of publicly hostable servers and some games DO have this, but its not possible for every kind of game such as thors examples.
He made a important point that you prove right with your statement, there are levels of nuance here that falls on deaf ears of fellas like you outside the industry of DEVELOPING and creating the games that creates unreasonable standards. You dont understand why its unreasonable because developers have been so lazy and scummy lately that you want to hold them accountable for literally anything at this point. They've been making bad games lately, and treating their customers like garbage, you got every right to wanna hold AAA studios responsible but dawg this isnt it. This would just harm future games in development, restricting how people make games in the future, which sucks.
take it from a software developer, making a video game backend not only portable but also able to works on different infrastructure is incredibly hard if not impossible without restructuring the whole backend, most game backends have deployment pipelines and complex infrastructure with different resources that supports it, that can only works on a specific could provides (aws, gc, etc) and won’t be portable.
it’s only possible for simple games that only require server instance to support it
@@moustafamohsen you don't need to make it work "on many infrastructures". nowadays most game servers just use an already established codebase/libraries with some personalization. if it works on one normal server, it works on most.
it's why you see private servers of games without the publisher releasing the source code.
the difficult part has always been load balancing, performance and global infrastructure support, things that should be of no real concern for community servers.
@@moustafamohsen
Presumably, the only reason it's "incredibly hard/impossible" is because it wasn't designed for from the start?
Thor's arguement with League of Legends falls apart instantly because DOTA on Warcraft 3 has been a thing for DECADES now and the community is able to handle cheaters just fine. So the point is vapid and empty. His arguement against MMO's is also empty because private servers exist and yes some make money, others keep the game alive for the love of the game.
a) League uses LAN clients on turnaments
b) Thor can't use mmos like an example because not even week before this video he cried how during his time at blizzard he was flooded by support tickets about private servers
While he has points, he delivers it so closemindedly while also forgetting that there are several reasons why petitions are vague, that I can't take his take seriously genuine.
I think the main problem with The Crew, is that, something like The Crew 2, most races you do are offline, and the "bosses" you race against are also offline, so you do have a simple and fair way of racing completely offline. If they left you with the option to do only those races, the game would be fine. Besides, they removed the game from everyones library simply to not have someone create modded or unofficial servers, which is very scummy imo.
i miss the crew my faverite game 😢
His argument that developers need to recode the entire game to be client only when game is made to be online only is ridiculous.
There's no reason for there to not be law to request of developers to release server binaries. Also there's an online only game that I've been playing for 15 years and it has exited for 20 and at most it had like 100 player online at the same time, the servers are still running even though there's only like 0-5 players on at the same time. The cost for servers of a game that has almost no players is so cheap and if developers want to keep server code private they can keep hosting, they won't be losing almost any money so they can make a decision If it is worth doing or should they share the code for players to do that themselves.
If I buy a a game, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to play it 30 years down the line when im 59. Nostlagia is very addictive and I often go back to play old games. There's a reason beyond new games being worse p2w trash but a lot of players play older games without the bullshit.
League of legends can be hosted by players, we just need server code otherwise how was garena able to host servers before riot decided to cancel the partnership? I don't want to see league of legends become unplayable 10-20 If years down the line when league of legends 2 or another game takes over and for some reason riot decides to stop running the servers because there is almost no players.
People aren't disliking Thor because of how he represents his argument. They dislike him because he's just plain wrong.
The initiative doesn't aim to make developers support servers infinitely. At best, it would probably suggest that after the live support period for the game is over, other players can reverse engineer and run their own servers, and the original devs can't come after them for petty reasons.
Online only experiences are mostly a cancer anyway. I haven't played FF14, but most of what I've heard praised about that game is the story, which I assume, based on my time in other MMOs, is almost entirely a single player experience, whereas the multiplayer aspect would be raids, dungeons, etc. that is all side content from the main plot. You can do that in a single player, offline game. It doesn't _NEED_ to be online. The only reason they made it so was to consistently milk you, for the same game.
The part with Ross explaining how he thinks the initiative would pass, is simply an acceptance of reality. Politicians DO like easy wins (most everyone does), and they do like distractions. Is that a good thing, morally? No, but that's not what Ross is trying to change. Political morality is a different conversation. He's discussing how he can get the initiative to not just be some throw away thought that they never even talk about. Jason seems to think Ross approves of how politics works, and I don't think he does. Ross is just staying on topic.
And lastly, just because some things are standards, doesn't mean they're right. Licensing that keeps the game from running, or arbitrary time limits that stop you from playing past a certain point. I would argue that neither of these should be practiced in the first place. Of course it's great, for the _company,_ but for the _customer_ it's practically abuse, and spits upon the very notion of ownership. Which, I don't understand why we can't own video games anymore. As far as I know, each purchase generates a unique key anyway. Not sure why it's made out to be some impossible task to say "You _own_ this key. No one can take it from you, not even us." But anything to line a big tech's pockets, eh?
Moral of the story is: Jason has connections to someone making a live service right now, so I don't believe he's even arguing in good faith.
I like a lot of Thor's takes on other issues, but he really doesn't seem to want to actually have an honest conversation about the initiative. Lots of people have asked him to talk with Ross, to maybe even work together to improve the consumer rights side that he has acknowledged has issues, but it's fallen on deaf ears. Thor just seems to want to slap the entire thing as, "I don't like the wording, therefore bad, no dissent allowed!"
Hell, he even contradicts himself in that second video, saying that the people don't get to decide what other people play and what should and should not exist, then turning around and arguing that preserving a MMO that only has a handful of players left isn't preserving anything since it's past it's prime. Thor himself breathed some more life into a "dead" game when he found out that Global Agenda had servers up again - he logged in, he relished in the nostalgia trip, he got his community to download it and play... but by his own logic, the plug should be pulled and nobody should be able to have that experience. The tiny community that arranges times for people to get on and queue up enough people to have matches, too bad for them.
Game preservation isn't about preserving the community at its prime, that's impossible, it's about preserving the world and the experiences that world offered. It is true that there may be things that couldn't be done solo, but it's also true that almost all live service games have large numbers of players who primarily handle the majority of content solo. Games like The Crew can be played with AI drivers in races, League of Legends has bot matches as an option, MMOs like World of Warcraft has massive swaths of single-player story content spanning numerous expansions... very few games require multiple players in order to function at all and those are explicitly social games that aren't typically live services.
Legislation that would require game creators to put out an end-of-life patch to render the game still playable would be something that the games of the future could be developed with that in mind. These patches could include the bot behavior and change the player data hosting to being local instead of remotely authenticated. If the developers are feeling particularly charitable, they could also provide server hosting software, much like you find with other games that thrive based upon privately hosted servers (Ark, Minecraft, etc). The core initiative isn't asking for the tools to run full-fledged private servers, it's asking for the games to be accessible for those who still wish to access them, even if the worlds preserved will be lonely... at least they will exist for those who cherish them or wish to see what once was.
He pulled for Global Agenda, despite making this video? I'm convinced that his connection to Rivals 2 (no idea what the hell kinda game it even is) is clouding his judgement. Not that I'm giving him a pass, his opinion on this is divisive and rather moronic. It just helps me understand how he got there.
@@GamePlayuh9510 Yeah, he brought up the game on stream and talked about how he loved playing it years ago and how he missed it. Someone in chat informed him that the servers were brought back up for internal testing and the community found out, so Hi-Rez left it running and allowed the players back into the game. He down loaded the client and logged in, streamed it, etc.
It's a game long past its prime, dead by almost every definition, but preserved by the love of a small community and kindness of a studio. It's making them no money, but buying good will. By Thor's logic in his second video, it shouldn't be preserved like that, yet it brought him joy to find it still existed.
React to Ross's FAQ next
Also to Josh Strife Hayes's take as well if you'd like
what PS isn't getting is that ross is asking for the server files, not to change the whole game or keep hosting it. change the realmlist and give them dedicated server software
Conflict of interest, don't listen to this guy regarding this subject.
Hard stancing against an initiative when you disagree with a few things but agree with the larger goal seems quite out of touch
If you see mirrors and clips of his initial reactions to the initiative, it's very clear he actually feels vitriol towards it even going so far as to insult Ross and the fact that he refuses to talk with him to clear things up it's enough of an indication that he's hard stancing against it. The videos he uploaded to the channel are less harsh but still do a poor job representing the movement and its goals, many of the points he raise are pretty much non-sequiturs meant to cause fear and cast doubt and then if you read between the lines his actual solutions are "Gamers being comfortable with the fact they don't own the games, they bought a license that can be revoked", "Gamers accepting games aren't forever and move on to more products" and lastly "It's not worth preserving a multiplayer game if there's only a fraction of the players." None of those are real solutions.
@@WisteriaNerium Wow, thanks for the info
I personally feel Piratesoftwares points are all built upon wrong ideas or misunderstandings and now that he has put them up on front, he doesn't want to go back on them.
Most of the example games he gives are of games that wouldn't be affected. He keeps demanding for the petition with a word limit to be extensively detailed. And even mentions monetization of private servers like this new thing to be afraid of when it already happens with WoW.
I really encourage anyone living on Europe to support this. What is being presented in Stop Killing Games is NOT a definitive solution, it's a formal presentation of consumer worry to the European goverment. They will later on have the responsability of regulating the matter after addressing different information sources in the topic
Let play game of "Spot American" 17:30 Oh look "precedent law"
did Thor ever mention why community hosted server for dead game is bad?
Something about hacks, players making off money of the game and then just "why bother because it's never going to have the same amount of players"
@@WisteriaNeriumah yes, the “bs meaningless excuses” approach. Classic Thor move
@@WisteriaNerium
1: Who cares? It's me and 5 of my mates, who gives a shit about hacks?
2: It didn't make enough money, before he wanted to pull the killswitch, why would he think it'd make money, just being kept alive by the community???
3: So what? If anything, that's a plus, because now me and my mates can play without some dipshit ganking us.
@@ShadowFalcon I'm talking about the poor points PirateSoftware made, not that I'm agreeing with them
@@WisteriaNerium
Sure.
I just felt each needed a direct response.
Sorry if it felt like I was crawling down your throat, that wasn't the intention.
He must be misconstruing it on purpose.
I don´t doubt he is knowledgable, i think however, that he is, for whatever reason, disingenuous.
My respect for him has massively diminished, because he acts like a blockhead in this this whole ordeal. And he must be doing it on purpose.
Like, AS IF he doesn´t understand that people don´t play The crew anymore, sure, but they still paid for it, and thus it doesn´t matter if they don´t play as much, or barely at all anymore.
A Paid Product, MUST AT ALL TIMES remain property of the customer, PERIOD!
We can have a discussion about HOW that is done, but not about IF IT HAS TO BE DONE.
Rarely comment on vides, but this seems to be a nothing burger no? Why care about servers for a game if nobody is using them. I just checked the crew and the number of players is 0 right now.
@@ggs4869 The number of players is 0 because you literally can't play it, because Ubisoft bricked it.
@@ggs4869 You're missing the point. As the other person pointed out, Ubisoft blocked access to people who have already payed for it. Thats the problem.
@@Johnspartan296 yea i did more reading on the topic and u guys are right
I believe the license argument is stupid. Owning a copy of the game doesn't make a user immune to a ban. Especially when there are both public and community run servers.
Idk why Thor thinks that this initiative should bend over backwards to be pro developer. This is like fossil fuel industry getting mad at green industry activism and policy proposals. Yes we know live service games are insanely profitable for devs, there are very few very small advantages for consumer tho with a lot of downsides. Being associated (or even helping develop them from what I've heard) with live service games and working at Blizzard anti cheat team is totally clouding his judgment. Like right now I can go and play CS1.6 on private server even if valve got deleted from reality. Are there cheaters? sometimes yeah, but somehow its not much worse than any current "live service" game. They get banned and the server admins work on countermeasures. I played Lineage II on totally unofficial servers and it was amazing. You can still do it. You can organize people to play on it and vet them one by one if you are so worried about cheaters.
Damn thor is really good at trying to sound smart while saying: all your ideas are shit, there is a solution but i dont know what it is so we should just let it keep getting worse
Pretty much sums up Thor.
I can't follow Thors arguements... the real problem is that the people who "buy" something aren't told that in reality they are buying nothing? So a bad practice is ok as long as people are told that they are doing something to their detriment? So e.g. something that causes an addiction is ok, as long as I tell people that what they are consuming is getting them addicted (I'm exaggerating)? That view seems extremely US centric and I am borderline certain that most tos/eula aren't as simple to use in conjunction with a lot of european contract laws as Thor makes it out to be.
I hope that the practice of live service games of the last 15 years goes the way of the dodo. I would go further and say this isn't simply about licenses or preservation, but what we, as a society and consumers want. For example (european citizen here): A lot of people voted for better environmental laws to protect nature and got it and if you want to e.g. build a company in the EU you have to adhere to these rules. In my country smoking became heavily regulated and taxed and I think that it was for the better. So should developers be forced to make games a certain way? No, they can make the games they want. This petition wont force them to anything of the kind. BUT if they want to sell it in the EU or offer their "service" in th EU they would have to adhere to the rules of the EU, it's their choice. Call it tyranny of the masses, but if the people vote for it, this will be the new rules to do buisiness in the EU.
And lets face it. It's nothing new. Wolfenstein and other games had to be censored in germany. Ohh how we all remember the outcries of devs and publishers how their artistic visions got destroyed and all the work that was necessary to change the games... oh wait, most of them changed their games, because money is king. The same goes for China and the depiction of Skeletons or how you have to adhere to certain regulations to do buisiness, change it or don't do buisiness with them...
I am prettty sure there will be enough companies that will make live service games under these new conditions, if they will ever come to fruition. This all reminds me somewhat of "Thank you for smoking" and I am aware that I am heavily simplyfying a lot of things here. But in the end I think that this initiative will do way more good for the consumers than bad and Thors argumentation showed me why I support "stop killing games". In a way his videos are a prime example why everyone should support this initiative, so thanks to Thor.
We may not necessarily be able to change how games are made or handled by devs and publishers (nor necessarily should we), but we very well can set the ruleset under which they are sold to us, as we do with a lot of things , if that makes any sense (e.g. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive anyone?).
The licensing argument is a bit nebulous. If you have any game (racing/sports) that existed before the internet connectivity era, it probably still works, provided you have the hardware to play it.
Licensing is only valid between the seller and the license owner, so for example, if you bought GTA SA on the PS2, Rockstar/the license owner from the songs that play in that game can't go to your house and break your CD because the license deal expired. The license deal is between the Seller and the license owner, if said deal is over, the seller can't sell new copies of his product that have said license attached to it. Again, when GTA SA was remastered, Rockstar removed the original songs from GTA SA. Thor is 100% wrong on this issue and/or how the law works.
louis rossman also responded to the stop killing game
Thor/PirateSoftware DOES NOT want to help with videogame preservation. Especially since he's making the game himself right now xD
Instead of bashing the initiative he could've actually watch Ross' fairly recent video and then he would get his answers to his (not real) questions. I'm calling them "not real" because they're not Thor's genuine questions and he avoids all the conversations with Ross for some weird reason. Well, we kinda know for what reason, it's just that Thor doesn't want to say it.
What is it?
@@YouBoo-hx9hz Rivals 2 by Offbrand Games, an always-online fighting game that's only always-online so the devs can kill it if they get in a Twitter argument.
Thor is literally trying to lobby in favor of his soon to be finished live service game, because if a law like that passes, it directly affects him and his bottomline, and we can't have that, can't we?
@@NaderinZim sorry, but I don't quite understand your comment. Are you for game preservation or against it? Just asking 😅
I, for one, am FOR game preservation 😄
@@BulletSponge71436They are pointing out that Thor has a vested interest in the initiative not passing since he's developing a live service game.
Go and support Stop Killing Games, give Ross Scott the visibility he deserves over this topic
Folks plz watch accursed farms videos, on stop killing games, thier very well researched, and what he's trying to do is a very Good thing for gaming,
My issue with this is that his take presents the initiative in a PURPOSEFULLY twisted way to make it seem what it's not. As well as removing the comment from Ross that explained those points which Thor misrepresented. I've unsubscribed from Thor and stopped watching his content because of it. This is extremely disingenuous and is very harmful to the Consumer Rights.
He removed Ross's comment?! I had an opinon on Thor, it seemed like a "he can't be wrong" feeling emanating, I always (from the like 5 clips I've seen (apart form his vampire survivors take)) agree with him but after this I've completely lost respect removing a comment to support your claim is scummy if true.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo That is the thing, Thor is not a bad guy, he says a lot of good things on most issues. That said he is reacting negatively to the threat of regulation from the perspective of a programmer. That warps his worldview on government's regulatory power.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo There has been quite a lot of talk about comments supporting Ross get's instant nuked on site. Whether it's Thor or him setting up googles auto banning bot or whatever i don't know. However a ton of people have brought up their comments, kind or aggressive don't matter. They get yeeted with the instant.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo There was another short he put out a while back, that wasn't as bad as this one, but it was pretty dumb take. Basically, he tried to argue that timed exclusivity is good for gamers. He clearly got push back on that one, because he made a comment on the video, doubling down on his own take, and providing some really poor examples. Which was, he just showed a cherry-picked list of steam games that used to be epic exclusives, that have high review scores. Doesn't account for the people who would choose not to buy the game at all when it came to steam (which is necessary to be allowed to make a review), not does it account for Hades 2 being steam early access instead of epic exclusive again, or Kingdom Hearts releasing on steam in the same buggy state that it was in on epic, despite one of his arguments being that the devs would use the cash injection to improve/fix games.
Anyway, that was my little early warning that the guy was far from being some kind of gaming messiah.
@@GamePlayuh9510 I didn't know about that, thanks, I've only probably known about him for 4 months and never seeked out his content so I really don't know anything about Thor, it really seems like he only gets devs opinions, super self-serving, and is against leveling the playing field for the consumer and instead defining what a live service is rather than making it better for the consumer.
Which are the problems I had in that 2nd statment, it's really baffling, unless you think of him as a dev.
Thor is great for some r/iamverysmart content. I don't think that he realises that Stop Killing Games isn't writig a law, they're trying to start the conversation and let the relevant and qualified people figure out the specifics of a law to put into practice.
The crew was mostly single-player, and it was NOT a live sevice game. Not by a legal definition, nor a loose game dev definition. In the code there was found an offline menu btw...
A sequel is NOT a replacement for the old game.
You can't know how long a game is gonna be alive, so we can't give you an "expiration date" ... Yeah, thats the whole point! You shouldn't. Sell it as a good, not a service!
"If the sequel doesn't suck, most players will move over" ... Sounds to me like a massive IF. *cough* Overwatch 2 *cough* Warcraft 3 reforged *cough*
Licensing only accounts for selling the game, not running servers. Also, the way the market works, that you need to "license" the look of a car to put it in a videogame, is r3t4rd3d to me! I can still officialy buy "Need for Speed Most Wanted". I have serious doubts that there are licensing issues with that.
Accursed farms has explained the reason why the innitiative is vague in nature.
A little bit of a reality check... EVERY game you buy on STEAM, it comes with a EULA (end user LICENSE agreement)... EVERY game is technically live service. And it shouldnt be!
The reasons Ross has listed are "Why the innitiative COULD pass", not that those are reasons for the innitiative to exist! You may complain how it might not be the right way to push this through with a statement "politicians like easy wins", butt that doesnt change the facts that it's true...
"Some people met their spuse or married in live service games" ... Now wouldn't that suck so fukin hard if you couldn't visit the place you met your loved one, just because a game publisher said FVCK YOU?! ... Yeah...
"Wasting hours upon hours playing gacha games" ... There is not a single reason why those need to be a live service game... Most are running entirely on your computer as they are, only updating a server with your account whenever you do an action. When the publisher decides to shut down the servers, there is no reason why those updates would need to still exist. Just let me play offline.
Looking through youtubes catalog on this issue, I found only 3 developers (including Pirate Sofware) that are agains this innitiative, and found several game devs and software engineers that 100% support it. Saying that Thor is speaking on behalf of developers is the disgusting thing here...
2nd video
All those exploints he said are already viable today. Nothing changes.
Its funny that he mentions TF2... The game that at launch did not have official servers and players needed to run their own. The game that is still thriving ONLY thanks to private servers, because the official were overrun with bots and Valve didn't give a shit about it until it hurt their bottom line... Yeah, funny...
EVERYONE would get those server binaries! No, you wouldnt monetize it, cuz there would be someone else who would run it cheaper, or on donations, so no profit for you! Congrats! You've just put yourself at risk by hacking and digitaly abusing a company, possibly facing huge consequences, for NOTHING! ... Not to mention, if the game is live service, the game should only be getting better with continuos updates by the developer. Why the fvck would you wanna kill it, just so you could privately run version 1.00.0 ?
So how does it work now, when the studio/publisher is dead, and I run and monetize their long gone live service game?...
Did he seriously said that if the initiative passes, then DDOSing, BOTing, hacking and all other digital abuse would be legal? O_o... The fvck is he smoking?
"You don't get to define what players get to play or not play" ... Heh... Can you tell that to the companies that are saying I no longer can play certain games please? Like the OG Warcraft 3? His father still works at Blizzard I think, so this shouldnt be an issue, right?
"You shouldn't be able to tell devs what they can and cannot build" ... SNAP BACK TO REALITY! Gaming market is full of stuff you can't put into videogames, the fvck are you talking about? What was the last game that I could kill children in? Oh yeah, OG warcraft 3... Every industry is packed with all sorts of regulations, game development included. He has NO IDEA what hes talking about...
I have serious doubt that you can put "ethnic cleansing" on steam.
"There is no incentive to build live service games anymore" - BRUHHHH! The live service genre is overflowing with money! Thats the reason everyone wants to get in! Implying that coding the game from ground up to accommodate for "end of life plan" would cost more that what those games are bringing in is ridiculous...
"You're not preserving those games in their peak" ... Guess we should tear down the pyramids, all ancient castles, any history memorabilia really... What? Your grandpa can no longer walk, and needs to be tied to a wheelchair? Why "preserve" him in that "sorry" state? Just end him...
No, he specifically said he won't talk to Ross...
Yea like most games, theres not a single thing about the crew that required it to be a live service game.
Games like flight simulator are live service games because the file size for the world map is literally over 2 milling GBs and so it has to be streamed in (which is live service) for the best seamless experience. Of cause being able to download sections of the game would be possible and good but forget that part. The crew nor any other game has this issue which makes their “live service” pointless. It’s only there for control which is what they used it for in the end
why do people do reactions to Thor's take (which misrepresents the initiative) instead of the videos published BY the initiative?
Because people want drama, not the truth. And now people are watching Thor thinking he’s right and attacking the initiative. It’s so sad to see
Wildstar isn't necessarily *thriving*, but there's a lot of people who miss it, and the people working on Nexus Forever still seem to have a long way to go with their hard work.
His argument about liscensing has one solution that could solve 2 really large issues I have with humanity, simply get rid of copyright as a law. Copyright has no reason to exist in this day and age except as a way to let monopolies control culture and remain stagnant and lazy. If we get rid of copyright and patents, then companies of every type will NEED to innovate to stay afloat, we need less laws that protects monopolies and this will help lower prices and lower monopolies grip on humanity.
The cool thing is licensing isn’t an issue. The worse thing it can do is stop a game from being sold, and whatever the licensed material is could just be removed. So there isn’t a issue with it at all
It's taken 3 tries to attempt to watch Thor's honestly kinda braindead take on this. The wording is vague because you have to be with politicians and it's aimed at single player games. The Crew can EASILY be an offline game but to track things it needs the servers. This is aimed at games that pretty much already run entirely offline besides server checks and it's also leaving a loophole for publishers to give server code for the people who want to keep playing the game like is done with most battlefield games. I play battlefield 3 (2011 title) now because players can make their own servers
Ross deserves better than this analysis.
Friendly reminder that PirateSoftware is Director of Strategy of Offbrand Games, publisher of Rivals 2.
Rivals 2 will be an always-online live-service game.
Stop Killing Games is a conflict of interest for him. That's the real reason he is so against it and he will make up any bullshit to justify that.
Yea. Most of his fans don’t even know this and defend him without realising he hates them all.
35:15 this is funny moment he doesnt want discussion with Ross (because his aguement is card house)
He point that developers cant speak, he cn, but he doesn't want too
Rpthis how you know he has no stance but some strage interest
You can take a dev out of Blizzard, but you can't take the breast milk out of him.
Thor's stance against game preservation is ignorant at best and actively malicious advocacy for anti-consumer practices at worst, and I'm leaning towards it being the latter.
The crux of my issue, is that I think Live service is a terrible model, and if we aren't learning this lesson NOW, after the first big generation of live service games in the mainstream are dying off, then we are setting ourselves up for another decade of live service trash.
I think pirate had a shit argument out of the gate, because at it's core, he is defending the live service model. And I think it's it's failure is undeniable for anyone paying attention.
I thought this was gonna be silly and not serious stuff so my dumb ass got 5 minutes in before I realized what was actually happening, adding this to my watch later for when I actually have the mental capacity (just got home from work on one of the busiest days of our year) to actually give it the attention it deserves. Just wanted to say I love what you do man.
I'll edit this post (without changing OP) with thoughts later/as I go if I remember to get around to this (ADHD go brrrrr)
I'm gonna repost my comments on his vids as replies to this one
(Don't mind me, Im kinda dumb very often)
Edit: also love the vids and keeping this active/in the public eye is good
I don't think it should be enforced but rather normalized
I wanna see defiance resurrected and many other older live service games like it
also I don't think functional means fun or fully playable like giving league of legend LAN support, rather than having people open dead servers
If an attack on a game were to happen and server architecture become public how could someone profit off of it given that anyone could make a server that doesn't have the same monetization
also I think there are far more cases of this working for games favor than harming it or the company behind it
This happens with Realm Of The Mad God private servers when someone attempts to monetize it, the server usually dies quickly after then someone else rises to take it's place
It feels like a lot of devs take issue with this initiative because it seems limiting or crates needless work. But rhs industry failures are not problems that needs a technical solution.
Like the bare minimum outcome would be for studios to disclose that a game might become unplayable at some point.
The sum of work for a studio would be a single line of text on store pages. No big redesigned server-client architecture or hundreds of extra work hours needed.
And if those games sell worse when that fact is disclosed, then its something to consider when planning future products.
there are also many devs in the comments from Thors videos that are entirely against his view on things. one dev who workes for a company basically said something along the lines of "i worked many years on this and it feels awful for it to not exist after a few years. i can't even look at my own work anymore."
so it's difficult for me to take devs serious if they are against that initiative. Like there is not enough pride in your own work that you put out in the open for people to experience.
I only agaree with his poits of licences if it were some kind of subscription. And charging a really low amount of money per month. But a live service game with a single player price, should be considered buying the game.
Youo should watch Ross's response to this
My problem with live service is that i could wake up the next day and can't play the game because I can't get a psn account or the game gets taken down for legal issues
Thor's videos are complete BS. Everybody knows that, including himself. A text book case of a disingenuous person.
Goblin lord
i understand pirate software to an extend love the guy great advises
80% of the games that are "live service" are convertable to single player only (the only problem with that is do i need other ppl i my game or not ) and yeah the costs for converting but whats so conplicated about that look at server copy code from server to game change values so it make sense without real money currency with 20-30 ppl maybe a month or two and done but yeah its money always money only take money
my 0.02$ 😢
p.s.: only exemple i know of is marvel avenger live service game was shutting down devs converted it to single so ppl dont feel ripped off
please don't be dumb enough to be on his side
Edit: good you weren't
He disagrees, its funny he actualy tryes to hear thor side but he realises slowly it keeps getting worse and worse 31:56
@@eclips_total2215 phew. THANK YOU for this, Thor is kind of a bad person in this situation.
*Kind of.* I wouldn't dare and say that we know for sure.
@@BulletSponge71436 He is not bad, he is just very childish specialy with the demeanour he had towards the subject and does a full straw man falacy that helps him even less.
@@eclips_total2215 "He is not bad" - he's old enough to understand that what he says is objectively bad.
@@mariuspuiu9555 Well, you are not wrong.
The sheer number of comments rebuking thors horrible take on this is filling me with hope. I liked thor and his takes on a lot of stuff. But i had to unsubscribe after this shit. Its SO clearly driven by greed and boomerisms, it's disgusting. And although people ALMOST have it right by saying he's getting defensive over it because of him being a dev. But no. Its because he's a PRODUCER now. If he were JUST a dev, he would still be on our side. But he agrees with the sentiment that you should be allowed to throw away whatever your customer buys just so you can resell it later, he just isnt saying that part out loud for obvious reasons.
Thor is normally pretty intelligent, but here, he had so many feet in his mouth. Very sad.
cause he is a dev who wants to make money off his fans, if he actually cared he would talk to Ross instead of insulting him
I only have 2 points taken from all of the discourse around this
1. The devs/publishers should not be able to remove the game from your library regardless of whether the app is still functional or not.
2. From those who says Thors points are not the users concerns then fine, I would say the best outcome is that the devs completely wash their hands of the games after sunsetting it and any potential problems/legal issues from private servers are entirely on the players and they also will not provide ANY help to make it possible, let the playerbase figure out how to make it all from scratch themselves, in exchange the devs should not be able to stop them from trying to make their own private servers so if they succeed, great and if they fail then too bad there werent enough people interested
As @paleflame said the is a point but as a developer pirate I honestly have to so say he is dishonest at best
You forget a lot of politics think in absolute
Good
React to JD Vance visiting a donut shop
Thor really fell off tbh
Thor feel into the pit of L and so far they got him by his subscription based balls
first
This is why thor is based and Ubisoft is cringe.
No, Thor is pretty cringe
@@Johnspartan296 no one asked you split lip
Hell yeah Thor
Love thor, all these ignorant crybabies tears, delicious.
This is a Thor L, super self serving.
@@rafaelfigfigueiredo2988 love thor, hes getting so much hate by people who clearly wernt paying attention or understand video game development.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo sure but still thor
a lot of benefactors in history have some dirt on them, thor shall not be any different
To truly preserve something that's what a Museum is for. So what about Games like Law Breakers, Gigantic, Battleborn or the other failed Live Services/Online Focused Games that got shut down.? Do you not understand just how many games would get resurrected and like his point where the fuck is that money going to come from. The government isn't going to create a Videogame development studio to preserve the game for you that's why people started creating Emulators. I understand as people why the idea of preservation is so strong and it's because eventually we die and would like to leave something behind but again for videogames. the truth is that I agree with 4 eyes on the whole that the proposition overlooks so many things and doesn't count for the future and that's what he's worried about.
thats not whats being asked here.
People can create their own servers. That's how it's been done for decades.
Shouldn't you be in school, since you're clearly not old enough to be on RUclips if you don't remember that?
@@wolf0o01
No law is retroactive, so I don't know where the hell you got the idea that, games would be resurrected from.
Honestly, I kinda see both side have very valid points. Player don’t want to see their favourite game gone and developer have the right to make their game the way they want. However, I actually agree with him. The language of the movement is so vague, it actually feels incredibly insulting that think they can win with that proposal. The fact they think it a “easy win” is crazy as hell, it make us gamer look like mob of idiot
It has been explained ad nauseam why the initiative was worded the way it was (something which PirateSoftware refused to explain or understand), not to mention that some of what Ross said was a bit of cynical humor. The initiative is designed to be a simple explanation of their goals while citing some EU directives to prove they have jurisdiction of what it's being asked of them, because it's for citizens of the EU to voice their concerns it doesn't have to be complex and in fact they have set a word limit to it, it's NOT law. Once enough signatures have been collected a "second phase" will start on which the people behind the initiative, law makers, and other experts in the legal field and within the industry will have to discuss and narrow it down so if you go into specifics you run into the potential problem of writing yourself into a corner. PirateSoftware has misrepresented the movement several times, refused to explain how EU law works in general and many of the points he raised are pretty much fearmongering. Will this shake up the industry a little bit? Yeah, but things will adjust. We're not asking developers to shell out millions to keep servers running, or to give out IPs or trade secrets. In many games, end-of-life support would be as simple as allowing games to only play their offline components once support runs out. Since if this initiative passes, it would only affect the end-of-life/support part of a game. Meaning many, many years down the line.
The initiative isn't vague, you're just repeating something Thor said to feel included in the conversation that's going over your head and you don't have the mental capability to understand.
Case in point: Thor said the initiative says it'll force developers to work on the same game forever. *Does it actually say that?*
"easy win" for the politicians. It's telling the doomers the initiative might actually work, instead of just giving up.
It’s vague at all. Thor has not once explained how it is vague, and you have not once explained how it is vague. So do the world a favour go sign, and not speak again
Two reasons why it's "vague".
1: It's a European Citizen's Initiative.
There's a word limit (actually, a character limit).
2: IT'S A EUROPEAN CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE! It's not a law proposal, it's not a draft, it's literally just a conversation starter. Nevermind the fact that, any "specificity" at this stage would just be needlessly tying the consumers hands behind their backs.
Also, what the heck does Thor need specificity for? He's the programmer, not us, why should we provide him with a roadmap for anything?