This is the best level-headed response I've seen so far. Bring up a good point that pirate seems to go waaaaaay into topics that the simple initiatives hasn't covered yet at all and fearmongers it.
'Don't let perfect to be enemy of the good' - you nailed this with that quote! Thank you for making this video! I'm from Poland and I've already signed!
Why do arguments manifest like diseases. Person A: WOW well said "Code Monkey" excellent point with phrase. Person B: It's not a new catch phrase it's something that's already been used. Person A: Oh right thanks for the info. END OF DISCUSSION.
@@jakubgrzybek6181 Race Driver GRID has car licensing, you can't buy the game anymore, but I can still download it and play it from my Steam Library. Same thing with GRID 2, DIRT 3... and many other games. The Crew is unplayable not because of car licensing issues, but because of Ubisoft's anti-consumer always online DRM bs ;)
@@jakubgrzybek6181 The licensing had nothing to do with them stripping the ownership of the game for people that used ubisoft's platform. All that happens when the license agreement ends the game gets delisted from stores. If you already own the game it isn't going to be removed from your library. The reason ubisoft did that is seemingly in retaliation to the movement as a whole. stripping the licenses from people that own the game isn't the norm. It actually happens very rarely so people that are dedicated enough usually have no issues with reverse engineering a private server software. The crew is different because even though there has been good progress and important key information found unless you backed up the game files you're sol when the community made offline patch comes out. Also ubisoft could have easily set the game to be offline since there was an offline mode found in the files that were used for testing purposes and disabled for the retail release.
Thor uses the argument that someone could "take down" the original servers with bots, exploits and going after the community but this is against the law already. Having a law to protect customers and make the company leave the game in a playable state (releasing the server binaries or not) is NOT gonna make bots and exploits legal. And on top of that, as you said, EVERYONE will be able to host their own private servers, so why would you pay for access to a server from a malicious entity?
Exactly, and on top of that, games get targetted by bots/ddos all the time already without any incentive to monetise a theoretical server. To use his own words, "It doesn't make sense"
I live in russia and you can't do anything about it. I am an anonymous stranger and you have to find my identity. I do think Thor's argument is kinda shit and relies on a lot of massive hypotheticals that are just incredibly unlikely to ever actually happen, but this wouldn't really matter. The people who just borderline took Apex Legends down for the Titanfall thing were never found.
Thanks for the very unbiased overview! Your channel is great. Your perspective is very interesting and you really get the point. I'll sign the petition as i'm a european citizien.
@@あれくす Uh... no? You can't be proponent of something and be unbiased; it is against the human nature. I'm also biased on this subject because of the same nature. Someone random, unrelated to the topic (not a game developer or game consumer, for example), sharing their ideas would be unbiased.
@@kulkalkul Thats absolute nonsense. Bias doesn't have to play into the reason why two people agree. People can agree on a conclusion but have entirely different reasons for why they arrived at those same conclusions. Being a "proponent" of something and believing in something are two different things. You made the assumption and it was stupid. Don't assume things about people you know zero about.
@@あれくす That's just your fantasy. You can't agree or disagree with something and be unbiased. Even if you try to be unbiased, your decision is affected if you are somehow part of it. It isn't something social, it is logic, it is 2 + 2 = 4. Just because you want it to be 5 doesn't make it 5.
It's possible that the main reason companies kill games is because they don't want to compete with their old product. Apparently the majority of players keep playing games older than half a decade. So, to push players into a new game, publishers likely prefer games with these kind of kill switches (akin to planned obsolescence). I expect a ton of pushback regarding this initiative.
This is exactly it, this is why PirateSoftware and Prime are against this. The biggest competitor of your software, is its previous versions. So forcibly killing off previous versions is obviously the play if you can get away with it. It needs to be stopped.
@@ColmVize And I understand where they're coming from. I didn't buy Unreal Tournament 3 nor 4 because I still played UT2004. So UT 4 lost sales to a 10 year old game at that point. The only way to prevent that from happening is by moving to a service-like model where you obfuscate a chunk of game logic behind a server.
Personally, the reason I think this is important is my steam library. I'm aware they have promised to provide DRM-free downloads were tsteam to shut down, but I'd rather have a law mandating that. Just to be safe.
@@magnusm4 if they have already made some kind of official promise then it could be argued in court that this was a part of the reason for buying those games and thus requiring them to follow through with providing it.
I can point to many flaws in Thor argument, being a Software Architect and in this profession for 10+ years, I also have insight to some aspect to what will happen, especially in networking within my carrier. One point I want to say is Thors argument for malicious intent, you have a good counter point for it, but we also need to understand that there are 2 possible outcomes in that scenario: 1. Studio shutdowns, goes through filing bankruptcy and selling the IP or the publisher will retain it. With that, they can file a copyright for any "paying" servers as you are selling or getting income through their intellectual property one way or another reason for. Look at Wow Nostalgia, Blizzard send S&D to them and thats it. Thors argument breaks at that point. 2. Another path would be abandonware, and at that point, who cares? Only people that bought it will be able to use, and that would be enough, what money will there even be to speak of? Nonsense, he thinks developer would just let that happen and do nothing? We have a lot of sophisticated tools already for security and they can be improved by a lot over time. If we are talking about indie dev, show me an example of a MMO type indie game that wont do anything to secure it and continue to do so. His example is just that, example that have no IRL correlation, it's easy to defend something with an example that have no IRL comparison. "Oh yeah, I can just DDOS the game, they will give up at one point and shut it down, after I will make monetized server and be rich", yeah, right. Game would be "dead" at that time and you think you can get more that 100 players on your MONETIZED server at any time? I just can't imagine that, especially since there would be many other free servers and you can put one yourself. And why the paying aspect of it is a problem in the first place? Minecraft P2W servers exist, Garry's mod P2W servers too, same with CS1.6 and many other with WOW included and lets have another asian one MU Online. Do we see people not playing official servers even with private and monetized one's? No. What we are talking here is End Of Life stage of a game, that is what important. Look at all Games For Windows Live games that didn't transitioned out of it on EOL, like I can't play my Lost Planet 2 game anymore, even though it' single player game with online and coop functionality. Who cares what happen at that point in time if you can't even play any of it in the first place? Another point is that MMO games are subscription based and are "true" service, which probably wont be included in this legislation (even thought I would have wanted to, Adobe eat shit). There is nothing that they do which confuses the player of their access nature, you subscribe, play, end subscription and end access. They can still fall into it, but I think even if an MMO server can only host 10 players at any giving time, thats a win. Ofc you wont be able to access some points of the game as large-scale raid bosses, but we see gamers do impossible in Souls like games and even in MMO by far less amount of people. Just because you wont be able to do 50+ people raid and clan wars, doesn't mean you can just abandon the other 90% of the game when that doesn't happen. Another thing is that MMO is one small aspect of this discussion, there aren't many MMO's compared to regular games and GAS which this will affect in positive way. ChatGPT says there are approx. 200-500+ MMO in existence, dead or not. We all love them, sure, but that number is drop in a desert compared to how many regular games are released. Other GAS games aren't as complex and can be easily ran in small scale, you can also just remove requirement for online authorisation, which is most games and The Crew falls into it. I can talk and write a lot more, but won't now, what baffles me more is how Thor doesn't add anything to the conversation, only some vague examples, how it's vague and all that, it's an citizens initiative, you expect them to be more knowledgeable about it than you? If citizens have an issue, it's their right to speak of it and make such initiatives without knowing the subject deeply and have enough specific legal knowledge. It's then Government role to have audition, invite 3rd party expertise and work through it for many years until it will find best solution. Have conversations now, but add to it, not dilute it with trying to stop it, get in touch with Ross and people with this initiative, inform them and provide solutions and examples of how one thing will work and another for MMO and LoL. Trying to stop it dead in tracks because it's vague is disingenuous and malicious of Thor. You have an issue with it, propose some solutions to it, with the fact that games needs to be at reasonable playable state after it's EOL.
You forgot that thor called ross greasy car sellsman, disgusting etc etc deleted his comment and dosent want disscus just he wants it stop existing so everyone can abuse players
@@JakubixIsHere I'm not aware of Thor intent or thoughts, he's position of not speaking to Ross on this can only be called childish. Calling names as well, it's not productive, example's he provided have holes in them. I just want for him to be more specific on how he things games should be preserved and how The Crew situation should be handled, opinion of just changing the button from "Buy Game" to "Buy Licence" isn't right, in EULA you are already stated as such, just showing it more won't solve the issue. Saying "then don't buy the game" is also not productive and resultive, take Gambling for example and say the same thing "Just don't Gamble", like that supposed to solve the issue.
Thor saying it'd be a "legal exploit" is so crazy to me considering every step of his "exploit" aside from the company letting you make servers would still be illegal. Especially when he says "the company won't be around to strike monetized servers". If that were the case, the company also wouldn't be striking any servers, and this initiative wouldn't exist.
@@Jokerister Thor doesn't want to have open discussion because he wants to be right and honest discussion would only prove him wrong. He doesn't take any criticism as in his mind he's right and knows better than anyone else.
5:29 just an fyi but malicious compliance is not something that will go under the nose of EU. Companies trying to find loopholes do get fined and followup corrections do get made. Spirit of the law is very much what the EU applies. This is completely different than the USA system, where the corresponding bodies are completely powerless as pointed out by Louis Rossmann over the years.
I don't know. Apple was forced to allow "sideloaded app", but forces developers to pay for each download AND enforces random rules to create a custom "AppStore". In my view it's a malicious compliance, and currently nothing happens.
@@FrequenciaJogos The EU is investigating that exact thing right now to see if it is illegal under the DMA. As well as taking Apple to court over breaking the DMA when it comes to allowing apps to advertise cheaper alternatives inside their apps.
Okay so in the future every game would be its own corporation to encapsulate liability. When the game is EOL the corp shuts down and ceases to exist. So no one to go after for the game not being available. This model is not uncommon, most Hollywood movies are in fact their own bespoke corporation just for that one movie.
@@FrequenciaJogos Here is the thing: EU is paaaaainfully slow. Like... painfully. But Apple DMA case is actually being processed, as EU very much so didn't like Apple's approach and they are in process of cracking down on it. As everything EU, it comes painfully slowly. @Me__Myself__and__I if they do that to skirt around that law, painfully slow crackdown will begin. Knowing EU it will be few years but they will finally close down the loophole one way or another, for example going after who is behind such shell company. Also if that happenes at least community have relief that there is nobody to go after them from reverse engeneered servers, for example Rising Hub (Battle Field Heroes) had EA being PITA.
I want you to really think about the following statements: "We should accept it if games are killed forever" "Games aren't meant to be played forever" "The game was playable for 10 years, it's time to move on" All of these should be extremely, EXTREMELY worrying to you. It means that the brainwashing has been successful. The customer has been conditioned to actively support what goes against their best interest. Every dystopian author would be proud/afraid of what the gaming industry has been able to achieve.
Oh, come on, that's just how life works-you can't live forever. Nothing lasts forever! Companies are made up of thousands of people who work over 9 hours a day just to make a living. Employees come and go, and nothing stays the same forever. 10 years is 1 decade of maybe 7 decades of our living! Edit: no one was brainwashed, it's just how it works, 10 years of service. appreciate it, think of the memory, and let it go. For example an actor in a series died, should we complement why the actor died?? The series is not over yet!! (the only thing that is not acceptable is that the company should announce that the game won't be accessible next year so no one buys it or if they did they know that there are time limits) all the statements are true when the multiplayer game is abandoned in 1 or 2 years, which is a completely different thing.
"no one was brainwashed, it's just how it works, 10 years of service. appreciate it, think of the memory, and let it go." On the Steam page for The Crew, it said "BUY The Crew". Not "subscribe, rent etc." . Customers had their copy of the game taken away from them years after purchase. It was stolen from them.
So many people shit on the crew becase the think it was only playable online. But the real problem is they took down the single player and deleted it from everyones libraty on their platform. Not selling a game is a totally different deal from this shit malpractice.
There is truly nothing more sad than great art being buried because some greedy company decides that people should move on to their next cash-grab. This initiative kinda also solves the issue of how people cannot even make copies of games that are no longer supported, as the company owning the IP would cease and desist them. This would make sure that no one had to worry about that ever again hopefully. Games are such beautiful things, and so many of the great ones only survived to date thanks to people keeping them alive manually, like through emulation, a lot of which is illegal sadly too. Hopeful about this, let's get the million, no actually let's get 20.
Don't be fooled by those percentages, they are calculated by the threshold that at least seven counties has to reach. It corresponds to 750 times the number of representatives in teh EU parlament. Due to the rules of representation in the EU parlament it's not proportional to the effective population (nor to the population elegible to vote). In particular tiny nations like Malta and Luxembourg will almost surely have a very low pecentage on the threshold even if the actual support is similar to the German one, for example.
Hi CodeMonkey! Thanks for signing the petition, I think it's great that these things are starting to get notoriery, since I firmly believe that games are an artform, and the destruction and consecuencial forget of so many work made by passionate artist is something really sad and easily avoidable. Since you are european, I want to tell you that the main problem for the initiative is to reach to people that do not speak english, since most of the people talking about it speaks in english, and youtubers from EU countries can help with that, since they can make their own video on their own language. I am not a representative of the initiative, but maybe you can talk to Ross about it? Sorry to bother you, and thanks again for signing and taking your time to speak about the subject.
So many MOBAs exist that have been shut down and made it possible to play. Your account is gone. You are provided a mock account with everything unlocked, and you can use it to connect to community servers or have a LAN party. Thats it. You just made a multiplayer game still playable after it got shut down. No one can download the game if they dont already have it, so there is 0 cost in doing this.
@SixCoreSecond there is a 1 fits 96% of the games. And for 4% you make exceptions. That's how laws are written that's why you have 100 sub sections to a law because NOTHING in the entire world is EVER black and white.
@@TheFaiLM4N it is for the developer Steam pays. Vainglory is a indie game and they still managed to make it playable. To suggest others cant do the same is insane.
firstly, i'd like to mention that ross scott has made a new video answering various questions, as well as making a couple of corrections. second, I feel like a large amount of the "this would be too difficult/unreasonable" type arguments against this that I've seen are just... things which are like that because there currently isn't such a law in place. for licensing deals, companies could have a bit more leverage, cause if they're not allowed to give the server to the consumers, then they wouldn't legally be able to sign that deal (unless they also decide to make their own server software prior to shutting down the game). in terms of it being too hard to give people working server binaries, well, a lot of things are hard to do when the software isn't made with doing them in mind. adding multiplayer to a singleplayer game is a lot harder than making the game work with multiplayer from the start (note: this is a simplification) "it's unreasonable to force companies to do this" yeah, well, it's also unreasonable to not be able to use the product that you BOUGHT just because the company making it felt like it. as for arguments such as "people would bot the game so that it dies and they could get access to the server binaries and profit off them" honestly, get real. the amount of effort that would take, compared to the likely profit makes me think this is unlikely. plus, there's still the risk of getting sued.
Fun fact, most license agreements don't even apply to servers. Outside of libraries that don't allow you to publish Sourcecode, what exact licensed data is stored on a server? You mean for example the crews car models? These are not stored on the server, they are stored on the client (the players machine) Any argument regarding license deals can be defeated by: The server in most cases doesn't have the information that's licensed, its usually the client. So by that logic the game should disappear from your steam library instead of the server binary being held hostage.
About the "wow server architecture is too complex" argument, people have been running private wow servers for years so it's definitely not too complex, even less if official server binaries were provided
Thor likes to make things sound more complicated than they are. Even a cloud native software architecture can be easily replicated. I mean, it's not like cloud providers aren't available to the general public.
from my understanding the private wow servers are emulators that dont actually function exactly how the servers do, just the best the developer of the emulator can figure out. how ever since all we are asking for is something rather than nothing, even if it means the main devs give any amount of info that helps in the production of an emulator, thats good enough because of the surface level the game functions the same to the user. Even if the inner mechanisms are different
Thors response was incredibly irresponsible. Spoken with such confidence yet be so misinformed. If this is required by law the entire chain from 3rd party libraries to licenced assets will simply adapt - because they have to. You can literally play Super Mario Bros.1 in a browser or any version of Minecraft any time you want. It is normal in consumer law that you get to have the thing you bought. It's surprising games have got this far without any legal backlash.
Normal in consumer law? I guess that is why it is illegal for a streaming platform to "sell" you a piece of content and then at some later date remove it from the platform, end completely end the platform. Oh wait, that does happen. If they haven't bothered to fix that glaring loophole that even average normie people can understand this initive doesn't have much hope.
@@TuriGamer I have seen very little of his content but in a HealthyGamerGG interview I watched year or two ago he seemed very chill and reasonable so his stance on Stop Killing Games initiative was bizarre to me. I am curious. Do you have examples how he has been lying or been so misinformed in the past?
Online games with large communities often develop their own servers. For example, there is TrinityCore for World of Warcraft, and even if Blizzard were to shut it down, you could still play it without any problems. Metin2 is also a good example of this.
Blizzard will probably never shut down WoW, but yes TrinityCore is great. And Blizzard can't do anything about TrinityCore since it's an open source project that has been created from scratch rather than any stolen code. I host a 3.3.5a server for myself and my friends. In EU you're actually allowed to do this providing you've lawfully obtained the game and you're not making money off it. (I assume everyone connecting to it needs to own a legitimate copy too)
Even smaller games might have communities that host weekly or biweekly community events in their own hosted servers for dead/abandoned games (and i believe some are still using valves free server structure). Dirty Bomb i believe is one of those where community is hosting the servers. Yt channel Rye Games has ongoing series where he plays "dead games" and about once per video he stumbles upon a game where some veteran joins him and educates about the existing community and how they work.
I saw what they did with cookies. There were (and are) better ways to handle that. But now nobody's really doing it, and we're stuck with these annoying popups on every site that try to play mind games to trick you into accepting cookies, making you go through multiple clicks, look carefully, switch buttons around or make them text links while the big clear obvious button is the wrong one, on purpose. We could have had non-tracking ways to store info cookies store, and/or other ways to deal with it (which were already there), with browser addons to block and manage cookies.
I wish the law had "reject all" be mandatory button. I hate the one type of cookie approval popup where at first it seems like there is just 3 things you need to turn off..... then u click + symbol next to "partners" and there is literally 1500+ new toggles. And when u start scrolling at 1st everything seems to be turned off. But its around in the 1st 1/3rd where you see few turned on. And after midpoint towards the end more and more were on. And what is worse: the site forgets your previous input after few days. So you'd have to do it again.......... Thank god the site is pretty useless so i often just go and find another site that has same info without this greedy deceiving cookie model.
@@samamies88 Yeah, the worst kind of cookie checkbox is like the one on the Fandom wiki pages, even if you disable all categories of cookies, if you go through partners there are still tons that are enabled. I did try to disable all of those several times but gave up after they kept resetting. Luckily BreezeWiki exists which allows you to access the same pages without that crap, I have an extension that redirects me there from fandom pages.
Thank you for the insights! Listening to Thor I also was thinking that I'm missing something he knows about... Well, that's definitely possible, but as much as I respect Thor I think he's wrong this time. One thing about "malicious 3rd party profiting off developers work" argument is that the server binaries would still have a license and the user would need to agree to that license before using the server. Anyone can fill a complaint or a lawsuit against that "malicious party", so this restricts completely the unintended usage of the server binaries.
With WoW its actually both you buying the game and the subscription. I would argue, that you buying WoW makes it so you own the game and the subscription makes it so you are renting servers to play the game. WoW is triple dipping with the monetization.
im not sure that would really follow. idk if there was a time you had to pay for WoW before installing it, but ive always been able to install it but unable to play past the like trial level cap of course.
11:00 that scenario could also easily be prevented if the game shipped a simple multiplayer server right from the beginning, that could be used for LAN parties like back in the days. If the official servers get botted or similar, the developer would not need to release anything on shut-down, as the included multiplayer server already leaves the game in a playable state.
They don't want that anymore is a Gen Alpha problem accepting the fact that they cannot own games because they were born with games already has live service mess🤦🤦🤦
Not to mention that without any help, people reverse engineered WoW and made private servers of one VERY COMPLEX MMO, from a very protective company. Hell, you can play the entire campaign of Diablo III with the Blizzless server emulator. It can be done even without the blessing of the companies. Imagine what can be done with a little bit of help. Licensing problems? Already happened with GTA, Crazy taxi and more. Remove all the songs, remove all the cars. Someone will put them back. Some actors are arguing with very bad faith, and I'm getting suspicious about their intentions. I don't think they are arguing in favor of gaming, preservation, developers or consumers.
The idea that one malicious actor could singlehandedly bankrupt a company by hacking their servers is pretty unreasonable. As far as I'm aware, that sort of thing has never happened before in the games industry. Some games like titanfall and tf2 have been plagued with hackers and bots but those were not from a single individual, and like you said, there's little incentive and great risk for that kind of malicious action, as running your own server is not that profitable and if you get caught there are severe consequences.
I think in rare instances some hackers found a RCE exploit that allowed them to gain access to other users. This is more of a Valve problem than SKGs. I
@@TheArachnoBot see this is why the whole initiative is a hot mess people know jack shit about copyright, patent, software and game development to comprehend the situation and come up with a solution
If it becomes a law, companies will need to take the law into an account from very beginning. At the same moment they start developing the multiplayer, they'll have to make it prepared for the end of service. No planned obsolesce BS. If multiplayer implementation needs to be planned from the beginning, so does the complying to the law. Saying "we relied on 3rd party stuff" won't cut it, if it's not in a playable state.
Yeah. And it is really bad. Games will become ever more expensive. There will be less games. Games will come out worse - cause more devtime would be spent on useless things like making things playable for like 50 people in 10 years.
@@nikitosha1000 Very good faith argument, definetly shows that you looked into the subject thoroughly and DEFINETLY checked the FAQ video AccursedFarms posted which explained silly lilttle misconceptions in detail, so people don't spread misinformation out there. Thank god, you watched that before making this comment and didn't use any logical fallacies like the "Slippery Slope" one in the process.
1980s 1990s 2000s games cared for game preservation because internet was not widespread at the time. As soon as the Gen Alpha was born they go into live service mess where theckids just accepts that they cannot own a game anymore. Miss the good old days🥺
I don't think this harms devs. If anything as an artist (broad definition, not just visual) it's a guarantee that all your hard work won't be zaslav'd away for good some day, all for naught.
My new favorite Dev! You got yourself a customer now, whether I like your type of games or not, i'll be buying one just because this video. You, my man, deserve the support of a customer. Nailed everything thing that was missed by the other main videos. You have my respect
Finally! Someone who actually understands the initiative and thinks potential issues through! So many bad actors are creating strawmen to try and tear the initiative down, or people like Thor who create some doomsday scenario in their head and never a step beyond that.
My main issue with Thor is how he's saying that people won't silence him and he won't stay quiet (2nd video), but at the same time he refuses to talk to Ross about the issues he sees with that initative. Looks like he's only comfortable talking about it in front of a camera.
yeah. genuinely how can you act like this will be an absolute detriment to the gaming industry as a whole, then just make your self a sidelines yapper. I earnestly think he realized what he was saying was retarded and now he doesnt want to backtrack
Speaking of "leaving games in a playable state": When Rockstar pulled the original _GTA: San Andreas_ from Steam, they did not simply disable new purchases. Suddenly, my already installed English game was invalidated by Steam, and my Library only allowed me to install a semi-broken Spanish version...
That's probably some sort of a bug. But in general, each time you download San Andreas from Steam it's considered a new re-destribution of the game. So if there are any licensed assets that were removed in the meantime, you no longer get to download them. The only solution is to make backups.
@@JakubixIsHere Yep, I know. And the music can be added easily from what I remember. I think there's a folder for each music station where you can just drag songs into. I could be wrong, I was mainly playing the PS2 version and only sometimes played the PC port for mods.
That's really great. It's crucial to involve publishers in the dialogue regarding this issue. It's not just a matter for game developers and consumers; publishers also play a pivotal role. Thor's theory is still hypothetical and doesn't make sense considering that it is an open-source code so that anyone can use it, not just one malicious person. I agree with you.
It’s not crucial as they are the ones that caused the issue. That’s like asking a murderer if murdering should stop, their answer is clearly going to be no.
one point i've had to repeat a few times to people having doubts about the larger SKG campaign has been, "games don't have to be like this". Laws changing how games are designed aren't exactly new, cf lootbox regulations, gambling regulations, play time regulations in asia, censorship laws, esrb/pegi ratings, etc, and I think forcing industries to think about end of life plans for their products (for example for recycling/environmental purposes) just makes sense. You could argue that FOMO-based business models work, or that they're toxic, etc, but at the end of the day, /games don't have to be like this/. I'm sure the devs themselves hate to see their games disappear after they've spent N months of crunch building them. I'm a dev and I support the proposal.
with WoW, not only is it double dipping (buying the expansions/game AND subbing), but it is also VERY possible to make a playable offline version. All the devs would have to do is talk to the ppl behind a project I've seen (to make single player WoW a thing-complete with AI players that work well for dungeons) IF they didn't want to do it themselves. With said project, I can play any pre-cata version, experience operation Gnomeregan etc. If fans can do it, there's no reason the devs themselves can't. and before ppl ask, I ain't sharing it here-don't want any Blizzard fans reporting it
it is not about the crew. the crew is simply a egzample of bad practice that is happening right now. It is about future games that would be born under such law if it would emerge from this initiative.
4:42 A bit later on in the video they expand on what they mean - Thor says that "if a game is single-player with online capabilities, shutting it down is not okay" (not a direct quote). He also explained in decent detail why forcing devs to release binaries of servers or a method to make servers could be easily exploited, hence is a bad idea. It sucks we can't have nice things, but I understand that this is an instance of a Nash equilibrium. A solution could maybe be release a LAN mode for the games? Just an idea. From what I understood them, Thor and Prime didn't say "this is what they mean 100% by this initiative"; they said that is one case which the people coming up with the initiative didn't take into account. Also, from what I know "The Crew" had licensing issues (which Thor also mentioned and addressed) and while I think it sucks the license was created for this game this way, I see why this was the path Ubisoft took. Imo Thor's take is not "I am against this in all forms" but more leaning towards "This needs to specify which behaviour should be prohibited and align with game devs, so that the law coming out of this doesn't hurt the industry.". I think it is a requirement because the later you will try to clear up what you intended, the harder it is to influence- meaning the earlier you get input from affected parties the better, and we wouldn't want a law to enforce something with opposite outcomes than we intended.
license issues doesnt mean anything here, litterally any game with music has license issues and so what? all that means is you are not allowed to further sell the game OR have to remove the licensed part if you want to further sell it - see GTA SA. Imagine buying a movie, but years later someone comes to your Home and takes the movie away from you because the studio lost the rights to the Ending scene Soundtrack. Seems reasonable right? In case of the CREW all that meant was they werent allowed to sell it further not that they had to go into everyones home and take the game away.
"One last patch" If they can even build the game. The studio can be shut down, part of the source code lost or lost knowledge. lot of time these old games can not be rebuilt. Greate video!
I mean, the law will probably be in the form of fines for noncompliance, so if the studio bankrupts, tough luck. That should be fairly rare I think, though
@@animowany111, Studio may be gone but what about the publisher? They don't know how to make the build most of time. They may not even have the full source code to build it again. Look what happened to classic wow.
29 дней назад
@@code82star12 Or an older game called Primal Rage, because of the security on the arcade machine (aka uncensored full game) they can never recreate it, because the guy who worked on it only did that one job in the industry and left, they never knew how to contact him or if he is even still alive and only he knows how to break it to copy it. So if someone wanted to port Primal Rage to any modern system, they have to use inferior versions for consoles or remake the game from the ground up
Subscription and free to play games should really be the only exceptions. If a game is so computationally intensive that it has to be server side only, then they're going to need constant revenue to keep it running anyway.
I think this happens because of a lack of planning during development. So, the online component becomes so entrenched into the base code, that pulling it out/ disabling it is like trying to untangle cables that have been tied and retied for years and years WITHOUT pulling any of them out of the outlet (cause, you know, the game would stop working). I make games, so if I don't know EXACTLY what the game needs to be BEFOREHAND, trying to go back and change things is... well...
In many cases, they may also have their hands tied by licensing; they can't provide server resources for security reasons, or because only Ubisoft and not John Serverhoster is allowed to use it, or because they can't even contact a third party involved. One of the big problems that stands in the way of Epic Games open sourcing Unreal Engine 1 is the fact that they're not allowed to distribute some of the third party materials involved, and I imagine the kind of platforms and tools required to handle tens of thousands of players seamlessly are similarly tied up in tight legal requirements.
This is developer from gen alpha problem. 1980s 1990s 2000s games are planned without the dependencies of the internet and yet games today require an online server just to play a driving game that is almost always use the client side for information🤦🤦🤦
@@mariocruz591 Tbf, there are a number of classic games like PlanetSide that are dead for similar reasons. There's also the mass GameSpy shutdown. The reality is a lot of modern games are willing to fully forego singleplayer to focus their resources, whereas it used to be standard to include some kind of SP content even if it was barebones trash. I'm not advocating for it, I'm upset that games with sizable amounts of SP content like Metal Gear Survive are a ticking time bomb... but there are reasons for how things have ended up.
The huge problem is people not knowing this topic, in Italy the biggest channel which did a dedicated video about this was like 5000 subs... It could be because of it's august and many youtubers are on vacation, but I think that this topic has to be spread out by many big streamers, expecially if they are not English speakers
6:08 "legally might not be allowed to just send over the binaries" If license agreement contradicts with the law then the the part of license license that contradicts the law will not be enforceable in court in EU so they could still release it without getting sued. And also this law will most likely target upcoming games, not current ones so in that case game companies can already start negotiations with this new law in mind.
I think the question getting lost in the conversation here is ," Are video games art? ". So far this conversation has been only from the perspective of a consumer getting a product.
But if video games are artistic forms of expression , then developers should be allowed to design games how ever they want- and control its life-span. This initiative seems to want to force developers to make games to certain specifications , which is a major violation of freedom of speech . If a developer sells a 60$ game , consumers can play only once a year - I am completely fine with that, as long as I am aware that this was the type of product I was buying... This being said , this is the same situation , except consumers seem to not know what their buying , and this can honestly be remedied through the FTC , not through regulating developers.
@@ji_ji_ Unlike art, games aren't sold as uniques. So if you sold a temporary painting (e.g. because it melts down after a while) and not tell the buyer, you may get away with artistic freedom. If you do it to one art piece. But if you sell a movie, which on a random Friday the 13th bricks every last copy of it, you can not claim artistic freedom after not putting a disclaimer out, because shenanigans of that sort are not the default and having one melted down heap of a painting can still be considered art, while broken disc #123456778 is not art. Are movies art? Pretty sure most would agree. But they are something you actively engage with and not have it hang/stand passively somewhere. And you engage with video games much more. But games, unlike movies, can not be in every case be tied down to a storage medium, so certain practices can grow, like putting kill switches into games that would be otherwise fine. All this is, is to make sure people don't pull a Friday the 13th without saying that it will happen.
@@JerbilKonai So, if i sell copies of my art in poster form at a convention , that is not art? Also paintings decays , paper cannot last forever. Are games not unique experiences? Also there is a disclaimer in the EULA of live service games....
@@ji_ji_ "Your art in poster form" implies in your own words that you already have art. You just choose the storage medium through which you sell it. But if you were to sell it digitially, would the one purchasing it appreciate, when you "sell" it to someone, and then killswitch it later? Especially when on the shop page (to match games) you never mentioned that and it is only written in the depths of a legalese document, that you keep the right to kill it? Just like paper, multiplayer games are understood to have a lifespan. But if you have a combination of a singleplayer and a multiplayer game you would expect the availability of the singleplayer to not be tied to the multiplayer. With the "art on paper" example, it would be the equivalent of a metal statue melting down because a paper labeling it faded.
I don't think custom servers are making so much money to justify bulling developers/publisher with bots and cheaters to the ground(it's just waisted money). And yeah devs can give as really shitty solution for MMOs but if there is a will people will find a way, look at The Dawnless Days they are making beautiful LOTR mod with campaign in TW Atilla, and they did it multipole times before. perfect vid
Regardless if it works or not. I will still have to press F for Wildstar D,X. I signed it already thanks to another guy's video on the important topic.
The Crew literally has code in place to enable an offline mode. And also, what this also tries to fix is bullshit like Fable 3 PC where the authentication servers have been taken down so you cannot play your offline single player game because the installation cannot be authenticated.
WoW is an interesting case, because while they do provide a monthly subscription service, they also sold box copies and continue to sell expansions and micro-transactions that are separate purchases. This technically doesn't matter as WoW would get grandfathered in, but a future game likely couldn't have that same business model.
The way I see it, liscenced games should by law be f2p cause you have no ownership anyway. You can still spend if you want. If you buy it, you get a copy at a state where the creators cannot change it without your permission. It's to avoid selling a broken product that changes without being scammed. Understand I'm aware of the extensive lose that comes with a f2p flop, but then, just make a game can is or can be downloaded to a physical medium. No one is wronged.
I think these companies should have some sorta offline version for when this happens eventually and people need to read fineprint better like Thor said as well. And an actual offline version not a play on our server offline thing. There should be an offline client that merges the users data to the offline version in the case of an event like this, so people don't cause a scene, that's just covering your butt pretty good i'd say. I personally just learned the horrors of netcode and multiplayer so I can see why devs would only want to work on one big version but if you don't cover that butthole properly, people will try to stretch it as far as you'll let them lol.
@@SixCoreSecond well no a government regulatory system shouldn't be necessary lol. It's a business. Just don't buy their products if you think they're scum. They gave you the terms to accept, everyone accepted them.
Problem is support. Most folks think they are more tech savvy than they are. They think it's just an installer, or an "offline mode", but really it's multiple server/services, a client app, with config & deployment for both, based on your home computer & network setup, OS patches/drivers, etc, and *zero* tech support, since the company is not helping. They could pass this into law, but it won't be as useful as players think.
@@mandisaw well I understand in the most layman sense that it's much more complicated than just turning the game off if the game requires server interaction to run at all. What I don't like to see from companies at all like this who know kids will play the game regardless of the rating. Kids are not lawyers and neither are gamers. Communication has to be clear on all ends or we'll all start claiming conspiracy left and right. It's just greed and laziness as per usual.
@@formantaudio That's my point, it's not greed or laziness, it's just a practical reality. Even folks who run private servers are usually sysadmins by profession, doing this for fun. Commercial multiplayer games are massive software suites, it's not trivial to make it work even for skilled pros. If the dev team (or publisher) is no longer willing or able to run it, then that's just the end of the line, unfortunately.
I believe the critical reactions come from a place of assuming that the business model of online games can't change. But the nature of this kind of legislation, which has touched down in China's industry(on topics other than this access issue) is to change the ground rules of what games go out into the market and compete against each other. And what happens in one region affects the decisions of publishers elsewhere, so there are a lot of games now that are China-oriented and the same could occur with EU legislation.
I agree with you and moreover I agree with L.Rossman . I have been following his channel for a while now and even dough he looks like he needs a few good night sleeps he is on to something with his interpretation of the direction the world is going towards. Maybe I am as old as him but I do not like this trend where we own a fraction of what we buy less and less each passing day and our privacy is reduced from us. I will gladly pay what I can for content and value I receive from many developers and providers but I do also expect that the stuff I've payed for are mine to use as I please. Not enough time to delve into in in a youtube comment, but I advise to go check him out and to get more politically active if you can (for whomever reads this). We need more people to be active...
A point you missed with the server binaries is that a lot of in house servers has proprietary technology in them. While releasing the server binaries seem fine the issue arise when you have multiple games that the studio supports that use the same/ similar in house proprietary technology as exposing one game’s server binaries can expose the entire security of all currently running game services from other games supported by the studio.
Let me just say this, while being as arrogant as possible, Pirate Software’s opinion doesn’t matter, Primeagen’s opinion doesn’t matter. Frankly speaking I’m very skeptical about Pirate Software’s technical skills, all I’ve seen so far is some script-kiddy level stuff and Primeagen is softballing this because he’s friends with Pirate Software.
This seems well intentioned but it would be very difficult to cover all the edge cases without creating issues. That said I do feel some pressure to make games more tolerant of not having network connections is overall good. I wish it was more market force driven. There should be some minimum time after a game stops being sold that it remains playable.
The way an ECI works is that it's just an initiative to get the EU to look at the issue. They would be able to come up with somethng that covers the edge cases much better, as per the intention: After all, it's not a law, it's just an initiative.
@@RavenReach I understand it’s just an early step in a long process, I’m just skeptical they’d be able to cover everything, but I’m not against them trying.
@@ItsDan123 Worth trying than giving up. This issue has been slept on for so long. In fact, I'd consider that laws like this really need to be refined for the internet age. It feels like they were all designed in the 90s with no clue about how modern communities would work on the net.
@@nono1271 Plenty, people get screwed by edge cases in the law all the time. No where am I saying they shouldn't proceed, just that I expect this to need a lot of work to go from an early proposal to law.
From a legal perspective, my main question would be how MUCH of the game is the publisher required to keep playable, how do you define that? For example, Mass Effect 3 is mainly seen as a single player game, but it did have a pretty well developed multiplayer mode, which also tied into the ending of the single player story. In Legendary Edition, they just stripped out the multiplayer mode entirely, so... is that okay? What if I want to play ME3 multiplayer 20 years from now, can't do that. Or what about a game like Diablo: those games work just fine as single player, but many players might argue the multiplayer scene is hugely important for them. So would just stripping out all the multiplayer stuff, or maybe only allowing LAN play, be sufficient? You could argue either way for all of these, but my point is: how do you LEGALLY define what does and does not need to stay playable? (I think this initiative is a good idea in general, but it's details like these that make it kind of difficult to nail down exactly. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be made into law, just maybe not as simple as it might seem at first glance.)
Prime's malicious compliance take actually showed a degree of bad faith that makes it hard for me to take him at all serious. It sounded to me like "If you implement this law I'll circumvent it in this way". Thanks for signalling that Prime, now that we know that devs are already preparing to work around the law we will make the law significantly broader and vague and includes harsher penalties to make sure you comply with it's spirit. It is in a sense honest though. Obviously it would be simpler and cheaper to run a server if it wasn't architected like a bloated mess but were made to be easy to host. But companies rather pay a team of engineers to maintain the software than allow their consumers to take control of the product they are selling them. This is why we need regulation: because companies would rather make a flammable product so that they can control the ashes than make a reliable one that I can use after they sold it to me.
About the licensing issue. What exactly is there the issue for the server? I mean all licensed information that could be a problem is usually not stored on the server. Its stored on the client. Or would you say the server contains model/texture/translations that would be a problem? If brand deals are a problem for publishing a server binary to each person who bought the game, shouldn't the game be revoked from your steam library the moment the deal ends?
Sometimes you arent just licensing brands but actual Code, if said code is part of the Server Binaries you cant just give it out without the Rightholder of the Code allowing you to do so.
I think sharing the binaries, security aside, some people take pride in their work ... espacially something that costs millions. People shouldn't be forced to give out their source code (which is needed.... pure "exes/dlls" don't work anymore on modern server structures... If people want to "conserve art" they should be able to recreate from sratch and host a private server "legally".
finally a more based take from someone that actually went to the source instead of just rehashing others takes. btw, in their podcast the german pirate party invited the initiator and talked to a eu representative and a lawyer. it was from two months ago and it is in german(auto translate closed captions worked fine while i watched it, im german so i would say they were on point). it was a much more nuanced discussion than what we currently have on the topic in the techfluencer sphere and quite worth a watch/listen/read. since it was brought up here. fun fact: you can play the og "GTA San Andreas" from the original xbox on a current state xbox series x. i have the disc and it worked thx to xbox providing backwards compatible emulation. remember: gta san andreas is two console generations behind the current one(xbox -> xbox 360 - xbox one). it actually runs in a xbox 360 emulator so it basically runs in two emulation layers and is playable still. after the remaster remake i was curious if my disc still works and i was pleasantly surprised. i also tried it with read dead redemption one which works too. say what you will about microsoft but they solved this on a plattform level which is another viewing angle to consider.
Olhe o video do Asmongold. Basicamente a ideia dele é: Se a empresa não vai mais fornecer o jogo, ela não pode impedir que outras pessoas o recriem. Acredito ser uma ideia bem válida
This is the best level-headed response I've seen so far. Bring up a good point that pirate seems to go waaaaaay into topics that the simple initiatives hasn't covered yet at all and fearmongers it.
'Don't let perfect to be enemy of the good' - you nailed this with that quote! Thank you for making this video!
I'm from Poland and I've already signed!
This is just a catch phrase.
@@diadetediotedio6918 And your comment is just a bunch of letters strung together.
@@InkyMuste
Sure, but my comment has meaning behind it.
@@diadetediotedio6918 Okay and what is the meaning of your comment?
Why do arguments manifest like diseases.
Person A: WOW well said "Code Monkey" excellent point with phrase.
Person B: It's not a new catch phrase it's something that's already been used.
Person A: Oh right thanks for the info.
END OF DISCUSSION.
The Crew was not only shut down, but it also taken out of people libraries - you can no longer download it.
Yup, but only on the Ubisoft conect, on steam,xbox, and playstation, you can still download but don't play.
do you understand how car licensing work? it's not on devs, but the leasing of real car specification
@jakubgrzybek6181 Forza Horizon also has car licensing, but you can still play the game if you have purchased on the past.
@@jakubgrzybek6181 Race Driver GRID has car licensing, you can't buy the game anymore, but I can still download it and play it from my Steam Library. Same thing with GRID 2, DIRT 3... and many other games.
The Crew is unplayable not because of car licensing issues, but because of Ubisoft's anti-consumer always online DRM bs ;)
@@jakubgrzybek6181 The licensing had nothing to do with them stripping the ownership of the game for people that used ubisoft's platform. All that happens when the license agreement ends the game gets delisted from stores. If you already own the game it isn't going to be removed from your library. The reason ubisoft did that is seemingly in retaliation to the movement as a whole. stripping the licenses from people that own the game isn't the norm. It actually happens very rarely so people that are dedicated enough usually have no issues with reverse engineering a private server software. The crew is different because even though there has been good progress and important key information found unless you backed up the game files you're sol when the community made offline patch comes out. Also ubisoft could have easily set the game to be offline since there was an offline mode found in the files that were used for testing purposes and disabled for the retail release.
Thor uses the argument that someone could "take down" the original servers with bots, exploits and going after the community but this is against the law already. Having a law to protect customers and make the company leave the game in a playable state (releasing the server binaries or not) is NOT gonna make bots and exploits legal. And on top of that, as you said, EVERYONE will be able to host their own private servers, so why would you pay for access to a server from a malicious entity?
Exactly, and on top of that, games get targetted by bots/ddos all the time already without any incentive to monetise a theoretical server. To use his own words, "It doesn't make sense"
thats like asking why to managed minecraft services exist even though you can make your own...
are you reading before you post?
@@SixCoreSecond bro didnt look in mirror
I live in russia and you can't do anything about it. I am an anonymous stranger and you have to find my identity.
I do think Thor's argument is kinda shit and relies on a lot of massive hypotheticals that are just incredibly unlikely to ever actually happen, but this wouldn't really matter. The people who just borderline took Apex Legends down for the Titanfall thing were never found.
I think the point he was trying to make is it could incentivise bad faith actors to do these attacks
Thanks for the very unbiased overview! Your channel is great. Your perspective is very interesting and you really get the point. I'll sign the petition as i'm a european citizien.
It isn't unbiased. Meaning of unbiased doesn't mean it aligns with your ideals.
@@kulkalkulyou're assuming he thinks that's what unbiased means? Unbiased ALSO doesn't mean two people can't agree unless their biased.
@@あれくす Uh... no? You can't be proponent of something and be unbiased; it is against the human nature. I'm also biased on this subject because of the same nature. Someone random, unrelated to the topic (not a game developer or game consumer, for example), sharing their ideas would be unbiased.
@@kulkalkul Thats absolute nonsense. Bias doesn't have to play into the reason why two people agree. People can agree on a conclusion but have entirely different reasons for why they arrived at those same conclusions. Being a "proponent" of something and believing in something are two different things. You made the assumption and it was stupid. Don't assume things about people you know zero about.
@@あれくす That's just your fantasy. You can't agree or disagree with something and be unbiased. Even if you try to be unbiased, your decision is affected if you are somehow part of it. It isn't something social, it is logic, it is 2 + 2 = 4. Just because you want it to be 5 doesn't make it 5.
It's possible that the main reason companies kill games is because they don't want to compete with their old product. Apparently the majority of players keep playing games older than half a decade. So, to push players into a new game, publishers likely prefer games with these kind of kill switches (akin to planned obsolescence). I expect a ton of pushback regarding this initiative.
This is exactly it, this is why PirateSoftware and Prime are against this. The biggest competitor of your software, is its previous versions. So forcibly killing off previous versions is obviously the play if you can get away with it. It needs to be stopped.
@@ColmVize And I understand where they're coming from. I didn't buy Unreal Tournament 3 nor 4 because I still played UT2004. So UT 4 lost sales to a 10 year old game at that point. The only way to prevent that from happening is by moving to a service-like model where you obfuscate a chunk of game logic behind a server.
If the dev/publisher can't make a better game than the one they put out 4+ years ago with better technology available now, that's on them lol.
@@rufuspilula247UT 4 wasn't commercialized at all.
@@uis246 You're right, I completely forgot. It's been 10 years after all.
Personally, the reason I think this is important is my steam library. I'm aware they have promised to provide DRM-free downloads were tsteam to shut down, but I'd rather have a law mandating that. Just to be safe.
Gabe is a great man but he's still a human.
One day he'll be sadly gone and whose to say they won't step on his company for their own selfishness?
@@magnusm4 if they have already made some kind of official promise then it could be argued in court that this was a part of the reason for buying those games and thus requiring them to follow through with providing it.
I can point to many flaws in Thor argument, being a Software Architect and in this profession for 10+ years, I also have insight to some aspect to what will happen, especially in networking within my carrier.
One point I want to say is Thors argument for malicious intent, you have a good counter point for it, but we also need to understand that there are 2 possible outcomes in that scenario:
1. Studio shutdowns, goes through filing bankruptcy and selling the IP or the publisher will retain it. With that, they can file a copyright for any "paying" servers as you are selling or getting income through their intellectual property one way or another reason for. Look at Wow Nostalgia, Blizzard send S&D to them and thats it. Thors argument breaks at that point.
2. Another path would be abandonware, and at that point, who cares? Only people that bought it will be able to use, and that would be enough, what money will there even be to speak of?
Nonsense, he thinks developer would just let that happen and do nothing? We have a lot of sophisticated tools already for security and they can be improved by a lot over time. If we are talking about indie dev, show me an example of a MMO type indie game that wont do anything to secure it and continue to do so. His example is just that, example that have no IRL correlation, it's easy to defend something with an example that have no IRL comparison.
"Oh yeah, I can just DDOS the game, they will give up at one point and shut it down, after I will make monetized server and be rich", yeah, right. Game would be "dead" at that time and you think you can get more that 100 players on your MONETIZED server at any time? I just can't imagine that, especially since there would be many other free servers and you can put one yourself.
And why the paying aspect of it is a problem in the first place? Minecraft P2W servers exist, Garry's mod P2W servers too, same with CS1.6 and many other with WOW included and lets have another asian one MU Online. Do we see people not playing official servers even with private and monetized one's? No.
What we are talking here is End Of Life stage of a game, that is what important. Look at all Games For Windows Live games that didn't transitioned out of it on EOL, like I can't play my Lost Planet 2 game anymore, even though it' single player game with online and coop functionality. Who cares what happen at that point in time if you can't even play any of it in the first place?
Another point is that MMO games are subscription based and are "true" service, which probably wont be included in this legislation (even thought I would have wanted to, Adobe eat shit). There is nothing that they do which confuses the player of their access nature, you subscribe, play, end subscription and end access. They can still fall into it, but I think even if an MMO server can only host 10 players at any giving time, thats a win. Ofc you wont be able to access some points of the game as large-scale raid bosses, but we see gamers do impossible in Souls like games and even in MMO by far less amount of people. Just because you wont be able to do 50+ people raid and clan wars, doesn't mean you can just abandon the other 90% of the game when that doesn't happen.
Another thing is that MMO is one small aspect of this discussion, there aren't many MMO's compared to regular games and GAS which this will affect in positive way.
ChatGPT says there are approx. 200-500+ MMO in existence, dead or not. We all love them, sure, but that number is drop in a desert compared to how many regular games are released.
Other GAS games aren't as complex and can be easily ran in small scale, you can also just remove requirement for online authorisation, which is most games and The Crew falls into it.
I can talk and write a lot more, but won't now, what baffles me more is how Thor doesn't add anything to the conversation, only some vague examples, how it's vague and all that, it's an citizens initiative, you expect them to be more knowledgeable about it than you? If citizens have an issue, it's their right to speak of it and make such initiatives without knowing the subject deeply and have enough specific legal knowledge. It's then Government role to have audition, invite 3rd party expertise and work through it for many years until it will find best solution.
Have conversations now, but add to it, not dilute it with trying to stop it, get in touch with Ross and people with this initiative, inform them and provide solutions and examples of how one thing will work and another for MMO and LoL. Trying to stop it dead in tracks because it's vague is disingenuous and malicious of Thor. You have an issue with it, propose some solutions to it, with the fact that games needs to be at reasonable playable state after it's EOL.
You forgot that thor called ross greasy car sellsman, disgusting etc etc deleted his comment and dosent want disscus just he wants it stop existing so everyone can abuse players
@@JakubixIsHere I'm not aware of Thor intent or thoughts, he's position of not speaking to Ross on this can only be called childish. Calling names as well, it's not productive, example's he provided have holes in them. I just want for him to be more specific on how he things games should be preserved and how The Crew situation should be handled, opinion of just changing the button from "Buy Game" to "Buy Licence" isn't right, in EULA you are already stated as such, just showing it more won't solve the issue.
Saying "then don't buy the game" is also not productive and resultive, take Gambling for example and say the same thing "Just don't Gamble", like that supposed to solve the issue.
@@Jokerister he forgot that voting with wallet dosent work at all
Thor saying it'd be a "legal exploit" is so crazy to me considering every step of his "exploit" aside from the company letting you make servers would still be illegal.
Especially when he says "the company won't be around to strike monetized servers". If that were the case, the company also wouldn't be striking any servers, and this initiative wouldn't exist.
@@Jokerister Thor doesn't want to have open discussion because he wants to be right and honest discussion would only prove him wrong. He doesn't take any criticism as in his mind he's right and knows better than anyone else.
5:29 just an fyi but malicious compliance is not something that will go under the nose of EU. Companies trying to find loopholes do get fined and followup corrections do get made. Spirit of the law is very much what the EU applies. This is completely different than the USA system, where the corresponding bodies are completely powerless as pointed out by Louis Rossmann over the years.
I don't know. Apple was forced to allow "sideloaded app", but forces developers to pay for each download AND enforces random rules to create a custom "AppStore". In my view it's a malicious compliance, and currently nothing happens.
@@FrequenciaJogos The EU is investigating that exact thing right now to see if it is illegal under the DMA. As well as taking Apple to court over breaking the DMA when it comes to allowing apps to advertise cheaper alternatives inside their apps.
@@FrequenciaJogosAs pointed out the EU is looking at this. It just takes time the EU is a slow moving behemoth.
Okay so in the future every game would be its own corporation to encapsulate liability. When the game is EOL the corp shuts down and ceases to exist. So no one to go after for the game not being available. This model is not uncommon, most Hollywood movies are in fact their own bespoke corporation just for that one movie.
@@FrequenciaJogos Here is the thing: EU is paaaaainfully slow. Like... painfully. But Apple DMA case is actually being processed, as EU very much so didn't like Apple's approach and they are in process of cracking down on it. As everything EU, it comes painfully slowly.
@Me__Myself__and__I if they do that to skirt around that law, painfully slow crackdown will begin. Knowing EU it will be few years but they will finally close down the loophole one way or another, for example going after who is behind such shell company. Also if that happenes at least community have relief that there is nobody to go after them from reverse engeneered servers, for example Rising Hub (Battle Field Heroes) had EA being PITA.
I want you to really think about the following statements:
"We should accept it if games are killed forever"
"Games aren't meant to be played forever"
"The game was playable for 10 years, it's time to move on"
All of these should be extremely, EXTREMELY worrying to you. It means that the brainwashing has been successful. The customer has been conditioned to actively support what goes against their best interest. Every dystopian author would be proud/afraid of what the gaming industry has been able to achieve.
Oh, come on, that's just how life works-you can't live forever. Nothing lasts forever! Companies are made up of thousands of people who work over 9 hours a day just to make a living. Employees come and go, and nothing stays the same forever. 10 years is 1 decade of maybe 7 decades of our living!
Edit: no one was brainwashed, it's just how it works, 10 years of service. appreciate it, think of the memory, and let it go.
For example an actor in a series died, should we complement why the actor died?? The series is not over yet!!
(the only thing that is not acceptable is that the company should announce that the game won't be accessible next year so no one buys it or if they did they know that there are time limits)
all the statements are true when the multiplayer game is abandoned in 1 or 2 years, which is a completely different thing.
"no one was brainwashed, it's just how it works, 10 years of service. appreciate it, think of the memory, and let it go." On the Steam page for The Crew, it said "BUY The Crew". Not "subscribe, rent etc." . Customers had their copy of the game taken away from them years after purchase. It was stolen from them.
what brainwashing, its fucking part of life
nothing lasts forever and shouldnt
Youre just bad a dealing with this
Thank you for pointing this out in a succinct way
@@noairtime more like idiotic
Code Monkey is so wholesome that he makes me wish I was still a Unity dev.
Honestly, one of the best takes from a game developer’s perspective that I’ve heard thus far.
Edit: I’m saying this as a software developer myself.
A lot of game developers agree with the initiative, it's just that stating that publicly may be a red flag for a future employer.
@@xNWDDpretty much. Companies are all about destroying what people own, and siding with a movement that could stop it would hurt future jobs
So many people shit on the crew becase the think it was only playable online. But the real problem is they took down the single player and deleted it from everyones libraty on their platform. Not selling a game is a totally different deal from this shit malpractice.
There is truly nothing more sad than great art being buried because some greedy company decides that people should move on to their next cash-grab. This initiative kinda also solves the issue of how people cannot even make copies of games that are no longer supported, as the company owning the IP would cease and desist them. This would make sure that no one had to worry about that ever again hopefully. Games are such beautiful things, and so many of the great ones only survived to date thanks to people keeping them alive manually, like through emulation, a lot of which is illegal sadly too.
Hopeful about this, let's get the million, no actually let's get 20.
I like how much context you game around the issue. I'm in the USA but would totally sign if I lived in the EU.
Do you have citizenship in countries that are eligible
ive joined and signed the petition, as a eu citizen i think its important for users to be able to play/use a product thats been purchased in the past.
except you purchased a license, nothing else
stop trying to bend the rules just cuz you wont read the terms
@@SixCoreSecond oh we have a gen alpha here who does not exprienced the retro games🤣🤣🤣
@@SixCoreSecond did u read? wtf the initiative is all about
bro is stupid
@@SixCoreSecond Purchased a Licensed Copy, which is a good.
@@Voyajer. yeah, which doesn't let you own the software altogether, only the copy, and only within the constraints of the license
Thanks for spreading the word!
21% voted already - nice!
Top voting gamers:
- Finland: 106%
- Sweden: 93%
- Netherlands: 78.8%
- Denmark: 78.4%
- Germany: 68%
Don't be fooled by those percentages, they are calculated by the threshold that at least seven counties has to reach. It corresponds to 750 times the number of representatives in teh EU parlament. Due to the rules of representation in the EU parlament it's not proportional to the effective population (nor to the population elegible to vote). In particular tiny nations like Malta and Luxembourg will almost surely have a very low pecentage on the threshold even if the actual support is similar to the German one, for example.
poland surged ahead.
Hi CodeMonkey! Thanks for signing the petition, I think it's great that these things are starting to get notoriery, since I firmly believe that games are an artform, and the destruction and consecuencial forget of so many work made by passionate artist is something really sad and easily avoidable.
Since you are european, I want to tell you that the main problem for the initiative is to reach to people that do not speak english, since most of the people talking about it speaks in english, and youtubers from EU countries can help with that, since they can make their own video on their own language.
I am not a representative of the initiative, but maybe you can talk to Ross about it? Sorry to bother you, and thanks again for signing and taking your time to speak about the subject.
So many MOBAs exist that have been shut down and made it possible to play. Your account is gone. You are provided a mock account with everything unlocked, and you can use it to connect to community servers or have a LAN party. Thats it. You just made a multiplayer game still playable after it got shut down.
No one can download the game if they dont already have it, so there is 0 cost in doing this.
There is no "one fits all" solution in this
Its technologically impossible
@SixCoreSecond there is a 1 fits 96% of the games. And for 4% you make exceptions. That's how laws are written that's why you have 100 sub sections to a law because NOTHING in the entire world is EVER black and white.
"Downloading" is not a 0 cost, and development time for this features aint free.
Genshin Impact lets see what will happen with that.
@@TheFaiLM4N it is for the developer Steam pays. Vainglory is a indie game and they still managed to make it playable. To suggest others cant do the same is insane.
firstly, i'd like to mention that ross scott has made a new video answering various questions, as well as making a couple of corrections.
second, I feel like a large amount of the "this would be too difficult/unreasonable" type arguments against this that I've seen are just... things which are like that because there currently isn't such a law in place.
for licensing deals, companies could have a bit more leverage, cause if they're not allowed to give the server to the consumers, then they wouldn't legally be able to sign that deal (unless they also decide to make their own server software prior to shutting down the game).
in terms of it being too hard to give people working server binaries, well, a lot of things are hard to do when the software isn't made with doing them in mind. adding multiplayer to a singleplayer game is a lot harder than making the game work with multiplayer from the start (note: this is a simplification)
"it's unreasonable to force companies to do this" yeah, well, it's also unreasonable to not be able to use the product that you BOUGHT just because the company making it felt like it.
as for arguments such as "people would bot the game so that it dies and they could get access to the server binaries and profit off them"
honestly, get real. the amount of effort that would take, compared to the likely profit makes me think this is unlikely. plus, there's still the risk of getting sued.
Fun fact, most license agreements don't even apply to servers.
Outside of libraries that don't allow you to publish Sourcecode, what exact licensed data is stored on a server?
You mean for example the crews car models? These are not stored on the server, they are stored on the client (the players machine)
Any argument regarding license deals can be defeated by: The server in most cases doesn't have the information that's licensed, its usually the client.
So by that logic the game should disappear from your steam library instead of the server binary being held hostage.
About the "wow server architecture is too complex" argument, people have been running private wow servers for years so it's definitely not too complex, even less if official server binaries were provided
Thor likes to make things sound more complicated than they are. Even a cloud native software architecture can be easily replicated. I mean, it's not like cloud providers aren't available to the general public.
I'm pretty sure you can run almost any server on a Docker container, and if you can't, you can, but you just need to make the dockerfile yourself.
Things are only as complicated as dev want them to be. If it’s hard then it was done on purpose
from my understanding the private wow servers are emulators that dont actually function exactly how the servers do, just the best the developer of the emulator can figure out. how ever since all we are asking for is something rather than nothing, even if it means the main devs give any amount of info that helps in the production of an emulator, thats good enough because of the surface level the game functions the same to the user. Even if the inner mechanisms are different
Thors response was incredibly irresponsible. Spoken with such confidence yet be so misinformed.
If this is required by law the entire chain from 3rd party libraries to licenced assets will simply adapt - because they have to.
You can literally play Super Mario Bros.1 in a browser or any version of Minecraft any time you want.
It is normal in consumer law that you get to have the thing you bought. It's surprising games have got this far without any legal backlash.
"Spoken with such confidence yet be so misinformed "
Thats his entire channel
Hes a pathological liar
Normal in consumer law? I guess that is why it is illegal for a streaming platform to "sell" you a piece of content and then at some later date remove it from the platform, end completely end the platform. Oh wait, that does happen. If they haven't bothered to fix that glaring loophole that even average normie people can understand this initive doesn't have much hope.
@@Me__Myself__and__I Have you tried?
@@TuriGamer I have seen very little of his content but in a HealthyGamerGG interview I watched year or two ago he seemed very chill and reasonable so his stance on Stop Killing Games initiative was bizarre to me. I am curious. Do you have examples how he has been lying or been so misinformed in the past?
@@iiropeltonen Have I tried what?
Online games with large communities often develop their own servers.
For example, there is TrinityCore for World of Warcraft, and even if Blizzard were to shut it down, you could still play it without any problems.
Metin2 is also a good example of this.
Metin2 servers are constantly closed and they dmca people that record on private servers
@@JakubixIsHere ah right, metin2 was gameforge.
Destroying their own games is their hobby...
Blizzard will probably never shut down WoW, but yes TrinityCore is great. And Blizzard can't do anything about TrinityCore since it's an open source project that has been created from scratch rather than any stolen code.
I host a 3.3.5a server for myself and my friends. In EU you're actually allowed to do this providing you've lawfully obtained the game and you're not making money off it. (I assume everyone connecting to it needs to own a legitimate copy too)
Even smaller games might have communities that host weekly or biweekly community events in their own hosted servers for dead/abandoned games (and i believe some are still using valves free server structure). Dirty Bomb i believe is one of those where community is hosting the servers.
Yt channel Rye Games has ongoing series where he plays "dead games" and about once per video he stumbles upon a game where some veteran joins him and educates about the existing community and how they work.
It was very good response from real indie dev that cares about customers. Maybe talk with thor you might talk sence into him.
Thor isn't really willing to have any sort of discourse aside from replying to people who agree with him on Twitter it seems
@@ambralemon we can atleast ask elon to ban thor because he want take away his diablo 4
Thor doesn't want to talk.
@@emenesu so he's an a.h.
@@emenesu He does talk about it. But not with Ross. It looks like he doesnt like that guy.
I saw what they did with cookies. There were (and are) better ways to handle that. But now nobody's really doing it, and we're stuck with these annoying popups on every site that try to play mind games to trick you into accepting cookies, making you go through multiple clicks, look carefully, switch buttons around or make them text links while the big clear obvious button is the wrong one, on purpose. We could have had non-tracking ways to store info cookies store, and/or other ways to deal with it (which were already there), with browser addons to block and manage cookies.
I wish the law had "reject all" be mandatory button.
I hate the one type of cookie approval popup where at first it seems like there is just 3 things you need to turn off..... then u click + symbol next to "partners" and there is literally 1500+ new toggles. And when u start scrolling at 1st everything seems to be turned off. But its around in the 1st 1/3rd where you see few turned on. And after midpoint towards the end more and more were on.
And what is worse: the site forgets your previous input after few days. So you'd have to do it again..........
Thank god the site is pretty useless so i often just go and find another site that has same info without this greedy deceiving cookie model.
@@samamies88 Yeah, the worst kind of cookie checkbox is like the one on the Fandom wiki pages, even if you disable all categories of cookies, if you go through partners there are still tons that are enabled. I did try to disable all of those several times but gave up after they kept resetting. Luckily BreezeWiki exists which allows you to access the same pages without that crap, I have an extension that redirects me there from fandom pages.
Thank you for the insights! Listening to Thor I also was thinking that I'm missing something he knows about... Well, that's definitely possible, but as much as I respect Thor I think he's wrong this time. One thing about "malicious 3rd party profiting off developers work" argument is that the server binaries would still have a license and the user would need to agree to that license before using the server. Anyone can fill a complaint or a lawsuit against that "malicious party", so this restricts completely the unintended usage of the server binaries.
With WoW its actually both you buying the game and the subscription. I would argue, that you buying WoW makes it so you own the game and the subscription makes it so you are renting servers to play the game. WoW is triple dipping with the monetization.
im not sure that would really follow. idk if there was a time you had to pay for WoW before installing it, but ive always been able to install it but unable to play past the like trial level cap of course.
11:00 that scenario could also easily be prevented if the game shipped a simple multiplayer server right from the beginning, that could be used for LAN parties like back in the days. If the official servers get botted or similar, the developer would not need to release anything on shut-down, as the included multiplayer server already leaves the game in a playable state.
They don't want that anymore is a Gen Alpha problem accepting the fact that they cannot own games because they were born with games already has live service mess🤦🤦🤦
Not to mention that without any help, people reverse engineered WoW and made private servers of one VERY COMPLEX MMO, from a very protective company. Hell, you can play the entire campaign of Diablo III with the Blizzless server emulator. It can be done even without the blessing of the companies. Imagine what can be done with a little bit of help.
Licensing problems? Already happened with GTA, Crazy taxi and more. Remove all the songs, remove all the cars. Someone will put them back.
Some actors are arguing with very bad faith, and I'm getting suspicious about their intentions. I don't think they are arguing in favor of gaming, preservation, developers or consumers.
The idea that one malicious actor could singlehandedly bankrupt a company by hacking their servers is pretty unreasonable. As far as I'm aware, that sort of thing has never happened before in the games industry. Some games like titanfall and tf2 have been plagued with hackers and bots but those were not from a single individual, and like you said, there's little incentive and great risk for that kind of malicious action, as running your own server is not that profitable and if you get caught there are severe consequences.
I think in rare instances some hackers found a RCE exploit that allowed them to gain access to other users. This is more of a Valve problem than SKGs. I
what consequences if the studio shut down?
I guess technically you could even add an exception for bankrupt companies?
@@TheArachnoBot see this is why the whole initiative is a hot mess
people know jack shit about copyright, patent, software and game development to comprehend the situation and come up with a solution
@@SixCoreSecond Excuse me?
If it becomes a law, companies will need to take the law into an account from very beginning.
At the same moment they start developing the multiplayer, they'll have to make it prepared for the end of service. No planned obsolesce BS. If multiplayer implementation needs to be planned from the beginning, so does the complying to the law.
Saying "we relied on 3rd party stuff" won't cut it, if it's not in a playable state.
Yeah. And it is really bad.
Games will become ever more expensive.
There will be less games.
Games will come out worse - cause more devtime would be spent on useless things like making things playable for like 50 people in 10 years.
@@nikitosha1000 Very good faith argument, definetly shows that you looked into the subject thoroughly and DEFINETLY checked the FAQ video AccursedFarms posted which explained silly lilttle misconceptions in detail, so people don't spread misinformation out there.
Thank god, you watched that before making this comment and didn't use any logical fallacies like the "Slippery Slope" one in the process.
@@shroomer3867 You can twist the solution in any way - it won't be good. And yes I checked the FAQ but I replied to OP, not to the initiative.
Good to hear a voice of reason in this discussion.
Very proud that my country managed to smash the 100% already
Congrats!
I think its important to preserve art. I hope people figure out a solution to this that doesn't hurt either gamers or game devs.
1980s 1990s 2000s games cared for game preservation because internet was not widespread at the time. As soon as the Gen Alpha was born they go into live service mess where theckids just accepts that they cannot own a game anymore. Miss the good old days🥺
I don't think this harms devs. If anything as an artist (broad definition, not just visual) it's a guarantee that all your hard work won't be zaslav'd away for good some day, all for naught.
Thank god this solution hurts no one
CHAD. Thor is arguing in bad faith.
lie
Oh shut it Thor you reply to every comment you see Thor was mention in bad faith you meat rider@@SixCoreSecond
@@SixCoreSecondYou are correct. Thor has lied
@@SixCoreSecondsheep
@@SixCoreSecondare you The CEO of Ubisoft or something?
My new favorite Dev! You got yourself a customer now, whether I like your type of games or not, i'll be buying one just because this video. You, my man, deserve the support of a customer. Nailed everything thing that was missed by the other main videos. You have my respect
Great and fair video - I hope people who are able to sign listen and see the merit of this initiative.
Finally! Someone who actually understands the initiative and thinks potential issues through! So many bad actors are creating strawmen to try and tear the initiative down, or people like Thor who create some doomsday scenario in their head and never a step beyond that.
My main issue with Thor is how he's saying that people won't silence him and he won't stay quiet (2nd video), but at the same time he refuses to talk to Ross about the issues he sees with that initative. Looks like he's only comfortable talking about it in front of a camera.
yeah. genuinely how can you act like this will be an absolute detriment to the gaming industry as a whole, then just make your self a sidelines yapper.
I earnestly think he realized what he was saying was retarded and now he doesnt want to backtrack
Speaking of "leaving games in a playable state":
When Rockstar pulled the original _GTA: San Andreas_ from Steam, they did not simply disable new purchases.
Suddenly, my already installed English game was invalidated by Steam, and my Library only allowed me to install a semi-broken Spanish version...
Weird i have it too on my account but i see only English version
That's probably some sort of a bug. But in general, each time you download San Andreas from Steam it's considered a new re-destribution of the game. So if there are any licensed assets that were removed in the meantime, you no longer get to download them. The only solution is to make backups.
@@rufuspilula247 they only remove music thats all
@@JakubixIsHere Yep, I know. And the music can be added easily from what I remember. I think there's a folder for each music station where you can just drag songs into. I could be wrong, I was mainly playing the PS2 version and only sometimes played the PC port for mods.
@@rufuspilula247 on pc you only need to downgrade steam version and add some mods and it works perfectly
This is one of the best overviews I have seen so far around Stop killing game and it's critics criticisms.
Nailed this right on the head grate video you just got a new sub from this
That's really great. It's crucial to involve publishers in the dialogue regarding this issue. It's not just a matter for game developers and consumers; publishers also play a pivotal role. Thor's theory is still hypothetical and doesn't make sense considering that it is an open-source code so that anyone can use it, not just one malicious person. I agree with you.
It’s not crucial as they are the ones that caused the issue. That’s like asking a murderer if murdering should stop, their answer is clearly going to be no.
one point i've had to repeat a few times to people having doubts about the larger SKG campaign has been, "games don't have to be like this". Laws changing how games are designed aren't exactly new, cf lootbox regulations, gambling regulations, play time regulations in asia, censorship laws, esrb/pegi ratings, etc, and I think forcing industries to think about end of life plans for their products (for example for recycling/environmental purposes) just makes sense. You could argue that FOMO-based business models work, or that they're toxic, etc, but at the end of the day, /games don't have to be like this/. I'm sure the devs themselves hate to see their games disappear after they've spent N months of crunch building them. I'm a dev and I support the proposal.
with WoW, not only is it double dipping (buying the expansions/game AND subbing), but it is also VERY possible to make a playable offline version. All the devs would have to do is talk to the ppl behind a project I've seen (to make single player WoW a thing-complete with AI players that work well for dungeons) IF they didn't want to do it themselves. With said project, I can play any pre-cata version, experience operation Gnomeregan etc. If fans can do it, there's no reason the devs themselves can't.
and before ppl ask, I ain't sharing it here-don't want any Blizzard fans reporting it
subscribed btw you're approaching it very nice, i like your point of view in contrast to Jason and the rest
it is not about the crew. the crew is simply a egzample of bad practice that is happening right now. It is about future games that would be born under such law if it would emerge from this initiative.
Capcom's Mega Man X DiVE Offline is a great example.
Great take! Lots of useful information as always. :)
4:42 A bit later on in the video they expand on what they mean - Thor says that "if a game is single-player with online capabilities, shutting it down is not okay" (not a direct quote). He also explained in decent detail why forcing devs to release binaries of servers or a method to make servers could be easily exploited, hence is a bad idea. It sucks we can't have nice things, but I understand that this is an instance of a Nash equilibrium. A solution could maybe be release a LAN mode for the games? Just an idea. From what I understood them, Thor and Prime didn't say "this is what they mean 100% by this initiative"; they said that is one case which the people coming up with the initiative didn't take into account. Also, from what I know "The Crew" had licensing issues (which Thor also mentioned and addressed) and while I think it sucks the license was created for this game this way, I see why this was the path Ubisoft took. Imo Thor's take is not "I am against this in all forms" but more leaning towards "This needs to specify which behaviour should be prohibited and align with game devs, so that the law coming out of this doesn't hurt the industry.". I think it is a requirement because the later you will try to clear up what you intended, the harder it is to influence- meaning the earlier you get input from affected parties the better, and we wouldn't want a law to enforce something with opposite outcomes than we intended.
license issues doesnt mean anything here, litterally any game with music has license issues and so what? all that means is you are not allowed to further sell the game OR have to remove the licensed part if you want to further sell it - see GTA SA.
Imagine buying a movie, but years later someone comes to your Home and takes the movie away from you because the studio lost the rights to the Ending scene Soundtrack. Seems reasonable right?
In case of the CREW all that meant was they werent allowed to sell it further not that they had to go into everyones home and take the game away.
A COUNTER STRIKE 1.6 BOY AYYY
Very level-headed response. Respect
best analysis so far imo
"One last patch" If they can even build the game. The studio can be shut down, part of the source code lost or lost knowledge. lot of time these old games can not be rebuilt. Greate video!
I mean, the law will probably be in the form of fines for noncompliance, so if the studio bankrupts, tough luck. That should be fairly rare I think, though
@@animowany111, Studio may be gone but what about the publisher? They don't know how to make the build most of time. They may not even have the full source code to build it again. Look what happened to classic wow.
@@code82star12 Or an older game called Primal Rage, because of the security on the arcade machine (aka uncensored full game) they can never recreate it, because the guy who worked on it only did that one job in the industry and left, they never knew how to contact him or if he is even still alive and only he knows how to break it to copy it.
So if someone wanted to port Primal Rage to any modern system, they have to use inferior versions for consoles or remake the game from the ground up
Oh! You're from Portugal? Saudações do Brasil! 😄
Fellow portuguese showing some good sense, awesome!
Easily the best and most balanced video on the whole matter
Already signed. thank you for spreading the word on this.
Subscription and free to play games should really be the only exceptions. If a game is so computationally intensive that it has to be server side only, then they're going to need constant revenue to keep it running anyway.
Good take, Let's Go!
I think this happens because of a lack of planning during development. So, the online component becomes so entrenched into the base code, that pulling it out/ disabling it is like trying to untangle cables that have been tied and retied for years and years WITHOUT pulling any of them out of the outlet (cause, you know, the game would stop working).
I make games, so if I don't know EXACTLY what the game needs to be BEFOREHAND, trying to go back and change things is... well...
In many cases, they may also have their hands tied by licensing; they can't provide server resources for security reasons, or because only Ubisoft and not John Serverhoster is allowed to use it, or because they can't even contact a third party involved.
One of the big problems that stands in the way of Epic Games open sourcing Unreal Engine 1 is the fact that they're not allowed to distribute some of the third party materials involved, and I imagine the kind of platforms and tools required to handle tens of thousands of players seamlessly are similarly tied up in tight legal requirements.
Or releasing server binaries
This is developer from gen alpha problem. 1980s 1990s 2000s games are planned without the dependencies of the internet and yet games today require an online server just to play a driving game that is almost always use the client side for information🤦🤦🤦
@@mariocruz591 Tbf, there are a number of classic games like PlanetSide that are dead for similar reasons. There's also the mass GameSpy shutdown.
The reality is a lot of modern games are willing to fully forego singleplayer to focus their resources, whereas it used to be standard to include some kind of SP content even if it was barebones trash.
I'm not advocating for it, I'm upset that games with sizable amounts of SP content like Metal Gear Survive are a ticking time bomb... but there are reasons for how things have ended up.
The huge problem is people not knowing this topic, in Italy the biggest channel which did a dedicated video about this was like 5000 subs...
It could be because of it's august and many youtubers are on vacation, but I think that this topic has to be spread out by many big streamers, expecially if they are not English speakers
6:08 "legally might not be allowed to just send over the binaries"
If license agreement contradicts with the law then the the part of license license that contradicts the law will not be enforceable in court in EU so they could still release it without getting sued. And also this law will most likely target upcoming games, not current ones so in that case game companies can already start negotiations with this new law in mind.
I think the question getting lost in the conversation here is ," Are video games art? ".
So far this conversation has been only from the perspective of a consumer getting a product.
But if video games are artistic forms of expression , then developers should be allowed to design games how ever they want- and control its life-span.
This initiative seems to want to force developers to make games to certain specifications , which is a major violation of freedom of speech .
If a developer sells a 60$ game , consumers can play only once a year -
I am completely fine with that, as long as I am aware that this was the type of product I was buying...
This being said , this is the same situation , except consumers seem to not know what their buying , and this can honestly be remedied through the FTC , not through regulating developers.
@@ji_ji_ Unlike art, games aren't sold as uniques. So if you sold a temporary painting (e.g. because it melts down after a while) and not tell the buyer, you may get away with artistic freedom. If you do it to one art piece. But if you sell a movie, which on a random Friday the 13th bricks every last copy of it, you can not claim artistic freedom after not putting a disclaimer out, because shenanigans of that sort are not the default and having one melted down heap of a painting can still be considered art, while broken disc #123456778 is not art.
Are movies art? Pretty sure most would agree. But they are something you actively engage with and not have it hang/stand passively somewhere. And you engage with video games much more.
But games, unlike movies, can not be in every case be tied down to a storage medium, so certain practices can grow, like putting kill switches into games that would be otherwise fine. All this is, is to make sure people don't pull a Friday the 13th without saying that it will happen.
@@JerbilKonai So, if i sell copies of my art in poster form at a convention , that is not art?
Also paintings decays , paper cannot last forever.
Are games not unique experiences?
Also there is a disclaimer in the EULA of live service games....
@@JerbilKonai u need to rethink what u just said
@@ji_ji_ "Your art in poster form" implies in your own words that you already have art. You just choose the storage medium through which you sell it. But if you were to sell it digitially, would the one purchasing it appreciate, when you "sell" it to someone, and then killswitch it later?
Especially when on the shop page (to match games) you never mentioned that and it is only written in the depths of a legalese document, that you keep the right to kill it?
Just like paper, multiplayer games are understood to have a lifespan. But if you have a combination of a singleplayer and a multiplayer game you would expect the availability of the singleplayer to not be tied to the multiplayer. With the "art on paper" example, it would be the equivalent of a metal statue melting down because a paper labeling it faded.
I don't think custom servers are making so much money to justify bulling developers/publisher with bots and cheaters to the ground(it's just waisted money).
And yeah devs can give as really shitty solution for MMOs but if there is a will people will find a way, look at The Dawnless Days they are making beautiful LOTR mod with campaign in TW Atilla, and they did it multipole times before.
perfect vid
Regardless if it works or not. I will still have to press F for Wildstar D,X.
I signed it already thanks to another guy's video on the important topic.
The Crew literally has code in place to enable an offline mode.
And also, what this also tries to fix is bullshit like Fable 3 PC where the authentication servers have been taken down so you cannot play your offline single player game because the installation cannot be authenticated.
thanks for your smart response
WoW is an interesting case, because while they do provide a monthly subscription service, they also sold box copies and continue to sell expansions and micro-transactions that are separate purchases. This technically doesn't matter as WoW would get grandfathered in, but a future game likely couldn't have that same business model.
The way I see it, liscenced games should by law be f2p cause you have no ownership anyway. You can still spend if you want. If you buy it, you get a copy at a state where the creators cannot change it without your permission. It's to avoid selling a broken product that changes without being scammed.
Understand I'm aware of the extensive lose that comes with a f2p flop, but then, just make a game can is or can be downloaded to a physical medium.
No one is wronged.
I think these companies should have some sorta offline version for when this happens eventually and people need to read fineprint better like Thor said as well. And an actual offline version not a play on our server offline thing.
There should be an offline client that merges the users data to the offline version in the case of an event like this, so people don't cause a scene, that's just covering your butt pretty good i'd say.
I personally just learned the horrors of netcode and multiplayer so I can see why devs would only want to work on one big version but if you don't cover that butthole properly, people will try to stretch it as far as you'll let them lol.
You shouldnt be enfored as a dev to implement that
@@SixCoreSecond well no a government regulatory system shouldn't be necessary lol. It's a business. Just don't buy their products if you think they're scum. They gave you the terms to accept, everyone accepted them.
Problem is support. Most folks think they are more tech savvy than they are. They think it's just an installer, or an "offline mode", but really it's multiple server/services, a client app, with config & deployment for both, based on your home computer & network setup, OS patches/drivers, etc, and *zero* tech support, since the company is not helping. They could pass this into law, but it won't be as useful as players think.
@@mandisaw well I understand in the most layman sense that it's much more complicated than just turning the game off if the game requires server interaction to run at all.
What I don't like to see from companies at all like this who know kids will play the game regardless of the rating. Kids are not lawyers and neither are gamers.
Communication has to be clear on all ends or we'll all start claiming conspiracy left and right.
It's just greed and laziness as per usual.
@@formantaudio That's my point, it's not greed or laziness, it's just a practical reality. Even folks who run private servers are usually sysadmins by profession, doing this for fun. Commercial multiplayer games are massive software suites, it's not trivial to make it work even for skilled pros. If the dev team (or publisher) is no longer willing or able to run it, then that's just the end of the line, unfortunately.
I believe the critical reactions come from a place of assuming that the business model of online games can't change. But the nature of this kind of legislation, which has touched down in China's industry(on topics other than this access issue) is to change the ground rules of what games go out into the market and compete against each other. And what happens in one region affects the decisions of publishers elsewhere, so there are a lot of games now that are China-oriented and the same could occur with EU legislation.
Not could. Would. Ala brussels effect. Apple switching to usb c? That was the EUs doing.
Love the breakdown.
Linux version of Nexus is playable, nobody online but I can still play it with bots.
I agree with you and moreover I agree with L.Rossman . I have been following his channel for a while now and even dough he looks like he needs a few good night sleeps he is on to something with his interpretation of the direction the world is going towards. Maybe I am as old as him but I do not like this trend where we own a fraction of what we buy less and less each passing day and our privacy is reduced from us. I will gladly pay what I can for content and value I receive from many developers and providers but I do also expect that the stuff I've payed for are mine to use as I please. Not enough time to delve into in in a youtube comment, but I advise to go check him out and to get more politically active if you can (for whomever reads this). We need more people to be active...
Thank you for your input on the initiative. Left a well-deserved like on this video.
Now this is a good, rational take
A point you missed with the server binaries is that a lot of in house servers has proprietary technology in them. While releasing the server binaries seem fine the issue arise when you have multiple games that the studio supports that use the same/ similar in house proprietary technology as exposing one game’s server binaries can expose the entire security of all currently running game services from other games supported by the studio.
perhaps that's incentive to keep a game running while your security depends on it. Keep one server running in the cupboard somewhere like guild wars 1
If MSFS 2020 went single-player the world data alone would be 2TB. It would be an absolute massive game.
Let me just say this, while being as arrogant as possible, Pirate Software’s opinion doesn’t matter, Primeagen’s opinion doesn’t matter. Frankly speaking I’m very skeptical about Pirate Software’s technical skills, all I’ve seen so far is some script-kiddy level stuff and Primeagen is softballing this because he’s friends with Pirate Software.
This seems well intentioned but it would be very difficult to cover all the edge cases without creating issues. That said I do feel some pressure to make games more
tolerant of not having network connections is overall good. I wish it was more market force driven.
There should be some minimum time after a game stops being sold that it remains playable.
The way an ECI works is that it's just an initiative to get the EU to look at the issue. They would be able to come up with somethng that covers the edge cases much better, as per the intention: After all, it's not a law, it's just an initiative.
@@RavenReach I understand it’s just an early step in a long process, I’m just skeptical they’d be able to cover everything, but I’m not against them trying.
@@ItsDan123 Worth trying than giving up. This issue has been slept on for so long.
In fact, I'd consider that laws like this really need to be refined for the internet age. It feels like they were all designed in the 90s with no clue about how modern communities would work on the net.
This "edge case" nonsense again... the lawmakers will figure it out. What other law have you ever viewed with such scrutiny before?
@@nono1271 Plenty, people get screwed by edge cases in the law all the time. No where am I saying they shouldn't proceed, just that I expect this to need a lot of work to go from an early proposal to law.
Nope. Thor's argument is blatantly in bad faith. He purposely misrepresent the whole situation.
From a legal perspective, my main question would be how MUCH of the game is the publisher required to keep playable, how do you define that?
For example, Mass Effect 3 is mainly seen as a single player game, but it did have a pretty well developed multiplayer mode, which also tied into the ending of the single player story. In Legendary Edition, they just stripped out the multiplayer mode entirely, so... is that okay? What if I want to play ME3 multiplayer 20 years from now, can't do that.
Or what about a game like Diablo: those games work just fine as single player, but many players might argue the multiplayer scene is hugely important for them. So would just stripping out all the multiplayer stuff, or maybe only allowing LAN play, be sufficient?
You could argue either way for all of these, but my point is: how do you LEGALLY define what does and does not need to stay playable?
(I think this initiative is a good idea in general, but it's details like these that make it kind of difficult to nail down exactly. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be made into law, just maybe not as simple as it might seem at first glance.)
Very educational, thank you
Thankgod your talking about this topic
This is why I like offline games. I like to actually own it!
THis is by far the best video on this subject.
can you make a tutorial on how to make a car cotroller
Thank you for your view on this!
Prime's malicious compliance take actually showed a degree of bad faith that makes it hard for me to take him at all serious. It sounded to me like "If you implement this law I'll circumvent it in this way". Thanks for signalling that Prime, now that we know that devs are already preparing to work around the law we will make the law significantly broader and vague and includes harsher penalties to make sure you comply with it's spirit.
It is in a sense honest though. Obviously it would be simpler and cheaper to run a server if it wasn't architected like a bloated mess but were made to be easy to host. But companies rather pay a team of engineers to maintain the software than allow their consumers to take control of the product they are selling them. This is why we need regulation: because companies would rather make a flammable product so that they can control the ashes than make a reliable one that I can use after they sold it to me.
About the licensing issue.
What exactly is there the issue for the server?
I mean all licensed information that could be a problem is usually not stored on the server.
Its stored on the client.
Or would you say the server contains model/texture/translations that would be a problem?
If brand deals are a problem for publishing a server binary to each person who bought the game, shouldn't the game be revoked from your steam library the moment the deal ends?
Sometimes you arent just licensing brands but actual Code, if said code is part of the Server Binaries you cant just give it out without the Rightholder of the Code allowing you to do so.
You should make a video in portuguese so the initiative reaches a wider audience.
Great video!
great take, thank you and instasub! :)
Olá. Bom dia. Bom trabalho!
I think sharing the binaries, security aside, some people take pride in their work ... espacially something that costs millions. People shouldn't be forced to give out their source code (which is needed.... pure "exes/dlls" don't work anymore on modern server structures... If people want to "conserve art" they should be able to recreate from sratch and host a private server "legally".
finally a more based take from someone that actually went to the source instead of just rehashing others takes.
btw, in their podcast the german pirate party invited the initiator and talked to a eu representative and a lawyer. it was from two months ago and it is in german(auto translate closed captions worked fine while i watched it, im german so i would say they were on point). it was a much more nuanced discussion than what we currently have on the topic in the techfluencer sphere and quite worth a watch/listen/read.
since it was brought up here. fun fact: you can play the og "GTA San Andreas" from the original xbox on a current state xbox series x. i have the disc and it worked thx to xbox providing backwards compatible emulation. remember: gta san andreas is two console generations behind the current one(xbox -> xbox 360 - xbox one). it actually runs in a xbox 360 emulator so it basically runs in two emulation layers and is playable still. after the remaster remake i was curious if my disc still works and i was pleasantly surprised. i also tried it with read dead redemption one which works too. say what you will about microsoft but they solved this on a plattform level which is another viewing angle to consider.
Olhe o video do Asmongold. Basicamente a ideia dele é: Se a empresa não vai mais fornecer o jogo, ela não pode impedir que outras pessoas o recriem. Acredito ser uma ideia bem válida
Great video
Infinite multiplayer tech I have protected IP means servers cost 1/10000 of normal services