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https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/4526764378252076547/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/12/3812910932507382739/
And as the previous two posters indicated, this is not going to work the way you think it's going to work.
Of course I didn't.
Europe, or rather the EU-part of it, still follows a more-or-less democratic system with a more-or-less free market; that just makes it impossible to just tell publishers that they have to keep something active forever. And even if it's not MMOs, you also cannot force them to keep selling a game forever, or to keep renewing licenses forever so they can keep selling it forever.
And yes, I wouldn't mind games being a more perpetual thing, and Steam is actually doing the best they can: apparently, their contracts with publishers allow them to let people download and use games even after they have been taken off the market, very much like a CD purchase back in the day. However, even Steam cannot sell games that publishers have removed from Steam, and MMOs are an entirely different thing altogether because of them depending on servers being active.
They're actually right though.
This initiative wouldn't stop the plug being pulled on an MMO; unless the playerbase themselves would be willing to come together to host the server infrastructure for it on their own costs and split the bill.
All this initiative seeks is legislation that will forbid publishers from abandoning a game before making available, within reason, the material necessary for the game to continue to function without the publisher's further involvement. It strictly does not seek legislation that would have the effect of requiring the publisher to continue to invest effort and resources into a game after they've discontinued it, in so far as they'd have left it in a working state.
This can help a lot with titles that have, for instance, always online DRM and would cease to work when the publisher pulls the plug on the authentication server. Or with traditional multiplayer games that don't require large server environments, but could run off of a simple dedicated server.
-- And that's literally not what the initiative is seeking. You might want to actually go back and read it.
Just a tip:
It would help your point immensely if you would stop using the word 'ownership.' Even if you are using it in its colloquial sense of being able to exercise control over a thing. For every sane person discussing in good faith that understands this is what you mean, there will equally be someone discussing in bad faith intentionally misinterpreting your use of the word and trying to push a narrative and create a strawman argument to burn down, that you meant it in the legal sense of the word.
You can’t force devs to keep servers online, that’s nuts. You can’t say a shut down game is in the hands of the player base (legally) because that would be a nightmare for copyright law.
Would ironically actually not be a problem in the EU from the 'getting your money's worth'-perspective. Only from the game-preservation perspective.
As per Directive 2019/770 Article 10 all EU member states must enact national laws that hold traders liable for non-conformance where access to or use of digital content is restricted through the consequence of a conflict over third-party rights; in particular intellectual property rights.
In the hypothetical situation where a future law would exist that forbids publishers from pulling the plug on a game without first supplying the materials to keep it in a functioning state without their future involvement, and a publisher would still try to do so without providing said material while citing as their defense that they can't because it is protected under copyright - then those laws kick in and everyone can hold the trader liable for defect, and demand a refund. After which traders have a legal right of redress to sue the publisher in question for damages.
So one way or another, any publisher attempting to try to pull a fast one that way, is going to end up paying the piper for it.
Texas two step, no legal chance. You can't hold a company liable that isn't liquid or doesn't exist anymore.
Because the way you're wording it, it would force developers to eternally support their games, or force them to spend extra time and money to build outs, all so that maybe fans could piece them together enough to run private servers. Or else risk mass refunding from every single person who has played the game plus the stores it was hosted on.
If this was actually how it would play out, I'd just imagine most companies would stop publishing in the EU, because this would massively suck for any game dev trying to make any sort of project that's not entirely singleplayer.
In practice, what would happen is that you'd wind up with companies being created for individual games (like what happens with movies), that company would licence the IP from the parent studio and then when the studio is no longer interested in supporting or selling that game, it would wind that company up.
Yep. People who build houses do that all the time. Create a company, build the houses under it's name. Keep it up for the warranty period, then close it. No one to sue at that point and completely legal.
Another possibility is they increase game prices to compensate for the end of life cost for the game.
There is also the question of IP and how that works out. Servers aren't exactly open source software.
I just see too many pitfalls for such little gain.
fortunately these little campaigns always go no where