EU citizen's initiative to stop killing games

[Nathan]

Ownership can still be saved outside the US, we just have to get signatures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkMe9MxxZiI

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/eci
https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en#

"Giant FAQ on The European Initiative to Stop Destroying Games!" (41min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEVBiN5SKuA

[Boblin the Goblin]

RiO님이 먼저 게시:

Thornskade님이 먼저 게시:

You're welcome to stay but I feel like I'm losing my sanity every time I take a look at this thread

There's a spectacularly easy fix for that.
It's all related to the mindset.

Have you ever had to deal with kindergartners, or much worse: young teens hitting the first steps of puberty? That's the kind of mindset with which you should approach things.

Basically, even if that's not the actual truth of the matter, just mentally project a 5 to 13 year old at the keyboard on the other end of the internet: They don't know anything, they think they know the world and they don't much like being told differently; and they can't help it - because that's just biologically the way they are.

This is a very ironic statement.

[ThorN]

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

If Moonsprout Games tells me to stop developing and hosting Spy Cards Online, the site goes offline and nobody can access the game. There's no reality where you can still play the game after they tell me to stop making it. There's no way to make the game playable offline because it is a website that requires a server to do pretty much everything it needs to do before you can actually connect to someone else and play the game.

If Valve tells Reactive Drop Team to stop developing and hosting Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop, the game goes away, and all the community-hosted servers go away as well. This would only happen in a situation where the game was being banned from Steam entirely, so you wouldn't be able to start the game up because it wouldn't have access to the APIs it needs. You'd get an error message that says "NO STEAM" and your only option would be to quit.

When a game that requires a server does not legally have the ability to continue, there is no other option but to break it. I've built my games to put as little load on the server as possible so that I hopefully never have to stop hosting them for economic reasons, but if the company that owns the IP says to stop, the game stops.

All of this is preventable if you design a game in a way that it doesn't die when official servers stop being hosted. Which you would do in case they mandated that in the future.

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

A company isn't going to pick "lose a lot of money" over "minorly inconvenience maybe a few dozen gamers".

Too bad. If you have to, you have to. Collectively, all the people you sold your game to also lost a lot of money when you took that game away from them. Do you think that's fair? If you call it a minor inconvenience when I spend all my hard-earned money on products that you are going to apply planned obsolescence to, without even informing me about it, do you think this is a fair relationship?

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

The same thing would happen if Pokemon fans released an MMO and Nintendo told them to stop

That's a violation of IP laws. So guess again what would happen. Tip: not that.

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

If the argument is "well, you don't have to make the full game accessible, just make as much as possible accessible", think about what that means. A Pokemon MMO without Pokemon. A car racing MMO without cars or multiplayer. A card game without cards or game rules. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop wouldn't have anything at all in it because it's all built on top of Valve's original 2010 remake of Alien Swarm and we can only use any of the code or assets in the game because Valve has given us permission.

The initiative calls for a "reasonaly functional (playable) state". Do you think that matches the definition you just gave?

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

If a game that boots up to the main menu and says "the server cannot be accessed so you cannot play this game right now" doesn't satisfy you, then "as much as possible" is not your boundary condition. And I don't think it's possible to satisfy all three parties (the rights holders, the game developers, and the players) in this situation. Someone (or possibly all three groups simultaneously) is going to get the short end of the stick.

I don't think giving publishers the ability to intentionally break the products is something that SHOULD be satisfied. That is an unfair, borderline criminal business practice.

You should, in fact, have the obligation to not sell products with a built-in killswitch that you can flip at your own leisure.

[RiO]

Boblin the Goblin님이 먼저 게시:

RiO님이 먼저 게시:

That's part of the formal process because an ECI's initiators can opt to not use the central collection, but collect signatures via their own system. (Provided they get the OK for it from the EU after providing proof that it lives up to the strict standards required by the GDPR.)

Is there a reason why it lost that as the next step and does not disclose it as an option?

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works_en#Step-4-Get-statements-of-support-verified

You failed to quote the following paragraph, emphasis mine:

TIP – The Commission provides a secure file exchange service to transfer the statements of support (collected on paper) to the national authorities. The Commission takes care of this transfer.

You also failed to follow the given hyperlink for more information, which has two relevant FAQ entries.

The first under the category "Giving support":

Q: What information do I need to provide?
A: This varies from one country to another.

For all EU nationals, the following is required: nationality; full first name and family name; and, depending on the country:

either

A. full postal address and date of birth
(for nationals of Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovakia)

or

B. a personal identification number and the type of number/document
(for nationals of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden).

Some EU nationals can also use e-Identification to support an initiative.

The second under the category "Getting statements of support verified":

Q: How are signatures collected online sent to the national authorities for verification?
A: The Commission sends the signatures collected using its central online collection system to the Member States via its file exchange service. This is a system that allows the secure transfer of statements of support to the Member States. The information is sent in an encrypted form and can only be decrypted by the competent authority concerned.

The EU Commission transmits this collected data securely, digitally, and it can be directly verified digitally against backing national database systems. And in cases where e-identity based signing is used, it will have been verified de facto.

The first entry btw. also links out to a further information page illustrating the data requirements for each member state, revealing how many member states are actually susceptible to low-hanging fraud based on illegitimate combinations of name, address, and date of birth.

It's not that many. Most require also a valid national identification document. Or they support e-signing - which the bulk of member state residents to which it is available will probably use out of sheer convenience because if they already have the app for it on their phones it's a matter of tap-tap-tap done


You'd have to be dealing with a few bad seeds that are willingly poisoning the well and submitting bad signatures knowingly for having any significant skew in the data to manifest during verification.


I.e. in case of using the online systems provided by the EU, it's not the case that verification is skipped - per say - but more that it's pretty much a formality. Unless, specifically, foul play is involved.

[mldb88]

Thornskade님이 먼저 게시:

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

If Moonsprout Games tells me to stop developing and hosting Spy Cards Online, the site goes offline and nobody can access the game. There's no reality where you can still play the game after they tell me to stop making it. There's no way to make the game playable offline because it is a website that requires a server to do pretty much everything it needs to do before you can actually connect to someone else and play the game.

If Valve tells Reactive Drop Team to stop developing and hosting Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop, the game goes away, and all the community-hosted servers go away as well. This would only happen in a situation where the game was being banned from Steam entirely, so you wouldn't be able to start the game up because it wouldn't have access to the APIs it needs. You'd get an error message that says "NO STEAM" and your only option would be to quit.

When a game that requires a server does not legally have the ability to continue, there is no other option but to break it. I've built my games to put as little load on the server as possible so that I hopefully never have to stop hosting them for economic reasons, but if the company that owns the IP says to stop, the game stops.

All of this is preventable if you design a game in a way that it doesn't die when official servers stop being hosted. Which you would do in case they mandated that in the future.

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

A company isn't going to pick "lose a lot of money" over "minorly inconvenience maybe a few dozen gamers".

Too bad. If you have to, you have to. Collectively, all the people you sold your game to also lost a lot of money when you took that game away from them. Do you think that's fair? If you call it a minor inconvenience when I spend all my hard-earned money on products that you are going to apply planned obsolescence to, without even informing me about it, do you think this is a fair relationship?

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

The same thing would happen if Pokemon fans released an MMO and Nintendo told them to stop

That's a violation of IP laws. So guess again what would happen. Tip: not that.

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

If the argument is "well, you don't have to make the full game accessible, just make as much as possible accessible", think about what that means. A Pokemon MMO without Pokemon. A car racing MMO without cars or multiplayer. A card game without cards or game rules. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop wouldn't have anything at all in it because it's all built on top of Valve's original 2010 remake of Alien Swarm and we can only use any of the code or assets in the game because Valve has given us permission.

The initiative calls for a "reasonaly functional (playable) state". Do you think that matches the definition you just gave?

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

If a game that boots up to the main menu and says "the server cannot be accessed so you cannot play this game right now" doesn't satisfy you, then "as much as possible" is not your boundary condition. And I don't think it's possible to satisfy all three parties (the rights holders, the game developers, and the players) in this situation. Someone (or possibly all three groups simultaneously) is going to get the short end of the stick.

I don't think giving publishers the ability to intentionally break the products is something that SHOULD be satisfied. That is an unfair, borderline criminal business practice.

You should, in fact, have the obligation to not sell products with a built-in killswitch that you can flip at your own leisure.

And in that case guess what developers are going to stop doing? If you guessed making these types of games at all because the mandated that is being put on them is extremely cost or resource prohibitive just to satisfy a small minority of players who may still be playing the game 20 years in the future, you’d be correct.

[Boblin the Goblin]

RiO님이 먼저 게시:

Boblin the Goblin님이 먼저 게시:

Is there a reason why it lost that as the next step and does not disclose it as an option?

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works_en#Step-4-Get-statements-of-support-verified

You failed to quote the following paragraph, emphasis mine:

TIP – The Commission provides a secure file exchange service to transfer the statements of support (collected on paper) to the national authorities. The Commission takes care of this transfer.

You also failed to follow the given hyperlink for more information, which has two relevant FAQ entries.

The first under the category "Giving support":

Q: What information do I need to provide?
A: This varies from one country to another.

For all EU nationals, the following is required: nationality; full first name and family name; and, depending on the country:

either

A. full postal address and date of birth
(for nationals of Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovakia)

or

B. a personal identification number and the type of number/document
(for nationals of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden).

Some EU nationals can also use e-Identification to support an initiative.

The second under the category "Getting statements of support verified":

Q: How are signatures collected online sent to the national authorities for verification?
A: The Commission sends the signatures collected using its central online collection system to the Member States via its file exchange service. This is a system that allows the secure transfer of statements of support to the Member States. The information is sent in an encrypted form and can only be decrypted by the competent authority concerned.

The EU Commission transmits this collected data securely, digitally, and it can be directly verified digitally against backing national database systems. And in cases where e-identity based signing is used, it will have been verified de facto.

The first entry btw. also links out to a further information page illustrating the data requirements for each member state, revealing how many member states are actually susceptible to low-hanging fraud based on illegitimate combinations of name, address, and date of birth.

It's not that many. Most require also a valid national identification document. Or they support e-signing - which the bulk of member state residents to which it is available will probably use out of sheer convenience because if they already have the app for it on their phones it's a matter of tap-tap-tap done


You'd have to be dealing with a few bad seeds that are willingly poisoning the well and submitting bad signatures knowingly for having any significant skew in the data to manifest during verification.


I.e. in case of using the online systems provided by the EU, it's not the case that verification is skipped - per say - but more that it's pretty much a formality. Unless, specifically, foul play is involved.

So, when you signed the petition, you were required to give all the information as verification correct?

[ThorN]

mldb88님이 먼저 게시:

And in that case guess what developers are going to stop doing? If you guessed making these types of games at all because the mandated that is being put on them is extremely cost or resource prohibitive just to satisfy a small minority of players who may still be playing the game 20 years in the future, you’d be correct.

What I also love is these people, who think they can see the future.

First off, let's say I grant you that this is going to happen. To which I say: Not my problem. Upholding consumer rights is priority number one.

This argument is fallacious in nature, by that logic I could say if developers release nothing but broken and buggy games then we get way more games!!!!111!! So let's have nothing but broken games, yay!

Who cares? I want functioning games. And I don't want my games I paid for yoinked from me. Not doing those things saves the developers money, but neither is an acceptable situation for consumers.



But also, I don't believe this is going to happen. Firstly, because the cost is not actually that great and all games in the past used to offer private servers or LAN for multiplayer, and secondly, because there are numerous examples of games that already do this. Remember how you mentioned Overwatch and League of Legends? Because Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 already offer private servers and LAN mode. What reason could there be the other games don't do it aside from greed?

[Ȼħⱥꞥꞥēł8753452]

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

Channel_191님이 먼저 게시:

You have gone on a unrelated rant.

The games you're talking about wouldn't even be released. This has to do with games that have already been on the market.

They can stop selling the game if wanted they just can't leave it in a broken state

Games are trapped with things like gameforwindowslive like lost planet 2, trapped in a condition that is pretty much unplayable to most and only was taken off sale years ago. And they still haven't even touched it.

The crew was just a recent noteworthy example.

I think you're getting confused or maybe miscommunicating.

I'm going to assume you're replying in good faith and there's just a misunderstanding here.

If Moonsprout Games tells me to stop developing and hosting Spy Cards Online, the site goes offline and nobody can access the game. There's no reality where you can still play the game after they tell me to stop making it. There's no way to make the game playable offline because it is a website that requires a server to do pretty much everything it needs to do before you can actually connect to someone else and play the game.

If Valve tells Reactive Drop Team to stop developing and hosting Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop, the game goes away, and all the community-hosted servers go away as well. This would only happen in a situation where the game was being banned from Steam entirely, so you wouldn't be able to start the game up because it wouldn't have access to the APIs it needs. You'd get an error message that says "NO STEAM" and your only option would be to quit.

When a game that requires a server does not legally have the ability to continue, there is no other option but to break it. I've built my games to put as little load on the server as possible so that I hopefully never have to stop hosting them for economic reasons, but if the company that owns the IP says to stop, the game stops.

The same thing would happen if Pokemon fans released an MMO and Nintendo told them to stop or if Ubisoft had a car racing MMO that barely anyone still played with two sequels and their options were to lose a lot of money renewing licenses or just cut the service. A company isn't going to pick "lose a lot of money" over "minorly inconvenience maybe a few dozen gamers".

If the argument is "well, you don't have to make the full game accessible, just make as much as possible accessible", think about what that means. A Pokemon MMO without Pokemon. A car racing MMO without cars or multiplayer. A card game without cards or game rules. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop wouldn't have anything at all in it because it's all built on top of Valve's original 2010 remake of Alien Swarm and we can only use any of the code or assets in the game because Valve has given us permission.

If a game that boots up to the main menu and says "the server cannot be accessed so you cannot play this game right now" doesn't satisfy you, then "as much as possible" is not your boundary condition. And I don't think it's possible to satisfy all three parties (the rights holders, the game developers, and the players) in this situation. Someone (or possibly all three groups simultaneously) is going to get the short end of the stick.

That's for them to figure out, as I've said mmos and server dependent games are tricky. They could however allow players to host it.

I'm confident that they're fully capable of finding ways to preserve these games

They're capable of finding legal loopholes and hiring psychologists to exploit players.

[Mrglanet]

Boblin the Goblin님이 먼저 게시:

RiO님이 먼저 게시:

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works_en#Step-4-Get-statements-of-support-verified

You failed to quote the following paragraph, emphasis mine:



You also failed to follow the given hyperlink for more information, which has two relevant FAQ entries.

The first under the category "Giving support":



The second under the category "Getting statements of support verified":




The EU Commission transmits this collected data securely, digitally, and it can be directly verified digitally against backing national database systems. And in cases where e-identity based signing is used, it will have been verified de facto.

The first entry btw. also links out to a further information page illustrating the data requirements for each member state, revealing how many member states are actually susceptible to low-hanging fraud based on illegitimate combinations of name, address, and date of birth.

It's not that many. Most require also a valid national identification document. Or they support e-signing - which the bulk of member state residents to which it is available will probably use out of sheer convenience because if they already have the app for it on their phones it's a matter of tap-tap-tap done


You'd have to be dealing with a few bad seeds that are willingly poisoning the well and submitting bad signatures knowingly for having any significant skew in the data to manifest during verification.


I.e. in case of using the online systems provided by the EU, it's not the case that verification is skipped - per say - but more that it's pretty much a formality. Unless, specifically, foul play is involved.

So, when you signed the petition, you were required to give all the information as verification correct?

Boblin the Goblin님이 먼저 게시:

RiO님이 먼저 게시:

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works_en#Step-4-Get-statements-of-support-verified

You failed to quote the following paragraph, emphasis mine:



You also failed to follow the given hyperlink for more information, which has two relevant FAQ entries.

The first under the category "Giving support":



The second under the category "Getting statements of support verified":




The EU Commission transmits this collected data securely, digitally, and it can be directly verified digitally against backing national database systems. And in cases where e-identity based signing is used, it will have been verified de facto.

The first entry btw. also links out to a further information page illustrating the data requirements for each member state, revealing how many member states are actually susceptible to low-hanging fraud based on illegitimate combinations of name, address, and date of birth.

It's not that many. Most require also a valid national identification document. Or they support e-signing - which the bulk of member state residents to which it is available will probably use out of sheer convenience because if they already have the app for it on their phones it's a matter of tap-tap-tap done


You'd have to be dealing with a few bad seeds that are willingly poisoning the well and submitting bad signatures knowingly for having any significant skew in the data to manifest during verification.


I.e. in case of using the online systems provided by the EU, it's not the case that verification is skipped - per say - but more that it's pretty much a formality. Unless, specifically, foul play is involved.

So, when you signed the petition, you were required to give all the information as verification correct?

In any case regardless, this is why the real signature goal is actually 1.2 or 1.3 million signatures, to prevent invalidations that might occur for one reason or another (ie from someone misspelling their name or address to not being an EU citizen)

[Ȼħⱥꞥꞥēł8753452]

Thornskade님이 먼저 게시:

mldb88님이 먼저 게시:

And in that case guess what developers are going to stop doing? If you guessed making these types of games at all because the mandated that is being put on them is extremely cost or resource prohibitive just to satisfy a small minority of players who may still be playing the game 20 years in the future, you’d be correct.

What I also love is these people, who think they can see the future.

First off, let's say I grant you that this is going to happen. To which I say: Not my problem. Upholding consumer rights is priority number one.

This argument is fallacious in nature, by that logic I could say if developers release nothing but broken and buggy games then we get way more games!!!!111!! So let's have nothing but broken games, yay!

Who cares? I want functioning games. And I don't want my games I paid for yoinked from me. Not doing those things saves the developers money, but neither is an acceptable situation for consumers.



But also, I don't believe this is going to happen. Firstly, because the cost is not actually that great and all games in the past used to offer private servers or LAN for multiplayer, and secondly, because there are numerous examples of games that already do this. Remember how you mentioned Overwatch and League of Legends? Because Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2 already offer private servers and LAN mode. What reason could there be the other games don't do it aside from greed?

God forbid they sell functional PRODUCTS.

I'm not paying for a beta test.

"But time, costs"
You're a company, but this instance you're "poor developers who just need to make it by"
No you're a company and million/billion dollar ones at that.
They just want to legalize theft from consumers.
"You will own nothing and be happy"

[Yujah]

Thornskade님이 먼저 게시:

You're welcome to stay but I feel like I'm losing my sanity every time I take a look at this thread

Time then for another uncontroversial and mentally soothing update...

Actually, bit soon maybe after Denmark -- but yes, Netherlands was on the heels of Denmark since the start, and also they have now reached the national threshold as country 6 of 7 needed. 7 is going to take a bit again, with Ireland still leading the pack of currently 5 countries sitting between 60% and 70%.

The map at the below ECI link gives a nicely coherent picture, although, go Baltics. The two island states Cyprus and Malta are the stragglers at 10%. Poland has post-finish eked past Finland.

1 124.80% Poland
2 124.12% Finland
3 114.61% Germany
4 109.69% Sweden
5 102.71% Denmark
6 100.14% Netherlands

7? 68.82% Ireland
7? 65.53% Belgium
7? 63.89% France
7? 61.76% Austria
7? 59.94% Spain

340K of 1M signatures in; https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home/allcountries

Previously...

Yujah님이 먼저 게시:

1 124.01% Finland
2 123.37% Poland
3 114.14% Germany
4 109.50% Sweden
5 100.02% Denmark
6 98.37% Netherlands

7? 67.86% Ireland
7? 65.34% Belgium
7? 63.68% France
7? 61.52% Austria
7? 59.73% Spain

[Elucidator]

Keep in mind that the thresholds can be invalidated when the signatures are bad. Because of that you need a lot more than just 100%
its the same with the total number of votes. That's why the aim is 1.3 million votes
The thresholds needs to go above 130 to have some certainty.

Also, this may be an interesting video.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Bv7-Les3Cgc

[Mrglanet]

Hey, I wanted to drop this off for the EULA people from earlier (god, reading back on this discussion/thread riled me up unnecessarily)
A couple MEPs asked questions to the EU Commission about the legality of EULAs, if games are goods, services, or licenses, and if copyright law allows rights holders to render all copies of a game inoperable:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2024-001352_EN.html
Answer: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2024-001352-ASW_EN.html

[Mrglanet]

Oh, and if people want examples of games other than The Crew which have been killed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vaNfqOv3rStBQ4_lR-dwGb8DGPhCJpRDF-q7gqtdhGA/edit?usp=sharing
Hence, Stop Killing Games!

[Soren]

Mrglanet님이 먼저 게시:

Hey, I wanted to drop this off for the EULA people from earlier (god, reading back on this discussion/thread riled me up unnecessarily)
A couple MEPs asked questions to the EU Commission about the legality of EULAs, if games are goods, services, or licenses, and if copyright law allows rights holders to render all copies of a game inoperable:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2024-001352_EN.html
Answer: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2024-001352-ASW_EN.html

What part of the reply were you trying to highlight?

Under EU copyright law namely Directive 2009/24[6], Member States are required to ensure that the exceptions which apply to lawful users provided therein are respected by the rightsholder in setting the contractual terms of use of the video game.

However, issues such as the availability of the videogame and reliance on online servers and the possibility that the game may be discontinued in the future do not fall within the scope of EU copyright law.

I don't really want to get involved in the conversation too much because I know so little despite reading so much back and forth in this thread. But isn't the second paragraph here actually stating games like "The Crew" do not fall within the scope (and thus protections) of this EU copyright law?

[Elucidator]

Mrglanet님이 먼저 게시:

(god, reading back on this discussion/thread riled me up unnecessarily)

There are a number of people who simply want to troll. They enjoy receiving replies and causing people to become upset. They have no intention of trying to get a certain perspective and are interested only in the people replying and upsetting them, rather than the information shared.

You need to recognize the trolls by the questions asked and lack of care shown, for example through a lack of words and attention to a particular post.
Keep in mind this isn't everyone, some are very hardheaded in "I'm right, your opinions don't matter", but it is very easy to see the difference once you identify it.

The keyword is lack of care. critique is shown which shows a huge lack of care about what you shared you should be sceptical. I recommend not replying.
Another red flag is, since their intent is to simply cause a stir, be it by upsetting or rediculing people or other ways, they tend to receive the most replies, even more than hardheaded people. You should be wary of people who receive the most replies in a thread.