The recent stopkillinggames campaign has been my first exposure to UK petitions.
Link to petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071
Link to campaign: stopkillinggames.com
Link to the campaigner’s video
Classic petition response. “We will do nothing extra here, there are already rules in place even if they are shitty ones you don’t like, suck it up.”
This is why I never saw the point in the UK petition. Fuck all chance the tories would give a fuck and it was a waste of time signing it. I very much doubt there’s even 100 mps from all parties that have any real understanding of video games or give a fuck about them.
Kinda why I still think it would have been a good idea for it to refer to software in general.
The campaign should have very much steered away from using the word video game at all. It allows them to dismiss the entire ideas oh look at them nerds. If they’d said software, and emphasized the corporate angle, we may have got a better response.
Perhaps an advantage could be that people could try again using “software” and making some other tweaks. I think you’re only supposed to make a petition for one subject once.
If there is a second attempt using “software” then you can campaign to the older people who may then better understand, as well as the people who are already interested in games.
Making it about software might then make the idea of public demonstrations seem less silly.
Not too sure though.
About what I was expecting.
Kinda hoping for it to reach the debate milestone, but its growth seems to have slowed. Still plenty of time for that to change though. It’s still in the first month I believe.
You are probably better off for asking that same question in 6 months, maybe less.
I guess the petition committee only has the significant power to request information for their response.
The petition isn’t over with this response, it’ll run for 6 months and if it breaks 100,000 signatures it is required to be debated in Parliament.
Instead of “if sold on the understanding that they will remain playable indefinitely” should be switched to say unless they are sold with an understanding that they will not be playable indefinitely.
Game companies should be explicitly stating whether a game will have a limited lifespan based on things like server availability. Especially for single player games with online verification.
It needs to be more extreme.
If the use the word buy or own. “Buy now” “buy here” “buy XXX” That is purchased indefinitely.
If they are being rented for a limited time I needs to be explicitly stated as “rent” any mention of buy or discrepancy has the above mentioned purchased indefinitely.
Fully agree.
I’d much prefer companies to be forced to release the source code for multiplayer servers once they decide to shut them down. There will always be fans who’d keep it running.
I would prefer any game that is no longer sold to fall into the public domain, including releasing the source code. Reward them for their limited copyright and pnly keep those protections as long as they maintain the game’a availability.
only keep those protections as long as they maintain the game’s availability
Didn’t you just repeat what I said
Putting it in the public domain is an additional thing.
He’s saying the whole game, not just the server.
You would immediately see most devs state that they are at least playable until 1 day after release. Which would make that meaningless.
Nobody would buy a game that says it is only guaranteed playable for one day.
What they need to clearly state are expectations on planned lifetime of authentication servers, any specific technology that is required, and so on. Like people know multiplayer requires servers, but something that says they will have those servers for X number of years would help set expectations and encourage companies to plan long term support for games that might not be massive hits.
For single player games this would discourage terrible DRM that keeps games from being played just because authentication was retired.
I disagree.
The devs that don’t do that would stand out a ton.
Plenty of meaning to me.Non-permanent games would be easier to identify, so plenty of devs would add an end of life plan just to stand out.
Sounds to me that if you bought The Crew with the understanding that you could play indefinitely, noting that they didn’t provide an end date at any time while they were selling it, they need to honour your access to it in one form or another, else provide you a refund.
I don’t even think they should be required to keep them in a working state, but they should absolutely be required to make them accessible and not allowed to prevent alternative servers after they stop hosting them themselves and not allowed to remove content you paid for from your possession.
Maybe “leave” could have been a better word for them to use than “keep”?
Unfortunately, I think there is no real way around companies killing games. Because as shitty as this is, is it worse than every game which doesn’t intend to comply simply selling the game as a service instead? I doubt that could realistically be made illegal.
In other words, one way of complying would simply be to only sell a 1-mo. “lease” to your game. You don’t own it, and at some point they stop selling more leases, and then kill the game. You never owned it to begin with, so you didn’t lose anything; you are no longer a customer. Of course…this is just describing a shitty subscription system.
That said: I think it would be a good start for companies to be required to list earliest end-of-support date. You already get this with many hardware vendors (enterprise network gear won’t be supported forever).
one way of complying would simply be to only sell a 1-mo. “lease” to your game. You don’t own it, and at some point they stop selling more leases, and then kill the game.
I prefer this route, to be completely honest with you. it will be easier for me to tell which games are just trying to suck dollars out of me and which games want me to just have fun.
Good point — getting the shitty ones to identify themselves is a good start.
Yeah. Having to make it clear that they’re services would be great.
It would make people more informed about what they’re getting, and give games that the devs intend to be sold and kept a way to stand out as such.
I’d be fine with a minimum support time if an end of life date is not made clear when buying. Say a game has to be able to run for at least one more year after purchasing unless there is an explivit warning about the planned shut down date. That would at least seem reasonable to me.
Of course the optimum would be requiring either offline functionality, or, even better, enabling fans to host their own servers once the official ones shut down. That way games could be preserved for much longer.
But at the very least, people shouldn’t lose access after an unreasonably short time.
Service is literally there to placate the armchair warriors. I don’t think it’s succeeded in anything other than stopping people taking to the streets
Full Response:
The Government recognises recent concerns raised by video games users regarding the long-term operability of purchased products.
Consumers should be aware that there is no requirement in UK law compelling software companies and providers to support older versions of their operating systems, software or connected products. There may be occasions where companies make commercial decisions based on the high running costs of maintaining older servers for video games that have declining user bases. However, video games sellers must comply with existing consumer law, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA) and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs).
The CPRs require information to consumers to be clear and correct, and prohibit commercial practices which through false information or misleading omissions cause the average consumer to make a different choice, for example, to purchase goods or services they would not otherwise have purchased. The regulations prohibit commercial practices which omit or hide information which the average consumer needs to make an informed choice, and prohibits traders from providing material information in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner. If consumers are led to believe that a game will remain playable indefinitely for certain systems, despite the end of physical support, the CPRs may require that the game remains technically feasible (for example, available offline) to play under those circumstances.
The CPRs are enforced by Trading Standards and the Competition and Markets Authority. If consumers believe that there has been a breach of these regulations, they should report the matter in the first instance to the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133 (www.citizensadvice.org.uk). People living in Scotland should contact Advice Direct Scotland on 0808 164 6000 (www.consumeradvice.scot). Both helplines offer a free service advising consumers on their rights and how best to take their case forward. The helplines will refer complaints to Trading Standards services where appropriate. Consumers can also pursue private redress through the courts where a trader has provided misleading information on a product.
The CRA gives consumers important rights when they make a contract with a trader for the supply of digital content. This includes requiring digital content to be of satisfactory quality, fit for a particular purpose and as described by the seller. It can be difficult and expensive for businesses to maintain dedicated support for old software, particularly if it needs to interact with modern hardware, apps and websites, but if software is being offered for sale that is not supported by the provider, then this should be made clear.
If the digital content does not meet these quality rights, the consumer has the right to a repair or replacement of the digital content. If a repair or replacement is not possible, or does not fix the problem, then the consumer will be entitled to some money back or a price reduction which can be up to 100% of the cost of the digital content. These rights apply to intangible digital content like computer software or a PC game, as well as digital content in a tangible form like a physical copy of a video game. The CRA has a time limit of up to six years after a breach of contract during which a consumer can take legal action.
The standards outlined above apply to digital content where there is a contractual right of the trader or a third party to modify or update the digital content. In practice, this means that a trader or third party can upgrade, fix, enhance and improve the features of digital content so long as it continues to match any description given by the trader and continues to conform with any pre-contract information including main characteristics, functionality and compatibility provided by the trader, unless varied by express agreement.
Consumers should also be aware that while there is a statutory right for goods (including intangible digital content) to be of a satisfactory quality, that will only be breached if they are not of the standard which a reasonable person would consider to be satisfactory, taking into account circumstances including the price and any description given. For example, a manufacturer’s support for a mobile phone is likely to be withdrawn as they launch new models. It will remain usable but without, for example, security updates, and over time some app developers may decide to withdraw support.
Department Culture, Media & Sport
I don’t think that providing never-ending service is likely practical.
Certainly not if the game doesn’t have an ongoing service fee of some sort. World of Warcraft players pay a monthly fee, and so as long as they can keep the thing in the black, they can keep it going as long as they can cover costs. But outside of that sort of thing, unless a game provider who provides ongoing service can make money by extracting information from player computers and data-mining players or something like that – not something that I’m really keen on encouraging – there’s inevitably a point in every online game’s life where service is gonna end.
I could see maybe an argument for, at purchase time, clearly-designating games that have an online component and thus will stop working at some point, so that the consumer can decide what he wants. There are some genres that just don’t work offline, but outside of those, it’d let a consumer more-readily choose offline games.
It was never to demand devs to support indefinitely. It’s to allow the game to function in some capacity after devs stopped supporting them. It can be letting users host their own private/community servers, and offline mode, or something similar.
They can give the users the tools to host their own servers
I don’t think that providing never-ending service is likely practical.
That’s…the entire point? To require them to make arrangements so that the game is still playable in some form even once they are no longer able to continue providing that service.
This might be requiring they patch out a server callback; automatically unlocking all digital-store-unlockable content; open-sourcing your server code so others can run their own servers; or some other methods.
I don’t think that providing never-ending service is likely practical.
A no longer supported but DRM-free offline game can likely still be played. You can find an old computer, or use emulation or virtual machines to run it.
But if the game uses DRM or online services it can become impossible to play once the company stops actively supporting it.
Link to the response? Wouldn’t the response be better as the post image?
Or a link to the petition instead of an image.
Good idea.
Edited.
awe shit i see a future where games start having expiring dates built in : (
I guess it’s nice to know it should stay up t’ill then, but if this gets popular devs would have to protect themselves by setting a deadline instead of letting it free. Right?
Like instead of giving people tools to self host servers or some kind of long term support, they’d think it easier to just say the game dies then and publishers would just use that as default
IMO (In My Opinion), that would be a good thing.
Knowing is better than not knowing.
It would also give devs who want to let you keep your games a way to stand out.
Honest question here… If you’re going to put “In My Opinion” in parenthesis, why not just skip the “IMO” part and type it out right from the beginning?
For people who might not have seen the acronym before.
I’d like to see a seal of quality/logo on games that have guarantees in place to keep working indefinitely.
the response just shows they have no idea what they’re talking about. demanding that games are “playable” in perpetuity is completely unreasonable and probably not even what anyone is asking for.
Why is that unreasonable?
If I buy a chair or a dvd, I can expect to last as long as I don’t break it or let it degrade too much.
The only things that seem to make this apply to software are planed hardware obsolescence, and needing to connect to the company’s server with no option to host your own.
Because a game is not a chair, nor is it a DVD.
Any piece of software requires periodic maintenance to keep it functional as operating systems, drivers etc. run away from it in compatibility. Demanding that any game developer spends money in perpetuity to keep a game “playable” is completely absurd which anyone understands if they just think about it for a second.
This becomes even worse when you take examples like you mentioned, where the entire software is built around the premise of connecting to centrally controlled servers.
What do you suggest should be done for example if World of Warcraft is permanently shut down, should Blizzard be forced to release the entire source code? Should they be forced to spend man hours to release something publicly that was never meant to be released? Should they be forced to document it?
When you buy a game that requires a connection to play, you’re not even buying a game, you’re buying a service. If you don’t want to agree to the terms that probably already outline this pretty clearly, don’t buy the game.
As nice as it would be to force companies to open source their code when they stop selling it, it will never happen because there are too many implications that are completely untenable, one of which is trademarks.
Because a game is not a chair, nor is it a DVD.
It’s still a product though. Besides I believe DVDs can contain software data as well as video data. Many of the older game discs were probably DVDs of some kind.
Any piece of software requires periodic maintenance to keep it functional as operating systems, drivers etc. run away from it in compatibility. Demanding that any game developer spends money in perpetuity to keep a game “playable” is completely absurd which anyone understands if they just think about it for a second.
I thought this too at first, but you could easily keep an outdated device offline to avoid the need to update it and keep it secure. Besides, compatibility layers exist (WINE, Proton, etc).
What do you suggest should be done for example if World of Warcraft is permanently shut down, should Blizzard be forced to release the entire source code? Should they be forced to spend man hours to release something publicly that was never meant to be released? Should they be forced to document it?
I don’t know much about that game, but I think the guy said that that game was subscription rather than purchase, so I reckon that specific game probably made it sufficiently clear that you weren’t buying it. For other games where providing users their own way to host a server is infeasible; they should do the same. … or whatever they feasibly can do to keep them playable.
When you buy a game that requires a connection to play, you’re not even buying a game, you’re buying a service.
Then they should make that clear.
If you don’t want to agree to the terms that probably already outline this pretty clearly, don’t buy the game.
I do strongly agree with that. Sadly though, many people just don’t know what they’re getting into. By the time they do, they’re already hooked on the series. It wouldn’t be as bad if the terms were clearer.
Edit: Also, many people get into games as children.
As nice as it would be to force companies to open source their code when they stop selling it, it will never happen because there are too many implications that are completely untenable, one of which is trademarks.
Releasing closed source server binaries, or even just not being allowed to go after people who make their own server when no official one is available would be a step forward though.
I can go to Google and log in to free email. I can create word documents and spreadsheet in google docs. I can learn AI with Google projects. I can create unlimited private repos on GitHub, play lots of games on steam for free. I can download Winamp from old versions .com for free. I can get a Linux distro for nothing off servers. I can use a freevpn, watch YouTube for free.
Literally handing over game servers to an authorised community to run or supporting games forever actually is possible in the modern day.
