(Text below written by @treasure@feddit.org. Hope you don’t mind me yoinking it for here!)
The European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Stop Destroying Videogames’ is nearing its deadline on July 31st and is still missing quite a lot of signatures. To be precise, at the time of writing this post, only 560.000 of the required 1.000.000 signatures have been reached.
Another requirement has already been fulfilled: The minimum signature threshold has been reached in 10 countries, 7 were required.
If this is the first time of you hearing about this initiative, here’s a short TL;DR for you (more detailed information can be found here):
- Publishers that sell or license videogames should have to leave their videogames in a functional (playable) state.
- This means: Remote disabling of video games (such as live service titles) without providing means of keeping the game functional without the involvement of the publisher should be illegal.
- This does NOT mean that publishers should support their games forever, but rather that they provide tools (such as server binaries) to enable others to keep the game playable.
The initiative is slowly picking up speed again recently after its creator published a video explaining some of the background and why he doesn’t want to continue after the initiative is over. The video has been well-received by the community and some big influencers have reported on the topic.
If you are an EU citizen and have not signed yet, THIS IS THE TIME! The month until the deadline is met will pass quickly. Use two minutes of your time to influence something that may improve your life forever!
CLICK HERE TO SIGN. (or click here for a guide on how to sign in your language)
Also, if you are a UK citizen, you can sign a UK specific legal petition that also carries legal weight (forces parliament to investigate the issue). You can sign that here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/
Makes me wish I was European so I could sign it too.
Am European, but not in the EU.
Wish I could do my part tooIn that case, help spread the word.
Signing it now just to spite piratesoftware.
I watched critical’s update on him and my fucking god is piratesoftware such an arrogant twat
I’ve been served PirateSoftware’s shorts long before all this controversy and it always bugged me how confidently wrong he was about systems and network things. He seems to be under the impression that he understands these things on an advanced level due to his experience as a checks notes QA tester for Blizzard, and a… indie software developer lol.
All this backlash against him is so vindicating.
ELI5 this controversy? I’m out of the loop.
There’s a group with a petition to “Stop Killing Games” which seeks to legally remedy the issue of game developers making games that are later turned off and left unplayable even in the case of them being single player.
Thor of PirateSoftware owns a development outfit that makes indie games and he also does a lot of streams. He’s against Stop Killing Games, but doesn’t seem to even understand it, and has publicly spoke out against it, going so far as to spread misinformation about it.
Have also been out of the loop too but went through the know your meme page.
Pirate Software made a video a year ago criticizing the initiative on a very surface level and has continued to do so in streams. Guy who created/sponsored/however-that-works the initiative posted a counter-argument video talking about what the initiative would actually do. Pirate Software did the ol’ Internet Doubledown and in general was kind of an ass and kind of revealed some ignorance. Cue Youtube Drama.
Don’t Give Up. You Can Cuss The Whole Time Just Don’t Give Up.
Hell yeah! We can do this!
Fuck Thor.
Drama drives these things. I totally understand Ross not wanting to engage in it 10 months ago but look at what it can do.
Yeah. It has rapidly turned an initiative that was already unnecessarily combative toward devs (fuck the publishers though) and associated it with harassment and review bombing games that are actually Doing It Right just because they worked with the wrong third party studio. Not to mention all the “Well, we don’t agree with everything asmongold says, but let’s call a truce so long as he is gonna let us play our video games”
And… honestly? I have disliked thor since LONG before all y’all realized he isn’t the world’s best WoW player or he has an opinion you don’t like because he was considering things from the perspective of the people who would be doing the work to enact these “simple requirements”.
But it feels REAL fucking everyday normal to watch people immediately go from “the harassment campaign that led to the death of Mikayla Raines was horrible” to “Let’s fucking ruin Pirate Software’s life and attack him and everything he has ever associated with because we are morally righteous”
I hope this petition succeeds. There are games and other digital media I want to experience, but corporations are dead set on just trotting out new things on their terms.
Absolute legend.
I’ve been hearing about this for so long I honestly can’t remember whether I’ve already signed it.
Not an issue! Just try signing in again and it won’t add it if you already signed
As an American who can’t bear to play most online games because they might go down or disallow Linux users, please please please please check. EU laws are our only hope of having usable fucking technology.
The thought of being able to mod and host my own GTA 5 online server when it goes down, without some weird custom server mod that also uses Windows-exclusive anti-cheat on most servers, sounds like a damn dream. I miss that game… but fuck Windows, nothing is worth installing Windows. I just realized I’ve been ranting about the lack of Linux compatibility of GTA 5 Online in reply to someone’s comment about how this petition has gone on for a while. I swear I wasn’t hijacking your comment, I just have strong feelings about Linux gaming and got carried away.
I’m an EU citizen living in the UK, but only signed the UK one because I’m not putting my passport ID into petitions O.o
Just to clarify, this isn’t a normal toothless petition, this is an official EU mechanism that allows citizens to bring problems to the attention of the European Commission, and force them to pass judgement on it legally. You can read more about it here.
It’s good to be skeptical of anything asking for that personal info, but I’d suggest researching into it to confirm that it is indeed legit.
Thank you for signing the UK one :)
I initially read this as a petition to stop games that have killing in them facepalm
Still better reading comprehension than PirateSoftware.
Did my part and signed, I hope it reaches the required threshold
Thank you so much for contributing! :D
Well, that pirate guy didn’t do anything. (Unless he actually caused this, then… messy causality…)
He actively misrepresented the campaign and spread misinformation about its goals. I don’t know if he genuinely didn’t understand or if he was too embarrassed to admit to a mistake but he did a lot of damage to the momentum and perception of the whole thing.
It sucks these big creators only now pick up the mantle but it’s better than nothing. There’s still some time left.
I don’t know if he genuinely didn’t understand or if he was too embarrassed to admit to a mistake
Worse, he actively lied. In his edited video about the petition he actively misrepresents the initiative, then goes on to edit out the the part of Ross’ video that would have contradicted his misrepresentation.
This is not an innocent or negligent mistake on Thor’s part, it’s an active attempt at burial.
Even worse, he is a narcissistic lying piece of shit with high ego. He would never admit a slight mistake, and thinks of himself as all-knowing. Think ChatGPT - confidently lying all the time, but always doubling down.
He’s like if ChatGPT hallucinations were kept in for the express purpose of profit.
I haven’t really been following it or him (I don’t really even know much, other than the gist of not wanting games to disappear when devs decide it’s too expensive to keep the servers). What did he do? Because normally he gives pretty good takes.
He wildly misunderstood/misrepresented the initiative two videos in a row (and continues to ten months later), and he continually discredits the entire initiative because of contrived edge cases.
I think this paragraph from this twitter reply really sums it up:
My dislike of the initiative stems entirely from the wording to keep all games in a “Functional Playable State” after sunsetting which is not possible for all games and could limit what kinds of games people make in the future.
The idea that creativity would be hampered because games would have to remain playable when the company shuts down servers one day is ridiculous. Can you imagine if we talked like this about anything else? “We can’t force every phone to use the same USB-C charging port because it would be too technically infeasible to do so and hamper creativity.” “We can’t outlaw CFCs because they’re useful chemicals and it would be technically infeasible for some products to be made without chlorofluorocarbons (the things that fucked up the ozone layer).” “My dislike of the initiative stems entirely from the wording to ‘make cars limit their emissions’ which is not possible for all cars and could limit what kinds of cars companies make in the future.” Ridiculous.
It’s absurd that I’m not exaggerating when I say his opposition to Stop Killing Games entirely boils down to “I think companies should be allowed to take games away because it would be really hard for them to leave some games playable when they’re done supporting them 🥺”
I used to passively like Thor, but when I watched those two videos he made last year about SKG I lost all of my respect for him.
Signed the UK parliament one, sadly drowning in those Brexit benefits when it comes to the other.
Thank you for your help! :D
Still think this is pure selfishness from players, but hey if you get a law passed then more power to you.
How is it selfishness to want to keep the product you bought? To preserve things that contribute to art and culture?
Of course things are so simple. I like the “everyone’s art” argument as well.
You wouldn’t mind elaborating on “of course things are so simple”? It feels like an awfully vague answer…
I think this movement is based on feelings. It feels bad that a game died, so we should fix it. Unfortunately the real world is more complicated than that, and overly broad rules are goint to cause unintended consequences for small developers.
The art argument is nonsense, although the other extreme is too. Artists need protections so they can earn a living, but the protections currently last far too long.
Either way, nothing is stopping a company creating a game similar to any number of often referenced “dead” games, and there is nothing wrong with letting something run its course and die off, to allow room for new creativity.
Damm I wish I could sigh these things but some dumb fucks decided I can’t
