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Comments (216)

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  hodgehog11
  As is stated in the article, but is not clear just from the headline, this was not an unexpected outcome from the initiative. The Commission did not seek discussions with SKG, and spent virtually all of their time with the gaming industry lobby groups.SKG was prepared for this, and their intention has been to join up with the group putting together the new Digital Fairness Act, since the objective there is very similar, but much broader in scope, and most of the groundwork is already there. Much of the earlier recorded Q&A sessions in Parliament had representatives commenting on this already, so it's the natural approach. This way, legislation will almost certainly be put forward and voted on, and the lobby groups will likely have a harder time trying to wrestle with a larger movement and a parliament that seems sympathetic to the cause.Basically, this is a battle lost that never really mattered. The climax of this war is yet to come.
• nickslaughter02
  > The Commission’s full communication said a legal obligation to keep games playable, as requested by the initiative, “would not be proportionate.”Making games playable is not proportionate but mass surveillance of private messages is complete fine.
• canthonytucci
  How about a “stop buying games” movement where people just don’t buy this live service garbage?It’s all shovelware. It’s all the same crap over and over. There are plenty of non live service games being released every day, buy those instead. If a game is actually important to people they’ll figure out a way to play it (as people did with WoW classic before classic).The idea that we should spend time and energy to regulate the big studios (who will just find loopholes anyway) instead of just supporting the indies who are making good stuff is wild to me.
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  reedf1
  From the perspective of someone with some experience in consumer advocacy via the EU is that SKG did not do this the right way, or at least the right way right now. The EU expects radical compromise. The right starting point for SKG was to enter talks with games industry lobby groups to discuss possible solutions. If that fails - you will need to be able to prove that it isn't because you were unable to compromise. Your next step is to find individual game developers and publishers who agree with your proposals and can back them at some (hopefully negotiated) level. Any one-sided proposal is a non-starter.The EU will view this this from the perspective of balancing the rights of its citizen workers/producers (game developers) and its citizen consumers.
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  madanparas
  The ECI process forces the Commission to respond formally, not to legislate. The Commission said no, which SKG anticipated. They had already secured a legislative call signed by 45 MEPs and are pushing to amend the Digital Fairness Act through Parliament. The headline frames this as a defeat. Finishing the ECI process shifted the venue to Parliament, where SKG says they have majority support.
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  dopa42365
  Well, it's a million signatures for something to be brought up, not for something to definitely become law.A decade or so ago I (among millions) signed to abolish daylight saving time. Still waiting for that heh.
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  _the_inflator
  I am mixed here. On the one hand there is the decision part from a game publisher, on the other hand the player.Subscription businesses is simply a usage over time. That's the troubling thing here. You don't really own games physically as we did during the 80th and 90th.Update-mania and buggy games were introduced first as consequence of the internet, then came the registration phase and after that the subsciption model.Why am I mixed? Did I keep my machines from back then? The SNES, the i486 etc? What if the hardware has an defect 30 years after? Eternal rights?They are in no way guaranteed, in either reality.I was a semi-pro gamer for some time around 99-01, being in the top 50 of the Age of Empires II: AoK ladder at the legendary ZONE in RM games. I had several smurf accounts leveled up into the ladder, to sneak into games without being tied to my clan and even clans (CN, Myll, ZXK just to name a few).I had to cut ties, because of the impact on my university curriculum. I remember the huge fallout it took on DBD_Jinx who kind of quit the game from one day to another without notice due to - if I remember correctly - being even kicked out of university due to being to heavily involved with the game all day. He was a notorious FLUSHER everywhere and every time which was unimaginable at the time but beat almost everyone being really an excellent executioner and top notch player even in late castle, on water etc. - and this took time and a toll.After AoK I never touched a game with any potential to being addicted. Never. I didn't play Warcraft, which I was a top notch player when it was called Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and came on a CD in 1995, and this lead me to AoK - an online game.People should consider, what they are doing online. A sarcastic colleague once put it this way: People changing bytes on a server in a cloud, wow...He had a point. Games are fun, but not for ever, sadly. I would love to play AoK like back then and while there is the chance now, I still refuse to take part in any online action at all. I took part in a few LAN party games - yes, we brought our laptops and played like it is 1998!But that's it. So I am mixed. Online gaming feeds more and more addiction and that's why I sometimes think: a server that gets shut down is like a cold turkey for some.
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  yndoendo
  I would say lobbyist are continuing their take over of the EU. Copyright law is the excuse but 90's games proves this to be invalidated.None of the games from the 90s and early 2000's required authenticating with a launder. They just worked and this is why those games are still playable to date.Those same games that had multi-player allowed for downloading a self-hosted server.Enemy Territory is a prime example. The game would still be playable even with out ID Software releasing the source code.GOG is built upon legacy games that don't require a launcher. Politicians in the EU have been bought and paid for. President exists and is not being applied.
• nottorp
  The EU is incapable of forcing the Sony assholes to allow region switching of a PSN account between EU countries... do you expect them to do more advanced thinking wrt the gaming market?
• 21asdffdsa12
  Any grown up media industry - is in a eternal battle against the "classics". And games even more, as some of the classics are LEGO sets that have eternal fun build in.Every new band ever has to compete against the beatles.
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  NooneAtAll3
  makes me envy of Switzerland's "enough signatures causes referendum which actually does create a new law" system
• sscaryterry
  Every time I hear lobby, I hear accepted/sanctioned corruption.
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  TheTaytay
  As written, wouldn’t this result in fewer online games? Maybe dramatically fewer?
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  simplyinfinity
  PirateSoftware predicted this would happen and got death threats, swatted, multiple videos hating on him. Like he is the villain. Lobby groups, politics and copyright law are the issues.
• greatgib
  I guess that they forgot to put a big "Protect the children" title on top of their proposal to have it accepted blindly.
• blitzar
  I thought regulations were leading to civilization erasure for the EU ...Or is this one of the good ones(tm)
• agrijakhetarpal
  No shit Sherlock! Pay your taxes to fund illegal immigration and shut up, little consumer-comrade.
• AgentMasterRace
  PirateSoftware must be so giddy right now.
• greenoracle9
  Calling this a failure seems a bit unfair. The signatures forced an official EU response, even if they did not produce a law.The disappointing part is the voluntary industry code. Publishers are not being asked to run servers forever, only to avoid making paid games completely unusable after shutdown.At what point does buying a game become nothing more than renting access until the publisher changes its mind?
• pull_my_finger
  I'm curious to see if this will embolden game corps to continue mistreating consumers or if they will acknowledge consumers are aware of that ethereal state of their "ownership" of games and start selling more complete products instead of "clients" to servers that can be rug-pulled at any time. I think we all can guess the answer as consumers continue to buy, unfortunately, but this movement is at least a step in the right direction.
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  EarlKing
  If only those 1.3 million signatories pledged to never buy from a company that Kills Games again...
• Telaneo
  Once more, capital is shown to have more power than people.
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  Razengan
  When was the last time any law in any of the so-called democracies was influenced by common citizens?Serious question not snark
• EdiX
  Days since last being disappointed by the EU: 0
• lofaszvanitt
  The premise was flawed from the get go. It should have been when you release a game it should be sound,NO DAY 0 patches,free of bugs that prevent in any way completing the game or cause serious annoyance,a way to have a digitally bought game made offline, and play offline.If it's an online game, then after X years, or before abandonment by the studio release a vm that holds the server code, so the addicts could host their own shit.That's all. But it was fucked from the get go, maybe literally started by a lobbyist. Or simply Ross Scott was simply didn't know what he was doing.
• yieldcrv
  > In its official response on June 16, the Commission said it “cannot propose a legal obligation” requiring publishers to keep games playable after they stop being sold commercially.Control behavior by regulating the intermediary. Figure out what the intermediary publishers rely on is, and regulate the intermediary or transactions to that intermediaryThis works within any legal system anywhere and just requires a little inspirationat least, I can do it anywhere, so just reach out
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  iLoveOncall
  The fact that the dude from Stop Killing Games completely fumbled his speach at the European parliament definitely didn't help their case.
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  dyauspitr
  Is this cause even worth a movement?
• w4yai
  They are too busy passing freedom-stifling laws.
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  slopinthebag
  Thankfully the EU recognizes that forcing people to work is slavery.
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  kgwxd
  1.3M signatures to grant government power it shouldn't be granted. It's good that it failed. Stop giving money to proprietary software if you have a problem with the arrangement.
• PowerElectronix
  Laws were never going to be the solution.
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  jstummbillig
  Why would 1.3M signatures be enough to secure EU law? That is entirely unreasonable and undemocratic, given the small section of the entire EU population that number represents.The "despite" certainly creates an interesting expectation, though.