Stop Killing Games campaign begins!

[Malkavian Grin]

I'm not much for activism but I feel the pull for justice perhaps stronger than most. Balance must be maintained. Where am I going with this... Ross Scott, of Accursed Farms, is heading up a worldwide campaign to try to finally get action taken against games being killed after a company is tired of providing support (i.e. servers or required online connectivity). Yes, this is a longshot but consider it an only-shot.

The point is to get at least one country to take action and force developers to let you continue playing a game after they've sold it to you. The spearhead of this campaign is for Europeans and people that purchased The Crew from Ubisoft. Unfortunately I think many of us, like Ross' audience, are American and the FTC is likely to do naught.

TLDR; how do I help? Goto StopKillingGames.com and spread the message! This may be our only way into saving video games.

 

[cailano]

Can they extend it to companies that lose the license to certain properties? I still haven't recovered from the trauma of losing access to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

[rorytheromulan]

He doesn't want to broaden his focus. He's focused on the one issue to stay effective and not spread himself thin. I will look at it this week to see how I can do my part. I would prefer to aim at the digital slips of permission that we buy to "own" our digital games, but I digress. Perhaps that will come later.

(Pictured: me)

[Suzuki Stumpy]

At the moment, the campaign in the UK is stalled somewhat whilst Parliament approves the petition (there's a mere 20 signatures on it at present, and no-one else can sign it until its approved). Hopefully that'll happen in the next couple of days.

[leons1701]

If this actually succeeds, expect to see a LOT fewer games with any online function at all. Which, to be clear, doesn't really bother me, a lot of games right now don't really need the features they have (come on, does Diablo really NEED to be some sort of bastard MMO? That's FAR from the most outrageous example.) but is going to make a lot of people super salty. One nice thing, a possible return to the days when you could actually host an FPS game yourself (would be tough with the huge maps some games run on, but maybe the era of giant player counts is over for the moment?)

[Malkavian Grin]

Glad to see this picking up some steam!

Yes, Ross is trying to keep his focus super narrowed on the specific issue, as a means to get the ball rolling and get literally any amount of legal action done over this practice. It'll be the first win in, hopefully, a series of them.

I'm doing my part spreading the message because not only did I not buy the game in question, I live in the US.

@leons1701 Agreed, there'll probably be less games that reflexively remove the online capability. It doesn't bother me either as I tend to play single player stuff. (as for Diablo, it's always had the ability for multiplayer but earlier iterations were not trying to be an MMO and weren't choking you with microtransactions). Personally, I say let people be salty. They are likely part of the problem, as they enable companies to do these things by agreeing blindly to TOS.

[cailano]

Oh please, let this result in more single-player games.

[Melkar]

For a minute there I thought this was about premature termination of games on MW 😂

[Avaday Daydream]

Darn...I wanted to sign the petition in Australia, but it looks like the petition won't go up for signatures until the House of Representatives next meets...and it seems like they've adjourned until around the 15th of May.

[Malkavian Grin]

11 minutes ago, Avaday Daydream said:

Darn...I wanted to sign the petition in Australia, but it looks like the petition won't go up for signatures until the House of Representatives next meets...and it seems like they've adjourned until around the 15th of May.

Does that mean you wouldn't still be able to sign it? I'm in America where laws are dumb and sentient, so I'm cheering peeps like you on :)

[Suzuki Stumpy]

Last I heard, none of the petitions were available for signing anywhere in the world (still waiting here in the UK for government approval)

[Sapphic Reiver]

5 hours ago, Suzuki Stumpy said:

Last I heard, none of the petitions were available for signing anywhere in the world (still waiting here in the UK for government approval)

UK government approval has gone through. It's been the most popular voted poll in the past 24 hours.

[Suzuki Stumpy]

Just signed it. Halfway to getting a government response already. Although still a long way to go before it's guaranteed to be debated in Parliament.

[Avaday Daydream]

Oh, hey, the petition for Australia is up. At least I'm pretty sure that's the right one, it doesn't say 'Stop Killing Games' but it does say 'require software sold to remain in a functional state after the end of the product's support period'.

[Malkavian Grin]

On 4/22/2024 at 4:31 AM, Avaday Daydream said:

Oh, hey, the petition for Australia is up. At least I'm pretty sure that's the right one, it doesn't say 'Stop Killing Games' but it does say 'require software sold to remain in a functional state after the end of the product's support period'.

That sounds like the one. That's the goal here: to make companies shut down a game properly and responsibly, not to force them to provide endless support.