The Save Game Campaign – help stop publishers from killing video games!

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

The short version:
Video game ownership is under threat from publishers and there’s a big campaign to push back against this.  Check out this simple, accessible website to see how you can help: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

The slightly longer version for people with short attention spans:

The much longer version for people who have the time to watch a video explaining the finer details:

There’s more videos I could post explaining why this is a major unaddressed issue in the industry and how most people are either unaware of the sheer scale of the problem or try to downplay it, or else say there’s no realistic option to fix it, but this should be enough to digest just for starters.  Besides which, does it really need spelling out if games with singleplayer campaigns are fair game?
The shortest version:
Sodding Ubisoft.

Topic

[Flap Jack]

JUSTICE FOR GEEK CHASE

[Dave]

[Moonlight]

This is why I never play anything that isn’t on SEGA hardware.

[Ben Saunders]

oh hey it’s the Freeman’s Mind guy

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

oh hey it’s the Freeman’s Mind guy

Oh hey someone who knows what that is at last!

[Hamish]

oh hey it’s the Freeman’s Mind guy

Oh hey someone who knows what that is at last!

I’ll do one better and say I follow the Game Dungeon.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I’ll do one better and say I follow the Game Dungeon.

Bravo Hamish! Good going!

[Hamish]

As for the campaign itself, I can not sign the petition as the Canadian one has not been approved as of yet. I also can not pester Ubisoft directly as I do not own any of their games. I refuse to buy any games encumbered with DRM or support any platforms that promote it, which yes even includes Steam.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

The UK campaign has also not been approved yet. You’d think that three months would be enough notice?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

The UK petition is now live: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071

Haven’t heard any word on the Canadian petition yet though.

[Flap Jack]

Cool. 1200 signatures isn’t bad for less than a day. Whether it can get to 100K in 6 months is another matter, but we’ll just have to see.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I saw it shoot up from 500 to 1,000 in less than an hour. That’s not bad going.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

The UK petition just hit 10k signatures. Let’s see if we can make it all the way to 100k and get a shot at a parliamentary debate. We’ve got 5 months to do it in.

[Flap Jack]

As it happens they just announced that LittleBigPlanet 3’s PS4 servers will remain offline indefinitely after they were put into “maintenance” in January. So that’s over 10 million player created levels just gone forever. Thanks Sony!

[GlenTokyo]

As it happens they just announced that LittleBigPlanet 3’s PS4 servers will remain offline indefinitely after they were put into “maintenance” in January. So that’s over 10 million player created levels just gone forever. Thanks Sony!

They must have used the same people as TOS. 

[Jonathan Capps]

Dark Souls had a similar problem because of ddos attacks, didn’t it? I’m sure the problem is solvable but likely very expensive, which will always end with it being fucked off.

[Hamish]

O Canada, we take our fucking time…

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

The Australian petition is now live: https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN6080

And now, a few words from Ross on how it’s slightly bungled:

The bad news is the wording got screwed up so now it applies to ALL software, which is a problem, that’s too big a scope.  We think we can still salvage it though, since a MP or Senator will still need to pick it up and can narrow it back down to just videogames then.  On that note, if you know of any MPs or Senators, or other influential figures in politics who would be willing to take up this issue with enough signatures, by all means reach out to them!
My apologies about this fumble, I really tried to have this this targeted more carefully, but we can still work with this.
On the upside, we’re in touch with an Australian law firm and now have an excellent chance of getting the ACCC’s attention on this issue, so there’s still hope!

[Dave]

My apologies about this fumble, I really tried to have this this targeted more carefully, but we can still work with this.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Response in the comments:

Australian here:

Given our governments particular idiosyncrasies, it’s possible this was done to avoid relitigation later down the line. In turn, this could allow a set precedent to go after other companies, such as Adobe etc to get them to also stop cutting people off software. That’s my theory as it may be, because down here we tend to be overly broad by default, which has its benefits as well as downsides.

It’s still worth signing regardless, but don’t get downhearted. Because the over broad nature does mean it will create a nuanced discussion if the petition is accepted for debate, which does stand to benefit more than just people that play games.

Edit: Ross, you need to understand that narrowing the focus isn’t going to be as successful down here as you think. It doesn’t work that way, because our consumer laws are for the most part designed to protect the most citizens as possible. Restricting this to “just videogames” will have a deleterious effect rather than the one you’re hoping. Making this broader is a road to a better outcome.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

https://www.reddit.com/r/StopKillingGames/comments/1cyrb9v/uk_political_system_shenanigans_and_its_impact_on/

You may already know that general elections have been called in the UK. Due to how elections work there, all petitions will close early, on May 30. They don’t reopen. There won’t be any revised response, unless the current government decides to give it before that date, which is extremely unlikely.

You have until May 30 to sign the petition and make your voice heard on the issue. In the meantime, I leave you with some reading, with one of the campaign volunteers managing to get an article published in the Mirror (one of the very few mention of the campaign in an english mainstream media).

[Technopeasant]

Cleary Sunak called the election purely to annoy Ross Scott.

[Nick R]

The UK government responds to the post-election version of the petition:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074

[Technopeasant]

Slightly curious, but has a single one of these petitions actually gone anywhere?

[Right_Said_Brett]

This is why I never play anything that isn’t on SEGA hardware.

Pfft. I refuse to play anything that isn’t SMEGMA.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Slightly curious, but has a single one of these petitions actually gone anywhere?

In a nutshell? Not quite far enough. The UK petition actually got a response that was then rejected and needed revising, but then the general election happened and the revision never happened, so when the petition was resubmitted to the new government, they gave the same response as before that didn’t actually address any of the points raised. The EU petition is less than halfway to its target and isn’t likely to reach it in time.

[Moonlight]

Time to illegally emigrate to the EU and commit voting fraud.

[Technopeasant]

I think emigrating illegally would make it harder to commit voter fraud.

My dad served as a scrutiner in a Calgary municipal election even though he wasn’t a Canadian citizen yet though.

[Flap Jack]

FYI there was a kind of depressing update posted about this campaign yesterday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIfRLujXtUo

Basically the only avenues left are the UK parliament petition and the European Citizens Initiative. The UK petition already got a bad response and so the only option left is to force a debate by getting 100,000 signatures by next month, which is probably not going to happen. And the ECI needs to hit 1 million signatures by the end of this month to move forward, which is also unlikely to happen.

But the video is an interesting watch regardless, especially if you were looking for a YouTuber to be justifiably furious with.

[Meteo]

What a weird kind of shock; – I don’t quite wrap my mind around this, and I was more scared about problems with early DVDs.

[Technopeasant]

[Flap Jack]

Seems that things have turned a bit more positive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmkCQJrc9n4

What a rollercoaster. Maybe that last update video was the kick up the arse a lot of people needed.

[Jonathan Capps]

In your stupid smug face, Thor

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Let’s not celebrate yet – we still need to reach the 1,400,000 safety margin to account for signatures that don’t count – either because they were incorrectly signed, or because they’re fraudulent (it does happen)

[Flap Jack]

Well it’s already at 1,163,000 and there’s still 26 days left until the end date, so chances are very good it does hit 1.4M by the end. Plus that is the most extreme safety margin, the fraudulent signatures probably won’t count for as much as 28%.

But I don’t want to tempt fate either, hence my hedging language.

[Technopeasant]

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/european-game-publisher-group-responds-to-stop-killing-games-claims-these-proposals-would-curtail-developer-choice/

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

What a load of crap. There’s absolutely nothing stopping players fronting the cost of hosting.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The article and their argument seems to be about liability, not hosting costs.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

The article and their argument seems to be about liability, not hosting costs.

Liability for what? I didn’t hear of any liability discussions around World of Warcraft when they started letting players host private servers. And Warcraft’s not exactly a niche IP.

[Flap Jack]

Weasel words in my opinion. Why would a publisher be liable for the actions of players in a game they’re no longer hosting or selling? And if they are liable under current law for some reason, then that’s the whole benefit of making new laws or regulations to resolve this issue, to ensure that publishers won’t be unfairly punished for keeping games alive.

At worst a publisher might get negative PR for bad things going on in their old games due to there not being enough public awareness about the fact they’re no longer their responsibility. An understandable concern, but when the alternative is destroying games, my sympathy can only go so far.

It probably is true that planning an online game so that it will still be playable when official support ends will be more difficult and more costly in some ways, but I don’t find the suggestion that it’s effectively impossible (or impossible without compromising players’ privacy) to be particularly believable. Firstly SKG left the definition of “playable” open for lawmakers and publishers to work out (so it could be satisfied with offline modes or LAN play only). Secondly they’re only trying to apply this to future games, not current or already shut down ones. If coming up with a way to end active support for an online game without making it fully unplayable when they know about the requirement from the beginning of development is too challenging for them, then maybe they shouldn’t be in this business?

At least PC Gamer were pretty even-handed in the way they reported this though.

[Technopeasant]

That does remind me of the situation with Unreal Tournament. Epic abruptly pulled them from digital stores awhile back. The scuttlebutt is the Duke Nukem Forever 2001 leak exposed some net code vulnerabilities in old school Unreal engine, and rather than fixing them they just dropped support. To their credit they eventually granted OldUnreal permission to distribute binaries, but that doesn’t fix the abandonware state with Unreal Tournament 2003, 2004 or 3. Now that was back in the relatively saintly era of distributed servers, and things with central servers are even more complicated (where even piracy can’t always fix it).

[Technopeasant]

https://www.euractiv.com/section/tech/news/commission-preparing-token-gesture-for-angry-gamers-and-game-developers/

[Flap Jack]

The ECI has crossed the 1.4M safety threshold!

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

[Author]

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