A European initiative is now underway for videogame preservation and consumer protections against publishers “killing games.”
well, while i understand sunsetting old online multiplayer games because hosting game servers is a non zero cost, i can’t understand the need for singleplayer games to be always connected and rendering them unplayable
The company wouldn’t be required to keep their servers online, just to allow other people to host their own. So it has 0 ongoing cost and maybe few hours of coding during game development.
Unless you are a game developer I would hold off on assuming how much work would be required to do what this proposal asks.
Used to be the norm back in the day though. I’m saying 15 years or so before the old internet disappeared with AWS etc.
Self hosted should be an option and I think this is a reasonable requirement tbqh. Yeah it’s not 0 work but it’s not a hardship either, really, given the many hours that are going to be needed on netcode anyway. Especially if you know this going in to development.
That isn’t an unreasonable take. But the language this proposal uses is far too vague and leaves too much in the hands of the government, and could be used by the EU, an organization not really known for their tech savvy, to place some burdensome requirements on developers…especially indie developers who do not have the resources that big studios have.
Indie developers are the only ones doing that, Knockout City devs released their hosting software for the community, it’s the AAA developers that wanted to maintain control.
Wat
Building a whole cloud backend is not a few hours work.
Plus I bet most of these companies share cloud tooling so they’ll need to make distinct standalone self host code
Most of what they use built-in in game engines, not their standalone code. It’s a matter of switching the servers used with some minor tweaks.
Hah.
While simply allowing the game to use a variable for the server URL is easy, the VAST majority of gamers would assume it’d come with a clean server installer and the ability to set the URL in some kind of UI.
Both of those details are very much NOT simple in many cases. Sure, quite a few well written games, it could be done quickly, but as someone who’s worked on software for decades … it’s NEVER well written. Especially when video game studio style crunch is involved.
This is still a good petition and good idea, but to assume “just a few hours” is … simply ignorant.
There’s actually nothing wrong with no longer supporting a game you developed. The problem is these scummy bastards make sure no one can support the game or run it privately after they abandon it.
I can’t understand the “need” for the server to be hosted by the company. Our computers are just as good.
Looking at you hitman…
If you are a European Citizen, sign it. It takes a minute of your time. Not more.
Who are u to tell me what to do ?
lol you downvoted yourself. I like it
How can you tell?
Posts get auto upvoted by the poster which means every post should have at least one upvote. If it doesn’t then OP took away their own upvote. His comment had 0 upvotes when I first saw it.
There seem to be some instances that DON’T give the automatic +1 I’ve noticed.
You can look at posts/comments with kbin to see who liked what (used to show dislikes as well, but not anymore). Example: https://kbin.run/m/gaming@lemmy.zip/t/597607/If-1-million-people-sign-a-petition-a-ban-on/comment/5070214/favourites
Thanks bae
I could see this leading to standardizing and outsourcing multiplayer services, which would be interesting.
That being said, before that happens, as a developer I’d be like: here’s a zip file with all of our proprietary stuff ripped out. Have fun spending the next few months getting it to work well. Congratulations, you’re now supporting a game that did poorly enough for us to drop it.
But seriously, go sign it. Long term it should be a good thing.
The proposal is precisely about not letting your snake ass do that, since it would be no different than spinning a private server, customers shouldn’t have to learn how to analyse network packages and break DRM just to play a game they paid for because you turned off your server.
Either sell it as a subscription or sell it as packaged product, not both.
I’m old enough to remember when dedicated servers were the norm.
Oh sweet times before the matchmaking
Just signed it. Took 10 seconds with my ID-Card.
The current language in this proposal is far too vague and has the potential to do more harm than good…I would hold off on signing this until a better proposal is made
Care to explain your point with some detail?
If this fails, I doubt we’ll see a second proposal. So I think it would be fair to measure any arguments you make as why no action is better than the proposal.
Correct me if I am wrong, but this petition doesn’t decide the wording of any law just ensures it is brought to attention of EU lawmakers and discussed right?
If the petition hits it target, the politicians are forced to discuss it which would include agreeing workable language. It would not automatically become the law with the proposed language.
We’re gonna rely on the same group of people who wanted to ban memes to be able to draft a policy that differentiates between MMO’s, live service games, and single player games that need to be connected to the Internet? Naw dog …I ain’t trusting them old farts…VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET.
People HAVE BEEN voting with their wallets. Nobody’s out there buying 5000 games they don’t wanna play, people are already buying only what they want. The problems is, all it takes to sustain a shitty game is a few fucking whales that none of us can compare to. Or a lot of people buying into the hype of a well-liked IP releasing a new game. Or a million other ways to get the fucking money without getting your money or mine.
So we can keep on voting with our wallets, but let’s also try to control this cunty behavior from companies at government level instead of basically “thoughts and prayers”.
Wouldn’t they just not release the games instead?
That would cut them off from a huge market. Just look at bad actors like Google, Apple, and Microsoft. They comply with EU laws, since losing the market would hurt them too much financially.
For a few specific games? Yeah they could stand to lose, it’s not every game in their catalog.
Totally different situation.
I don’t feel like reading the article, but I’m guessing if they want to release a multiplayer game that you have to pay for, and they want to shut down their servers (making the game unplayable), maybe they would be required to release their server software so people can host themselves.
deleted by creator
