(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 different legal petition here, which also helps tremendously:
Makes me wish I was European so I could sign it too.
In that case, help spread the word.
I’ve been hearing about this for so long I honestly can’t remember whether I’ve already signed it.
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.
Not an issue! Just try signing in again and it won’t add it if you already signed
I hope the wording of the petition is very clear. The last time this was brought up in the UK the government of the time basically just brushed it off by intentionally misunderstanding the petition. You can’t give them any leeway to do that this time.
I suspect they would’ve brushed it off regardless, they didn’t want to deal with it. There’s another 100k UK petition that would force them to re-look at it with more depth which is also ending quite soon.
Drama drives these things. I totally understand Ross not wanting to engage in it 10 months ago but look at what it can do.
Not only do I not mind you yoinking the text, I want to thank you for your contribution to the cause. If everyone who has signed could get one more person to sign, the initiative would succeed!
Glad to help out, and thank you for letting me use your well written words! :D
I initially read this as a petition to stop games that have killing in them facepalm
This also has big implications for consumer rights and society as a whole in other areas of digital technology and right to repair, it is a foot in the door to start actually holding manufacturers responsible for the full lifecycle of their products (digital and real) that requires them to actually relinquish their control when their product reaches end-of-commercial-life, instead of turning everything into digital garbage out of what basically amounts to apathy and compulsive rights hoarding.
Don’t Give Up. You Can Cuss The Whole Time Just Don’t Give Up.
Hell yeah! We can do this!
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.
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.
Wow, so that won’t do anything.
you do realize this isnt some dumb online petition but rather a official citizens initiative to create new laws, right?
actually you clearly dont realize that.
It is better to try and fail than to not try at all.
It does infinitely more than sitting around being a doomer.
What’s a doomer?
Someone born within the years 1992-1995. You can spot 'em easy.
I feel attacked, I’m doing my best 😭
Someone believes a cause is doomed from the start, so doesn’t even try.
Because gaming companies are all greedy fucks. They aren’t going to give a fuck about people’s signatures lmao. You have to not buy the game in the millions. Not sign a website, and still buy the games anyways
Its not a meaningless web petition.
It’s a formal, direct democracy style legal process in the EU, to get the relevant legal authorities to review and revise the laws that currently allow gaming companies to be greedy fucks.
A similar concept exists in many US states amd cities:
If enough signatures can be gathered in a defined amount of time, then the proposed legal concept that has been directly endorsed by enough citizens then is automatically either pushed to the legislators and courts to review, or to be included for broader democratic voting up or down on by the next local election.
…
You apparently have no idea that initiatives and petitons can be more than just a legally non binding, essentially useless virtue signals on some random website.
In many, many parts of the world, something like an initiative serves as a way for the citizens of an area to bypass their own representatives and force them to directly engage with an issue.
If this initiative crosses the threshold, it stands s good chance at reforming the laws around games as a consumer product, from a consumer rights point of view.
Governments do actually have the ability to restrain and modify the actions and practices of corporations, by altering the laws that define what they are and are not allowed to do.
Further, because the EU has so many people, is such a large market for games… there is a good chance that if the EU reforms what game companies are allowed to do within the EU… well, developing an entirely different game for the EU and the US, totally different in the underlying internal design, more than just translstion/localization… from a business POV, it may end up making more financial sense to not essentially develop two games at once, and instead just develop a single, global game, that is compliant with with EU laws.
Go look into how digital privacy laws being different between the EU and US and other parts of the world are currently, right now, forcing many US based tech firms to alter their practices within the EU, and sometimes even in the US and elsewhere, due to the propagation effect of a huge market altering its laws.
…
Another example of something like this is firearms in the US: California, and now several other US states, have passed laws stating that for certain kinds of guns, a magazine can hold no more than 10 rounds.
Prior to this, when such laws did not exist… not many firearm companies made and sold guns with only 10 round mags. Now, many of them actually do.
This has also occured at a Federal level with barrel length restrictions: Basically, you cannot sell a civillian a short barelled rifle, something that has a barrel less than 16 inches in length, or a total butt stock to tip of barrel length less than 26 inchds.
Before those laws were passed… you could buy those, companies could sell those.
But because a compact, higher powered rifle is the easiest thing to use in a confined space, for something like a school shooting… well, now all the guns have to be at least a bit bigger, so that they’re more difficult to use in a ‘moving from room to hallway to room’ kind of scenario.
…
Laws passed by governments can alter industry practices, thats the entire concept of regulation.
Laws and legal review processes can be formally initiated within a government by formal, legal, citizens initiatives, that’s the entire point of them.
You speak on matters which you do not understand
Ah, like PirateSoftware! :D
eu citizens initiatives are official tools of the public to help draft new laws.
This is not a change.org petition. This is a European initiative. Meaning if this gets the necessary number of signatures this could get brought forth to the European Parliament, where laws on the subject can get negotiated over.
I assume by “gaming companies” you mean game publishers. No they won’t care, in fact this initiative is not meant for them. It is meant for EU lawmakers, which after a certain signature number threshold are required to look at the issue. Once a protection is written into law, these same companies have to, of course, comply with it, or face whatever consequences were prepared for this case (fines, probably).
Oh come on you can’t actually be that dense. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are these things called laws and companies have to follow them.
This isn’t a petition like change.org. It’s to get this brought in front of politicians that HAVE to make a ruling based on it.
Like a boomer, but even less respectable.
Oh. No I’m a millennial
Very insightful. Thank you for your wisdom.
You are welcome good sir 😊
Go back to reddit
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