Videogames are being destroyed! Most video games work indefinitely, but a growing number are designed to stop working as soon as publishers end support. This effectively robs customers, destroys games as an artform, and is unnecessary. Our movement seeks to pass new law in the EU to put an end to this practice. Our proposal would do the following:
- Require video games sold to remain in a working state when support ends.
- Require no connections to the publisher after support ends.
- Not interfere with any business practices while a game is still being supported.
If you are an EU citizen, please sign the Citizens’ Initiative!
I wonder which ESA funded billion dollar game company will tank this if this gets ground
Just like billion dollar Apple, Google, Microsoft stopped the Digital Market Act? /s
And signed.
<3
An interesting question is whether this would be constitutional in the US, if ever attempted here. Generally, forcing developers to code something has been considered “compelled speech”, though this defense gets deployed to varying degrees of effectiveness (i.e. refusing to code proper authentication doesn’t exempt you from liability in a breach just because requiring that auth would compel you to code it).
Frankly I have no faith we’ll ever see game makes forced into being consumer-friendly, and I’ve just begun to refuse to purchase any “Live Service” games precisely because I don’t want to be investing hours of my time into something that can be taken away at-will.
Good question. Presumably games like this will have a server that is proprietary, and the compulsion may simply be to make the server source or executables available, rather than creating anything new
If you’re talking about being forced to code as in “make the game work on it’s own without the server”, I’m thinking a “working state” includes “here’s what you need to run the server privately”, no more coding should be necessary.
Idk if you were thinking they’d be legally compelled to convert server based multiplayer games into peer-to-peer, but that’s not how I see it.
It should also not be legally possible to prosecute restoration work to make unsupported games run on private servers.
This is important, and so good!
If you’re in the EU and care about consumer rights, sign it. Then, when you’re done, please talk to everyone you know, gamers or not, and convince them to sign too!
The phrasing of the title made me think this was a Star Citizen thing lol
