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Stop Killing Games delivers 'absolutely incredible' hearing in European Parliament: 'There was no [parliament member] that wasn't responding positively' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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It's amazing what a difference a little bit of time can make: Two years after kicking off what looked to be a long-shot campaign to push back on the practice of shutting down server-dependent videogames once they're no longer profitable, Stop Killing Games founder Ross Scott and organizer Moritz Katzner appeared in front of the European Parliament to present their case—and it seemed to go very well.

Official Stream: https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/webstreaming/committee-on-internal-market-and-consumer-protection-ordinary-meeting-committee-on-legal-affairs-com_20260416-1100-COMMITTEE-IMCO-JURI-PETI

Digital Fairness Act: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act/F33096034_en

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[–] 51 points 5 months ago (28 children)

This is a masterclass in “pick your one thing in life and focus on that.”

I’m highly pessimistic that the spirit of this legislation, which I wholly support, can ever be enshrined in law with enough specificity that it works the way we want it to in the cases where we need it to, without becoming a truly undue burden on small developers or forcing all publishers to just work around it in some way: like taking everything to a subscription model going forward.

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  • [–] 41 points 5 months ago*

    undue burden on small developers

    Uuh, more often than not, the small devs already make their games indefinitely playable and preservable, just out of a love for the medium.

    No actual artist wants their work to have an expiry date.

    Legal enforcement is only needed for the passionless big publishers that shutter games just to funnel players into purchasing their latest releases.

    It's mentioned in the parliament presentation. Only a small minority of game publishers engage in this BS, but it's ALL the big ones, meaning the problem is experienced by the vast majority of consumers.

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  • [–] 16 points 5 months ago (12 children)

    We've had the technology since stone ages, quit lying about this so called burden. All it takes is to not be greedy.

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  • [+] -21 points 5 months ago (11 children)

    Spoken like someone who’s never had to implement regulatory measures in software.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (10 children)

    The regulatory measure in this case is solved by "don't make it require the player to be online". That removes a complication, it doesn't add one.

    For multiplayer games it is solved by "make them like we already did in the fucking 90s, where players could run their own servers".

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  • [+] -11 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    I’d only be repeating myself.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    Perhaps you could elaborate on what 'regulatory measures' you are referring to that would run counter to the argument. I can take that overly simplistic phrase a number of ways ranging from "doesn't make sense at all" to "maybe I could discuss the nuance", but it's impossible to continue a discussion based on the dismissive vague comment.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    I would, but it’s video games and the mood in the room is not one of curiosity and discussion, but of pounding fists on the table. But suffice it to say that people think they can explain a law like this in two sentences while I despair that it can even be written at all, even with 100 pages, and function recognizably.

    If you want an example, take Texas SB2420, the recent age verification law which said “the App Store has to ask your age and then tell developers so they can only show age appropriate content.” And now go read the full text, which I did at work. And look up Apple and Google’s implementation guidance and API specs. A “simple” thing people think can be explained in a few words is much, much more complex underneath. Like I said, I don’t even think this law can be written and come out the way we want it to.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    The difference in your scenario is that it is enforcing a regulation, rather than being bound by it.

    Yes, enforcing a regulation, particularly with different requirements by geography is a nightmare. You have to translate the law to code, and make it conditional based on some mechanism of determining jurisdiction.

    However, a regulation like "you will ensure you will not require online connectivity for single player games, or if multiplayer you will ensure that third parties are able to keep hosting to keep the experience whole once you stop" is not a nightmare of nitpicky local regulations to navigate. The law doesn't need to map to code, it just governs the human behavior/decisions.

    For example, there are various 'password' laws, and it's no huge deal to comply, since you only have to honor some strictest common law and you don't need software to implement the regulatory rules.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    I believe you’re trying to make it sound like “no it would be simple, just don’t go out of your way to do the bad thing.”

    I know people just want to root out only the most obvious most insidious cases where online is totally unnecessary so it can seem like a simple matter of not doing it. But what about all the rest of gaming? How are we going to define these concepts? Write this law so that it will work for Fortnite, Among Us, MOBAs, and Hearthstone. Just try.

    If someone wants to write ten paragraphs defining “single player games” with due precision and “unnecessary online components” and the required remedies for games that do have online components I’d love to hear it. No one here will take this time even though ten paragraphs is a laughably small length for such legislation to be written.

    This bound/enforce bit is a distinction without a difference. In each case you need to understand the letter of the law and dance around it. SB2420 has plenty of things to “simply not do” and any “ensure offline play” law would absolutely have things you must do.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    Kinda seems like you are pounding more tables than I am. Can't wait for a future when little timmy needs to nag his parents any time a fortnite or roblox update happens. Almost like these laws are written by out of touch simpletons who don't understand tech.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    I wasn’t referring to you but rather the heavy downvoting that my comments are receiving. I know when I’m muddying the hive mind’s cherished narrative with complications from reality, and that’s a stoning offense, no mistake.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    My apologies if you weren't. But I would still reference all the problems that implementing this kind of law will cause. Instead of making things secure this does the exact opposite 99% of the time, its just a Honeypot for hackers.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Absolutely. Age verification sucks. It’s just an example of the complexities between a two sentence concept and an actual software implementation. I lived through SOX, GDPR, and many others. They sound simple. “Right to be forgotten” but they are complex as hell and often have unforeseen side effects.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    I don't see how this would put any additional burden on smaller devs. Small teams usually don't make always-online type games because they're very complex and expensive

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (7 children)

    Take Among Us. It is not some huge bullshit live service game, but it makes use of the internet. It was created by a small developer.

    The game includes local network play which is a good thing because I assume it would have to under this law, so it can play “offline.”

    Do we think that local network play was zero effort to include? Would it really have no effect on small developers if they all had to include this always?

    I know what you mean about small indie games being simple but the reality is a little more complex than that image. Small developers do also create online games. They aren’t big shit shows like Fortnite but that doesn’t mean they don’t use the internet.

    No one ever wants to hear that it’s more complicated than they think it is, but that’s the truth virtually all the time.

    I understand the core case that this man wants to stop. But laws have to be written for all, with precise language, and can’t just say “you know the kind of game we’re talking about.”

    And that’s where this gets difficult.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

    If you can make a multiplayer game over the internet, you can make a multiplayer LAN mode or even share the server implementation or give API specifications to allow the community to make their server software

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah I think there’s some promise in “open the source” as a remedy here. Because that doesn’t really put any onus on the game maker. They can keep making games exactly as they do now, but if they want to utterly walk away from a title, they have to open the source.

    I think the complications with this would come from IP and copyright law, licensing, etc. for example, if the developer licensed any other software (or music or whatever) in order to make the game, do they actually have the rights to open source all of that? Perhaps not.

    It’s kind of like accelerating the public domain thing. Very interesting remedy for this situation, but extremely complex legally, I would guess.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (4 children)

    The music/artwork thing is usually not a problem since the license can just not cover art like many open source licenses already do

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    But then how could anyone use it? If it’s to download and run at home, you can get away with it. But in many of these cases they’re saying open source it so volunteer group XYZ can host a server and keep the game alive. Wouldn’t group XYZ be vulnerable to copyright action?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    The artwork and music is usually on the client side (and if it's not, the programmers need to get good lmao) so it's really not a problem

    But in many of these cases they’re saying open source it so volunteer group XYZ can host a server and keep the game alive

    open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for usage, modification from its original design, and publication of their version (fork) back to the community
    (copied 1:1 from wikipedia, i was too lazy to write it myself)

    So no, open source don't mean that a specific group keeps the server game alive by hosting a server but that the server code is aviable to the public to do whatever they want;

    Another solution is making the code Source-available (like some companies already do: eg Mojang) or just distributing a copy of the server for people to use, without being open sourc

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (1 child)

    I know what open source means.

    A group that wants to host that game server is eventually going to need to fix it, or adapt it to new software / hardware if we expect it to be able to run in perpetuity. They will need to be able to modify that source code to do so.

    So the game publisher can’t just publish one final compiled package “for people to use.” The software has to be able to be maintained, not just used. And if we expect the software to survive over time, it will need a community not just one group. Open source is the only thing that would allow the game publisher to walk away from it, but allow the software to live on.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    I'd prefer an open source solution too, but tbh, there are other (more lazy) ways for the publisher, like sharing the APIs specifications so the people can make their own server, i hope that the EU will take the open source approach tho

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah. I have similar feelings. And I don’t think the social media fervor is helping things sometimes. There needs to be a certain level of precision in what is being asked for, and I see lots of broad statements about what laws should prevent from happening from random individuals. Using words like “kill switches” when required servers are taken offline. Or demanding every game have a direct networking mode or LAN options in addition to matchmaking or platform facilitated matchmaking.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago*

    I imagine you see the undue burden as a mandate to keep running the game servers yourself when you have no income to do so.

    Once upon a time, the norm for exclusively online games was to provide a hostable server so that any third party could host, because the game companies didn't want to bother with hosting themselves, so at most they owned or outsourced a hosted registry of running servers, and volunteers ran instances.

    Then big publishers figured out that controlling the servers and keeping the implementation in-house was a good way to control the lifespan of games, and a number of games kept it closed.

    So the remedy is to return to allowing third party hosting, potentially including hooks for a third party registry for running game servers if we are talking more ephemeral online instances like you'd have in shooters. One might allow for keeping the serving in-house and only requiring third party serving upon plan to retire the in-house game.

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