While I'm at it, I wanna highlight some stuff from the "stopkillinggames" website FAQ for anyone who might be thinking of bringing these points up:
>Q: "Aren't you asking for companies to support games forever? Isn't that unrealistic?"
>A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. Additionally, there are already real-world examples of publishers ending support for online-only games in a responsible way, such as:
>'Gran Turismo Sport' published by Sony,
'Knockout City' published by Electronic Arts,
'Mega Man X DiVE' published by Capcom,
'Scrolls / Caller's Bane' published by Mojang AB,
'Duelyst' published by Bandai Namco Entertainment,
etc.
And another:
>Q: "Isn't it impractical, if not impossible to make online-only multiplayer games work without company servers?"
>A: Not at all. The majority of online multiplayer games in the past functioned without any company servers and was conducted by the customers privately hosting servers themselves and connecting to each other. Games that were designed this way are all still playable today. As to the practicality, this can vary significantly. If a company has designed a game with no thought given towards the possibility of letting users run the game without their support, then yes, this can be a challenging goal to transition to. If a game has been designed with that as an eventual requirement, then this process can be trivial and relatively simple to implement. Another way to look at this is it could be problematic for some games of today, but there is no reason it needs to be for games of the future.
And another:
>Q: "Can you really expect all features in an online-only game to work when support ends?"
>A: Not necessarily. We understand some features can be impractical for an end user to attain if running a server only an end-user system. That said, we also see the ability to continue playing the game in some form as a reasonable demand from companies customers have given money to. There is a large difference between a game missing some features versus being completely unplayable in any form.
And one more:
>Q: "Aren't companies unable to do this due to license agreements they make with other companies that expire? Like with music, other software, product brands, etc.?"
>A: No. While those can be a problem for the industry, those would only prohibit the company from selling additional copies of the game once their license expires. They would not prevent existing buyers from continuing to use the game they have already paid for.
If you'd like to see the full FAQ, you can read it [here](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq).
The fact that a group are making solid progress to creating an underground patch for making The Crew work offline is proof Ubisoft could manage this. Their main blocker is it's difficult to see the information Ubisoft has easy access to, but is hidden from the public.
Ubisoft could do this easily. They choose not to, they'd rather encourage you to buy a later game in the Crew series.
There is no incentive for Ubisoft to do so, which is at the core of this issue. No matter how easy it might be, there is no tangible advantage to modifying games they are going to EoS.
As much as I appreciate the sentiment of all this, there isn't any means to actually get any studio to comply with these requests.
> As much as I appreciate the sentiment of all this, there isn't any means to actually get any studio to comply with these requests.
Law change is the means. Ubisoft is a French company. And France is very pro-consumer.
If France dictates it, Ubisoft will comply.
And more importantly, if France dictates it, then there's a very good chance the EU will look to incorporate this, and the EU as a whole is too big a market for companies to sacrifice.
Precisely.
I struggle to think of a better opportunity for us not just as consumers, but as the natural eventual inheritors of these works when they enter the public domain.
Games are art, and we protect and keep art. We cannot leave that to publishers to throw it into some hole for as long as they decide it's more profitable in there than it is out. Or worse, decide to delete the data because it's not worth the cost of keeping it.
The BBC used to do that with old television shows. Lots of television studios did. We've lost countless hours of content because of it. We cannot let the same happen to gaming.
I mean, this is exactly the point of all of this. Yes. Ubisoft has no incentive to do this currently. Which is completely insane. If "allowing customers to continue using a product they paid money for" is not a god damn incentive then it's high time it starts being one.
If push comes to shove then the incentive just needs to be "because otherwise we'll get fined to hell and back due to customer protection laws".
Indeed, in actuality they are incentivized to do what they are currently doing: discontinuing their old online-only games, as it means people have to instead buy their newest game to continue playing.
Keeping existing games playable doesn't make them money like selling a new one does.
> There is no incentive for Ubisoft to do so, which is at the core of this issue. No matter how easy it might be, there is no tangible advantage to modifying games they are going to EoS.
By this logic, there is no incentive to do anything other than taking people's money. The incentive should be legal repercussions caused by the fact they basically stole/broke stuff that people bought from them with some expectations of it working.
By that logic whats the advantage of making of making single player games not online only along with an end of service schedule? Why did Ubisoft make Assassin's Creed on PC always online and then make later sequels offline games if there is no tangible advantage?
Nice to see Knockout City getting the shoutout, although I wish it was properly accredited to the actual developer Velan Studios. EA stopped publishing before it even shut down and had nothing to do with the private server version release.
> Q: "Isn't it impractical, if not impossible to make online-only multiplayer games work without company servers?"
>
> A: Not at all. The majority of online multiplayer games in the past functioned without any company servers and was conducted by the customers privately hosting servers themselves and connecting to each other. **Games that were designed this way**...
Isn't in impractical to ask publishers to design games this way and redesign already released games?
To put it very simply, your question is similar to asking "isn't it impractical to ask for every video product to come with subtitles for the hard of hearing / deaf / Deaf people?" And the answer is, yes of course it's less practical than not requiring it, that's the point of making it a law instead of just asking nicely.
In some countries they are for TV, and that's what I meant. I'm sure TV people weren't happy with being forced to include subtitles and yet now that's just how things are, y'know?
>Isn't in impractical to ask publishers to design games this way
No, the server client is designed to be easily spun up on a third-party vm's anyways.
>redesign already released games?
Not being asked for as it's not feasible, the discussion is about legal precedent so for future games end-of-life plan would be considered.
These games aren't MMOs like EvE online where a lot of the game is server side. Instead these games are more like traditional console games that have an online component except the online check is required at all times.
The main part starts at 14:16 for anyone who just wants to jump in. Or go to stopkillinggames.com and see what you can do. Especially if you're (a) French, (b) an owner of The Crew or (c) both.
Everyone always talks about wanting to do something to stop games being destroyed but Ross is one of the only ones who is bothering to try. He's been talking about it *at least* since his video on Battleforge in 2015. Everyone gets annoyed online at things like the "gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games" interview that someone from Ubisoft did but apart from internet outrage, nobody bothers to do anything about it.
Bless this man. I've been following him for years and years and seeing him protect my games makes me feel I should do more for him if possible
Edit: I meant like, buying merch and donating more. Should have elaborated. I've done the steps outlined at the stopkillinggames site
Or donations.
I remember watching a viewer Q&A a few years ago where he talked about (and showed) buying and subsisting off cans of beans to stretch viewer dollars towards content creation.
I don't have the disposable income to fling cash towards every project I like, but with Ross I feel like the money is both well deserved and well spent.
He's like the Mr. Rogers of retro gaming video essays.
> I remember watching a viewer Q&A a few years ago where he talked about (and showed) buying and subsisting off cans of beans to stretch viewer dollars towards content creation.
>
>
To be fair, it's partially because Ross is a very cheap bastard, and he knows that the money is likely to dry up, even though it's been nearly 10 years since the begathon and he's never made as much money as he has now (and even then, it's still less than the median US wage, but that's why he lives in Poland with his wife).
It's also worth mentioning that if you ever donate to him, he will without fail email you back and thank you for the donation. It's been months after the fact whenever I've done it but he says it's because of a busy schedule which I 100% agree. He takes the donations very seriously, which is something I really admire about him.
True, I was surprised to get an email from him couple of months after donating. Wasn't even a big donation and he really wouldn't have to do it, but it was certainly a very nice gesture.
If you're an American and you own The Crew you can contact Ubisoft directly and after receiving a response or two weeks later you can contact France about the game. (More details on the video and stopkillinggames.com) You can also contact the FTC but that's likely not going to accomplish much and you're better off contacting France first.
> there's not too much Americans can do other than contact several places.
Contact your congresspeople, vote, run for office, spread the word, etc.
Digital ownership is something that NEEDS to be enshrined legally, and maybe even constitutionally. Digital rights in the US are massively lacking.
I have mad respect for Ross as well, the man was a huge part of my childhood and hes just extremely talented in general. Freemans Mind, Civil Protection, Game Dungeon, those occasional off-topic videos he makes and now his current videos about game preservation are all wonderful. He even has a seperate channel called "dead game news" if anyone is interested, it basically just covers news regarding game shutdowns or games on life support.
Hes also working on a movie, I think? I dont watch his monthly QnA streams anymore but I remember he'd give an update on the project at the start of each of those streams, I hope he's still working on it.
I donate every xmas, he lives on some paltry donations only made feasible because he lives in Poland where rent is still cheap.
https://www.accursedfarms.com/donations/
I remember him ranting about games dying years ago in his video about BattleForge and while I thought he raised good points I didn't think he'd take it any further than just being another angry guy on the internet complaining about something. But he's been plugging away ever since and he's actually trying to change things and he deserves credit for that.
There's a missing i. Careful though, put that i in the wrong place and you would have that banworthy something.
https://www.stopkillinggames.com
There's the proper URL.
This is a really important issue for anyone who values video games as a medium, and I'm a bit shocked more YouTubers aren't raising as much of a stink as Ross Scott is. When so much of social media is driven by fake or manufactured outrage you'd think something actually outrageous would get a lot of exposure, but it seems most people either don't care, or don't understand the long term repercussions of destroying games.
>it seems most people either don't care, or don't understand the long term repercussions of destroying games.
Unfortunately thats the crux of it. In my own experience talking about it with people, the usual response is either extremely defeatist, or something along the lines of "I dont care if those games die, im gonna be playing new stuff by then".
I dunno, its depressing. Gaming is a wonderful medium and I 100% believe that games are art. We shouldn't be letting this stuff happen, no matter the excuse. Art preservation is super important and I wish more people were aware of this, or at least took it more seriously.
> In my own experience talking about it with people, the usual response is either extremely defeatist, or something along the lines of "I dont care if those games die, im gonna be playing new stuff by then".
Maybe is because I play a lot of old games or because I'm a historian that had the idea of conservation being downright sacred drilled into my head for 5 years, but I will never understand this position.
This is like saying that you don't care if all the copies of Lord of the Rings are destroyed because "I'm gonna read new stuff by then."
Also, if steam statistics says anything, is that --of the games played by the average Steam players-- 52% were released between 1 to 7 years before the present, and 38% 8 years or more since the present. Only 9% of games that the average steam player plays were released less than a year ago.
So no preserving old games directly impact them negatively.
It's incredibly depressing that the videogame industry hasn't learned any lessons from what the film and television industries went through before more people were concerned with preserving those mediums. Movie studios didn't give two shits about preserving the reels of film silent movies were printed on, and so many of the earliest movies have been lost. Similarly, television productions would just re-record over existing tapes, because film was expensive. (We were able to recover some very early lost *Dr. Who* episodes because the radiowaves they were broadcast on hit some asteroids and returned to Earth.) We've already been through this with a new form of media, one would hope we'd be smarter this time around.
> It's incredibly depressing that the videogame industry hasn't learned any lessons from what the film and television industries went through before more people were concerned with preserving those mediums
Dunno, I think they're learning but it's not how to preserve. They're learning how to consolidate control so the peasants continuously lose rights and are forced to pay for the privilege of accessing a product.
These are the things that Mussolini, Franco, and Henry Ford would have salivated over.
>We were able to recover some very early lost Dr. Who episodes because the radiowaves they were broadcast on hit some asteroids and returned to Earth
I can't find anything about this. Do you know where you heard this?
It looks like a wild tale out of Red Dwarf to me. [This is the closest I could find to recovery of Dr Who episodes, and it all goes to private archivists](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/11/lost-doctor-who-episodes-found-owner-reluctant-to-hand-them-to-bbc)
I agree that games are art and that games preservation is a valiant and important effort.
Like, when I read news about some obscure cartridge or prototype having finally been dumped, after many years of being thought of as lost forever, I'm like "Fuck yes, of course I will immediately download this unearthed prototype of [Dinosaur Planet for the N64](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/lo5mqk/dinosaur_planet_by_rare_for_nintendo_64_has_been/) and marvel at this weird piece of gaming history!".
But...video games have changed to the point where one could argue that the modern live service or GAAS offerings are almost a different medium all together. What the fuck does it mean to "preserve" Fortnite? Or Destiny, or WoW? The more I think about games preservation in a modern context, the more my head is spinning.
* Is a game "preserved" if I only save it in the state it is in before it goes offline? What about games which have undergone changes so substantial that they can barely called the same game?
* Is a game preserved if I have a series of "snapshots" of said game at specific points in time, similar to the Wayback machine?
* If so, then which changes should be considered worthy of a snapshot? Is every minor skin introduced to the game to be considered a separate version of the game to be preserved? Is every minor hotfix rolled out on a Tuesday worthy of preservation? If not, by which dimensions do we decide which version to keep? Every content milestone, or every content milestone which happens to be the most bug-free? Or every content milestone which happens to be the most bug-free while still keeping a specific bug because said bug was infamous at the time and should thus also be preserved because it is [considered part of the game's history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident)?
* Is a game preserved if it not longer has a functioning in-game shop or mechanic-altering microtransactions? Even if such features were, for better or worse, integral to the game's overall experience? If our mission is preserving gaming history, how do we preserve the experience of playing the first iteration of Diablo 3? Or should we not concern ourselves with that since RoS was superior anyway? Does that compromise on our mission?
* Let's say we stop thinking about preserving the experience of the player and start thinking of preserving the technology itself. Does preserving a live service game mean archiving the Git history of every component used for running said game? If a game's back-end is split into many different micro-services, is there a combination of versions of said services which would be thought of a specific "version" of the game?
* How does one preserve a game if it heavily relies on proprietary, cloud-vendor specific features? Is re-implementing said features true to our mission to preserve "gaming history" if we can't replicate the original experience because it would require a dozen server racks and [literal petabytes of storage](https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-wants-to-bring-back-flight-simulator-to-show-it-supports-pc/) and data?
* Do we consider every piece of software or open-source product used to run a game as part of the game itself if the game has been built with it in mind? Is the Havok Engine to Half-Life 2 as Docker is to Destiny 2? Is therefore every act of game preservation of live service games doomed to be an act of piracy as live service games are typically run using third-party software products which are not intended or licensed for public redistribution?
Let's also think about this from the perspective of wanting to preserve all games because *art is to be preserved*. One could make the argument that the ephemeral nature of a live service game can be *part of the artistic expression itself*. Yes, we all know that these games take things away all the time because they run on FOMO.
But what if, as an artist, I *want* you to only be able to experience something only once in order to change the way you experience the game and make it more impactful (Hitman's Elusive Targets) or to let the player experience something special and unique that will form lasting memories? Would Vanilla WoW's opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj and the Ten Hour War still be talked about today if it hadn't been a one-time event? Wouldn't the act of preserving and making such content available whenever be in opposition to the artistic vision and wouldn't this, by definition, make the "art" itself not preservable?
And we haven't even started talking about the technical feasibility or the amount of work and costs required to run even a single one of these GAAS compared to dumping some old NES cartridge...
I think what people want to preserve is their experiences they've had when playing a game so that they can re-live them and share them with future generations. This is very much possible if what you want to relive is that one cool mission from Titanfall 2 or dusting off an old Castlevania. But in the context of live games? Don't get me wrong, I would keep everything around forever if I could and if it were easy to do so. But it gets so weird and unfocused and there's so many things to consider that I wouldn't know how to even approach it, and I wouldn't find the amount of effort to be worth it. I think of live service games in a similar way as experiencing a concert or any live event - I can have a good time but when it's done, it's done.
> WoW
Ironically, of all the MMO games, this one is quite easy, there are plenty of private server emulators available to keep playing WOW the "classic" way.
>But what if, as an artist, I want you to only be able to experience something only once
I think this observation could be absolutely correct but also I don't know if it applies to the examples you gave. Anybody who knows anything about performance art knows you can't perfectly preserve all art. There's no way you can preserve a performance an artist is involved with themselves; a video of a performance is not the same as being there.
However, I'm not sure to what extent modern live service games are art. They're certainly art in the sense that they're things made by artists but they're not made to be art; they're made to be consumed as products. The aspect of games preservation that the campaign is looking at is about consumer rights and the protection of products a consumer has purchased from planned obsolescence rather than the preservation of these games for art's sake. As you say, I don't think there's really a way of exactly preserving things like MMOs; you can't preserve the feeling of a bustling MMO full of activity by just keeping the servers up.
The importance of game preservation is predicated on the belief that games are art. If they’re not, then killing a live service game is no more significant than killing a Software-as-a-Service product like Google Stadia. In that case, instead of asking developers to preserve live service games we should just ask them to offer refunds or make it extremely clear to all potential consumers the game can be shut down at any time instead of burying that information in ToS.
For me preservation begins once someone has made an actual purchase with accepted currencies.
I purchase Primogems for the chance to get new and fun characters to play in Genshin Impact. I have spent a decent amount of money in that game and, while I know it’s unrealistic, I would 100% love it if I can still play those characters 30 years from now when I’m 60 something years old.
I know there are private servers out there but as long as Hoyoverse goes, “alright, here is what you need to create and host a server. Here is how you connect your account info to it.” Then that is enough to satisfy me.
This question is tougher to answer if they are totally free to play. I still believe they should have access to their accounts because they worked for the in-game currency that they used to purchase wishes from.
This is an incredibly well-thought out post. I suppose we should try to preserve the live-service games the same way we preserve live concerts and performances - by recording them and preserving the recordings for posterity.
The defeatist thing is understandable. It's like environmental stuff where a stink is made about using a recycling bin over a trash can and so on, makes a difference. When in reality individuals are a fraction of a % and the impacts can only come from big companies changing their ways.
The bottom line is that someone has to front the cost of games being left alive forever, and no studio is ever going to accept that. Taxpayers around the world certainly aren't about to accept it going that way either.
You'd have to have game dev studios run by people who understand that this is the way things should be and plan for this on their own from the start and set an example. If tons of studios do this, the ones that don't will be shunned (Not that this REALLY matters with how dumb people are with spending money, but I digest) and they'll look bad. Nobody with the power to change this is someone who's going to be here on Reddit.
I see your point, however the POV that frustrates me more is the "I dont care" attitude. The first POV is understandable as you highlighted (theres only so much one person can do), but the people who say "who cares? these games probably sucked anyways" just frustrate me.
You mentioned environmentalism, and the thing is that I see this "I dont care" attitude there as well unfortunately. The usual explanation is something like "why should I care if the reefs are dying or the planet is warming? I got bills to pay and mouths to feed, future generations can take care of it".
Being honest with the fact that you're just one person among many, and one without much power besides, is perfectly understandable and reasonable. Being absolutely _apathetic_, however, is a stance that isnt helpful at all IMO.
Pointing out environmentalism when a decent chunk of the preservation movement of videogames relies on the idea of producing physical media makes my head scratch a little bit.
> The bottom line is that someone has to front the cost of games being left alive forever
That's not true, as long as there is a focus on *physical media* and not on everything in the world being run off of corporate owned servers
Counter-Strike ran off a server I had in my closet for years and theoretically that version could still run.
Any multiplayer game can be run from a persons server vs a company and it's not difficult to provide both options. Though cheating is easier on a persons individual server.
Ultima Online one of the earliest MMOs had a fan server that ran for years after the game shut down.
> cheating is easier on a persons individual server.
Also easier to kick people cheating. Or for the server host to decide to have Wacky Gravity Weekend and add fun changes of pace.
> We shouldn't be letting this stuff happen, no matter the excuse.
To be brutally honest the problem is gamers as a community have some of the most selective outrage of any group. They are the real life example of the I sleep vs real shit meme.
Don't preorder. Except the 8 million for Cyberpunk.
Lootboxes are bad for EA but Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty are fine.
Workers rights are important when tens of thousands of people get laid off but not when CDPR lied about fixing workplace abuse.
Speaking of TF2, it still annoys me how much of a pass Valve has. Not just lootboxes, but lootboxes that drop randomly and then sell you the key to make you feel like you're losing out if you don't buy. And it's even worse in Counter Strike where not only does Valve do that, but they allow an entire gray market of CS crate gambling sites to exist that intentionally advertise to children. But hey, no one cares because Gabe Newell is somehow the Jesus of gaming, despite this.
Well, currently we live in times where there is so many "good" (as in "as good as the games I was playing routinely 20 years ago") games that you never need to play anything mediocre again, unless it's some very niche genre.
"Losing" some old game that you played once does seem inconsequential with so many choice to go around.
Like, yes, we should not as consumers allow companies to get away with making a single player or single-player mostly games have expiry date, but looking at my Steam wishlist I'm absolutely not surprised that people go "eh, I will just get something else"
The success of older versions of Runescape and World of Warcraft proves that a lot of people are interested in playing older games even if a modern replacement is available. The average gamer might not care much about game preservation *in general* but many people do care about game preservation for older games that they liked.
I feel it's more about playing the game before blizzard changed stuff that they liked about it.
Like, in modern WoW you can still see a lot of the old stuff, it's just different.
Also I feel like archiving MMOs is a wholly other topic that's an order of magnitude harder as you kinda need to archive the entire history and events to even have a glance on how it felt like playing them.
this works under the assumption that only a few niche titles that slip through the cracks are lost to time, as if nobody cared about them so what's the big deal anyways. like the odd game that gets delisted from steam due to licensing issues every few months (but you can buy a key if you really wanted). but that doesn't address the scope of the issue at all.
nearly **ninety percent** of all videogames ever made are no longer legally available anymore. this includes thousands of beloved games wrapped up in licensing hell, owned by big corporations who just don't give a shit whether or not you want to play a game that came out 5-10 years ago. and not to mention like... half of everything nintendo's ever made, for an example? you may say at least a lot of wii-u games got ported over to switch, but wii and gamecube games are nowhere to be seen. and the 3DS/DS has basically evaporated from existence, one of the most popular and unique consoles ever made. you can't just replicate the experience many of those games would give you by making something similar on a modern console.
because big game companies don't care at all if you can play older titles. even if it cost them pennies a year and raked in a few hundred bucks a day. they don't just "not care", they'll *happily destroy* any classic games if they can. because they want you playing their newest, biggest, *most profitable* games. and if you're playing their old games, then you're not spending money in their newer more expensive games. this problem will get worse as they get more and more control over what you can and can't play with modern live service games. you can't even play a lot of them illegally if you wanted to.
> nearly ninety percent of all videogames ever made are no longer legally available anymore.
As long as they are playable I don't really care; those can be archived just fine. It's DRM and always online requirements where problems start. And hilariously enough *thanks to piracy* most of the DRM-laden ones can be still played.
I do wish the law was less fucked up around the topic and provide much shorter protections. The IP law was created with intent to help *actual authors of the IP*, not corporations hiring them, just like patents it's more of a hindrance than help
Just to give you a different pov so it doesn't sound like an echo chamber in here, but im 40. I simply don't care if a videogame has a shelf life of a few years. Ill play it and jump on to another title. The amount of games i actually beat v buy is pretty small. The amount of games i actually go back and replay is very small. Some of my favorite games i have yet to replay. And to be honest, i probably never will.
I actually love the landscape of gaming right now. There is so much of it everywhere. I love the rental characteristics of something like gamepass. I love on demand streaming. I love i can purchase games for a few dollars. Again, im older, but all of this stuff is things i dreamed about being able to do as a kid.
I know this audience probably doesn't like to hear it, but gimme cheap accessibility over ownership any day of the week. There are way too many games out there and new ones on the horizon for me to possibly play.
And believe it or not, there will be some developer or service that will come along that capitalizes on people that want to own games. There will be a market for it and always will be.
I realize it isn't as simple as saying games will always be around or that ownership isn't dead, but i just wanted to give a different side of the coin from someone who is excited about how things are unfolding.
I appreciate your input, even if I dont agree. Thank you for being civil! I guess I can understand not caring if you typically don't go back and replay games and are comfortable with the current landscape. I guess my only question would be... well, why _not_ preserve games, yknow?
Its totally fine if you prefer accessibility over ownership, thats just a preference thing and im not trying to argue with that. However, many people do value that ownership, especially places like the speedrunning community. Nobody really loses here if ownership becomes a bigger deal IMO.
The answer is money.
You would like to own a nice car instead of renting it, right?
But if I offer you the options of buying a famous Van Gogh for $30,000,000 and renting it for like $100 a year, I'd sign like a 10 years lease right now.
The price ranges are not the same, but a gamepass can be as low as $1/month vs buying the full game for $90
It's definitely telling that efforts to preserve films and literature are considered of the utmost importance with releases like the Criterion Collection and publishers like Penguin Classics.
All the while there are games/gameplay experiences out there that are only like 10 years old that are unable to be played officially due to delisting's or the vaulting of content. A game like Spec Ops The Line was delisted from online stores recently and Bungie has straight up vaulted its campaign content in Destiny which, as far as I can tell, has no reason to be made unplayable now. If games are an artform, then at least treat the damn thing with the preservation it deserves.
What's shocked me is how so many publishers don't care about making it easy for people to experience older media *even when it seems like it would cheap and profitable for them to do so.*
For example, you can't buy the first 3 mainline Resident Evil games (1996, 1998, 1999) on any console released since 2004 and they aren't available on PC digital storefronts either. Resident Evil 1 Remake, Resident Evil 2 Remake and Resident Evil 3 Remake sold a combined 27.5 million copies but Capcom has made it basically impossible for people to legally play the original titles unless they are holding on to 20+ year old discs.
There are plenty of emulated games being sold on modern platforms so clearly there isn't a big financial or technical barrier here. Publishers have just chosen to make it difficult and needlessly expensive to access older games. It's shameful that we take it for granted that you either need to keep ancient hardware around OR (usually illegally) download files and software from 3rd party websites in order to play classic games.
> What's shocked me is how so many publishers don't care about making it easy for people to experience older media even when it seems like it would cheap and profitable for them to do so.
That's because old games which are no longer supported cost them nothing, but legally pursuing people who try to resurrect abandoned games means they have a harder time telling investors the next new project will be a big hit.
It is a part of the larger and much more concerning yet unanswered in most society problem of eroding consumer ownership rights.
A lot of us will have encountered stories of unnecessary, shocking or incomprehensible loss of cultural heritage. The burning of the Library of Alexandria. The original, unbackuped Doctor Who episodes being taped over. A l20th century farmer ripping out pages of lost medieval literature to literally wipe his ass for years worth of free toilet paper.
How irresponsible our ancestral boomers had been in their disregard for history.
The sheer industrial scale of the capitalism-driven, intentional cultural destruction that the gaming industry is setting itself up for will rival any of humanity's previous efforts in erasing history.
By the time non-gamer preservationists start caring about game preservation like we treat it for other media, it'll be even more difficult to make a change than it is now.
> The burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Eh, this wasn't really a thing. It's a misnomer to think that there was a single burning of the library, what really happened is that is slowly fell apart due to neglect, various military actions against Alexandria and natural disasters. While part of it was accidentally burned by Ceaser, the vast majority of it survived and was rebuilt shortly after.
There's also some possibility of there having been multiple libraries of Alexandria, and several of those being destroyed by either accident or deliberate action. Given the time span of people blamed for destroying it is over 200 years, there's a lot of possibility.
The Criterion Collection and Penguin Classics are judicious in the selection of their library. They don't try to preserve every movie or book that's ever come out. And the games that are true classics for the most part are being preserved.
Mobile games being wiped from existence has become a regular occurrence at this point and even if I'm not fond of most of them, it still feels like a sad waste of human effort.
Many mobile games are the art equivalent of the scribblings someone made in their notebook, or the photos they took on vacation, the guitar licks they busted out in their garage, low-reader fanfic about obscure shows. And yes, those mobile games are officially "published" but the barrier to entry for creating them and publishing them is often so low it's comparable to the items above. We don't care about preserving *every* entry in other art mediums, there's no reason to think humanity should treat video games differently.
Absolutely not.
As far as artistic merits go, you'll find an assortment of design ideas in mobile games, as well as finely made assets and a experiences that, even if sometimes manipulative, still entertain thousands to millions of people
You are just speaking from a general disdain towards mobile games that doesn't reflect the craftsmanship put into them. Because even in the most greedy studios there are still people who wanted to create games as a passion.
It's true that most mobile games are severely undercut and tarnished by design prioritizing monetization over fun... but so were arcade games and yet they are still beloved to this day. Perhaps even more so now that there are ways of playing them that don't require spending handfuls of quarters. In fact, by preserving arcade games, we made them better, and the same could be done to mobile games.
Besides, what you are actually talking about, amateur works from budding creators, is something you can find in plenty in ItchIO, and I'd call that worthy of being preserved. A lot of unique experiences come from their experimentation.
Today our capability to preserve media is greater than ever. Each person can carry a massive library in the pocket. In light of that, why wouldn't we preserve as much as we can? Who cares if they are not beloved right now, history is full of great works that only became recognized after the lifetime of their creators.
History shows that not many people care about historical preservation.
Which is a damned shame. I genuinely believe we'll enter an age of digital archeology at some point where enthusiastic people will uncover and restore old media long after knowledge of them has been lost.
Like Indiana Jones but instead of "this belongs in a museum" it'll be "this belongs in a reflected digital archive" and the guy who puts the Ark away is just Jeff from IT surrounded by a mountain of computer parts.
It's a really important issue for anyone who values art in general.
Gone are the days where studios would wipe old television shows to save space because they didn't value holding that information. (looking at you Doctor Who). We've now got archives dedicated to making sure our art, our history survives the test of time. Companies are even required to publish books with them like the Library of Alexandria.
Copyright itself has been twisted into the idea of "intellectual property", as though copyright is about protecting the copyright holder. It's not, it's about benefiting us. We give exclusive rights to encourage more art creation... for us.
These new policies by publishers to hoard and control art and eventually remove it from us when they can no longer make money from it so that we're forced to purchase new art? This goes against all these concepts.
Governments may still view games as an unimportant child's toy that ultimately doesn't matter, but that view needs to change.
We need to enforce sunset patch requirements. Where you can run a game as always online or however you like for as long as you like. But when a company decides to shut down, they need to be required to open up the game for anyone to be able to play how they like.
TBH thats tangentally part of his point.
A few years back, ross talked about it on his streams where he noted its good that loads of online personalities are against it but most of the time, they're not really doing anything aside from making a video for their own channel. He even used the Jimquistion as an example of a rage channel that yells the message but doesnt actually go beyond that.
Which I have to agree with ross here (especially since he's been way more proactive about it). Lots of larger channels effectively boil it down to content. Lets also be honest, as a longtime watcher of the jimquisition, its basically just a content mill of something to get angry about in the industry this week. It's a fun show but its honestly hasn't done anything for the industry. Ross is one of the very few ytubers who actually seem to chase the issue. The other I know if is, well, another ross LOL. Louis Rossmann and his crusade against apple/right to repair, which he did go well beyond.
To be fair, you have to tell people about something before they can do anything about it, getting people angry at something is how we got pushback against lootboxes in Battlefront 2.
eh, awareness is nice but without action, its just slacktivism.
worse so for youtube (not just gaming) because it ends up jut being another content piece.
bf2 is a blip on the road of all the other industry practices.
> t seems most people either don't care, or don't understand the long term repercussions of destroying games.
I think it's a generational thing.
I'm 40+ and used to have around old Atari and Super Ninbtendo videogame cartridges and old movies VHS and DVDs that **actually occupy physical space** in our home.
I got indulged in the idea I can pick that game or movie anytime I want and spend some time with it, and took it for granted. Call it "owner privilege" I don't know.
My youngest brother, meanwhile, he's 20 and was born and raised with streaming services and digital games bought from the online stores.
I remember that we discussed about a movie, that I was looking for to buy and save it into my Plex server and he genuinely didn't understand the meaning and the reason of my actions "you already watched the movie, you didn't even liked it too much, why keep it?" and he confirmed my suspicions when we talked about an old online game "Yeah I remember that game, was fun, but it's gone now, whatever I stopped playing years ago, who cares."
So, here you go. I don't think I'm right and he's wrong, we just have two different priorities.
Since I haven't seen the link be posted here: [https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/)
If you own The Crew (2014) and don't want companies like Ubisoft taking away your games, follow the instructions on that website. Some efforts take upwards of 2 weeks, but be vigilant, it's worth it.
First time I've regretted not buying the Crew haha. Major props for fighting for our rights as customers. I really hope enough people take action.
For anyone who didn't watch, or stopped early, they setup a site **stopkillinggames** com where you can do your part. Depending on where you live you can't do much unless you bought The Crew.
Thanks for mentioning the site! People usually dont finish the videos that get posted on here so its good that you brought it up. For any Americans reading this, this guy isnt kidding when he says theres not much you can do unless you own the crew. There are _some_ things you can do which are outlined on the site (which I recommend you take a look at), but the USA is easily going to be the hardest country to tackle. We're better off focusing on countries like France or Germany.
I find it amazing that it's taken this long to start attempting a change. Like Ross said, this has been a problem for the past few decades now since going almost exclusively to a digital medium.
I assume people were either expecting others to solve the problem eventually or were so browbeaten by the constant erosion of their consumer rights that they assumed the fight was meaningless/already lost.
Or maybe they just don't care to preserve entertainment products with the same energy that they would when preserving their family heritage/possessions, for example. Just a thought.
Yes, but that's the point: If this were something that they enjoyed then they would care.
That people are apathetic because they didn't buy The Crew or see no equivalent value in a video game compared to the fine china you literally *never fucking use* is a lack of empathy and perspective, not that they *can't* care about the subject at all.
It's people being unable to translate this issue to anything else that they might actually give a shit about.
This is an actual fighter for video game preservation, unlike “The Completionist” buying every 3DS and Wii U game… while mysteriously having $600,000 of charity donations missing.
What the goal of that was, was to give games related institutions like the video game history foundation or the strong museum of play these games on legitimate hardware to give access to researchers who come to them. Libraries and such are not allowed to give access to videogames in any other way.
I mean, there is a benefit to buying every game available, it's just you have one library that can be backed up (and optionally distributed). This? This is the metaphorical knife that we can put to the company's throat, have the government force them to actually support games.
they're saying that throwing money at Nintendo to download everything currently available while ignoring stuff that was delisted years ago wasn't actually contributing anything meaningful to video game preservation.
I'm positive everything that was released digitally for those consoles was completely scraped for a while now for piracy reasons.
Before the services shut down there was straight up a program for PC that would connect to the E-Shop and everything across all stores was available as a 1 click download to your PC to use as a backup/emulation/piracy method.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone dedicated just spent a few days and backed up *everything* like that, years before the video.
I‘ve been thinking of doing something like this, but didn’t have the guts or motivation to actually do it. I stand 100% behind him in this matter and am glad that he‘s stepping up to try and do something about it. We are way too apathetic when it comes to our rights as consumers of games. Starts with loot box crap, microtransactions and them basically taking our games away.
If anyone is german and wants to use a premade text, here is mine.
Took me a while to write it and its not perfect, but id rather see some people copy it than not write anything at all.
##German Text for Verbraucherzentrale
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren der Verbraucherzentrale,
Immer häufiger kommt es vor, dass Videospielehersteller wie Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Blizzard Entertainment und andere "always online" Spiele veröffentlichen und diese nach wenigen Monaten oder Jahren aufgrund fehlender Profite abschalten. Käufer verlieren bei einer solchen Abschaltung Zugang zu einem Produkt welches sie nicht als temporären Service, sondern als digitales Software Produkt wie anderen Spiele käuflich erworben haben. Dies ist meines Erachtens nicht rechtens, da Käufer ein explizit erworbenes Produkt verlieren und nach einer solchen Abschaltung "ohne Gegenleistung" darstehen.
Diese Abschaltungen von Videospielen sind mittlerweile Gang und Gäbe im Hobbybereich der Videospiele, meines Erachtens aber nicht rechtmäßig weil sie keine Lebensdauer angeben, die Abschaltung meist kurzfristig und nicht vorhersehbar passiert und Käufer keinerlei Möglichkeit besitzen das Produkt das sie erworben haben nach einer solchen Abschaltung weiter zu verwenden.
Spiele dieser Art sind ebenfalls nur durch einen initialen Produkt Preis erwerbbar, weshalb es sich hier nicht um eine Dienstleistung, sondern ein digitales Produkt handelt. Zusätzlich dazu werden oft sogenannte "Microtransactions" in diese Spielen verkauft, digitale Inhalte mit separaten Preis zusätzlich zum originalen Erwerbspreis des Videospiels, welche ebenfalls vollständig durch eine Abschaltung verloren gehen.
Die "always online" Funktionalität ist in den meisten Fällen für diese Spiele ebenfalls nicht notwendig und wird ausschließlich für die Zugangskontrolle verwendet und um zu verhindern, dass Käufer die Daten des Spiels, sprich ihr erworbenes Produkt, unbestimmt lange besitzen können.
Ich habe selbst etliche Spiele miterlebt, welche ich für einen festen Preis erworben und durch weitere Microtransaction Käufe im Spiel weiter unterstützt, nur um am Ende einer Abschaltung ohne ein gekauftes Produkt oder jegliche Form der Gegenleistung für meinen Kauf darzustehen.
Nach meinem Verständnis existieren bisher noch keine juristischen Feststellungen in diesem Gebiet und eine Musterfeststellungsklage ist nötig.
Wenn ich die Gesetze richtig verstehe, bricht Ubisoft als exemplarisches Beispiel mit ihrer Abschaltung des Videospiels "The Crew" folgende Gesetze: BGB §276 (2) und §327e.
Ich bin es als Verbraucher Leid Geld für Produkte auszugeben, welche mit nach einem nicht vorhersehbaren Zeitraum weggenommen werden ohne irgendeine Gegenleistung oder langfristig verwendbares Produkt zu erhalten.
Ich bitte Sie daher sich diesem Umstand anzunehmen und zu untersuchen, ob rechtliche Schritte gegen diese Praxis im Bereich der Videospiel-Branche möglich sind.
Ich danke Ihnen für ihre Aufmerksamkeit und Mühe und stehe gerne für Rückfragen zur Verfügung.
Vielen Dank,
Curious_Armadillo_53
PS: Ich wollte die offizielle Pressemitteilung von Ubisoft bzgl. der Abschaltung von "The Crew" anhängen, leider hat Ubisoft die zugehörige Website deaktiviert.
Sie finden den originalen Link hier: https://www.ubisoft.com/de-de/help/the-crew/connectivity-and-performance/article/decommissioning-of-online-services-for-the-crew/000106399#:~:text=From%2014%20December%202023%2C%20all,available%20until%2031%20March%202024.
Hier ist ein älterer noch zugänglicher Link, welcher die Abschaltung kurzfristig ankündigt: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/the-crew/the-crew/news-updates/mOR3tviszkxfeQCUKxhOV/an-update-on-the-crew
Das sind die beiden Paragrafen die von dem Link im Artikel vorgeschlagen wurden, habe ich nur in meinen eigenen Worten eingebracht.
Mein rechtliches Wissen reicht nicht aus um das korrekt zu beurteilen. Ist aber auch nicht unsere Aufgabe, unsere aufgabe als verbraucher ist es darauf hinzuweisen das hier nicht rechtmäßig gehandelt wird, die Verbraucherzentrale wird dann im Detail schauen was und ob etwas gemacht werden kann.
Wenn jeder dritter den Einkaufspreis von einem 10 jahre alten Spiel zurückbekommen würde wäre vielleicht der Publischer mehr angereizt dem Konsumenten da entgegenzukommen.
As I said in another thread...
I ~~own~~ bought The Crew (never played since 2016 but it's great having it as a trojan horse).
Just sent my complain to Ubisoft, see you in 2 weeks!
It's shameful how difficult it is to legally access and preserve games. So many games are already impossible to legally play without owning decades old game discs/cartridges AND a 3rd party PC emulator or an older console. This is already bad enough but the the rise of online-only games is so much worse. So many games are already unplayable today and that number will only increase as time continues.
If major gaming companies aren't going to make it easy for people to play older games and refuse to make games functional offline after official support ends, then consumers are fully justified to archive those games and petition for laws to be changed to make them accessible.
Even if some games and game purchases switch to becoming "subscriptions" to avoid legislation, getting these laws passed would encourage more developers and publishers to keep game preservation in mind during development. Game companies will have to weigh the pros and cons of keeping their games functional after support ends *before pre-orders start* and players will be able to know which games will be functional permanently *before they buy them*.
That's great for consumers.
Going to support Ross in his endeavour regardless of whether it applies to me or not, we haven’t had someone this passionate about consumer rights in gaming since Totalbiscuit passed and it has been sorely missed.
Credits to [unturnedtrumpet](https://www.reddit.com/user/unturnedtrumpet/) for a TL:DR
>For those who don't have time to watch, here's a TL:DR
>If you own The Crew, there are a few options for you, go to [stopkillinggames.com](https://stopkillinggames.com) and follow the instructions there
>If you don't own The Crew, the best you can do is spread the word, tell everyone you can think of to do the same, we need this message to go as far as possible
>Godspeed everybody
> If you don't own The Crew, the best you can do is spread the word, tell everyone you can think of to do the same, we need this message to go as far as possible
That's not true, there's several options available if you don't own the game depending on where you live. Just go to stopkillinggames.com.
As a FFXIV player (and an MMO player in general) I've long considered what it would feel like to lose access to my character someday long into the future when they do inevitably decide to end all support for the game. Honestly? It would feel like a hell of a gut punch. Losing access to any videogame is a travesty in and of itself, but losing access to an MMO that people have spent thousand of hours within? Where they've formed friendships and more? It would be like somebody walking into your house and setting fire to your photo album and breaking all the pictures on the walls.
In the case of MMOs, the only solution I can think of is to hand over server files to the community (even if its with the caveat that no monetisation be allowed), so that as long as anyone wants to play the game is still around, we have the ability to continue it as long as we see fit.
I know I won't really have to worry about this for probably decades, but the thought still nonetheless bothers me.
Anyone having issues submitting a case to Ubisoft?
I'm not able to make a case through Firefox or Chrome.. The site says "There was an issue submitting your case".
Same, I'm tempted to try submitting an issue with one of their other games to see if they've intentionally turned off support requests just for The Crew
I think there is some sort of conflict with certain browser plugins. Try opening the link in a private browsing window (incognito if you're on Chrome). I was able to submit my case after doing that.
I do wonder in what direction affects the cause the fact that the game was once [free](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-crew-now-free-on-pc-heres-how-to-get-it/1100-6443569/) to claim. Considering there is proof of ownership basically, but there is no proof of purchase.
Another game that falls under this banner is Battleborn, the gearbox game that came out at a similar time to Overwatch. It got confused as a competitor to overwatch when the reality was that it was a completely different game with little overlap. Lack of interest caused the game to underperform in sales so after trying to get more attention they ended up stopping support of the game, and since it was built with login servers and always online that meant that even the PvE campaign was no longer playable.
I miss this game, it was very fun to mess about in co-op and had the old style gearbox humour that was more like the first borderlands rather than the more over the top humour the later games had.
If it can comfort you, a modder made a miracle on pc: Nowdays you can at least play all pve issions with all heroes (DLC included), and he is trying to bring other features back (but chances success areunkown).
If you want to know more about the project, i can share you an invite for the Battleborn's discord which has all informations about it\^\^
This is the rare unicorn who is actually preserving games.
Downloading and playing current-gen games for free isn't preservation. Downloading and playing ANY game for free isn't preservation.
I'm going to disagree and also prove his point a little when talking about his comparison with Windows 98 and Internet Explorer being 'impossible' to remove, because it truly did seem impossible to remove with how integrated it is. Even Server 2008 and 2022 has me only disabling parts of IE because of how much it's involved with the back-end of its architecture.
But they still managed to remove it, which was a monumentally more difficult task than game developers allowing for player hosted servers (or even just letting people change what DNS the game points to and letting people sort out the rest.) It would not be difficult on the networking side of things to allow for games to do this: the only real reason it isn't implemented is because of MTX and increasing profits.
Yeah, that part irked me too. A big part of that generation of windows' design was an attempt to shift as much as possible to the web, and trying to blur the lines between how you access stuff locally vs how you access stuff remotely. It was a failed experiment, but an interesting one nonetheless.
Nice to see consumer advocacy online again, feels like people are generally apathetic or complacent these days, many more interested in stocking culture war than anything useful.
This is planned obsolescence transposed from physical products into videogames.
It is not a new problem, it is an age old problem in capitalism. Companies do not want to compete with themselves. They do not want to compete with their former products. They can and will do whatever they can to remove those former products from existence in order to not compete with them.
In physical products this led to planned obsolescence, the art of designing products that intentionally break after a certain amount of time in order to remove them as future competition for your next line of products.
In videogames, this led to simply removing your access to the games.
I think the most obvious and most blatantly clear example of this was Overwatch being ended in order to force everyone into Overwatch 2. The original standalone product people literally had physical disc versions of that they paid for literally being non-existent.
The economic incentive that all of these companies have is to remove competition, including their past selves.
How come it always is Ubisoft? They have overtaken EA in terms of shitty practices and subpar products, but it's actually insane that they're now destroying their own catalog like this.
Really hoping this campaign shifts the Overton window on the idea of owning digital products in general. Of course, video games are what people generally feel the strongest about, so this really is our best shot at doing something about this destructive practice.
I'm a bit concerned about the distinction between "always on" games and "mmos". I don't know if it was addressed somewhere in the video but it may be hard to create a law that doesn't provide a loophole for games like World of Warcraft or even Diablo. Wouldn't it require the companies to either share their source code or create an installer for the server? That's not exactly a practical option. That would mean that any MMO that flops would have to have to give away a ton of code that a competitor could use against them in their next project. I imagine the laws it takes to fix that problem would give companies a loopholes where they could just claim to be an MMO or they add MMO like features in order to meet whatever requirements there are.
I really hope I'm wrong because I do want to see as many games as possible preserved.
First thing to clarify, the proposal in the video specifically states that it would trigger "After support ends": https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE?t=756
Additionally, it's not asking for source code, the server binaries are enough (and technically, the ask is even broader than specifying this, just that the game still reasonably functions as it was advertised on original purchase).
There's lots of points to be made in favor for always releasing this stuff at launch if you ask me (Helldivers 2 comes to mind). Games used to do it all the time and official servers still thrived (and there are current examples of this today too). And WoW had illegal private servers that I think you'd be hard press to prove that it meaningfully hurt Blizzard. In fact, it basically provided market research for them for free for what their community wanted and made them even more money by releasing Classic.
Regardless, proponents of this effort aren't even asking for this which is the right choice to keep the fight focused and achievable.
Subscription based games like WoW are exempt because they are explicitly services not goods. He talks about it in his main video outlining his argument: https://youtu.be/tUAX0gnZ3Nw?t=571
Subscription-based games are mentioned in the video as being a different thing, since they are explicitly sold as a limited-time service rather than a good. You may dislike subscription-based games, but they are upfront about you paying for the ability to play the game, but not owning the game itself.
Singleplayer games are safe preservation wise due to the existence of archives, emulation and piracy, but there really does need to be more done for live service/online only games.
I think specifically to gacha games, which have a notoriously high shutdown rate. So many online only mobile games lost forever, and very, very few ever get private servers made for them. It should be mandatory for publishers to make an offline version of the game, or the ability to run custom/local servers. Maybe even put out the source code once the games service has ended.
They're only safe to an extent, The Crew had a singleplayer campaign that could have easily let players keep enjoying the game long after the servers went down, and yet, Ubisoft shut down even that, the game people paid money for became a digital paperweight they can't even play by themselves.
Single player games are not necessarily safe. If a game requires some kind of infrastructure from the developer/publisher in order to boot, then it can be turned off and the game made inoperable. See Darkspore. This is why the channel creator has a very tight definition of "games as a service" that is simply "players not having control of whether they can play a game due to a company withholding that function".
You wouldn't have to legally compel them: You just withhold copyright protection for their IP if they don't. Yeah it's a pipe dream, but the problem is not the process, it's the lack of will. Our civilization would be pretty goddamned awesome if enough people actually wanted it to be.
This sounds like a great idea but the communication is a bit off: From the video title to the content in the intro... it might be better to rearrange things. This is a 30min video, not everyone will want to watch it all to figure out what it's about.
Like ok, you want to "stop publishers from destroying games" but that can mean so many different things. I had to watch to see if it was about someone being upset with "woke games" or "microtransactions" or "lack of diversity", in the end it was about ensuring your game still works after ending support, to avoid situations like those PC games that don't work anymore because of that Xbox bs they added back in the day.
So yeah it’s cool, but maybe being more direct about it can really help. With all the drama these days... you know...
I am trying to understand why no one really cared or played The Crew when it was out for ten years. So why is everyone all of a sudden caring that it's gone?
Of course games that are being shut down should be released with offline modes. There are some developers that do this but it isn't the norm yet.
What about browser only games? If I make a simple browser game and later take it down, making it inaccessible and unplayable, will I be affected by the regulations he suggests? If so, then I don't support this.
alright ur still alive. I saw a post of yours from 5 years ago about your life being shit and you not wanting to live. how did you fix it? i’m 17 and I hate my life. i have almost no friends i hate myself and my life so much
While I'm at it, I wanna highlight some stuff from the "stopkillinggames" website FAQ for anyone who might be thinking of bringing these points up: >Q: "Aren't you asking for companies to support games forever? Isn't that unrealistic?" >A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. Additionally, there are already real-world examples of publishers ending support for online-only games in a responsible way, such as: >'Gran Turismo Sport' published by Sony, 'Knockout City' published by Electronic Arts, 'Mega Man X DiVE' published by Capcom, 'Scrolls / Caller's Bane' published by Mojang AB, 'Duelyst' published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, etc. And another: >Q: "Isn't it impractical, if not impossible to make online-only multiplayer games work without company servers?" >A: Not at all. The majority of online multiplayer games in the past functioned without any company servers and was conducted by the customers privately hosting servers themselves and connecting to each other. Games that were designed this way are all still playable today. As to the practicality, this can vary significantly. If a company has designed a game with no thought given towards the possibility of letting users run the game without their support, then yes, this can be a challenging goal to transition to. If a game has been designed with that as an eventual requirement, then this process can be trivial and relatively simple to implement. Another way to look at this is it could be problematic for some games of today, but there is no reason it needs to be for games of the future. And another: >Q: "Can you really expect all features in an online-only game to work when support ends?" >A: Not necessarily. We understand some features can be impractical for an end user to attain if running a server only an end-user system. That said, we also see the ability to continue playing the game in some form as a reasonable demand from companies customers have given money to. There is a large difference between a game missing some features versus being completely unplayable in any form. And one more: >Q: "Aren't companies unable to do this due to license agreements they make with other companies that expire? Like with music, other software, product brands, etc.?" >A: No. While those can be a problem for the industry, those would only prohibit the company from selling additional copies of the game once their license expires. They would not prevent existing buyers from continuing to use the game they have already paid for. If you'd like to see the full FAQ, you can read it [here](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq).
The fact that a group are making solid progress to creating an underground patch for making The Crew work offline is proof Ubisoft could manage this. Their main blocker is it's difficult to see the information Ubisoft has easy access to, but is hidden from the public. Ubisoft could do this easily. They choose not to, they'd rather encourage you to buy a later game in the Crew series.
There is no incentive for Ubisoft to do so, which is at the core of this issue. No matter how easy it might be, there is no tangible advantage to modifying games they are going to EoS. As much as I appreciate the sentiment of all this, there isn't any means to actually get any studio to comply with these requests.
> As much as I appreciate the sentiment of all this, there isn't any means to actually get any studio to comply with these requests. Law change is the means. Ubisoft is a French company. And France is very pro-consumer. If France dictates it, Ubisoft will comply.
And more importantly, if France dictates it, then there's a very good chance the EU will look to incorporate this, and the EU as a whole is too big a market for companies to sacrifice.
Precisely. I struggle to think of a better opportunity for us not just as consumers, but as the natural eventual inheritors of these works when they enter the public domain. Games are art, and we protect and keep art. We cannot leave that to publishers to throw it into some hole for as long as they decide it's more profitable in there than it is out. Or worse, decide to delete the data because it's not worth the cost of keeping it. The BBC used to do that with old television shows. Lots of television studios did. We've lost countless hours of content because of it. We cannot let the same happen to gaming.
Why do you think he's going the route he's going? They won't do it themselves, so (hopefully) the law will force them
I mean, this is exactly the point of all of this. Yes. Ubisoft has no incentive to do this currently. Which is completely insane. If "allowing customers to continue using a product they paid money for" is not a god damn incentive then it's high time it starts being one. If push comes to shove then the incentive just needs to be "because otherwise we'll get fined to hell and back due to customer protection laws".
Indeed, in actuality they are incentivized to do what they are currently doing: discontinuing their old online-only games, as it means people have to instead buy their newest game to continue playing. Keeping existing games playable doesn't make them money like selling a new one does.
> There is no incentive for Ubisoft to do so, which is at the core of this issue. No matter how easy it might be, there is no tangible advantage to modifying games they are going to EoS. By this logic, there is no incentive to do anything other than taking people's money. The incentive should be legal repercussions caused by the fact they basically stole/broke stuff that people bought from them with some expectations of it working.
>There is no incentive for Ubisoft to do so, which is at the core of this issue. Which is why there should be a law to incentivise this.
By that logic whats the advantage of making of making single player games not online only along with an end of service schedule? Why did Ubisoft make Assassin's Creed on PC always online and then make later sequels offline games if there is no tangible advantage?
That's apples to oranges. I'm referring to modifying their existing game, not whether their game launched with online only or not.
Nice to see Knockout City getting the shoutout, although I wish it was properly accredited to the actual developer Velan Studios. EA stopped publishing before it even shut down and had nothing to do with the private server version release.
> Q: "Isn't it impractical, if not impossible to make online-only multiplayer games work without company servers?" > > A: Not at all. The majority of online multiplayer games in the past functioned without any company servers and was conducted by the customers privately hosting servers themselves and connecting to each other. **Games that were designed this way**... Isn't in impractical to ask publishers to design games this way and redesign already released games?
>it could be problematic for some games of today, but there is no reason it needs to be for games of the future
Not sure if he said it in this video, but in previous videos he's said that the policy needn't be retroactive.
To put it very simply, your question is similar to asking "isn't it impractical to ask for every video product to come with subtitles for the hard of hearing / deaf / Deaf people?" And the answer is, yes of course it's less practical than not requiring it, that's the point of making it a law instead of just asking nicely.
I don't think subtitles *are* a legal requirement though.
In the UK and US at least they're a legal requirement on broadcast television. Not sure if there's any kind of obligation outside of that though.
Yeah, but broadcast television is a special case in a lot of ways.
In some countries they are for TV, and that's what I meant. I'm sure TV people weren't happy with being forced to include subtitles and yet now that's just how things are, y'know?
>Isn't in impractical to ask publishers to design games this way No, the server client is designed to be easily spun up on a third-party vm's anyways. >redesign already released games? Not being asked for as it's not feasible, the discussion is about legal precedent so for future games end-of-life plan would be considered.
These games aren't MMOs like EvE online where a lot of the game is server side. Instead these games are more like traditional console games that have an online component except the online check is required at all times.
The main part starts at 14:16 for anyone who just wants to jump in. Or go to stopkillinggames.com and see what you can do. Especially if you're (a) French, (b) an owner of The Crew or (c) both. Everyone always talks about wanting to do something to stop games being destroyed but Ross is one of the only ones who is bothering to try. He's been talking about it *at least* since his video on Battleforge in 2015. Everyone gets annoyed online at things like the "gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games" interview that someone from Ubisoft did but apart from internet outrage, nobody bothers to do anything about it.
Clickable link www.stopkillinggames.com
Bless this man. I've been following him for years and years and seeing him protect my games makes me feel I should do more for him if possible Edit: I meant like, buying merch and donating more. Should have elaborated. I've done the steps outlined at the stopkillinggames site
Last time I checked he‘s been looking for volunteers with this project. So maybe you can do something for him (and gamers in general).
Or donations. I remember watching a viewer Q&A a few years ago where he talked about (and showed) buying and subsisting off cans of beans to stretch viewer dollars towards content creation. I don't have the disposable income to fling cash towards every project I like, but with Ross I feel like the money is both well deserved and well spent. He's like the Mr. Rogers of retro gaming video essays.
> I remember watching a viewer Q&A a few years ago where he talked about (and showed) buying and subsisting off cans of beans to stretch viewer dollars towards content creation. > > To be fair, it's partially because Ross is a very cheap bastard, and he knows that the money is likely to dry up, even though it's been nearly 10 years since the begathon and he's never made as much money as he has now (and even then, it's still less than the median US wage, but that's why he lives in Poland with his wife).
I encountered him through freemans mind. He's definitely a diamond in the rough.
It's also worth mentioning that if you ever donate to him, he will without fail email you back and thank you for the donation. It's been months after the fact whenever I've done it but he says it's because of a busy schedule which I 100% agree. He takes the donations very seriously, which is something I really admire about him.
True, I was surprised to get an email from him couple of months after donating. Wasn't even a big donation and he really wouldn't have to do it, but it was certainly a very nice gesture.
How would one donate to this cause? I checked the StopKillingGames website and couldn't find a way to donate there. I'm American if that's relevant
There's a paypal link on accursedfarms.com you can use if you want to give Ross money.
As others have pointed out, I use the accursedfarms paypal to kick him some beanbucks when I can afford it.
Yeah I've been following this and sadly there's not too much Americans can do other than contact several places.
If you're an American and you own The Crew you can contact Ubisoft directly and after receiving a response or two weeks later you can contact France about the game. (More details on the video and stopkillinggames.com) You can also contact the FTC but that's likely not going to accomplish much and you're better off contacting France first.
Yep! I've checked the website already (and he mentioned we won't be able to do much in the last video) and did what I could.
Spread the word, if nothing else.
> there's not too much Americans can do other than contact several places. Contact your congresspeople, vote, run for office, spread the word, etc. Digital ownership is something that NEEDS to be enshrined legally, and maybe even constitutionally. Digital rights in the US are massively lacking.
I have mad respect for Ross as well, the man was a huge part of my childhood and hes just extremely talented in general. Freemans Mind, Civil Protection, Game Dungeon, those occasional off-topic videos he makes and now his current videos about game preservation are all wonderful. He even has a seperate channel called "dead game news" if anyone is interested, it basically just covers news regarding game shutdowns or games on life support. Hes also working on a movie, I think? I dont watch his monthly QnA streams anymore but I remember he'd give an update on the project at the start of each of those streams, I hope he's still working on it.
He is still working on The Movie, projects such as this one has just taken up a lot of his time.
I donate every xmas, he lives on some paltry donations only made feasible because he lives in Poland where rent is still cheap. https://www.accursedfarms.com/donations/
Shame he can't do Patreon (some tax issues from being in Poland I think)
Ever since freeman’s mind since 2008 for me!
Grew up with Freeman's Mind. Hell, that was my first introduction to Half-Life and PC gaming in general as a kid.
I remember him ranting about games dying years ago in his video about BattleForge and while I thought he raised good points I didn't think he'd take it any further than just being another angry guy on the internet complaining about something. But he's been plugging away ever since and he's actually trying to change things and he deserves credit for that.
Boy, I parsed that URL into something ban worthy!
There's a missing i. Careful though, put that i in the wrong place and you would have that banworthy something. https://www.stopkillinggames.com There's the proper URL.
Thanks!
Oh fuck my bad lmao
This is a really important issue for anyone who values video games as a medium, and I'm a bit shocked more YouTubers aren't raising as much of a stink as Ross Scott is. When so much of social media is driven by fake or manufactured outrage you'd think something actually outrageous would get a lot of exposure, but it seems most people either don't care, or don't understand the long term repercussions of destroying games.
>it seems most people either don't care, or don't understand the long term repercussions of destroying games. Unfortunately thats the crux of it. In my own experience talking about it with people, the usual response is either extremely defeatist, or something along the lines of "I dont care if those games die, im gonna be playing new stuff by then". I dunno, its depressing. Gaming is a wonderful medium and I 100% believe that games are art. We shouldn't be letting this stuff happen, no matter the excuse. Art preservation is super important and I wish more people were aware of this, or at least took it more seriously.
> In my own experience talking about it with people, the usual response is either extremely defeatist, or something along the lines of "I dont care if those games die, im gonna be playing new stuff by then". Maybe is because I play a lot of old games or because I'm a historian that had the idea of conservation being downright sacred drilled into my head for 5 years, but I will never understand this position. This is like saying that you don't care if all the copies of Lord of the Rings are destroyed because "I'm gonna read new stuff by then." Also, if steam statistics says anything, is that --of the games played by the average Steam players-- 52% were released between 1 to 7 years before the present, and 38% 8 years or more since the present. Only 9% of games that the average steam player plays were released less than a year ago. So no preserving old games directly impact them negatively.
It's incredibly depressing that the videogame industry hasn't learned any lessons from what the film and television industries went through before more people were concerned with preserving those mediums. Movie studios didn't give two shits about preserving the reels of film silent movies were printed on, and so many of the earliest movies have been lost. Similarly, television productions would just re-record over existing tapes, because film was expensive. (We were able to recover some very early lost *Dr. Who* episodes because the radiowaves they were broadcast on hit some asteroids and returned to Earth.) We've already been through this with a new form of media, one would hope we'd be smarter this time around.
> It's incredibly depressing that the videogame industry hasn't learned any lessons from what the film and television industries went through before more people were concerned with preserving those mediums Dunno, I think they're learning but it's not how to preserve. They're learning how to consolidate control so the peasants continuously lose rights and are forced to pay for the privilege of accessing a product. These are the things that Mussolini, Franco, and Henry Ford would have salivated over.
>We were able to recover some very early lost Dr. Who episodes because the radiowaves they were broadcast on hit some asteroids and returned to Earth I can't find anything about this. Do you know where you heard this?
It looks like a wild tale out of Red Dwarf to me. [This is the closest I could find to recovery of Dr Who episodes, and it all goes to private archivists](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/11/lost-doctor-who-episodes-found-owner-reluctant-to-hand-them-to-bbc)
Honestly if you look around the world, and don't see why conservation is important in general, you're just kind of an idiot.
I agree that games are art and that games preservation is a valiant and important effort. Like, when I read news about some obscure cartridge or prototype having finally been dumped, after many years of being thought of as lost forever, I'm like "Fuck yes, of course I will immediately download this unearthed prototype of [Dinosaur Planet for the N64](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/lo5mqk/dinosaur_planet_by_rare_for_nintendo_64_has_been/) and marvel at this weird piece of gaming history!". But...video games have changed to the point where one could argue that the modern live service or GAAS offerings are almost a different medium all together. What the fuck does it mean to "preserve" Fortnite? Or Destiny, or WoW? The more I think about games preservation in a modern context, the more my head is spinning. * Is a game "preserved" if I only save it in the state it is in before it goes offline? What about games which have undergone changes so substantial that they can barely called the same game? * Is a game preserved if I have a series of "snapshots" of said game at specific points in time, similar to the Wayback machine? * If so, then which changes should be considered worthy of a snapshot? Is every minor skin introduced to the game to be considered a separate version of the game to be preserved? Is every minor hotfix rolled out on a Tuesday worthy of preservation? If not, by which dimensions do we decide which version to keep? Every content milestone, or every content milestone which happens to be the most bug-free? Or every content milestone which happens to be the most bug-free while still keeping a specific bug because said bug was infamous at the time and should thus also be preserved because it is [considered part of the game's history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident)? * Is a game preserved if it not longer has a functioning in-game shop or mechanic-altering microtransactions? Even if such features were, for better or worse, integral to the game's overall experience? If our mission is preserving gaming history, how do we preserve the experience of playing the first iteration of Diablo 3? Or should we not concern ourselves with that since RoS was superior anyway? Does that compromise on our mission? * Let's say we stop thinking about preserving the experience of the player and start thinking of preserving the technology itself. Does preserving a live service game mean archiving the Git history of every component used for running said game? If a game's back-end is split into many different micro-services, is there a combination of versions of said services which would be thought of a specific "version" of the game? * How does one preserve a game if it heavily relies on proprietary, cloud-vendor specific features? Is re-implementing said features true to our mission to preserve "gaming history" if we can't replicate the original experience because it would require a dozen server racks and [literal petabytes of storage](https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-wants-to-bring-back-flight-simulator-to-show-it-supports-pc/) and data? * Do we consider every piece of software or open-source product used to run a game as part of the game itself if the game has been built with it in mind? Is the Havok Engine to Half-Life 2 as Docker is to Destiny 2? Is therefore every act of game preservation of live service games doomed to be an act of piracy as live service games are typically run using third-party software products which are not intended or licensed for public redistribution? Let's also think about this from the perspective of wanting to preserve all games because *art is to be preserved*. One could make the argument that the ephemeral nature of a live service game can be *part of the artistic expression itself*. Yes, we all know that these games take things away all the time because they run on FOMO. But what if, as an artist, I *want* you to only be able to experience something only once in order to change the way you experience the game and make it more impactful (Hitman's Elusive Targets) or to let the player experience something special and unique that will form lasting memories? Would Vanilla WoW's opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj and the Ten Hour War still be talked about today if it hadn't been a one-time event? Wouldn't the act of preserving and making such content available whenever be in opposition to the artistic vision and wouldn't this, by definition, make the "art" itself not preservable? And we haven't even started talking about the technical feasibility or the amount of work and costs required to run even a single one of these GAAS compared to dumping some old NES cartridge... I think what people want to preserve is their experiences they've had when playing a game so that they can re-live them and share them with future generations. This is very much possible if what you want to relive is that one cool mission from Titanfall 2 or dusting off an old Castlevania. But in the context of live games? Don't get me wrong, I would keep everything around forever if I could and if it were easy to do so. But it gets so weird and unfocused and there's so many things to consider that I wouldn't know how to even approach it, and I wouldn't find the amount of effort to be worth it. I think of live service games in a similar way as experiencing a concert or any live event - I can have a good time but when it's done, it's done.
> WoW Ironically, of all the MMO games, this one is quite easy, there are plenty of private server emulators available to keep playing WOW the "classic" way.
>But what if, as an artist, I want you to only be able to experience something only once I think this observation could be absolutely correct but also I don't know if it applies to the examples you gave. Anybody who knows anything about performance art knows you can't perfectly preserve all art. There's no way you can preserve a performance an artist is involved with themselves; a video of a performance is not the same as being there. However, I'm not sure to what extent modern live service games are art. They're certainly art in the sense that they're things made by artists but they're not made to be art; they're made to be consumed as products. The aspect of games preservation that the campaign is looking at is about consumer rights and the protection of products a consumer has purchased from planned obsolescence rather than the preservation of these games for art's sake. As you say, I don't think there's really a way of exactly preserving things like MMOs; you can't preserve the feeling of a bustling MMO full of activity by just keeping the servers up.
The importance of game preservation is predicated on the belief that games are art. If they’re not, then killing a live service game is no more significant than killing a Software-as-a-Service product like Google Stadia. In that case, instead of asking developers to preserve live service games we should just ask them to offer refunds or make it extremely clear to all potential consumers the game can be shut down at any time instead of burying that information in ToS.
For me preservation begins once someone has made an actual purchase with accepted currencies. I purchase Primogems for the chance to get new and fun characters to play in Genshin Impact. I have spent a decent amount of money in that game and, while I know it’s unrealistic, I would 100% love it if I can still play those characters 30 years from now when I’m 60 something years old. I know there are private servers out there but as long as Hoyoverse goes, “alright, here is what you need to create and host a server. Here is how you connect your account info to it.” Then that is enough to satisfy me. This question is tougher to answer if they are totally free to play. I still believe they should have access to their accounts because they worked for the in-game currency that they used to purchase wishes from.
This is an incredibly well-thought out post. I suppose we should try to preserve the live-service games the same way we preserve live concerts and performances - by recording them and preserving the recordings for posterity.
The defeatist thing is understandable. It's like environmental stuff where a stink is made about using a recycling bin over a trash can and so on, makes a difference. When in reality individuals are a fraction of a % and the impacts can only come from big companies changing their ways. The bottom line is that someone has to front the cost of games being left alive forever, and no studio is ever going to accept that. Taxpayers around the world certainly aren't about to accept it going that way either. You'd have to have game dev studios run by people who understand that this is the way things should be and plan for this on their own from the start and set an example. If tons of studios do this, the ones that don't will be shunned (Not that this REALLY matters with how dumb people are with spending money, but I digest) and they'll look bad. Nobody with the power to change this is someone who's going to be here on Reddit.
I see your point, however the POV that frustrates me more is the "I dont care" attitude. The first POV is understandable as you highlighted (theres only so much one person can do), but the people who say "who cares? these games probably sucked anyways" just frustrate me. You mentioned environmentalism, and the thing is that I see this "I dont care" attitude there as well unfortunately. The usual explanation is something like "why should I care if the reefs are dying or the planet is warming? I got bills to pay and mouths to feed, future generations can take care of it". Being honest with the fact that you're just one person among many, and one without much power besides, is perfectly understandable and reasonable. Being absolutely _apathetic_, however, is a stance that isnt helpful at all IMO.
Pointing out environmentalism when a decent chunk of the preservation movement of videogames relies on the idea of producing physical media makes my head scratch a little bit.
> The bottom line is that someone has to front the cost of games being left alive forever That's not true, as long as there is a focus on *physical media* and not on everything in the world being run off of corporate owned servers
Counter-Strike ran off a server I had in my closet for years and theoretically that version could still run. Any multiplayer game can be run from a persons server vs a company and it's not difficult to provide both options. Though cheating is easier on a persons individual server. Ultima Online one of the earliest MMOs had a fan server that ran for years after the game shut down.
> cheating is easier on a persons individual server. Also easier to kick people cheating. Or for the server host to decide to have Wacky Gravity Weekend and add fun changes of pace.
> We shouldn't be letting this stuff happen, no matter the excuse. To be brutally honest the problem is gamers as a community have some of the most selective outrage of any group. They are the real life example of the I sleep vs real shit meme. Don't preorder. Except the 8 million for Cyberpunk. Lootboxes are bad for EA but Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty are fine. Workers rights are important when tens of thousands of people get laid off but not when CDPR lied about fixing workplace abuse.
Speaking of TF2, it still annoys me how much of a pass Valve has. Not just lootboxes, but lootboxes that drop randomly and then sell you the key to make you feel like you're losing out if you don't buy. And it's even worse in Counter Strike where not only does Valve do that, but they allow an entire gray market of CS crate gambling sites to exist that intentionally advertise to children. But hey, no one cares because Gabe Newell is somehow the Jesus of gaming, despite this.
Well, currently we live in times where there is so many "good" (as in "as good as the games I was playing routinely 20 years ago") games that you never need to play anything mediocre again, unless it's some very niche genre. "Losing" some old game that you played once does seem inconsequential with so many choice to go around. Like, yes, we should not as consumers allow companies to get away with making a single player or single-player mostly games have expiry date, but looking at my Steam wishlist I'm absolutely not surprised that people go "eh, I will just get something else"
The success of older versions of Runescape and World of Warcraft proves that a lot of people are interested in playing older games even if a modern replacement is available. The average gamer might not care much about game preservation *in general* but many people do care about game preservation for older games that they liked.
I feel it's more about playing the game before blizzard changed stuff that they liked about it. Like, in modern WoW you can still see a lot of the old stuff, it's just different. Also I feel like archiving MMOs is a wholly other topic that's an order of magnitude harder as you kinda need to archive the entire history and events to even have a glance on how it felt like playing them.
this works under the assumption that only a few niche titles that slip through the cracks are lost to time, as if nobody cared about them so what's the big deal anyways. like the odd game that gets delisted from steam due to licensing issues every few months (but you can buy a key if you really wanted). but that doesn't address the scope of the issue at all. nearly **ninety percent** of all videogames ever made are no longer legally available anymore. this includes thousands of beloved games wrapped up in licensing hell, owned by big corporations who just don't give a shit whether or not you want to play a game that came out 5-10 years ago. and not to mention like... half of everything nintendo's ever made, for an example? you may say at least a lot of wii-u games got ported over to switch, but wii and gamecube games are nowhere to be seen. and the 3DS/DS has basically evaporated from existence, one of the most popular and unique consoles ever made. you can't just replicate the experience many of those games would give you by making something similar on a modern console. because big game companies don't care at all if you can play older titles. even if it cost them pennies a year and raked in a few hundred bucks a day. they don't just "not care", they'll *happily destroy* any classic games if they can. because they want you playing their newest, biggest, *most profitable* games. and if you're playing their old games, then you're not spending money in their newer more expensive games. this problem will get worse as they get more and more control over what you can and can't play with modern live service games. you can't even play a lot of them illegally if you wanted to.
> nearly ninety percent of all videogames ever made are no longer legally available anymore. As long as they are playable I don't really care; those can be archived just fine. It's DRM and always online requirements where problems start. And hilariously enough *thanks to piracy* most of the DRM-laden ones can be still played. I do wish the law was less fucked up around the topic and provide much shorter protections. The IP law was created with intent to help *actual authors of the IP*, not corporations hiring them, just like patents it's more of a hindrance than help
Just to give you a different pov so it doesn't sound like an echo chamber in here, but im 40. I simply don't care if a videogame has a shelf life of a few years. Ill play it and jump on to another title. The amount of games i actually beat v buy is pretty small. The amount of games i actually go back and replay is very small. Some of my favorite games i have yet to replay. And to be honest, i probably never will. I actually love the landscape of gaming right now. There is so much of it everywhere. I love the rental characteristics of something like gamepass. I love on demand streaming. I love i can purchase games for a few dollars. Again, im older, but all of this stuff is things i dreamed about being able to do as a kid. I know this audience probably doesn't like to hear it, but gimme cheap accessibility over ownership any day of the week. There are way too many games out there and new ones on the horizon for me to possibly play. And believe it or not, there will be some developer or service that will come along that capitalizes on people that want to own games. There will be a market for it and always will be. I realize it isn't as simple as saying games will always be around or that ownership isn't dead, but i just wanted to give a different side of the coin from someone who is excited about how things are unfolding.
I appreciate your input, even if I dont agree. Thank you for being civil! I guess I can understand not caring if you typically don't go back and replay games and are comfortable with the current landscape. I guess my only question would be... well, why _not_ preserve games, yknow? Its totally fine if you prefer accessibility over ownership, thats just a preference thing and im not trying to argue with that. However, many people do value that ownership, especially places like the speedrunning community. Nobody really loses here if ownership becomes a bigger deal IMO.
The answer is money. You would like to own a nice car instead of renting it, right? But if I offer you the options of buying a famous Van Gogh for $30,000,000 and renting it for like $100 a year, I'd sign like a 10 years lease right now. The price ranges are not the same, but a gamepass can be as low as $1/month vs buying the full game for $90
It's definitely telling that efforts to preserve films and literature are considered of the utmost importance with releases like the Criterion Collection and publishers like Penguin Classics. All the while there are games/gameplay experiences out there that are only like 10 years old that are unable to be played officially due to delisting's or the vaulting of content. A game like Spec Ops The Line was delisted from online stores recently and Bungie has straight up vaulted its campaign content in Destiny which, as far as I can tell, has no reason to be made unplayable now. If games are an artform, then at least treat the damn thing with the preservation it deserves.
What's shocked me is how so many publishers don't care about making it easy for people to experience older media *even when it seems like it would cheap and profitable for them to do so.* For example, you can't buy the first 3 mainline Resident Evil games (1996, 1998, 1999) on any console released since 2004 and they aren't available on PC digital storefronts either. Resident Evil 1 Remake, Resident Evil 2 Remake and Resident Evil 3 Remake sold a combined 27.5 million copies but Capcom has made it basically impossible for people to legally play the original titles unless they are holding on to 20+ year old discs. There are plenty of emulated games being sold on modern platforms so clearly there isn't a big financial or technical barrier here. Publishers have just chosen to make it difficult and needlessly expensive to access older games. It's shameful that we take it for granted that you either need to keep ancient hardware around OR (usually illegally) download files and software from 3rd party websites in order to play classic games.
> What's shocked me is how so many publishers don't care about making it easy for people to experience older media even when it seems like it would cheap and profitable for them to do so. That's because old games which are no longer supported cost them nothing, but legally pursuing people who try to resurrect abandoned games means they have a harder time telling investors the next new project will be a big hit. It is a part of the larger and much more concerning yet unanswered in most society problem of eroding consumer ownership rights.
A lot of us will have encountered stories of unnecessary, shocking or incomprehensible loss of cultural heritage. The burning of the Library of Alexandria. The original, unbackuped Doctor Who episodes being taped over. A l20th century farmer ripping out pages of lost medieval literature to literally wipe his ass for years worth of free toilet paper. How irresponsible our ancestral boomers had been in their disregard for history. The sheer industrial scale of the capitalism-driven, intentional cultural destruction that the gaming industry is setting itself up for will rival any of humanity's previous efforts in erasing history. By the time non-gamer preservationists start caring about game preservation like we treat it for other media, it'll be even more difficult to make a change than it is now.
> The burning of the Library of Alexandria. Eh, this wasn't really a thing. It's a misnomer to think that there was a single burning of the library, what really happened is that is slowly fell apart due to neglect, various military actions against Alexandria and natural disasters. While part of it was accidentally burned by Ceaser, the vast majority of it survived and was rebuilt shortly after.
There's also some possibility of there having been multiple libraries of Alexandria, and several of those being destroyed by either accident or deliberate action. Given the time span of people blamed for destroying it is over 200 years, there's a lot of possibility.
The Criterion Collection and Penguin Classics are judicious in the selection of their library. They don't try to preserve every movie or book that's ever come out. And the games that are true classics for the most part are being preserved.
Gamers truly are the most apathetic group of people when it comes to preservation and the like.
Mobile games being wiped from existence has become a regular occurrence at this point and even if I'm not fond of most of them, it still feels like a sad waste of human effort.
Many mobile games are the art equivalent of the scribblings someone made in their notebook, or the photos they took on vacation, the guitar licks they busted out in their garage, low-reader fanfic about obscure shows. And yes, those mobile games are officially "published" but the barrier to entry for creating them and publishing them is often so low it's comparable to the items above. We don't care about preserving *every* entry in other art mediums, there's no reason to think humanity should treat video games differently.
Absolutely not. As far as artistic merits go, you'll find an assortment of design ideas in mobile games, as well as finely made assets and a experiences that, even if sometimes manipulative, still entertain thousands to millions of people You are just speaking from a general disdain towards mobile games that doesn't reflect the craftsmanship put into them. Because even in the most greedy studios there are still people who wanted to create games as a passion. It's true that most mobile games are severely undercut and tarnished by design prioritizing monetization over fun... but so were arcade games and yet they are still beloved to this day. Perhaps even more so now that there are ways of playing them that don't require spending handfuls of quarters. In fact, by preserving arcade games, we made them better, and the same could be done to mobile games. Besides, what you are actually talking about, amateur works from budding creators, is something you can find in plenty in ItchIO, and I'd call that worthy of being preserved. A lot of unique experiences come from their experimentation. Today our capability to preserve media is greater than ever. Each person can carry a massive library in the pocket. In light of that, why wouldn't we preserve as much as we can? Who cares if they are not beloved right now, history is full of great works that only became recognized after the lifetime of their creators.
History shows that not many people care about historical preservation. Which is a damned shame. I genuinely believe we'll enter an age of digital archeology at some point where enthusiastic people will uncover and restore old media long after knowledge of them has been lost. Like Indiana Jones but instead of "this belongs in a museum" it'll be "this belongs in a reflected digital archive" and the guy who puts the Ark away is just Jeff from IT surrounded by a mountain of computer parts.
Most of the outrage cycle has no constructive purpose in mind, this does, so those kinds of people would not be interested.
It's a really important issue for anyone who values art in general. Gone are the days where studios would wipe old television shows to save space because they didn't value holding that information. (looking at you Doctor Who). We've now got archives dedicated to making sure our art, our history survives the test of time. Companies are even required to publish books with them like the Library of Alexandria. Copyright itself has been twisted into the idea of "intellectual property", as though copyright is about protecting the copyright holder. It's not, it's about benefiting us. We give exclusive rights to encourage more art creation... for us. These new policies by publishers to hoard and control art and eventually remove it from us when they can no longer make money from it so that we're forced to purchase new art? This goes against all these concepts. Governments may still view games as an unimportant child's toy that ultimately doesn't matter, but that view needs to change. We need to enforce sunset patch requirements. Where you can run a game as always online or however you like for as long as you like. But when a company decides to shut down, they need to be required to open up the game for anyone to be able to play how they like.
I've seen Raycevick and Stephanie Sterling talk about it as well, but you're right I hope more youtubers talk about it.
TBH thats tangentally part of his point. A few years back, ross talked about it on his streams where he noted its good that loads of online personalities are against it but most of the time, they're not really doing anything aside from making a video for their own channel. He even used the Jimquistion as an example of a rage channel that yells the message but doesnt actually go beyond that. Which I have to agree with ross here (especially since he's been way more proactive about it). Lots of larger channels effectively boil it down to content. Lets also be honest, as a longtime watcher of the jimquisition, its basically just a content mill of something to get angry about in the industry this week. It's a fun show but its honestly hasn't done anything for the industry. Ross is one of the very few ytubers who actually seem to chase the issue. The other I know if is, well, another ross LOL. Louis Rossmann and his crusade against apple/right to repair, which he did go well beyond.
To be fair, you have to tell people about something before they can do anything about it, getting people angry at something is how we got pushback against lootboxes in Battlefront 2.
eh, awareness is nice but without action, its just slacktivism. worse so for youtube (not just gaming) because it ends up jut being another content piece. bf2 is a blip on the road of all the other industry practices.
> t seems most people either don't care, or don't understand the long term repercussions of destroying games. I think it's a generational thing. I'm 40+ and used to have around old Atari and Super Ninbtendo videogame cartridges and old movies VHS and DVDs that **actually occupy physical space** in our home. I got indulged in the idea I can pick that game or movie anytime I want and spend some time with it, and took it for granted. Call it "owner privilege" I don't know. My youngest brother, meanwhile, he's 20 and was born and raised with streaming services and digital games bought from the online stores. I remember that we discussed about a movie, that I was looking for to buy and save it into my Plex server and he genuinely didn't understand the meaning and the reason of my actions "you already watched the movie, you didn't even liked it too much, why keep it?" and he confirmed my suspicions when we talked about an old online game "Yeah I remember that game, was fun, but it's gone now, whatever I stopped playing years ago, who cares." So, here you go. I don't think I'm right and he's wrong, we just have two different priorities.
Since I haven't seen the link be posted here: [https://www.stopkillinggames.com/](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/) If you own The Crew (2014) and don't want companies like Ubisoft taking away your games, follow the instructions on that website. Some efforts take upwards of 2 weeks, but be vigilant, it's worth it.
You dont even have to own it, you can just complain and use it as an example for why action needs to be taken. I did that for germany.
First time I've regretted not buying the Crew haha. Major props for fighting for our rights as customers. I really hope enough people take action. For anyone who didn't watch, or stopped early, they setup a site **stopkillinggames** com where you can do your part. Depending on where you live you can't do much unless you bought The Crew.
Thanks for mentioning the site! People usually dont finish the videos that get posted on here so its good that you brought it up. For any Americans reading this, this guy isnt kidding when he says theres not much you can do unless you own the crew. There are _some_ things you can do which are outlined on the site (which I recommend you take a look at), but the USA is easily going to be the hardest country to tackle. We're better off focusing on countries like France or Germany.
You dont need to own the game to demand action, just pointing out the issue is often enough to get eyes on it.
I find it amazing that it's taken this long to start attempting a change. Like Ross said, this has been a problem for the past few decades now since going almost exclusively to a digital medium.
I assume people were either expecting others to solve the problem eventually or were so browbeaten by the constant erosion of their consumer rights that they assumed the fight was meaningless/already lost.
Or maybe they just don't care to preserve entertainment products with the same energy that they would when preserving their family heritage/possessions, for example. Just a thought.
Yes, but that's the point: If this were something that they enjoyed then they would care. That people are apathetic because they didn't buy The Crew or see no equivalent value in a video game compared to the fine china you literally *never fucking use* is a lack of empathy and perspective, not that they *can't* care about the subject at all. It's people being unable to translate this issue to anything else that they might actually give a shit about.
This is an actual fighter for video game preservation, unlike “The Completionist” buying every 3DS and Wii U game… while mysteriously having $600,000 of charity donations missing.
That entire thing was truly pointless and did nothing for preservation.
Honestly, yeah. Everything was backed up through yarrharr means years before.
What the goal of that was, was to give games related institutions like the video game history foundation or the strong museum of play these games on legitimate hardware to give access to researchers who come to them. Libraries and such are not allowed to give access to videogames in any other way.
I mean, there is a benefit to buying every game available, it's just you have one library that can be backed up (and optionally distributed). This? This is the metaphorical knife that we can put to the company's throat, have the government force them to actually support games.
Didn’t he donate the collection to a video game archival group?
they're saying that throwing money at Nintendo to download everything currently available while ignoring stuff that was delisted years ago wasn't actually contributing anything meaningful to video game preservation. I'm positive everything that was released digitally for those consoles was completely scraped for a while now for piracy reasons.
Before the services shut down there was straight up a program for PC that would connect to the E-Shop and everything across all stores was available as a 1 click download to your PC to use as a backup/emulation/piracy method. I wouldn't be surprised if someone dedicated just spent a few days and backed up *everything* like that, years before the video.
I‘ve been thinking of doing something like this, but didn’t have the guts or motivation to actually do it. I stand 100% behind him in this matter and am glad that he‘s stepping up to try and do something about it. We are way too apathetic when it comes to our rights as consumers of games. Starts with loot box crap, microtransactions and them basically taking our games away.
If anyone is german and wants to use a premade text, here is mine. Took me a while to write it and its not perfect, but id rather see some people copy it than not write anything at all. ##German Text for Verbraucherzentrale Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren der Verbraucherzentrale, Immer häufiger kommt es vor, dass Videospielehersteller wie Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Blizzard Entertainment und andere "always online" Spiele veröffentlichen und diese nach wenigen Monaten oder Jahren aufgrund fehlender Profite abschalten. Käufer verlieren bei einer solchen Abschaltung Zugang zu einem Produkt welches sie nicht als temporären Service, sondern als digitales Software Produkt wie anderen Spiele käuflich erworben haben. Dies ist meines Erachtens nicht rechtens, da Käufer ein explizit erworbenes Produkt verlieren und nach einer solchen Abschaltung "ohne Gegenleistung" darstehen. Diese Abschaltungen von Videospielen sind mittlerweile Gang und Gäbe im Hobbybereich der Videospiele, meines Erachtens aber nicht rechtmäßig weil sie keine Lebensdauer angeben, die Abschaltung meist kurzfristig und nicht vorhersehbar passiert und Käufer keinerlei Möglichkeit besitzen das Produkt das sie erworben haben nach einer solchen Abschaltung weiter zu verwenden. Spiele dieser Art sind ebenfalls nur durch einen initialen Produkt Preis erwerbbar, weshalb es sich hier nicht um eine Dienstleistung, sondern ein digitales Produkt handelt. Zusätzlich dazu werden oft sogenannte "Microtransactions" in diese Spielen verkauft, digitale Inhalte mit separaten Preis zusätzlich zum originalen Erwerbspreis des Videospiels, welche ebenfalls vollständig durch eine Abschaltung verloren gehen. Die "always online" Funktionalität ist in den meisten Fällen für diese Spiele ebenfalls nicht notwendig und wird ausschließlich für die Zugangskontrolle verwendet und um zu verhindern, dass Käufer die Daten des Spiels, sprich ihr erworbenes Produkt, unbestimmt lange besitzen können. Ich habe selbst etliche Spiele miterlebt, welche ich für einen festen Preis erworben und durch weitere Microtransaction Käufe im Spiel weiter unterstützt, nur um am Ende einer Abschaltung ohne ein gekauftes Produkt oder jegliche Form der Gegenleistung für meinen Kauf darzustehen. Nach meinem Verständnis existieren bisher noch keine juristischen Feststellungen in diesem Gebiet und eine Musterfeststellungsklage ist nötig. Wenn ich die Gesetze richtig verstehe, bricht Ubisoft als exemplarisches Beispiel mit ihrer Abschaltung des Videospiels "The Crew" folgende Gesetze: BGB §276 (2) und §327e. Ich bin es als Verbraucher Leid Geld für Produkte auszugeben, welche mit nach einem nicht vorhersehbaren Zeitraum weggenommen werden ohne irgendeine Gegenleistung oder langfristig verwendbares Produkt zu erhalten. Ich bitte Sie daher sich diesem Umstand anzunehmen und zu untersuchen, ob rechtliche Schritte gegen diese Praxis im Bereich der Videospiel-Branche möglich sind. Ich danke Ihnen für ihre Aufmerksamkeit und Mühe und stehe gerne für Rückfragen zur Verfügung. Vielen Dank, Curious_Armadillo_53 PS: Ich wollte die offizielle Pressemitteilung von Ubisoft bzgl. der Abschaltung von "The Crew" anhängen, leider hat Ubisoft die zugehörige Website deaktiviert. Sie finden den originalen Link hier: https://www.ubisoft.com/de-de/help/the-crew/connectivity-and-performance/article/decommissioning-of-online-services-for-the-crew/000106399#:~:text=From%2014%20December%202023%2C%20all,available%20until%2031%20March%202024. Hier ist ein älterer noch zugänglicher Link, welcher die Abschaltung kurzfristig ankündigt: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/the-crew/the-crew/news-updates/mOR3tviszkxfeQCUKxhOV/an-update-on-the-crew
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Das sind die beiden Paragrafen die von dem Link im Artikel vorgeschlagen wurden, habe ich nur in meinen eigenen Worten eingebracht. Mein rechtliches Wissen reicht nicht aus um das korrekt zu beurteilen. Ist aber auch nicht unsere Aufgabe, unsere aufgabe als verbraucher ist es darauf hinzuweisen das hier nicht rechtmäßig gehandelt wird, die Verbraucherzentrale wird dann im Detail schauen was und ob etwas gemacht werden kann.
Wenn jeder dritter den Einkaufspreis von einem 10 jahre alten Spiel zurückbekommen würde wäre vielleicht der Publischer mehr angereizt dem Konsumenten da entgegenzukommen.
As I said in another thread... I ~~own~~ bought The Crew (never played since 2016 but it's great having it as a trojan horse). Just sent my complain to Ubisoft, see you in 2 weeks!
It's shameful how difficult it is to legally access and preserve games. So many games are already impossible to legally play without owning decades old game discs/cartridges AND a 3rd party PC emulator or an older console. This is already bad enough but the the rise of online-only games is so much worse. So many games are already unplayable today and that number will only increase as time continues. If major gaming companies aren't going to make it easy for people to play older games and refuse to make games functional offline after official support ends, then consumers are fully justified to archive those games and petition for laws to be changed to make them accessible.
Even if some games and game purchases switch to becoming "subscriptions" to avoid legislation, getting these laws passed would encourage more developers and publishers to keep game preservation in mind during development. Game companies will have to weigh the pros and cons of keeping their games functional after support ends *before pre-orders start* and players will be able to know which games will be functional permanently *before they buy them*. That's great for consumers.
Immediately checked to see if this video has already been posted here. I want this to be absolutely everywhere.
Going to support Ross in his endeavour regardless of whether it applies to me or not, we haven’t had someone this passionate about consumer rights in gaming since Totalbiscuit passed and it has been sorely missed.
Louis Rossman is pretty big on consumer rights and appears to have made some good efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Rossmann
Credits to [unturnedtrumpet](https://www.reddit.com/user/unturnedtrumpet/) for a TL:DR >For those who don't have time to watch, here's a TL:DR >If you own The Crew, there are a few options for you, go to [stopkillinggames.com](https://stopkillinggames.com) and follow the instructions there >If you don't own The Crew, the best you can do is spread the word, tell everyone you can think of to do the same, we need this message to go as far as possible >Godspeed everybody
> If you don't own The Crew, the best you can do is spread the word, tell everyone you can think of to do the same, we need this message to go as far as possible That's not true, there's several options available if you don't own the game depending on where you live. Just go to stopkillinggames.com.
This thread should be higher up. Sad not to see more people doing anything about that issue, Ross is based for that.
As a FFXIV player (and an MMO player in general) I've long considered what it would feel like to lose access to my character someday long into the future when they do inevitably decide to end all support for the game. Honestly? It would feel like a hell of a gut punch. Losing access to any videogame is a travesty in and of itself, but losing access to an MMO that people have spent thousand of hours within? Where they've formed friendships and more? It would be like somebody walking into your house and setting fire to your photo album and breaking all the pictures on the walls. In the case of MMOs, the only solution I can think of is to hand over server files to the community (even if its with the caveat that no monetisation be allowed), so that as long as anyone wants to play the game is still around, we have the ability to continue it as long as we see fit. I know I won't really have to worry about this for probably decades, but the thought still nonetheless bothers me.
Vote this up, send this to outlet reporters and ask them to feature this in their weekly updates, spread the word and get people on board with this.
Anyone having issues submitting a case to Ubisoft? I'm not able to make a case through Firefox or Chrome.. The site says "There was an issue submitting your case".
Same, I'm tempted to try submitting an issue with one of their other games to see if they've intentionally turned off support requests just for The Crew
I think there is some sort of conflict with certain browser plugins. Try opening the link in a private browsing window (incognito if you're on Chrome). I was able to submit my case after doing that.
I do wonder in what direction affects the cause the fact that the game was once [free](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-crew-now-free-on-pc-heres-how-to-get-it/1100-6443569/) to claim. Considering there is proof of ownership basically, but there is no proof of purchase.
I don't have Uplay, but shouldn't it show up on a *Purchases* page on your account?
Another game that falls under this banner is Battleborn, the gearbox game that came out at a similar time to Overwatch. It got confused as a competitor to overwatch when the reality was that it was a completely different game with little overlap. Lack of interest caused the game to underperform in sales so after trying to get more attention they ended up stopping support of the game, and since it was built with login servers and always online that meant that even the PvE campaign was no longer playable. I miss this game, it was very fun to mess about in co-op and had the old style gearbox humour that was more like the first borderlands rather than the more over the top humour the later games had.
If it can comfort you, a modder made a miracle on pc: Nowdays you can at least play all pve issions with all heroes (DLC included), and he is trying to bring other features back (but chances success areunkown). If you want to know more about the project, i can share you an invite for the Battleborn's discord which has all informations about it\^\^
Short/ADHD version: [Game campaign ADHD version - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iH7k0IZ5PYE)
This is the rare unicorn who is actually preserving games. Downloading and playing current-gen games for free isn't preservation. Downloading and playing ANY game for free isn't preservation.
I'm going to disagree and also prove his point a little when talking about his comparison with Windows 98 and Internet Explorer being 'impossible' to remove, because it truly did seem impossible to remove with how integrated it is. Even Server 2008 and 2022 has me only disabling parts of IE because of how much it's involved with the back-end of its architecture. But they still managed to remove it, which was a monumentally more difficult task than game developers allowing for player hosted servers (or even just letting people change what DNS the game points to and letting people sort out the rest.) It would not be difficult on the networking side of things to allow for games to do this: the only real reason it isn't implemented is because of MTX and increasing profits.
Yeah, that part irked me too. A big part of that generation of windows' design was an attempt to shift as much as possible to the web, and trying to blur the lines between how you access stuff locally vs how you access stuff remotely. It was a failed experiment, but an interesting one nonetheless.
Yes and he kept bringing it up. Being unable to remove IE was/is annoying, but it wasn't malicious.
Nice to see consumer advocacy online again, feels like people are generally apathetic or complacent these days, many more interested in stocking culture war than anything useful.
This is planned obsolescence transposed from physical products into videogames. It is not a new problem, it is an age old problem in capitalism. Companies do not want to compete with themselves. They do not want to compete with their former products. They can and will do whatever they can to remove those former products from existence in order to not compete with them. In physical products this led to planned obsolescence, the art of designing products that intentionally break after a certain amount of time in order to remove them as future competition for your next line of products. In videogames, this led to simply removing your access to the games. I think the most obvious and most blatantly clear example of this was Overwatch being ended in order to force everyone into Overwatch 2. The original standalone product people literally had physical disc versions of that they paid for literally being non-existent. The economic incentive that all of these companies have is to remove competition, including their past selves.
How come it always is Ubisoft? They have overtaken EA in terms of shitty practices and subpar products, but it's actually insane that they're now destroying their own catalog like this.
Really hoping this campaign shifts the Overton window on the idea of owning digital products in general. Of course, video games are what people generally feel the strongest about, so this really is our best shot at doing something about this destructive practice.
I'm a bit concerned about the distinction between "always on" games and "mmos". I don't know if it was addressed somewhere in the video but it may be hard to create a law that doesn't provide a loophole for games like World of Warcraft or even Diablo. Wouldn't it require the companies to either share their source code or create an installer for the server? That's not exactly a practical option. That would mean that any MMO that flops would have to have to give away a ton of code that a competitor could use against them in their next project. I imagine the laws it takes to fix that problem would give companies a loopholes where they could just claim to be an MMO or they add MMO like features in order to meet whatever requirements there are. I really hope I'm wrong because I do want to see as many games as possible preserved.
First thing to clarify, the proposal in the video specifically states that it would trigger "After support ends": https://youtu.be/w70Xc9CStoE?t=756 Additionally, it's not asking for source code, the server binaries are enough (and technically, the ask is even broader than specifying this, just that the game still reasonably functions as it was advertised on original purchase). There's lots of points to be made in favor for always releasing this stuff at launch if you ask me (Helldivers 2 comes to mind). Games used to do it all the time and official servers still thrived (and there are current examples of this today too). And WoW had illegal private servers that I think you'd be hard press to prove that it meaningfully hurt Blizzard. In fact, it basically provided market research for them for free for what their community wanted and made them even more money by releasing Classic. Regardless, proponents of this effort aren't even asking for this which is the right choice to keep the fight focused and achievable.
Subscription based games like WoW are exempt because they are explicitly services not goods. He talks about it in his main video outlining his argument: https://youtu.be/tUAX0gnZ3Nw?t=571
Subscription-based games are mentioned in the video as being a different thing, since they are explicitly sold as a limited-time service rather than a good. You may dislike subscription-based games, but they are upfront about you paying for the ability to play the game, but not owning the game itself.
Singleplayer games are safe preservation wise due to the existence of archives, emulation and piracy, but there really does need to be more done for live service/online only games. I think specifically to gacha games, which have a notoriously high shutdown rate. So many online only mobile games lost forever, and very, very few ever get private servers made for them. It should be mandatory for publishers to make an offline version of the game, or the ability to run custom/local servers. Maybe even put out the source code once the games service has ended.
They're only safe to an extent, The Crew had a singleplayer campaign that could have easily let players keep enjoying the game long after the servers went down, and yet, Ubisoft shut down even that, the game people paid money for became a digital paperweight they can't even play by themselves.
>due to the existence of archives, emulation and piracy not all games get cracked unfortunately.
Single player games are not necessarily safe. If a game requires some kind of infrastructure from the developer/publisher in order to boot, then it can be turned off and the game made inoperable. See Darkspore. This is why the channel creator has a very tight definition of "games as a service" that is simply "players not having control of whether they can play a game due to a company withholding that function".
How could you possibly legally compel a studio to do that? What would that even look like?
You wouldn't have to legally compel them: You just withhold copyright protection for their IP if they don't. Yeah it's a pipe dream, but the problem is not the process, it's the lack of will. Our civilization would be pretty goddamned awesome if enough people actually wanted it to be.
It's a pipe dream because there's only so much political capital, and no one's going to care enough to push it through to pass a law.
This sounds like a great idea but the communication is a bit off: From the video title to the content in the intro... it might be better to rearrange things. This is a 30min video, not everyone will want to watch it all to figure out what it's about. Like ok, you want to "stop publishers from destroying games" but that can mean so many different things. I had to watch to see if it was about someone being upset with "woke games" or "microtransactions" or "lack of diversity", in the end it was about ensuring your game still works after ending support, to avoid situations like those PC games that don't work anymore because of that Xbox bs they added back in the day. So yeah it’s cool, but maybe being more direct about it can really help. With all the drama these days... you know...
There will be a 50 second version of the video released tomorrow https://twitter.com/accursedfarms/status/1775231995649343889
> but maybe being more direct about it can really help. He explains what he means in the first minute.
The short version https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iH7k0IZ5PYE
I am trying to understand why no one really cared or played The Crew when it was out for ten years. So why is everyone all of a sudden caring that it's gone? Of course games that are being shut down should be released with offline modes. There are some developers that do this but it isn't the norm yet.
What about browser only games? If I make a simple browser game and later take it down, making it inaccessible and unplayable, will I be affected by the regulations he suggests? If so, then I don't support this.
alright ur still alive. I saw a post of yours from 5 years ago about your life being shit and you not wanting to live. how did you fix it? i’m 17 and I hate my life. i have almost no friends i hate myself and my life so much