Setting aside piratesoftware’s concerns (that it’s economically untenable to require devs to develop a form of their game’s source that would be publicly releasable), I’m not clear on why games should have this requirement and no other media, particularly when games are so much more complicated.
If we can’t even require physical releases of any show or movie or album, because the company still owns the copyright and might choose to profit from it in the future, how can we expect active investment in the unwinding of their copyright from devs? Seems a double standard.
This campaign is not asking to take away IP from devs or publishers, they would still retain it.
Legally speaking, a game sold for a single payment and without clear stipulation of an end of service would be considered a Good under EU law. Tjis means you’re purchasing a perpetual license to your specific copy of the game, but not to the IP or copyright.
Ross, the creator of the SKG campaign, goes into extreme detail on this very topic of goods vs services, and how the game industry is committing fraud by destroying a customer’s ability to access the content their perpetual license allows.
The equivalent for other media would be that if I buy a digital copy of a film or something, I should always be able to access it in the same resolution and whatnot that I purchased it. That’s outside the scope of this campaign, but this campaign would certainly pave the way for it.
Nothing about the initiative says anything about “requiring devs to develop a form of their game’s source that would be publicly available”. Where did you see that?
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So, I have no idea how purchasing a show or movie (to own) digitally works, but I would think that at least you wouldn’t have to worry about a server being taken down and not being able to access the movie, and I’m 100% certain that it’s not a problem when you have a physical disk. The thing is, most media isn’t being watched this way. It’s watched on Netflix or any other streaming service where you aren’t actually paying for a movie itself, which is why it’s okay for them to delist it and you not be able to watch it anymore.
The reason that Stop Killing Games is happening is because people own a disk of The Crew and are physically unable to play the game now
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By the way, situation with Hitman is interesting, because petition as it stands, will not address the issue with it specifically. Hitman technically has offline mode, and it’s even playable as a game. The fact that it doesn’t have that part that makes it so interesting isn’t actually addressed.
It sounds like you’re asking genuinely. Ross’ interest is in games, hence that’s the area he started it in. He’s already stretched to his limit co-ordinating this limited campaign. He also advised to keep the scope limited so that the opposition to it will be mostly from games companies (Nintendo, Sony, Ubisoft, EA etc.) Than from movie companies (Paramount, Disney, Warner Bros. etc.) who will be also pushing as hard, using a lot of lobby money and a whole web of arguments from different fronts, that will be more difficult to deconstruct and rebut.
For other audio and visual content, there are often “analog loopholes” that can preserve media even if in a slightly degraded form no matter how many layers of DRM you put. Games do not have a standard method to do that, so access is unilaterally and permanently taken away without a way for it to have been preserved.
The Stop Killing Games’ end goal is that governments will implement legislation to ensure the following:
Games sold must be left in a functional state
Games sold must require no further connection to the publisher or affiliated parties to function
The above also applies to games that have sold microtransactions to customers
The above cannot be superseded by end user license agreementsIt’s asking for games to remain functional, not for source to become available. Even the Video Games Europe reply linked in the article mentions that the main problem, for them, is “keeping servers online indefinitely”:
It appears to be a combination of a requirement to provide online services for as long as a consumer wants them[1], regardless of price paid, and/or a requirement to provide a very specific form of end-of-life plan where the game is altered to enable private servers to operate[2]. We do not believe these are proportionate demands.
It’s not that, you fucking douchebags ↩︎
This is the easy solution and perfectly doable, no matter what bullshit they try to use as an excuse. Don’t want to keep your own servers anymore? Release the files needed to run private servers, update files so any game can connect to any private server, done. ↩︎
Other media should. But getting it to happen on games is a good first step considering games are the MOST profitable form of media.
They’re also the most complicated, and the production budgets, the resources available for archival, are often higher on blockbuster movies, as well as the barrier to entry being lower, for them to participate in archival, there’s no such thing as spaghetti code in a movie
Like, why games first, unless you’re specifically trying to tamp down their profitability as compared to other forms of media? I’m suspicious that this is the kind of shit the MPAA would pull because they’re getting outcompeted.
Because movies and series don’t need it as much. Because piracy is a thing. You can watch any series that was pulled from air even if there’s no DVD because you can download it. Even if you download some games, you can’t play them because they’re online only. See the crew as a prime example, as others have said.
require devs to develop a form of their game’s source that would be publicly releasable
That’s not a requirement or even expectation. The petition just requests that the game be reasonably playable after support ends, and only for people who bought it. That’s it. That could mean:
- release the server binaries so they can be self hosted
- bake server logic into client and allow P2P play
- for some games, merely remove the server requirement and allow single player
Or whatever other option the studio prefers. The only expectation is that the game is still playable in some meaningful fashion after support ends. How they achieve that is up to them.
For all of these options, they don’t need to:
- release source code
- give up any IP rights
- allow anyone who hasn’t bought the game to play
The petition is intentionally vague on solutions to give publishers and studios as much choice in how they comply as possible.
