Canadian Petition That Games Must Remain Functional At EOL (ourcommons.ca) 64
Zitchas writes: The practice of having games require a connection to a publisher's server -- whether it is to check for a license or to access plug-ins and DLC -- is an increasingly common thing in computer software; and many people are concerned that at some point in the future the publisher will shut down their server, and effectively render the person who paid for the game left with something that no longer functions. This has already happened to some games and software
Concerned citizens in Canada are taking the issue to their Parliament in order to push for a law that will mandate that when the server-side support for software is discontinued, companies must leave it in a functional state and remove mandatory connections to servers -- services that no longer exist. Perhaps even more importantly, the petition also asks government to pass a law prohibiting EULA's from forcing users to agree to waiving their right to this. Unfortunately, the petition is only open to citizens of Canada, so the rest of us are out of luck. Considering the potential benefits to the rest of the world if they enact legislation that does this, though, it might be worth suggesting to any of your Canadian friends to go sign the petition.
Concerned citizens in Canada are taking the issue to their Parliament in order to push for a law that will mandate that when the server-side support for software is discontinued, companies must leave it in a functional state and remove mandatory connections to servers -- services that no longer exist. Perhaps even more importantly, the petition also asks government to pass a law prohibiting EULA's from forcing users to agree to waiving their right to this. Unfortunately, the petition is only open to citizens of Canada, so the rest of us are out of luck. Considering the potential benefits to the rest of the world if they enact legislation that does this, though, it might be worth suggesting to any of your Canadian friends to go sign the petition.
No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this would set a bad precedent so even though I agree in principle, there's no way I'd sign this petition.
Don't buy games that are locked down. Support DRM-free publishers. Or just don't play them. These are much better options than whining to the government.
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
voting with your wallet doesn't work in a global economy with more rubes than braines. Whining to the Government does. Big government > small wallet in capitalism.. See: lemon laws, consumer protection acts, Food and drug administration, etc
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The obvious move is that publishers will stop selling games at all. Now all games are subscriptions. Good job!
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I'm fine with the people who were planning to have their game as a subscription having to be up front about it. And not only will people still sell games, they will give away games for free. And not just games, operating systems and office software and all kinds of utilities.
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If only it were that simple. DRM is not the main issue behind many games going EOL these days. In many cases the issue is the games rely on infrastructure. Are you suggesting we don't play any online games at all?
I mean I'm all for it. People suck, and I love single player games. But the reality is for many the joy of gaming is hitting up a server with a bunch of randoms and battling it out against other humans. Can't do that if the servers are taken down.
Re: No thanks (Score:2)
Or do like we used to where individuals can run their own servers. I don't quite understand why publishers moved away from that model -- all they had to do was maintain an optional master server and that's it, their costs were much lower.
The only thing that sort of makes sense is if they don't want server admins to fail to enforce some stupid code of conduct, and a player wasn't reported for misusing a pronoun.
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Or do like we used to where individuals can run their own servers. I don't quite understand why publishers moved away from that model
Simple: a) end to end connectivity, and b) matchmaking.
Even back in the days of being able to run your own server, to function properly online you were actually reliant on other people's servers. Rolling your own from your own computer was difficult. The majority of servers were either owned by companies, ISPs, or companies which provided gaming services from internet facing hosts. Very few people actually used their own servers.
That worked, but...
Fast forward a decade or two and companies started to want t
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It's not everything or nothing. It's a sliding scale of benefit. The centralisation of servers has brought a world of ease to playing with friends (invite systems which share server entries), and playing against somewhat equal components (skill based matchmaking).
I have played games for decades now. I do lament the days of being able to spin up your own server and go nuts, but I fully recognise that the best place for that was at a LAN party. In a room. With your friends. The days of trying to organise a bu
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I'm not talking about EA's online server requirement for offline play bullshit. I'm talking about actual online games.
Re: No thanks (Score:1)
OK ancap (Score:2)
These are much better options than whining to the government.
Until you learn that rent seeking behavior breaks capitalism, butt out. The adults are talking.
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't buy games that are locked down. Support DRM-free publishers. Or just don't play them. These are much better options than whining to the government.
This is the same idealist/libertarian nonsense that people suggest when they say to avoid buying tickets for shows through Ticketmaster. Realistically the big names aren't going to notice a few people boycott their games and doing so means you'll lose out on the entertainment. Especially in cases like this where by the time the issues happen most people will have stopped playing, public pressure isn't going to be enough.
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If I think that a games DRM or cost is egregious enough I will just wait until it goes on sale on Steam and get it for 10 bucks or wait even longer until it's free on the epic game store. As for tickets to shows and the Ticketmaster Monopoly; if there's a show I really want to go to, and by the time I get a chance to make it into the ticket buying que they're asking $500 for a bot purchased resell ticket that was originally $50 what I do is say f*** that noise I'm going to take $100 and go and see a local b
Weirdly narrow (Score:5, Interesting)
Why just video games? Why not any product that requires an Internet connection to work, where being on the Internet isn't part of its core functionality? Smart plugs, smart appliances, smart thermostats... I'm looking at you.
This is a badly thought-out petition.
Re:Weirdly narrow (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to say do it.. Pass this one law. It makes progress in a good direction.
Extending this law to Appliances and Smart devices can be the next petition, But it's less frequent so far that that "Appliances" become EOL'd by software --- Usually Manufacturers will want to sell you a subscription service to keep your appliance working, instead.
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And if it starts in Canada it will spread as well.
After all - if there's a fix for software in Canada then it won't take long until that fix spreads, countries aren't watertight.
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Actually, Canada (with a population of 40 million) is pretty much exactly California (population about 40 million.)
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And if it starts in Canada it will spread as well.
Not necessarily - Canada is a small enough market that vendors may just decide to skip it. Look at what happened with the recent news-link-tax on Google and Facebook. The latter just stopped linking news and the former did a deal with the government worth cents on the dollar vs. the original cost to keep access.
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Canada has a slightly higher population than California. Facebook didn't pull out of Canada; it just pulled an asshole move and made it impossible to link to news sites (which actually improved the quality of my feed, but I digress...)
I don't think many tech companies would easily give up a California-sized market.
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"American Exceptionalism" is incredibly resilient. The US does a lot of things right, but it is far from perfect... try to discuss those imperfections and point out solutions implemented elsewhere and you are often met with an impenetrable wall of "that wouldn't work here" from Americans.
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Perfect need not be the enemy of Good.
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I bought a $20 set of 5 volt USB powered music responsive or programmable pattern LED light strips to put on my bike when I go out for a ride with the Toronto group the Neon Riders. I was really pissed that I had to enable GPS to set up my phone to connect to the controller for the lights so that I could set it to respond to the music that it hears. The only reason I didn't tear the f****** s*** off and throw it in the garbage is the fact that I could turn off the GPS immediately after making the connection
how does this work for an online game? (Score:2)
And if there's an exception for online games, then they'll just add enough of an online component that they qualify as an online game and then the game will just be worse.
And it's unlikely that the game server must be made available because the ability to run software like that isn't really something that can be done without a team. And it probably doesn't run on windows anyhow. And you can't force them to make the source available because it may have things they don't have the right to release... unles
Re:how does this work for an online game? (Score:4, Interesting)
And it's unlikely that the game server must be made available because the ability to run software like that isn't really something that can be done without a team
Just make Offering the server code and Placing functionality within the client that allows choosing a custom server as Sufficient to comply with the requirement.
In the real world: they will probably comply with the requirement by continuing to run the server indefinitely. The cost of running a server for old games in perpetuity is small compared to the cost of shipping a release of code.
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The cost of running a server for old games in perpetuity is small compared to the cost of shipping a release of code.
Because electricity is free? The people needed to keep the server(s) running work for free? The connections to their backbone provider is gratis? The servers themselves never need replacing because they never wear out?
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Because electricity is free?
No.. Put it this way. It will cost you $100,000 worth of engineer time to mod the game client and ship a consumer-friendly server package.
If you don't spend the money that will add up to $200,000 in one-time expenses after taxes and such, then you can go to an insurance company and exchange that $200,000 for an Annuity that will pay you 10% interest per year until the end of time.
The $20,000 per year until the end of time you earn off that perpetual annuity. Will pay you
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Until it takes a week of one FTE to manage it every year, then you're at a loss.
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It doesn't take a week FTE to manage a cloud instance every year.
There must still be some admin time, but this should be deminimis, as there is practically maintenance ever needed to keep a cloud server that merely serves game clients and doesn't have any large application databases to keep. 10-Line script that re-images the server every 3 months up to a current OS release, and good to go.
Paid for at Purchase or Give Expiry Date (Score:5, Insightful)
Because electricity is free? The people needed to keep the server(s) running work for free?
No because you paid them money for the game which covers the cost. If they think that the continued support for the authentication server is too much then they just need to issue a patch for the game that removes the need to authenticate.
At the very minimum, if they are going to effectively add an expiry date to the game then, just like any other product with an expiry date, it has to be clearly advertized on the box at time of purchase to customers know that they are only going to get 5 years of access. Of course that will hurt sales but whether a game has an expiry date is entirely up to them and if they insist on having one they should be required to state it.
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No because you paid them money for the game which covers the cost.
No you paid them a one off fee, not a subscription. The idea that you can get an indefinite expense for a one off fee (often a small one) is absurd.
If they think that the continued support for the authentication server is too much then they just need to issue a patch for the game that removes the need to authenticate.
What makes you think it's just authentication. You know that multiplayer games make up by far the largest portion of gaming in the industry right? I'm fully onboard with banning the idea of a single player game being able to be turned off, but there's far more to most games than "authentication".
I do agree with the expiry date part. But at the same time don't se
This is not for MP games (Score:2)
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No you paid them a one off fee, not a subscription. The idea that you can get an indefinite expense for a one off fee (often a small one) is absurd.
No it's not.. It is called a payment for Lifetime subscription with a Lump sum upfront payment, which is a way of financing an indefinite expense. A lot of these games charge an initial purchase price that is more than enough to finance such an instrument.
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And it's unlikely that the game server must be made available because the ability to run software like that isn't really something that can be done without a team.
People have been self-hosting MMOs, and other online only games, for years. It ultimately comes down to the desire of the team, the size of the community, and what people are willing to pay. The main reason they wouldn't want to officially release the servers to the public is because it'll eat into subs/sales for their new games.
And you can't force them to make the source available because it may have things they don't have the right to release... unless you require that the game not use software like that... but then you're really upsetting the entire industry.
The company would just need to license any external propriety bits so that they can be released when the servers go officially offline. If they can't, they'd have to use something e
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It ultimately comes down to the desire of the team, the size of the community, and what people are willing to pay.
a big part is how much they have to worry about legal actions, which could be rendered moot with the right legislation
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On the flip side of this, I know people who run World of Warcraft servers so that people can play classic WoW. It runs on an amusingly low-end windows laptop. So does WURM, for that matter.
I think Minecraft (Java) is really the best business model in this case: Sure, have the company servers (Realms) and push it and whatnot... But have a server client available so that everyone who wants to can just run their own private server. Someday, when Realms gets shutdown... Everyone will get to keep on playing Mine
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Release a standalone server or the ability to start your own multiplayer game in the last update. Frontier Development committed to this on Elite Dangerous if they ever stop offering that game, though having the force of law behind it would be a nice assurance.
For reference, here is the link to that promise [frontier.co.uk] (and a link to the web archive [archive.org] in case the Frontier forum would go offline).
Of course, this is just a promise, nothing is guaranteed. If Elite or FDev is ever being sold, I do not think the buyer would feel bound by that personal promise by David Braben. Also, it would not be the first time FDev breaks a promise on this issue: during the Elite Dangerous Kickstarter [kickstarter.com], an offline mode was promised but canceled a month before release of the game [eurogamer.net].
temporal scaling (Score:2)
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if a game's dead, there's no reason not to push implementing that as a final update.
Weeeell that is where you're wrong! If a game is dead, then players will have to shell out even more money for a new remastered version of the same game!
Suggestion (Score:2, Funny)
Canadian Petition That Games Must Remain Functional At EOL
Extend that to people too. That would be super helpful, thanks. :-)
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Maybe I'm missing something (Score:2)
I get what they're saying so far as not requiring the game to check in for activation on a server, but since most (all?) games now require a server to operate simply because of how vast the gameplay is, are they asking the government to require the game company to keep their servers running?
If not, how are these people expecting to play?
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Either keep the server running, Or remove the hooks in the client dependent on those specific servers, And either ship the client with that server functionality, or ship the server code and a Client that can be customized to hook up to the shipped server components.
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If the game relies on the server, release the server. It's that simple. Games used to do this in the past.
Unintended Consequences (Score:2)
The easy solution is to just remove the ability for companies to sue or prevent anyone else from creating a server
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Unfortunately, in terms of economics to most Americans Canada is an afterthought even if it shouldn't be. The reality is that they'll pay a lot more attention to a state law in California than a federal one in the Great White North.
Regardless, I signed it because it's not right to let the current situation exist. When you buy something, IT SHOULD BE YOURS. Locking it down, then crippling it when you're done with it while preventing anyone from fixing that is just wrong. And as a society, we have a right
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Permanent residents can sign (Score:2)
Ah more shell games.... (Score:3)
Intellectual property licensed to holding company. Holding company licenses OpCo to sell product/services. OptCo pays royalties/profits to Holding company. OpCo shuts down, games die and there is nobody to sue since OpCo has no assets.
We need to change copyright law. Copyright law was created so that works would be available to purchase/consume not to guarantee perpetual revenue for the holder. Copyright should not exist to limit or prevent access to a product/service. If the holder is no longer able to offer the product/service then why should society carry the burden of protecting the copyright?
There is no easy answer to this but the petition will fail if copyright law is not changed.
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We see the willingness of US government to protect corporate cartels in the DMCA, the prove-you're-innocent copyright law. Other countries should be making laws to prevent the same fascism.
It's been said before, there should be a increasing registration fee for copyright, the government should not be automatically responsible for protecting intellectual property for hundreds of years: It doesn't do that for patents, which rights-holders have to protect with their own money.
Follow the lead of old iD Software (Score:3)
Release your dedicated server files. Open Source it too. You've decided to abandon the game, so you shouldn't be worried about it siphoning profits from DLC at this point.
I think it'd need a small bit of work considering the integration things tend to have with online services, but if you organize your code right, just don't release those files and let people code their own matchmaking/achievement/etc. service or whatever.
Adds cost, and most not interested. (Score:2)
They should petition for forfeiture of copyright (Score:2, Interesting)
Patents too... It's the only fair way to deal with a product that is not being supported anymore
remember this needs to be built-into the DRM (Score:2)
There's absolutely no point in telling vendors they need to remove their license checks and whatnot when they close their business. One big reason business entities and LLCs exist is so they can fold with zero notice and zero responsibilities. And no business plans to fail, most of them shutter with no warning because a faltering business that makes their troubles public just snowballs the problem because investors pull out at a critical time. So they hide their troubles and one day the doors are locked