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It's finally up! Please sign it if you're in the UK :) Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state.

Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071

Require publishers to leave videogames (and related game assets / features) they have sold to customers in a reasonably working state when support ends, so that no further intervention whatsoever is necessary for the game to function, as a statutory consumer right.

Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state

26 comments

jsomae

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No, it's unreasonable to expect the servers to stay online forever. Instead, they should be required to hand the keys over to the community if they stop providing the online service.

frog

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A requirement to leave a game in a "working state when support ends" doesn't mean continuing support (ie, running the server). It means the game should still work when the server is gone, which means either fully offline play, or a means for players to run their own servers. That's the whole point of this campaign, which is taking place across multiple countries.

jsomae

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so that no further intervention whatsoever is necessary for the game to function

I mean, I'd accept "release the source code" but this doesn't.

frog

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"Release the source code" isn't going to be considered a reasonable thing to ask a government to legislate on. "Make sure the game can still be played after support ends", which in practice means patching it so it doesn't require an internet connection to servers that no longer exist and/or allowing players to self-host their own servers, is far more likely to succeed. It's a reasonable request that someone who has bought something should be able to continue using it for as long as they want, no matter what happens to the company that sold it to them.

It's a request that stands a decent chance of success if a politician can be made to understand what the problem is, because it is an easy extension of existing consumer rights law. Requiring game studios to hand over their source code to gamers would be considered excessive and unreasonable, and is therefore much more likely to be denied outright.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. For the majority of gamers, the changes proposed would be more than sufficient, so that's a good reason to push for it even if it isn't what an open source idealist would want.

jsomae

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I wouldn't require source code, no. I would just consider that one acceptable form of allowing the game to continue being playable. However, it requires intervention from the user, so it wouldn't be accepted under this proposal.

Under the proposed rule, a company would not avoid penalty by releasing the source code.

frog

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Of course they wouldn't, and they shouldn't. Releasing the source code doesn't absolve them of a responsibility to make sure the game is actually working when they end support. "We fucked over all our players, but here's the source code so someone else can fix it for nothing" would be a really shitty thing to do and they shouldn't avoid penalty for fucking over the majority of their players (and the unpaid people who will have to fix it for them).

On the other hand "we patched the game so it'll continue to work for everyone who bought it" benefits most players, and "we patched the game so it'll continue to work for everyone who bought it, AND here's the source code so others can expand/modify it if they feel so inclined" would satisfy everybody. It just shouldn't be a legal requirement.

Also keep in mind that in the UK system, if a petition reaches its 100,000 signature minimum in order to be considered for debate in parliament, that's only the beginning of the process. It doesn't just get put into law exactly as the petitioner words it. It goes through multiple debate stages, where the MPs consider all the options, and then the law gets written - and then it usually gets amended a few times. So I would expect that if this petition did lead to a change in the law, the resulting legislation would have considered multiple options for what "leaving the game in a working state" would look like. A surprisingly large amount of UK legislation on this kind of stuff sort of goes "this is what we want, but companies have freedom to choose how they will implement it".

jsomae

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Good point.

Xyloph

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Go check the petition text and https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq

Leaving the servers online endlessly has never been what is being asked.

Romanmir

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Or simply release a patch that disabled only the online portion.

coughTheCrewcough

jsomae

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I never play games that are pure online with no LAN support.

blindsight

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Cool, that's great, but that's also kinda the point.

Live service games suck because you can't depend on being able to play them. This is trying to fix that. So you (or anyone else) can play these games offline—eventually. Once they shut down the servers, customers should still be able to access their purchases. This campaign is trying to force companies to design around releasing a patch to strip out the online portion/online DRM or face significant financial consequences.

jsomae

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Moreso, I like to be able to have control of the game. If I play a game with my friends that I like, I don't want the game to be changed into something else (live service) so I can't come back and play the version we once did.

Zworf

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Yeah I agree, it's a better solution. But something that meets the requirement too.

After all if they stop selling the game, why bother with activation? Just patch that shit out.

li10

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I’ve signed it, looking forward to the nonchalant dismissive response from the government.

jaykay

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True, but we can still try

frog

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Ah, it's active! I saw this a few weeks ago when the petition had been created but was being reviewed by the petitions team. Been waiting for it to be open for signatures, so thanks for the reminder. I have signed it.

I don't expect the government to do much about it, though. I've signed a number of these petitions over the years and the government response is always very non-committal. They can get more traction when an MP can be inspired to care, so if anyone has a youngish MP who might actually be capable of understanding what the problem is, it could be worth writing a letter to them directly (regardless of what party they're in - a 35 year old Tory MP isn't a complete write-off and may be more sympathetic than you'd expect.)

That said... could be the kind of thing the next government could be pushed to act on. We'll likely have a cash-strapped Labour government that'll be looking for stuff they can do to make things better for normal people which also don't cost the government any money, and this is a simple adjustment to consumer rights that would achieve that.

Moonrise2473

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if it's a 100% online game what to do? They would be forced by law to keep servers online in perpetuity? The workaround could be to create a shell company that would bankrupt the day they want to discontinue the game and turn off the servers

bdonvr

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I think a minimum would be open sourcing the server backend, or at least a compatible one, once servers reach EOL.

SpaceScotsman

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100% online games in the past were perfectly playable even after developers / publishers ended support. Online only games dying is a relatively recent invention. This petition is asking for consumer protection to return to the norm where a purchaser of an online game always has the choice of being able to play it in some fashion.

A game developer could do this by releasing a server application. They could even do this at the barest minimum by releasing documentation describing how the server ought to work, to allow for reverse engineering.

The Stop Killing Games campaign as a whole isn't asking for perpetual server access, just to ensure that games stay in some sort of playable state.

jaykay

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They could keep the servers up, or open source them so people can host the servers themselves

OneCardboardBox

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They would not even need to open source the servers. Just making the server available for users to run (even under a proprietary license) would be enough.

blindsight

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Or a patch to strip out the online portion. If developers know they'll need to create that patch eventually, then they can design the game around it. Offline/LAN play/local servers were the norm until ubiquitous high-speed internet.

There's no technical reason why Diablo 4 needs to be online only. It was a design decision made for DRM and microtransactions. D2 still works great and has thousands of active players.

darreninthenet

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Should have waited until after the election later on in the year as, all being well, we'll have a new government. This shower of shit we have in right now won't do f'all for the average person that's against business interests.

frog

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I thought about this too, but then I checked the end date of the petition. It's in October, as petitions have to run for 6 months in order to give them enough time to get to the 100,000 signatures. So by the time this petition ends, and then rises to the top of the list of petitions to be debated, we'll definitely have a new government. 😉

Legendsofanus

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Is it possible to spoof the website into thinking you are in UK? I just signed using a Google searched UK Postcode and after an email verification it counted my signature. If this works people from everywhere should be on this!

jaykay

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Maybe, but it’s also possible they will check if the name matches the postcode