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Stop Killing Games is a new campaign to stop developers making games unplayable

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/04/stop-killing-games-is-a-new-campaign-to-stop-developers-making-games-unplayable/

We've all been there right? You paid for a game, it required an active internet connection and a couple of years later the publisher decided they're done with it and shut it down leaving you with a broken game. Annoying.

41 comments

hinterlufer

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When I was younger, you'd still buy games in a physical store and one time I found a great sounding game "Fury" (an online PvP RPG). I went ahead and bought it with my pocket money and was super eager to play it. I even remember reading the booklet in the car while driving home, imagining how fun that game will be.

At home I then installed the game just to find out the the fuckers have shut down the game servers just about 2 years after the initial release of the game rendering the game absolutely unplayable.

I'm still kinda pissed about that, and I still have that box lying around somewhere.

ApathyTree

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I’ve accidentally bought a couple of ps4 games that lost servers within a year of launch, super frustrating, because they look great to play (and they weren’t exclusively multiplayer, so it makes no sense to me to scrap the single player along with multiplayer servers).

yemmly

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Phew, for a moment there I thought you were trying to take the gratuitous murder out of games

TheDarksteel94

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Same. What would I even do if I couldn't stick to my checklist titled "Geneva Suggestions" whenever I play?

Vendul

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Developers? Publishers are the problem.

tabular

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Publishers? Shareholders are the problem. If any involved can make a change then we should do that. I can't talk of publishers but I can speak dev.

If many of us refused towrite code unless it will be shared under an open source/free software license then publushers would have no choice but to let people self host. Sadly school doesn't appear to teach programmers ethics of software, specifically flsoftware freedomn

BURN

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Oh they teach it, most people (honestly including myself), just don’t care.

I really couldn’t give a shit what license code I write for work is under.

tabular

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Where do they teach it?

Para_lyzed

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University. Cyberethics is a required course where I graduated from, and it goes deep into open source licensing and the free software movement. I can tell you from experience presenting on open source licensing and the free software movement during that class that almost no one in the class gave a shit about it. It was quite sad to see so many people uninterested in a topic I'm so passionate about, especially because these are the types of people who would go on to be my coworkers.

The fact of the matter is that most people (including programmers) will never care about it, simply because they refuse to understand how important it is or how they can make money from it. It seems to me that people just want to conform to the systems that already exist (copyright and proprietary software) instead of challenging and changing the way we view, write, and interact with software.

But of course, that only really applies to students who graduate with a Bachelor's in CS, and likely doesn't apply to every university. The layperson still has absolutely no idea what "open source" even means or why it is important. In fact, the layperson is often brainwashed into thinking that the best thing for enterprises is the best thing for them, so in all likelihood most people would rather fight for copyright than against it, even if they had been informed on open source licensing and the free software movement. US businesses do a damn good job of brainwashing their consumers into echoing their views.

ampersandrew

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Plenty of games without publishers are designed to destroy themselves in this exact way, because there's money in it.

laughterlaughter

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In that case, the developers are the publishers.

ampersandrew

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Then why make the distinction when A can often be B? People like to paint a picture of the little guy being bullied by the big guy into making a decision that players didn't like, but we've seen plenty of times that developers will be the ones making the decisions we didn't like. If there's an incentive to do the bad thing, developers will do it without being told to.

laughterlaughter

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That's a strawman argument, sorry. You're arguing as if all developers are publishers. You just said it "A can often be B," but A is not always B.

Publishers do this bullshit. Period. And in small shops, developers are the publishers, sure. But when they make those decisions, they don't make them in their roles of developers. They do so in their roles of publishers. And also, not all publishers and not all developers-turned-publishers are dicks.

But I understand what you're saying. When they are dicks, they are dicks.

ampersandrew

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Developers can and have made this decision on their own even when they've got a publisher, because publishing deals come in all sizes, and online connection requirements that inevitably lead to a game's death are pervasive in the industry right now.

laughterlaughter

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No, not really. You just said it, man. "Publishing deals come in all sizes." Publishing. Publishing. So, it's the publishers who make those decisions. Not developers. That developers must accept them is one thing. But the publishers made the decision.

ampersandrew

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All sizes meaning that those deals also come with the absence of that decision, leaving it up to the developers.

Rose

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The developers willingly entrust publishers to make those decisions.

A_Random_Idiot

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It should be law that online only games, when shut down, must release their server software, so the games community can continue to play and use the software they bought.

also make it law that buying software means you've BOUGHT IT. not leased access to.

sugar_in_your_tea

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And it shouldn't be just games, any time it says "buy," that should be understood to mean complete ownership of that thing. That means:

DRM will be stripped in a reasonable time frame (say, 2-3 years)
for physical goods, no prevention of availability of parts
any server components will be made available for private hosting when the vendor is no longer interested in supporting it (ideally FOSS, but any source-available license should work)

And so on. If the product is intended to be available for a limited time, they should instead say "lease," because that's what that means.

A_Random_Idiot

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Agree with everything you said.

and I 100% guarantee they dont want to say lease cause they know people wont be willing to pay 70 fucking dollars for a game that they are renting for a time to be dictated by the developer/publisher, which you have no knowledge of. Is it 3 months? 6 months? 12 years? Who knows!

sugar_in_your_tea

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Yup, that's why they hide this nonsense in the TOS or whatever. If the intent was clear upfront, they'd have to reduce prices. So that means people don't really understand what exactly they're buying.

I'd like to add that anything I own, I should be able to sell. Whether the platform supports it is another story, and I think it's acceptable for the platform to take a cut since there's work involved moving licenses, but if I own it, I should be able to lend, sell, or gift my copy to someone else.

AmazingAwesomator

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this part of it is really frustrating for me.

step 1. purchase game that looks cool
step 2. disagree with TOS
step 3. too bad, get fucked

BURN

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Only major problem is when software is reused for future games and releasing server binaries makes attack vectors much easier to find. Apex legends has a major issue with this where a significant amount of code was reused from previous games that have server code available, and hackers have absolutely used it as a testing ground for all kinds of cheats.

bigmclargehuge

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Wanna know how to make that irrelevant? Make the server files available from the start. Wanna play with just your friends? Host a server. Wanna play with a dedicated group that actually bans cheaters effectively? Join a clan. Then, when the sequel comes out, who cares if the server tech is already known, because we can just host our own and collectively oust the cheaters ourselves. It's funny because when multiplayer is handled this way, it stays active for decades. Look at the community for the old Battlefield's, SW Battlefront's, Call of Duty's, Unreal Tournament's, Quake's, etc etc etc. They're small, but they're all still active and not chock full of hackers because they're community led and community maintained. That's a hell of a lot more consistent and reliable than trusting the studio to develop and maintain the server tech, and squash cheating long term. Eventually that system will always fail (look at every old CoD on console, where you can't run your own servers. It's basically a coin flip whether you end up in a game with a hacker, and I guarantee the devs will never do anything about it).

BURN

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That doesn’t make the point irrelevant, it makes it even more likely to happen. Most of us don’t want to play on shitty, self-hosted servers and I’ll gladly remove that option to have a more secure game server.

Hot take, but games don’t need to be active for decades. Everything dies eventually. After 10 years there’s no need to keep running the game servers.

bigmclargehuge

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We're on the exact opposite sides of this argument.

Being able to host your own servers means there is a much higher potential to have servers located close to you, giving you much lower latency. If there aren't, host your own. This is great for people in, for example, Australia, who often get really poor support in terms of servers in large games. Not an issue when they can host as many as they want.

As for security, what's more secure than having a server with a password only me and my friends know? On top of that, when a server is my own, I know when it's going to be down. When the studio is the one controlling all the servers, you are at their whim.

As for games not needing to last decades... why? Do you want to be kicked off of a service you paid for, then expected to buy a new one that's basically the same thing (which you will also eventually be kicked off)? Especially when the original still (in theory) functions perfectly?

Ultragigagigantic

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Just play old games. Many will let you self host!

Neverwinter nights anyone?

cai

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The campaign plans to get France's consumer rights agency to rule against Ubisoft's killing of The Crew, making game publishers have to leave games at least partially functional when online service ends (or else risk legal action & costs).

France has strong consumer protections, Europe doesn't treat EULAs as very legally serious, and Ubisoft was selling the game mere months before they "discontinued online service", which also stopped the single player mode from working.

And France's consumer protection agency accepts complaints from international customers, too, in English.

So, no, don't just keep your head down & "play old games". This is a perfect chance to actually fix shit.

laughterlaughter

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You have a point. But "play old games," is also part of consumer choice. OP didn't say "just suck it up and play old games." I'd say it's more like "do not buy new games. Stick to perfectly good and playable old games." In theory, companies should feel it in their pockets.

In theory.

krimson

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I had no idea they killed The Crew like that, insane.

Petter1

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They should have to offer the server software (or open source it) if the turn off their servers

Similar to computing devices without root rights (mainly phones/tablets) where I want forced root access (or better unlocking of bootloader), if the manufacturer does not offer new (security) updates.

isthingoneventhis

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love Neverwinter nights! I need to fire it up again, but I seem to recall the random crashing was moderately annoying.

ProdigalFrog

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Short version: Game campaign ADHD version - YouTube

TWeaK

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https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

There are direct government petitions for the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

cai

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...and, if you actually owned The Crew (20 million people did), even outside of France, the French regulator accepts complaints from international customers. Which is super unusual, and very valuable to the campaign...

SturgiesYrFase

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The Canadian and UK ones aren't live yet

ahoneybun

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I remember getting C&C 4 and was playing at my grandma's place on my own in the campaign then I lost Internet and it threw me into the main menu. I stopped playing that day since that's bullshit.

AngryCommieKender

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https://segmentnext.com/command-and-conquer-4-tiberian-twilight-offline-patch/

Probably not helpful to you, but there's a patch if anyone else needs it