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If 1 million people sign a petition, a ban on rendering multiplayer games unplayable has a chance to become law in Europe

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/if-1-million-people-sign-a-petition-a-ban-on-rendering-multiplayer-games-unplayable-has-a-chance-to-become-law-in-europe/

A European initiative is now underway for videogame preservation and consumer protections against publishers "killing games."

If 1 million people sign a petition, a ban on rendering multiplayer games unplayable has a chance to become law in Europe

A European initiative is now underway for videogame preservation and consumer protections against publishers "killing games."

80 comments

maniel

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well, while i understand sunsetting old online multiplayer games because hosting game servers is a non zero cost, i can't understand the need for singleplayer games to be always connected and rendering them unplayable

BrikoX

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The company wouldn't be required to keep their servers online, just to allow other people to host their own. So it has 0 ongoing cost and maybe few hours of coding during game development.

FPSkra

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Unless you are a game developer I would hold off on assuming how much work would be required to do what this proposal asks.

calamitycastle

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Used to be the norm back in the day though. I'm saying 15 years or so before the old internet disappeared with AWS etc.

Self hosted should be an option and I think this is a reasonable requirement tbqh. Yeah it's not 0 work but it's not a hardship either, really, given the many hours that are going to be needed on netcode anyway. Especially if you know this going in to development.

FPSkra

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That isn't an unreasonable take. But the language this proposal uses is far too vague and leaves too much in the hands of the government, and could be used by the EU, an organization not really known for their tech savvy, to place some burdensome requirements on developers....especially indie developers who do not have the resources that big studios have.

yamanii

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Indie developers are the only ones doing that, Knockout City devs released their hosting software for the community, it's the AAA developers that wanted to maintain control.

umbrella

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if they can code their own server software already, it wouldnt be a problem to release it.

GBU_28

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Wat

Building a whole cloud backend is not a few hours work.

Plus I bet most of these companies share cloud tooling so they'll need to make distinct standalone self host code

BrikoX

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Most of what they use built-in in game engines, not their standalone code. It's a matter of switching the servers used with some minor tweaks.

scaramobo

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Ask any professional senior software developer if they ever maintained an existing or new codebase and made the mistake of thinking "oh easy! it's just a matter of doing this or that and changing a couple of small things. Won't take longer than <small amount of time>. " Then ask them how long it really took.

Post results here for our amusement :)

BrikoX

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My few hours comment was never exact for a reason, but it reasonably conveys that the work requires is trivial in the full game development cycle and not an insurmountable task that will bankrupt game developers like you try to do.

SchmidtGenetics

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Bloviating and exaggerating with obvious lies won’t get people on your side dude… at least it shouldn’t, but weirder shits been upvoted.

MotoAsh

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While simply allowing the game to use a variable for the server URL is easy, the VAST majority of gamers would assume it'd come with a clean server installer and the ability to set the URL in some kind of UI.

Both of those details are very much NOT simple in many cases. Sure, quite a few well written games, it could be done quickly, but as someone who's worked on software for decades ... it's NEVER well written. Especially when video game studio style crunch is involved.

This is still a good petition and good idea, but to assume "just a few hours" is ... simply ignorant.

howrar

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Does it need to be simple? I think it's pretty reasonable to just release what you have as is, then let the users figure out how to run it for themselves.

MotoAsh

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I wouldn't mind anything above "possible". I was just commenting on what most end users would expect if it's released for public consumption. Just like everyone keeps bringing it up as a good example, old steam games with a perfectly functional server component you can start up about as easily as the game is all the "hosting" experience most gamers have. If it's more than setting a port for the server and typing in the url/ip and port in the client, many will be immediately lost.

... not that they should have to make it that easy. The main point of my earlier post was that for many games, creating an easy server component and updating the game to connect to arbitrary servers is very likely to be more than a few hours' work.

Especially MMO's and bigger games that may have multiple server components running on multiple servers and likely with an entire build/deploy pipeline behind them...

GBU_28

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Hah.

Mango

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I can't understand the "need" for the server to be hosted by the company. Our computers are just as good.

VirtualOdour

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Well look at gta online, moders and hackers have so much more power when the session isn't run by the company. it alao allows them to find exploits much easier if the server tools are available to run locally. Also If you don't want people being able to give themselves all the weapons and money and mess up your game that means game states can't transfer between servers which means you could invest weeks in a campaign only to have the server close.

I prefer locally hosted stuff but there are obvious benefits which draw game companies to choosing to control the hosting process

Mango

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Terrible example. Why should the company decide how anyone plays? Just join a server that's decent if that's what you want. You shouldn't decide for others if they can spawn in tanks.

2pt_perversion

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Looking at you hitman...

leave_it_blank

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If you are a European Citizen, sign it. It takes a minute of your time. Not more.

Crazyblu

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Who are u to tell me what to do ?

krashmo

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lol you downvoted yourself. I like it

Alk

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How can you tell?

krashmo

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Posts get auto upvoted by the poster which means every post should have at least one upvote. If it doesn't then OP took away their own upvote. His comment had 0 upvotes when I first saw it.

QuadratureSurfer

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You can look at posts/comments with kbin to see who liked what (used to show dislikes as well, but not anymore). Example: https://kbin.run/m/gaming@lemmy.zip/t/597607/If-1-million-people-sign-a-petition-a-ban-on/comment/5070214/favourites

Crazyblu

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Thanks bae

otp

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Their username is there with their comment

anakin78z

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I could see this leading to standardizing and outsourcing multiplayer services, which would be interesting.

That being said, before that happens, as a developer I'd be like: here's a zip file with all of our proprietary stuff ripped out. Have fun spending the next few months getting it to work well. Congratulations, you're now supporting a game that did poorly enough for us to drop it.

But seriously, go sign it. Long term it should be a good thing.

umbrella

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Have fun spending the next few months getting it to work well.

judging by some fan mods out there, i think many people would genuinely have a blast doing this (and do a much better job than the original developers)

anakin78z

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Oh, it would be super fun if you're into the game, as long as it doesn't become a job, which it might.

Kecessa

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Sweats in GameSpy

Honestly, it would probably lead to the major distributors also having control over that... So I guess one more yacht for Gaben?

Kinda funny that people on this platform consider that centralization of the service would be a good thing.

Tlaloc_Temporal

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On one hand, I'd love to see drop in replacements for steam services, especially something that could be selfhosted. On the other hand, if steam services ever goes down, there are metric megatons of reasons to reverse engineer a solution. The centralisation could end up being standardisation.

anakin78z

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I was thinking more of an open API of how the game interacts with multiplayer services, so that in theory anyone could setup a server, or server services. In practice I completely agree with you though. Nobody wants to do the whole "Oh wait, you're on that server? I have an account with that other server" thing. Steam, or some other party, would just become the defacto place.

yamanii

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The proposal is precisely about not letting your snake ass do that, since it would be no different than spinning a private server, customers shouldn't have to learn how to analyse network packages and break DRM just to play a game they paid for because you turned off your server.

Either sell it as a subscription or sell it as packaged product, not both.

rozPierog

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I'm old enough to remember when dedicated servers were the norm.

Oh sweet times before the matchmaking

TheSealStartedIt

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Just signed it. Took 10 seconds with my ID-Card.

Hawk

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While this would be great for those "online needed to play" games, wouldn't this also lead to companies preferring subscription models?

I'd assume it's easier to not include multiplayer in the "base" game and just charge a monthly subscription for the online part. Now the proposed law wouldn't apply, since the customer only paid for the base game.

It's pretty obvious what the intention of the writers of the proposal is, but I feel like it could have an opposite effect and push even more to the "games as a service" model those greedy publishers so desperately want.

yamanii

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Still better than the shit we have where Ubisoft just stole my game, The Crew.

That's part of the intention, either make a service or sell a game, companies are getting it both ways without the responsibility of neither.

RememberTheApollo_

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Prepare for it to be official that you own nothing.

yamanii

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Cool, than I can just stop buying new games.

UnderpantsWeevil

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That's already the case

TheGalacticVoid

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The problem is that a lot of companies are already launching dead-on-arrival live service games, so unless they're willing to make something unique, all they will do is saturate the market further and keep burning money. I don't think this law would change those incentives much if at all.

nasi_goreng

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The reality is GaaS is exteremely hard to success. Every one success GaaS, there are probably 20 or 50 failed one that we even never heard.

vga

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We can ban multiplayer games in EU? Where do I sign?!

ArcaneSlime

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Cool!

Tbh I just want a ППШ блять.

Schmuppes

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What's an RRSH?

ArcaneSlime

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Lmao fixed. Hadn't had my coffee yet, thanks.

Schmuppes

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What do the first three Cyrillic characters mean?

Someonelol

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I'm no expert but I think it's "PPSh".

ArcaneSlime

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Nothing that I know of, russian isn't my first language.

Edit: oh jeez you meant ППШ. Yeah the П is english P, which since I speak english sometimes my brain forgets to translate and goes with Р which is actually R in cyrillic. Origionally before I fixed it in the edit I had typed РРШ, which is nothing and I thought you meant that.

ППШ-41 is the gun in the pic.

thr0w4w4y2

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Hey players! Our multiplayer AAA title “craftshootteams” isn’t doing well and we’re prohibited by law from switching it off. But not to worry, with our ad supported €99.99 per month premium package you can keep access to your loot, high score and kudos thanks to our partners Evilcorp and DataSeller who will transfer over to their servers. You just need to install their “SocialMedialSlurper” anti cheat client with full root access to continue.

umbrella

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calm down satan

YeetPics

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Idk, seems pretty accurate considering the overall pattern in the industry..

umbrella

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the industry certainly takes consulting from satan

denshi

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Nice write-up, but really not helpful since it has nothing at all to do with what is actually proposed in the initiative.

OneWomanCreamTeam

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If the price is too high on an already unprofitable game it's still just going to lose money. It would probably be cheaper to just let the community run servers for them.

FPSkra

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The current language in this proposal is far too vague and has the potential to do more harm than good...I would hold off on signing this until a better proposal is made

mranachi

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Care to explain your point with some detail?

If this fails, I doubt we'll see a second proposal. So I think it would be fair to measure any arguments you make as why no action is better than the proposal.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this petition doesn't decide the wording of any law just ensures it is brought to attention of EU lawmakers and discussed right?

sm1dger

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If the petition hits it target, the politicians are forced to discuss it which would include agreeing workable language. It would not automatically become the law with the proposed language.

FPSkra

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We're gonna rely on the same group of people who wanted to ban memes to be able to draft a policy that differentiates between MMO's, live service games, and single player games that need to be connected to the Internet? Naw dog ..I ain't trusting them old farts....VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET.

Skates

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People HAVE BEEN voting with their wallets. Nobody's out there buying 5000 games they don't wanna play, people are already buying only what they want. The problems is, all it takes to sustain a shitty game is a few fucking whales that none of us can compare to. Or a lot of people buying into the hype of a well-liked IP releasing a new game. Or a million other ways to get the fucking money without getting your money or mine.

So we can keep on voting with our wallets, but let's also try to control this cunty behavior from companies at government level instead of basically "thoughts and prayers".

SchmidtGenetics

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Wouldn’t they just not release the games instead?

magic_lobster_party

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Unlikely. They don’t want to lose the entire European market.

SchmidtGenetics

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For a few specific games? Yeah they could stand to lose, it’s not every game in their catalog.

BrikoX

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It's every game sold to EU citizens, not only those made in the EU.

SchmidtGenetics

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That have multiplayer servers* what percentage of all games made fit the requirement that would fall under the umbrella of this law?

BrikoX

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Most of them that make them money. Steam Charts: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/global

And this doesn't even take into account mobile games that generated 49% of global games market share revenue in 2023.

SchmidtGenetics

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At first glance, most look to be single player actually.

Don’t just spout obvious bullshit and provide something that doesn’t even corroborate what you’re claiming, if you want to try and have a conversation dude don’t lie, don’t post stuff that shows the opposite of what you’re claiming. It just shows you have no idea about the content and wanted to complain.

Vast majority of games are actually SP, not MP, so your claim is just showing you have zero intention of having a discussion on this, you just want to cry and be heard.

unexposedhazard

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Do you even understand what this is about? For games that are fully functionally offline this isnt even relevant. This is about multiplayer and forced online games. This is about any game that would stop functioning as intended due to the dev/publisher disabling servers of any sorts.

2pt_perversion

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Honestly if it stops some single player games from shoehorning multiplayer aspects where they don't fit that's a win too.

BrikoX

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That would cut them off from a huge market. Just look at bad actors like Google, Apple, and Microsoft. They comply with EU laws, since losing the market would hurt them too much financially.

SchmidtGenetics

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For a few specific games? Yeah they could stand to lose, it’s not every game in their catalog.

Totally different situation.

scaramobo

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They won't. Because of short term greed.

SchmidtGenetics

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They already don’t sell in particular markets because of laws, why do you think this time would be any different?

The cost of making a point could easily make up for it, if we are just going to make stuff up that is.

BrikoX

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Oh, please, tell me how companies ignore profitable markets because of laws they don't like. China and Russia have some weird gaming laws that require companies to remake their whole game assets to sell there, yet they do it.

SchmidtGenetics

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Bethesda games couldn’t be sold in Germany for decades, no lgbqt games in a host of countries, there was just a huge issue with Sony and their requirements for helldivers or whatever… thats just the last year or so, plenty of precedence actually now that you brought it up.

Do you even know what you’re talking about here? Or do you just make whatever random claim comes into your head first?

What do you have to claim that they would cave? Most just move on and not sell it from what we just figured out, can you provide any on your side…?

danc4498

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I don’t feel like reading the article, but I’m guessing if they want to release a multiplayer game that you have to pay for, and they want to shut down their servers (making the game unplayable), maybe they would be required to release their server software so people can host themselves.

magic_lobster_party

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Yes, that’s part of the proposal. Another part is that you should be able to play the game even if you don’t have access to the servers.

danc4498

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Oh, 100% agree with that.

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