Please keep signing the petition, to prevent games from being intentionally destroyed by publishers like what happened to The Crew.
You deserve to keep the games you bought with your hard-earned money.
Don’t let people who argued against your right to own your games win this!
For in their heart they dream themselves your master.
I’m not a gamer, but gamers have my entire support. That industry, like so many others, needs to be reminded they’re not supposed to be making the rules.
Of course it will fail.
The whole movement has seemed a bit silly to me this whole time. And I don’t understand what the appeal is of the guy heading it up.
Just my take on things.
But I also believe the games industry has abusive practices relating to selling games that basically expire without clear warnings and planned dates of expiry.
In any other art medium it would be an outrage if they would be destroyed when the owners didn’t find them financially sound. We have film, music and other arts preservation agencies or projects. I don’t see why videos games can’t have the same level of respect.
But I also believe the games industry has abusive practices relating to selling games that basically expire without clear warnings and planned dates of expiry.
That’s literally what this is all about…
So why do you think your belief is silly?
How can you call it silly when they fought for what you call abusive practices yourself?! Typical nihilistic cynicism, disregarding the actual hard work that went in to it and the progress that was made.
The approach, and the framing and the legal footing is silly, or not legally sound. I just find this approach, and the person heading it up misguided.
You can want something to happen, AND find a particular effort trying to achieve the goal ineffectual. You can also find the person heading up the effort to be the wrong fit.
If you guys can’t separate the two, then I don’t know what to tell you.
What approach? Because I bet you heard about “the approach” from a very particular ex blizzard employee with a large following that is against it. The approach is reasonable - release the server code so people can host their own when a company abandons them. It is 100% a reasonable ask.
So you agree with the campaign but think it’s silly?
Did you watch the video? I thought they were very clear and articulate with their intended goal. Which part specifically seems silly or confused you?
I’ve tried to watch previous videos from him on the topic. My response is about the overall approach. Not about what to do next, or anything else.
Maybe give this one a watch and see what you think?
Respectfully, your response appeared to be one of apparent bewilderment and negativity at the very idea of the topic. If you just don’t care about it that’s one thing but if you think the overall goal (for lack of better words) is “dumb” or “pointless” I’d be really interested to know why you feel that way.
Thanks for getting back to me either way.
Did you watch the video?
Does this even bear a response?
A new video with 1.6m views just dropped on SKG.
So hold your horses!
Please let something come from this!
Ross is most well known for his very long running series “Freeman’s Mind”, where he narates as if he was Gordon Freeman during Half-Life (and now Half-Life 2).
He also runs a series called “The Game Dungeon” where he does in depth looks at computer games.
I recommend the Freeman’s Mind series, it is funny and very well done when you notice Freeman getting more unhinged through out the series.
I tried, years ago, to watch it. It’s just not my thing.
It isn’t for everyone, the game dungeon however is very different, you may enjoy that
It must be for everyone based on the downvotes.
Chet Faliszek, of Valve fame, has been railing against the guy (and this initiative) recently
https://bsky.app/profile/chetsucks.com/post/3lsd7rsd3j22n https://bsky.app/profile/chetsucks.com/post/3lsf4vxbtls2p
I mean, he does have a point. I do think there should be some obligations and disclosures to enable third parties to take over unsupported games, the specifics of how this particular project presents that seem… not super technically or legally sound?
Maybe we can try again in a bit with a project built by people who have a clearer view on both the legal and technical side of what’s being asked.
The initiative is not supposed to be all encompassing as this is meant to get the ball rolling on peserving games.
The EU initiative has a character limit of how much Ross can say on it.
Sure, but he has a whole website and a youtube channel, right?
I get that there’s some tension between making the materials you present digestible to end users so they will support you and making them technically sound. That’s fine.
But legislation does need to be technically feasible. I think the “games need to be able to run on consumer hardware, both server and client” bit is probably past that line. You can’t just go “but old games ran on local servers and some games have been reverse engineered” and assume that means this is feasible across the board. And a piece of legislation would, in fact, have to be applicable across the board.
I think there’s probably some way towards this. Maybe we need to just create some term of mandatory support, or a mandatory refund policy within some term. Maybe we need to carve some exception to copyright to ensure that abandonware owners can’t go after server replacements, or some semi-public repository where users can contribute to paying for a server directly. I do think there needs to be better regulation for this.
“Your server needs to be able to run on the same machine as your client in all cases” is… probably not it? (EDIT: In the guy’s defense, and after reviewing the full video in context, he does acknowledge the option of having a proper server at some cost, although his answer to dependencies and shared services still seems to be “well, I guess games need to be made fundamentally differently, then”). Some of the things in that FAQ (which I had already read, by the way) are also outright incorrect, objectively.
I will say for it that the petition itself is super vague and does not include many of these incorrect statements (beyond the characterization of losing functionality in a game as “robbing”). I think the vagueness here helps avoid some of the problems, and as a result I don’t have a huge problem with the petition itself as presented.
How the guy visualizaes this working in the rest of his materials and through his online persona is a different story.
We’re not at that stage yet to hammer out all the details. This is why this initiative needs to succeed so the European Union can initiate the conversation between the advocates and industry to figure out a better situation than the status quo.
The initiative is focused on exposing the problem then having something done about it.
We are absolutely at that stage, though. That’s why you make a petition in the first place. Even if knowing what you actually want wasn’t a key element in gathering support (which it obviously is), it certainly would be fundamental in the process of advocating for legislation in front of the EU and other governments.
See, I get this feeling that this guy wants to be the Louis Rossman of this issue but perhaps lacks some of the insider knowledge and expertise to take on that role. Which is no defense of Rossman, I disagree with him on a lot of things (political things, primarily), but there’s no denying the guy knows the specifics of what he’s talking about and can defend them in public. This Ross guy is stuck trying to defend his project with “well, we’ll figure it out later, we just want it to work” when developers take issue with it. Even in the places where I think he’s right he would benefit from being able to be a lot more specific and accurate about what he wants to do.
Ross is very well spoken on the topic and has gone into detail about a lot things.
Giant FAQ on The European Initiative to Stop Destroying Games!
So you follow Piratesoftware, I presume?
Nope. First time I heard of the guy was watching the bow out video where this Ross guy “reponds” to him. I still don’t know who he is. I don’t care. This is about policy and business practices, not Youtube drama.
I knew of the petition (and signed it, because as I said above I don’t have a problem with the generalities it contains and I agree with the spirit). I don’t follow the guy promoting it. Even the Faliszek caveats I only saw this week and I only watched the petition’s promoter recent videos in full because people are clearly being dramatic about it and I knew I’d probably have to deliberate it if I mentioned something here. I was right. Good times.
I mean okay, but you had the same talking points as Piratesoftware.
And what do you mean by being dramatic about it? Companies should not allowed to destroy what you owned, simple as that that’s the entire spirit of this petition. And then comes peeps like Piratesoftware who outrageously misrepresent the petition and even attacked Ross personally and also declined a discussion with him to clarify the misunderstandings. Instead Piratesoftware used his Plattform to start a counter campaign against this good cause.
Beside this petition is not legislation (also a lie spewed by Piratesoftware), this is an offer for discussion about this topic. Legislation is made by the peeps in the senate not EU Citizens.
Hey, if two separate people look at the same issue separately and raise some of the same concerns there’s a possibility that the concerns are legitimate.
I don’t know if we’re raising the same “talking points”, though. I haven’t heard his “talking points”, beyond a ten second clip in this guy’s video. I didn’t agree with the clip (a comment about how it’s fine for games to end), although I wouldn’t be suprised if there was more context to it.
Look, I think preservation of live games is a huge problem. I think there are probably only partial solutions available to it, and I think any solutions will likely impact the business to some extent. I think everybody is going to have to live with that impact at some point, though.
I think the request of legislation to drive consumer protections around this is perfectly legitimate, but perhaps the person driving it as a campaign isn’t super aware of what some of those concerns are and is presenting a bit of a distorted picture of what he’s asking for and what it’d entail.
Thanks for chiming in. You get my point.
I can’t believe how many downvotes I got.
The vast majority of my downvotes come from saying I don’t agree with Ross Scott. If only downvotes created signatures!
