Stop Killing Games and what follows
Correction:
Eurogamer.net points out that the European Citizens’ Initiative is called “Stop Destroying Videogames”, whereas “Stop Killing Games” is the US equivalent.
Original Post:
If you have a vague interest in gaming, I am quite sure you read about the initiative to “stop killing games”.
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
In case you haven’t, it is an European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI), a people’s initiative asking the European Commission to consider putting its requests into law if more than a million EU citizens sign it.
Even though the initiative reached the milestone of a million signatures recently, it still needs support – signatures may be invalid for a variety of reasons (bad data, non-EU citizens) or even fake. You might consider signing it.
[https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en](https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/)
So, Stop Killing Games.
“Killing” here means shutting down game servers when it is no longer profitable for the publisher, effectively taking the means of play from the customer.
You might be thinking that this is not your kind of game, that you are only playing on your own, but think again: This goes for any kind of game, with any kind of connectivity. Friend list? Server connection. Leaderboard? Server connection. Chat? Multi-device savegame? Server connection.
It is trivially easy to add a “feature” like this to a game, essentially making it always online no matter the actual gameplay loop or its participants.
The target state of the initiative is that singleplayer parts of a game are playable indefinitely beyond end of lifetime on any system that they worked on previously, given that the system components are unchanged. For multiplayer parts, they should remain available without further publisher involvement.
Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
Needless to say, publishers are not happy. If you had a second look, you may also be aware of the games publisher’s first reaction on its presumed passing.
Here’s the money quote:
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
https://www.videogameseurope.eu/news/statement-on-stop-killing-games/
Essentially, it’s the Apple defense. “Customers prefer our usuriously expensive repair service over third parties, because, safety.”
I venture that none of this is true, down to the very last sentence. For most people, the game would be dead and they wouldn’t care. For enthusiasts, there should be a way.
Shots have already been fired, with Ubisoft changing its End User License Agreement to force customers to delete games upon termination of service, making it a least a violation of contract to set up a game server of your own(as you wouldn’t be allowed to have any client software).
https://gamerant.com/ubisoft-eula-change-game-deletion-user-requirement/
This is just another move in a game that’s been going on since corporations discovered technology, and it must not stand. Rebbeca Giblin and Cory Doctorow have written a whole book about all the ways this fight has been fought be creatives and consumers alike:
https://chokepointcapitalism.com/
But still, a (more) public discussion around this, expert hearings and a legislative process in the EU parliament would lead to some results, even though it might not be the perfect result people might imagine.
Of course, those expert hearings will be lots of managerial types from all major publishers repeating that “this isn’t possible and games in general / in Europe would die, and can’t someone think of the smaller companies?”, expanding on what they already stated.
It is up to the counterparties to guide lawmakers to a more enlightened stance. Obviously, games have long been running without involvement of anyone but the player(s). This is not lost technology, but very much possible. Less convenient for the gaming layman, less insightful for the ever hungry data sink that is the publisher, but still: possible.
What may a way forward for discontinued games look like?
In a perfect world, publishers would open source the fully functional code and all required build tools with no further commercial dependencies or requirements after server shutdown and leaving the rest to the people who care. For most people, the game would be gone, but for enthusiasts and archivists, everything would be preserved.
In essence, given a community initiative picks up the slack, any game given this treatment should remain playable on any system it originally ran on.
This is not what the initiative is about, though:
The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.”
So a close second would be to share all the binaries involved in running all parts of the game and publishing a final patch to make a choice of community-run servers possible to players, the way multiplayer worked since time immemorial.
Any thing else? Hardly imaginable. Any server will cost money, any patch will cost money, and even keeping people’s Steam/EGS/Origin saves and achievements functional would be too high a requirement.
A big unanswered question is about temporary media and asset licenses, like radio songs in GTA or car models in a racing game. For the archivist, removing them would be unacceptable, whereas for the enthusiast, it might be fine as long as the core experience remains playable.
All of this said, I am a layman when it comes to these things. If anyone would like to discuss this deeper, I would love to learn.
How does the initiative find its place in the greater scheme of things? What parallels, what precedent? What would a game plan for the initiative be if it really reaches quorum? What technical solutions would be realistic from your experience, and what countermoves would one expect?
If you have any thoughts on this, do share!