Regarding Stop Killing Games, Video Games Europe (VGE) posted a statement and, more notably, a PDF document (which I'll also upload here for posterity's sake), which goes over why discontinuing online services for games isn't something that's always possible.
VGE's board includes many big game development/publishing companies. Of note: Roblox, Activision, EA, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Take 2, Ubisoft, Squeenix, Bandai-Namco.
It's hard to tell whether VGE thinks the shutdown of live service / online games is the sole focus of SKG, or whether they choose just to focus on that aspect of the discussion specifically. I hope it's the latter.
I'll look at the statement first, since it's not nearly as large.
No it wouldn't? You wouldn't be the one hosting any of that. You would have shut down the servers for that game. How are you liable for something you aren't responsible for in any way?VGE wrote: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.
Is Microsoft liable for Insignia continuing to provide OG Xbox Live? No.
Is Nintendo liable for Wiimmfi or Pretendo continuing to provide Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection services for Wii, DS, Wii U, 3DS? No.
Is The LEGO Group liable for all the LEGO Universe servers hosted with Darkflame? No.
Is Valve liable for community servers created for Half-Life, TF2, etc? No.
Is Epic Games liable for community servers created for the Unreal Tournament games? No.
If they were liable, these services would have all been taken down years and years ago.
Notice also how many of these companies who are demonstrably not liable for these things that already exist, are a part of VGE. Weird, isn't it?
You can look at this however you want, but I see this as a blatant lie.
...You could just not do that.VGE wrote: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.
Also, how does this make game development more expensive?
Maybe the PDF will tell us, so let's look at that. Saying it now, this is slightly riddled with poor grammar; I won't make assumptions as to why.
So basically, "We put a lot of money into making a bunch of ongoing stuff for our online games, so we deserve to keep the right to shut down the servers for them."VGE wrote:Online video games evolve over time after their initial release, providing consumers with regular new content, experiences, patches, and updates. This is highly valued by players and is required to compete in the market. It involves significant, ongoing development expenditure over years, sometimes decades.
Video games companies put significant investment into creating and developing the best interactive entertainment and experience for their passionate player bases.
The right to decide how, when, and for how long to make an online video game services available to players is vital in justifying this cost and fostering continued technical innovation. As rightsholders and economic entities, video games companies must remain free to decide when an online game is no longer commercially viable and to end continued server support for that game.
I can kinda see this a little bit, but the desire to completely shut down any game doesn't make much sense to me; if you dumped so much money into making all that stuff for people to play and experience over such a long ongoing timeframe, would you not want to also ensure that stuff stays accessible for people into the future?
This also paints shutting down and effectively deleting online games as a necessary evil, when it really isn't. Look at more recent releases that were formally live-service games, like Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Complete (oh look, another game from a VGE board member!) and Mega Man X DiVE Offline. I'd much rather see this be a requirement because it means I'm not going to permanently miss out on a game like this, and it also enables continued sales of a game well after server support for it has ended.
SKG isn't seeking to disrupt this so I don't know why this is even here.VGE wrote:All video games, whether digital or physical copies, are licensed. As is the case with virtually all digital works when consumers purchase online games, regardless of the country of sale, what they acquire is a personal license to access and play the copy of the game they have purchased in accordance with the game’s terms of service. The consumer does not acquire ownership of that video game.
...Welp. Whoever wrote this either can't read, or chose not to.VGE wrote:It is not clear what the initiators of the stop killing games petition seek to achieve as a legal change. It appears to be a combination of a requirement to provide online services for as long as a consumer wants them, regardless of price paid, and/or a requirement to provide a very specific form of end-of-life plan where the game is altered to enable private servers to operate.
From the EU petition:
SKG wrote:This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union [...] to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
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.
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.
But it's been done before...VGE wrote:Ensuring an online game can work without official server support, requires a significant investment of engineering resources making it a very costly exercise for video games companies. Many of the costs that games companies would incur in implementing an end-of-life plan would have to be incurred towards the end of the commercial life of the game, when it is no longer commercially viable to continue support. Requirements to implement such plans could lead to less risk taking, fewer investment projects in developing new games, and potentially fewer jobs. Ultimately, it could lead to increased costs for consumers and less choice.
Even if it wasn't, though, if we're talking about new games that haven't been made yet, this is something you would consider in the design phase of the project so that it's already taken care of.
In terms of the things that have already been proposed as hypotheticals by Ross and other community members, they aren't that expensive afaik (I'm not a game dev so I may be wrong here):
- Release offline-only version - Charge for a version of the game that's playable offline. Remove function calls that query a server and instead do local processing. Consider making this version free for people who bought microtransactions pre-shutdown (special build with exclusive features?).
- Release server binary - You've already coded the server side, so account for builds later on that don't have nonessential services
- Release documentation for server emulation - Not ideal, but could work for significantly popular franchises as there would be lots of demand and interest among technically-minded folks to make server emulators (for example, LEGO Universe and Darkflame).
...I... I don't... wha...?VGE wrote:Allowing players to run private servers, with online interaction possibilities could result in players using those games in ways that don’t align with the games companies’ brand values, leading to a negative association with the brand, thereby harming its reputation.
Firstly, again, look at Valve and Epic Games with community servers.
Secondly, I don't care about your reputation, when you've laid off thousands of people, maintained a hostile work environment (Actiblizz), and taken down fangames made purely out of passion (Nintendo). In my mind, what reputation is there to destroy?
And even then, how would anything destroy your "reputation" more than making a game forever completely unplayable would??
Liability argument aside (I'm done repeating myself), what competition? You'd have shut down your game at that point. And even if you didn't, wouldn't competition drive you to make your services better and improve the overall landscape of that game genre in general?VGE wrote:Such a requirement could lead to community-supported versions of games competing with official versions, potentially jeopardizing the financial investments of the video games companies. This would lead to confusion between trademarks, and the original trademark holder may be held responsible for actions undertaken by a community supported version.
...Yes...?VGE wrote:Allowing consumers to create or run modified copies of online games would necessitate games companies to either license additional rights or refrain from enforcing them, effectively leading to a forfeiture of control over these rights.
This is obviously something we'd have to compromise over and work out in parliament...
They cite a couple of sources here on the second part.VGE wrote:Video Games Europe and their member companies are committed to, and actively support,
serious professional efforts to preserve video games and recognise the industry’s creative
contributions under circumstances that do not jeopardize game companies’ rights under
copyright law.
For example, members regularly donate game copies and hardware to preservation organisations
and support museum exhibitions featuring games. Other video game companies have
undertaken the gigantic task of creating video games libraries to support the preservation of
games.
I think this highlights how people's perception of video game preservation and companies' perception of it seem to differ quite a bit. I've never even heard of the Embracer Games Archive until now and it seems very impressive, and credit where it's due, I do commend the companies that have contributed to it! But the ability to actually play these games and experience them is what I think many people actually want more than anything; it's great to see the games preserved on a shelf here and know that they'll still exist, but that means nothing if I can't sit down and play them, see what the game actually has to offer in itself, because that's where the majority of the creativity and effort actually went. The box needs a game to go along with it, no?
...But yeah, most of this is bullshit. You're not going to be liable for stuff you don't host, I feel like people will generally understand that the server isn't hosted by you (and I find it likely there will be a notice saying as much anyway; this is something you could add to your terms of use or whatever). You clearly have not read the initiative. It likely won't be that much more expensive to implement these changes in future games; indies probably won't make too many games like this anyway, and AAA studios would have the funding necessary to comply with this.
