11mo ago

It's finally up! Please sign it if you're in the UK :) Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state.

petition.parliament.uk Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state

Require publishers to leave videogames (and related game assets / features) they have sold to customers in a reasonably working state when support ends, so that no further intervention whatsoever is necessary for the game to function, as a statutory consumer right.

26 comments

No, it's unreasonable to expect the servers to stay online forever. Instead, they should be required to hand the keys over to the community if they stop providing the online service.
- A requirement to leave a game in a "working state when support ends" doesn't mean continuing support (ie, running the server). It means the game should still work when the server is gone, which means either fully offline play, or a means for players to run their own servers. That's the whole point of this campaign, which is taking place across multiple countries.
  
  so that no further intervention whatsoever is necessary for the game to function
  I mean, I'd accept "release the source code" but this doesn't.
- Go check the petition text and https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
  Leaving the servers online endlessly has never been what is being asked.
- Or simply release a patch that disabled only the online portion.
  coughTheCrewcough
  
  I never play games that are pure online with no LAN support.
- Yeah I agree, it's a better solution. But something that meets the requirement too.
  After all if they stop selling the game, why bother with activation? Just patch that shit out.

I’ve signed it, looking forward to the nonchalant dismissive response from the government.
- True, but we can still try

Ah, it's active! I saw this a few weeks ago when the petition had been created but was being reviewed by the petitions team. Been waiting for it to be open for signatures, so thanks for the reminder. I have signed it.
I don't expect the government to do much about it, though. I've signed a number of these petitions over the years and the government response is always very non-committal. They can get more traction when an MP can be inspired to care, so if anyone has a youngish MP who might actually be capable of understanding what the problem is, it could be worth writing a letter to them directly (regardless of what party they're in - a 35 year old Tory MP isn't a complete write-off and may be more sympathetic than you'd expect.)
That said... could be the kind of thing the next government could be pushed to act on. We'll likely have a cash-strapped Labour government that'll be looking for stuff they can do to make things better for normal people which also don't cost the government any money, and this is a simple adjustment to consumer rights that would achieve that.

if it's a 100% online game what to do? They would be forced by law to keep servers online in perpetuity? The workaround could be to create a shell company that would bankrupt the day they want to discontinue the game and turn off the servers
- I think a minimum would be open sourcing the server backend, or at least a compatible one, once servers reach EOL.
- 100% online games in the past were perfectly playable even after developers / publishers ended support. Online only games dying is a relatively recent invention. This petition is asking for consumer protection to return to the norm where a purchaser of an online game always has the choice of being able to play it in some fashion.
  A game developer could do this by releasing a server application. They could even do this at the barest minimum by releasing documentation describing how the server ought to work, to allow for reverse engineering.
  The Stop Killing Games campaign as a whole isn't asking for perpetual server access, just to ensure that games stay in some sort of playable state.
- They could keep the servers up, or open source them so people can host the servers themselves
  
  They would not even need to open source the servers. Just making the server available for users to run (even under a proprietary license) would be enough.

Should have waited until after the election later on in the year as, all being well, we'll have a new government. This shower of shit we have in right now won't do f'all for the average person that's against business interests.
- I thought about this too, but then I checked the end date of the petition. It's in October, as petitions have to run for 6 months in order to give them enough time to get to the 100,000 signatures. So by the time this petition ends, and then rises to the top of the list of petitions to be debated, we'll definitely have a new government. 😉

Is it possible to spoof the website into thinking you are in UK? I just signed using a Google searched UK Postcode and after an email verification it counted my signature. If this works people from everywhere should be on this!
- Maybe, but it’s also possible they will check if the name matches the postcode

26 comments