Stop Killing Games - Calling all Europeans

[Redglyph]

I'm not sure I believe multiplayer games are the backbone, compared in sales in revenue to single-player games. They certainly are the most active and vocal and the ones you hear about, but I'd imagine they're a minority when speaking just numbers. They probably do have a long tail, but that depends on how much people buy random microtransactions. I mean, look at Destiny 2, you'd think it was probably the biggest multiplayer game and it seems to be going into the ground, with Bungie apparently almost bankrupt before being bought by Sony. Anyway, this is sort of a different point.

Mobile gaming is largely dominant, with a revenue share around 50% mobile / 30% console / 20% PC in the most conservative estimations, and it mostly works online because of the specific market: people expect cheap and good casual games, so making offline games is very difficult. Also, successful games are quickly copied, and this kills the revenues, so the best strategy is online/GaaS/microtransactions and community.

Overall, the online revenues are estimated as about half the total revenues. You could argue that China is pulling those numbers up, but local statistics are about 2/3 of people play online (for ex, last I saw 68% in the UK), so it's not negligible.

Even if the share of online revenue were smaller, it's still huge in a 200+ B$ revenue market (again, a very conservative value).

But I still don't agree, that just because it's been 10 years the game is supposed to shut down. If it had a subscription, and therefore a clear understanding that you get access to it as long as you pay or the game allows you to pay for it, I'd have no issue. This goes back to the confusion about whether it's a product or a service. Let them make it a subscription or put a date on the box, for how long they aim to support it, and I'd have no issue.

It costs to maintain servers. It was not shut down because it was 10 years but because nobody (figuratively) played it any more.

Technically, it's not a product the buyer owns; it's a licence to a gaming experience. But I agree the conditions should be clarified: permanent online connection requirement (the Steam page mentions an Internet connection but nothing about a permanent connection), guaranteed lifetime of the server availability, ideally percentage of availability of the server, subscription, microtransactions, DRM. The EU really needs to enforce a clear label so that people clearly see what they're paying for.

The only reason I would've maybe made it only for singleplayer and DRM games is that it would probably make the whole fight easier. But philosophically speaking I'd want multiplayer games to be covered. As long as you're buying a product and not renting a service I'd want it covered.

I'd like that too, even if I'm not an MP either, but how would you approach the problem? For SP/MP games, they could possibly guarantee that the SP will continue to work indefinitely, but not MP that relies on servers hosted by the publisher/developer. The only way out I can think of is giving away the server binaries or sources, provided there's no contradiction with licenced IPs (D&D, Porsche, FIFA, etc - though I don't know the terms, so I could be wrong). It's a complex problem, and I don't think people on the government side know how those things work. They'll need to study the system very thoroughly.

Offline games are easier and would already be a big step. It would in effect change the status of those games to owned products, even if after a while. It would be huge if publishers accepted that.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Mobile gaming is largely dominant, with a revenue share around 50% mobile / 30% console / 20% PC in the most conservative estimations, and it mostly works online because of the specific market: people expect cheap and good casual games, so making offline games is very difficult. Also, successful games are quickly copied, and this kills the revenues, so the best strategy is online/GaaS/microtransactions and community.

Overall, the online revenues are estimated as about half the total revenues. You could argue that China is pulling those numbers up, but local statistics are about 2/3 of people play online (for ex, last I saw 68% in the UK), so it's not negligible.

Even if the share of online revenue were smaller, it's still huge in a 200+ B$ revenue market (again, a very conservative value).

Right, I completely forgot about the mobile market.

It costs to maintain servers. It was not shut down because it was 10 years but because nobody (figuratively) played it any more.

Not sure why it was shutdown, but it's also not rare to want to kill off an early version because you're maintaining it is just not worth it anymore. Or because you have a new version that you'd want to force everybody onto.

Technically, it's not a product the buyer owns; it's a licence to a gaming experience. But I agree the conditions should be clarified: permanent online connection requirement (the Steam page mentions an Internet connection but nothing about a permanent connection), guaranteed lifetime of the server availability, ideally percentage of availability of the server, subscription, microtransactions, DRM. The EU really needs to enforce a clear label so that people clearly see what they're paying for.


I'd like that too, even if I'm not an MP either, but how would you approach the problem? For SP/MP games, they could possibly guarantee that the SP will continue to work indefinitely, but not MP that relies on servers hosted by the publisher/developer. The only way out I can think of is giving away the server binaries or sources, provided there's no contradiction with licenced IPs (D&D, Porsche, FIFA, etc - though I don't know the terms, so I could be wrong). It's a complex problem, and I don't think people on the government side know how those things work. They'll need to study the system very thoroughly.

Offline games are easier and would already be a big step. It would in effect change the status of those games to owned products, even if after a while. It would be huge if publishers accepted that.

Yeah, the whole license contrivance is another attempt to distance from buying the actual thing. Though, most of this is "enforced" through EULAs which definitely are not above a country's laws. And in some countries there probably are laws that go against this. I remember Steam having to cave to Germany's (iirc) laws around allow you to sell you steam account.

Yeah, it's a big mess to sort out the multiplayer stuff. What I'd ideally want, to at least save singleplayer, is enforce them to make the singplayer parts be fully playable offline. So even if they want multiplayer components those have to be segregated. Plenty of games are already doing this, where they segregate the two worlds, just that they don't bother to make the singleplayer parts be fully playable offline. But I think they could.

More and more I'm leaning towards that maybe this should've started only for singleplayer games. Though, I wonder if it's not too late to pivot now. And it might be even better this way. You start a huge controvercy, and demand the moon, but you end up compromising and get what you really want, the singleplayers games. Otherwise, had this started only with singleplayer games, then that would be the point you're negotiating down from. Maybe this is better. I don't know.

But regardless of all of this, indeed we definitely need more info on the lifetime of the product before you buy it. I'd also mandate that be revealed.

 

[Redglyph]

Right, I completely forgot about the mobile market.

FWIW, I'm not playing mobile games. I find the principle's flawed because of how long batteries can hold, but I'm very biased as an old PC dinosaur gamer. I did play a few puzzle games, but I can count them on the fingers of one hand. None of that F2P stuff.

Yeah, the whole license contrivance is another attempt to distance from buying the actual thing. Though, most of this is "enforced" through EULAs which definitely are not above a country's laws. And in some countries there probably are laws that go against this. I remember Steam having to cave to Germany's (iirc) laws around allow you to sell you steam account.

Yeah, I can only imagine the extra mess with countries' laws.

Yeah, it's a big mess to sort out the multiplayer stuff. What I'd ideally want, to at least save singleplayer, is enforce them to make the singplayer parts be fully playable offline. So even if they want multiplayer components those have to be segregated. Plenty of games are already doing this, where they segregate the two worlds, just that they don't bother to make the singleplayer parts be fully playable offline. But I think they could.

I also think that starting with SP could open the door to having a more convenient system. Games with both modes would naturally have to make the online requirement optional; they could of course make it so only after a number of years and enforce begin always online at the beginning, but it would complicate things for them. This could be a nice benefit if it encouraged them to remove the online requirement for SP from day 1.

The problem remains for online games and the communities that gravitate around them. It's a pity when they have to shut down.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

Awesome to see it picking up steam so much, after the PirateSoftware debacle.
It's looking like it's pretty certain to reach the limit.
Now for the demoralizing result of, when the corporate lobbyists will screw us over every which way.
But better to have tried, than not.

 

[DarkWunder]

... Also, I've never seen a game that stopped working the instant the support ended. ...

I'll give you one that I'm sure many that frequent this site played. Ubisoft shutdown the Might & Magic X Legacy servers in 2021 because they no longer wanted to support it. The single player game was released in 2014, and it worked perfectly fine up until that point. I was about 85% of the way through my first full playthrough. And I was unable to continue playing. Since the game could not reach the servers, certain flags were not triggered that would allow you to move between areas, select certain quests, etc. All legit customers of the game lost access to anything beyond Act 1, as well as any purchased DLC and the Uplay rewards.

Ubisoft chose to delist the game so that nobody new would buy it. But they did not patch it to remove the activation requirements so that those already owned it could play it. Luckily fans of the game stepped up and did what Ubisoft would not. "Thanks to the wonders of C# decompiling someone figured out how to intercept calls that check for unlockables and make them answer "yup, it's unlocked, no problem"." (I'm paraphrasing that list bit from the reddit post where the steps for implementing the fix were presented).

 

[bkrueger]

I'll give you one that I'm sure many that frequent this site played. Ubisoft shutdown the Might & Magic X Legacy servers in 2021 because they no longer wanted to support it. The single player game was released in 2014, and it worked perfectly fine up until that point. I was about 85% of the way through my first full playthrough. And I was unable to continue playing. Since the game could not reach the servers, certain flags were not triggered that would allow you to move between areas, select certain quests, etc. All legit customers of the game lost access to anything beyond Act 1, as well as any purchased DLC and the Uplay rewards.

Ubisoft chose to delist the game so that nobody new would buy it. But they did not patch it to remove the activation requirements so that those already owned it could play it. Luckily fans of the game stepped up and did what Ubisoft would not. "Thanks to the wonders of C# decompiling someone figured out how to intercept calls that check for unlockables and make them answer "yup, it's unlocked, no problem"." (I'm paraphrasing that list bit from the reddit post where the steps for implementing the fix were presented).

Since your post could be misunderstood: In the meantime Ubisoft has patched this officially and the game can also be bought again via Steam or the Ubisoft store, for example. They even added achievements now, which isn't necessarily something positive in itself, but shows that they want the game to live on.

I only wanted to mention this, because I love the game and recommend it to everybody, who likes RPGs, in particular turn-based ones (or is it better to say: step-based?). So it would be a pity, if people miss this game, since they don't know that it is available again.

But that set aside I completely agree to you: All games with some kind of online-requirement (game servers or even only activation servers) might get unplayable from one day to the other. So your general point was definitely right.

 

[Arhu]

I signed a couple of days ago (word of mouth).

Only one month left, but over the last couple of days it seems to have attracted ~200k signatures. From what I understood they still have to be verified, so a healthy buffer would certainly help.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I signed a couple of days ago (word of mouth).

Only one month left, but over the last couple of days it seems to have attracted ~200k signatures. From what I understood they still have to be verified, so a healthy buffer would certainly help.

Not exactly sure how they could verify. I don't remember leaving an email or anything. It's just using your ID, national or passport.
And those I assume they validated upon entering. I know I forgot I signed it, and tried signing it again and it said I had already signed.
Anyway, I hope it doesn't come to that. That could be the easiest way to kill off this initiative, even by pretending they removed just enough to not make the numbers.
But I also wouldn't be shocked. Especially in the year of cancelled elections on dubious claims.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

We will very much venture into a dark age of gaming history, s9imply because so many games as a service games simply cannot be archived - not even in the congress library.
In a hundred years, DOS games wil be excellenrtly documented - at least later ones - but games based on DirectX will be very much less archived - because there simply do not exist many emulators properly handling DirectX and Hyper-V is exclusively aimed as business, not at all at home customers, because there is no money to be gained fom home customers, and that includes gamers.
Home customers (domestic customers) have died out. Games like "P.A.W.S." ? Impossible these days, it would be torn apart by trolls anyway.

Gaming in the business sense has very much evolved either into "as a service" = MMO , or into "fire and forget" structures.
And not even the congress library is going to change that.

 

[Carnifex]

They've sure racked up numerous signatures from the last time I monitored this. How the world turns.

 

[DarkWunder]

Since your post could be misunderstood: In the meantime Ubisoft has patched this officially and the game can also be bought again via Steam or the Ubisoft store, for example. They even added achievements now, which isn't necessarily something positive in itself, but shows that they want the game to live on.

I only wanted to mention this, because I love the game and recommend it to everybody, who likes RPGs, in particular turn-based ones (or is it better to say: step-based?). So it would be a pity, if people miss this game, since they don't know that it is available again.

But that set aside I completely agree to you: All games with some kind of online-requirement (game servers or even only activation servers) might get unplayable from one day to the other. So your general point was definitely right.

Thanks for pointing out that the game was actually officially patched by Ubisoft and is now available for sale again (there was actually a post about it on RPGWatch when the patch was announced in October 2021 for those that are interested: https://rpgwatch.com/forum/threads/might-magic-x-back-on-steam.48760/). I was not aware of this as I was able to finish the game using the workarounds provided by the Community-at-Large in August 2021. At that point there was no indication from Ubisoft that they were even working on a patch. So good on them for doing the right thing (eventually). The fact that the MMX team even went so far as to add Steam Achievements in May 2025...I did not see that coming.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

And I suddenly have more respect for Mark Darrah than for Tim Cain. Mark did speak about this initiative, and didn't just treat it as just another current event that he doesn't want to involve himself in. (while still making videos about games preservation in general, and having complaints that games are not preserved; but when the wheel hits the road he's suddenly quiet)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBroGnDIk3I