The campaign to stop companies from killing games.

[Jack Foxtrot]

I've been helping support a campaign to stop games from being destroyed by companies. Led by Ross Scott, owner of the AccursedFarms YouTube channel, our goal is to keep gamers from being robbed.

The main issue lies in online games, especially those that require a server connection to function. Whenever a game's support is dropped by a company, they shut down the servers. Sometimes, this renders a game unplayable to those who own it. Especially as companies commonly never provide people with tools of their own to host privately, or even to play the game with an offline patch.

This campaign started when Ubisoft announced that The Crew, an expensive racing game with a map that spans the entire United States, will be shutting down on March 31st, 2024, back in December 2023. While the game is mostly played singleplayer, it requires a constant connection to Ubisoft's servers just to even leave the main menu. Ubisoft took players' games away from them, which wasn't even a cheap game to begin with, and have essentially kept the money. There's no offline patch and no server tools for people to take over without further company interference. The game also came on discs for every platform, which will now be a paperweight. So even the "buying it physical" argument simply doesn't work.

The game is sold with a perpetual license just like any other game on the market, which does not expire. It's a copy that you buy full price to own, and not rent. There's a lot more to it than that as well. More on that later.

Our goal with this campaign is a few things:

1. We're not asking for eternal support.
   • This is ridiculous. Of course a company can't support a game forever.
2. If a game's support is dropped, the game's functionality and playability should be as available as possible offline via an offline patch for the game.
3. Provide users with the tools or source code necessary to host their own servers instead.
4. This campaign primarily affects games you pay to own and games that contain microtransactions, as you're not only losing access to the copy of the game you bought, but technically you'd also be losing access to the product you bought via MTX.
5. None of the above things can be superseded by a terms of service or license agreement.

Both 2 and 3 will mean that the games we play will be able to forever live on and remain preserved and playable, without any future needed support from developers and companies. Even developers have expressed concerns, as they're tired of putting effort into making and designing games that in the foreseeable future will be forever lost to time as lost media.

This campaign mostly affects The Crew owners, but everyone in the long run benefits. You can help too by watching the video and checking out the website. Should you choose to take action on the website, there's plenty of things you can do to help depending on your country, and some options don't even require you to own/prove you own The Crew. For example, some countries have some upcoming petitions we're making that need a handful of signatures to be sent into the governments. The site should let you know when those become publicly available, but overall, you can sign the petitions to help out. The other thing too is getting this as much exposure as possible via sharing and social media.

For more information, visit the Stop Killing Games website, which even has an FAQ page. Also watch Ross's video on the matter, as he goes in-depth with what we're doing, and why we're doing it.

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE&ab_channel=AccursedFarms

To add my own two cents to the mix, I made a Steam Discussion post on The Crew's community after spending the last couple months doing heavy research and talking to lawyers internationally. It talks about misinformation regarding things like "you were licensed a game, not sold" and "but you signed a ToS/EULA". I highly recommend taking a look and reading it thoroughly.

If you live in the UK, Australia, or Canada, you can sign a petition without requiring The Crew ownership. The only requirement is to be a citizen/resident of the aforementioned country.
United Kingdom Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state
Australia e-petitions
Canada Petition e-4965 - Petitions

The SKG website has information for other things you can do in those countries as well as things you can do if you're not in those countries.

 

[unknownaspect]

Ross does great work, cutting through the misinformation that gets spewed out.

I have returned games before when I've found out they needed to connect to a server, despite not needing online connectivity (single player).

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

ATTENTION!
If you live in the UK, the petition finally just went up! I would appreciate it if you can sign it! Anyone can sign it regardless if they own The Crew or not, the only requirement is that you're a British citizen.

Archived 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.

petition.parliament.uk

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

Already at 5,000 signatures, halfway there to the 10,000 needed for the government in the UK to take notice, but we've got until 6 months down the line, can we get 100,000 before then?

In other news, this has been going on for a while now, but for those unaware, Ubisoft caught wind of the SKG campaign, and so now they're trying to do damage control—by removing everyone's ownership of their copies of The Crew. Trying to remove purchases and everyone's proof of purchases, with zero refunds, fully robbing you of your game by making it seem like you never owned it in the first place. For some people, it's just become unavailable with no play/install button, but still visible, but for others, it's completely gone entirely.

So everyone's now screenshotting and holding onto their proof of purchases and receipts. I imagine this shit Ubisoft is pulling is 100% illegal. "We robbed you of your game? Uhm... what game?"

But that's not all! I was talking to Ross, leader of the campaign, earlier via email. Ubisoft is trying to pull more stupid shit.

I guess he has an AccursedFarms Discord server for his YouTube channel? So I was talking to him earlier via email and he said there was someone in the server who was confirmed to be a representative of Ubisoft's legal firm, and was basically harassing users.

What this individual was trying to do was basically BAIT people into saying or doing bad things by harassing, gaslighting and entrapping, so that Ubisoft can make the campaign and everyone look bad, and paint everything in a bad light. So that when things go to court Ubi can go "Oh well everyone involved said/did this, this and this, so these are bad people and you shouldn't support them." Even though anything people could've said/done would've basically been 100% provoked and induced.

Their attempts were fruitless AFAIK, but still, fuck 'em. In the United States, purposefully trying to induce people into incriminating themselves like this, especially when they normally wouldn't under normal circumstances, falls under "entrapment".

Ubisoft I feel is just digging themselves into a hole at this point. I'm pretty sure any sane firm/organization/government can look at what they're doing and say "WTF?" I mean in the United States, it's complicated... but elsewhere? I'm sure something will come along.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

ATTENTION!
If you live in Australia, the petition finally just went up! Anyone can sign it regardless if they own The Crew or not, the only requirement is that you're an Australian citizen.

https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN6080

The UK petition has also reached over 10,000 signatures in a matter of a week. We have 6 months to get to 100,000.

 

[Faust]

One potential issue I can think of regarding this goal is that even hosting an 'offline' patch for a game costs a company money. Any effort on this front would need to support owners of existing physical copies too, which could wind up with a requirement to keep such a patch online far longer than it was economically viable to do so.

Another is that 'offline' patches for many games would mean writing extensive amounts of additional code to handle enemy AI, which may previously have been provided by players. This could prove deeply problematic, since a company cannot always predict when a particular product is going to suddenly stop making them money, making such additional work difficult to budget for.

Then there's the question of if the code is even built with such possibilities in mind. It could be that refactoring to allow for offline play requires a massive amount of work, possibly introducing new bugs in the process. I cannot emphasise how much work can sometimes result from making even a tiny change to some fundamental part of a software application. (I've spent the last six months rewriting a complete UI system because of a tiny little bug in a low-level system.)

While I'd welcome some kind of laws or guidelines to safeguard against bad practice from companies going forward, I also think an amnesty on old games would be necessary to avoid damaging the gaming industry, which is already hurting. Legally requiring this kind of stuff for existing games could force some good studios into bankruptcy, simply due to the costs of updating their backlog. A company knowing that they have to provide offline support from the get-go can prepare for it and have it in place from day-1, or at least an early patch.

But then, that could amount to the end of live service gaming as we know it.

YAY! DO IT! DO IT NOW!

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

One potential issue I can think of regarding this goal is that even hosting an 'offline' patch for a game costs a company money. Any effort on this front would need to support owners of existing physical copies too, which could wind up with a requirement to keep such a patch online far longer than it was economically viable to do so.

Another is that 'offline' patches for many games would mean writing extensive amounts of additional code to handle enemy AI, which may previously have been provided by players. This could prove deeply problematic, since a company cannot always predict when a particular product is going to suddenly stop making them money, making such additional work difficult to budget for.

Then there's the question of if the code is even built with such possibilities in mind. It could be that refactoring to allow for offline play requires a massive amount of work, possibly introducing new bugs in the process. I cannot emphasise how much work can sometimes result from making even a tiny change to some fundamental part of a software application. (I've spent the last six months rewriting a complete UI system because of a tiny little bug in a low-level system.)

While I'd welcome some kind of laws or guidelines to safeguard against bad practice from companies going forward, I also think an amnesty on old games would be necessary to avoid damaging the gaming industry, which is already hurting. Legally requiring this kind of stuff for existing games could force some good studios into bankruptcy, simply due to the costs of updating their backlog. A company knowing that they have to provide offline support from the get-go can prepare for it and have it in place from day-1, or at least an early patch.

But then, that could amount to the end of live service gaming as we know it.

YAY! DO IT! DO IT NOW!

The stupid thing is though, is a LOT of online games actually can be played offline. The Crew for example was like 90% singleplayer despite being considered an MMO. Races and story missions have AI opponents, police chases had AI police, etc. The only online aspect of it was seeing other players in Free Roam and having them join your crew to play story missions in co-op. There was also the PvP Summit, but you could only play that if you had the Wild Run expansion (which I didn't). So all-in-all, you really don't need the players to play it.

What made it stupider still is that despite being a supposed MMO, I rarely saw other players. I spent probably almost thousands of hours on the game and I only ever saw 2 or 3 people maximum when playing. One of the reasons for this was some idiot decided the map should be sectored. This meant you'd only ever see players in your sector. I'm pretty sure the way it worked was like, the Mountain States region was one sector, and the Midwest was another, etc. You couldn't even interact with or see other players in a lobby list or anything, so once they leave your sector, they're gone for good. No idea why they did this, it made the map feel empty. The Crew 2 does the same thing. Not sure about Motorfest, but Motorfest takes place on a small 1:3 scale Oahu island, unlike the larger 1:34 scale continental US map the previous games had. Also, The Crew HAD an offline mode during early development, but Ubisoft deliberately cut that feature and then encrypted whatever remained in the code.

Gran Turismo Sport had a heavy emphasis on online competitive play. However, when the servers recently shut down, this didn't stop Polyphony from patching to be playable offline, enough to keep 90% of the game still accessible.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is going to be online-only as well. But I can almost guarantee it'll have AI drivers like most other games, thus making online-only kind of redundant again.

Need For Speed 2015 has AI and can be played singleplayer as well, and I don't know when EA plans on killing that off. There's a possibility they won't patch it to be offline and still playable.

The problem Faust is that it takes a lot of effort to deliberately make a game online-only like this versus not online-only. It takes effort to make a game require a constant server connection or connect to a DRM versus having it not need to. If you don't want to go through the hassle of patching it, then simply don't make it online-only in the first place. Every other game bought with a perpetual license could connect to servers sometimes but was more then functional without a connection, except for online multiplayer. And when so many games are designed to be playable without online anyways, it just makes this shit a much bigger slap to the face. We're buying these games to own them. If they want to take our perpetual licenses away from us, then they need to change the game's pricing to either be subscription-based like WoW or make it F2P. Otherwise, that's on them.

A lot of the problems you bring up Faust are self-inflicted. Not that game companies don't already have a shit-ton of money anyways, but the reason why sometimes companies are starting to lose some of it is simply because they don't feel like making good games anymore. They just focus on preying on consumers by rushing games out the door and overpricing it and finding other scummy tactics. And when a game they make is actually good for once, that goodness gets ruined immediately when they start adding microtransactions, battle passes and FOMO to it.

They need to start listening to the fans again, not the investors. They keep failing because people are getting fed up with shady practices. That's entirely their own fault. And what does make it annoying sometimes too is a publisher/parent company will tell a development studio to make a game and do it a certain way, development studio doesn't want to because it goes against what studio stands for, executives force them to do it anyway, and when the game comes out and flops because it's full of predatory practices or got rushed by the executives, then they blame the developers and shut down the studio, rendering them jobless. It's not their fault that you keep trying to find ways to prey on consumers.

Not to mention as well, developers are tired of some of this stuff too. With other games that get delisted, they're still playable, doesn't matter of it's a year later or 50 years later. Developers are tired of spending time and effort into developing a game when at the snap of someone's fingers, it instantly and permanently becomes lost media. I know I wouldn't want to develop a game that would be forgotten just like that, against me and everyone else's will. A developer of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 can put their own game into a PS2 and still play it, long after the game was pulled from store shelves. A developer of The Crew can't do that.

If companies don't want to put effort into making the game remain playable, then that's where Goal #3 listed above comes in; provide people with the tools necessary to make the game playable themselves. If a game becomes delisted and the servers get shut down, give the community the tools and source code. You're not selling nor making money off of it anymore anyways, so give players what they need to keep the game going for those who owned it, without you having to need any further intervention. There's some games out there to this day that still have private hosting and peer-to-peer anyways, and some have been doing it since the 90's. Why should that ever change?

Overall, companies are taking more effort to come up with excuses than to just... make good fucking games again and care about the community. Investors don't give a shit, so stop listening to them.

 

[Faust]

The problem Faust is that it takes a lot of effort to deliberately make a game online-only like this versus not online-only. It takes effort to make a game require a constant server connection or connect to a DRM versus having it not need to.

It does, but (in some cases) it can also reduce the amount of work needed in other areas, such as AI for enemies. It's always a case of trade-offs. Let's not forget that those problems often come with advantages too - the pay-to-win model, horrible as it is, is a frequent offender. Keeping up with the Joneses only works if there are Joneses around with whom to keep up.

I'm not saying that gaming companies shouldn't be making this effort. It would make for a better game in the long run. What I'm saying is I think it would do more harm than good to try and enact such rules retroactively.

If you don't want to go through the hassle of patching it, then simply don't make it online-only in the first place.

All games these days feature constant patches. It's a model not dissimilar from the 'Early Access' one. Get the game out soon, even if it's a fishy buggy mess, and you can start monetising it earlier, plus if the bugs aren't too bad you can get some goodwill back from the community when you fix them later. This can also help with companies like Sony / PlayStation who won't allow early access on their stores - No Man's Sky got away with it pretty well. I mean, I'd love to see a day when post-release patches aren't needed, but I think that would be unrealistic.

They keep failing because people are getting fed up with shady practices. That's entirely their own fault.

I reckon an awful lot of them manage to succeed in spite of, or in some cases because of shady practices. Hopefully people are getting wiser to it, because I totally agree that it's bad for the industry. Frankly though, I see people gripe a lot but still hand over their cash anyway if the game is good enough. If I see a game using, i.e., loot boxes, but the game is good and I want to play it, I'm not going to boycott it out of spite, I just won't buy the loot boxes.

There totally IS a problem with preserving historic video games though, and some people are working to try and resolve that issue. To that end, what I'd like to see is your Goal #3 - rather than some backbreaking fines that could end up punishing the wrong people - is a rule that says a live-service game that has its servers taken off-line should become legally open source so that fans could maintain it.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

Yeah, and that kind of pisses me off, too... no matter how bad a game is and no matter how much people complain, those same people always decided to pre-order the ultra-deluxe edition of whatever comes next with practically no questions asked. Companies continue to do this stuff primarily because people will buy into it anyways. The best thing to do anymore is vote with your wallet and nobody does. I mean hell, with Ubisoft, they've been making some pretty shitty games for quite a while now, or have been using scummy practices for quite a while.

Like... I've had Ubisoft blacklisted from my shopping list for a decade, with The Crew 1 being the last game I ever purchased from them. Ever since a lot of companies started doing stupid shit, I blacklisted them ages ago, and all I can ever think of is "what's your excuse?" I mean Christ, I knew the day that Modern Warfare III got announced it was going to be bad straight from the beginning. There was a billion red flags showcasing why. It comes out, it's bad, but then all the CoD fanboys basically thought that Activision Blizzard could do no wrong and literally went so far as to send death threats and doxxing to anyone who had genuine issues with the game. Like how the campaign was poorly made and how the game was rushed and released in such a sorry state. Same with DICE's Battlefield 2042. God, what a shit show that game was. You can always tell from the day it's announced whether a game will be good or bad, yet people always seem so shocked when a game is shit, even when a company already has an existing and heavy track record of doing the same shit in the past. It's kind of like the whole "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me", there's gotta be a point in time where eventually everyone just goes "enough is enough". Same with the "patch it later" excuse, I don't understand why companies always want to be so quick to rush a game out the door for money instead of waiting until it's done. If you buy a game at launch and it's in an unplayable state, you're at the mercy of the developer/publisher for it to get fixed and updated, and you know, there's no guarantee that it might even get updated in the first place. But more importantly, how about instead I get the complete product I paid for in the first place instead of waiting for it to get fixed? What happened to the days of buying a game on Xbox 360 or PS3, or hell, maybe even the early days of Xbox One and PS4, where what you see is what you get, a complete feature-complete and tested game? Sure, there might be a couple tiny bugs here or there that quickly get ironed out with a hotfix, but it wasn't such a common thing where every AAA game you buy is literally unplayable at launch because it's just so broken almost beyond repair. If a game gets delayed, then it gets delayed. I'd rather wait longer for release if it means I'm getting a finished product. I think one of the last times I've seen a mess this big since the recent decade was probably way back during that Driv3rgate scandal. And we all know how much of a dick move that was, Atari.

Or hell, I don't know if you know about the whole scam of The Day Before that went down. That game was delayed time and time again but since the beginning always had so many red flags. From several allegations over time, to all the false promises they kept making, to the stolen and copy-pasted assets, and despite delaying repeatedly, it still came out super unfinished and completely different to what everyone thought it would be. They advertised over the years as it being this big zombie MMO sort of thing in an open-world. Constantly using pre-rendered gameplay for the trailers and showcases, never showing us actual gameplay. One of the trailers copied a Call Of Duty trailer to a tee, everything from camera angles, lighting, you name it. Then they finally show us gameplay after years of waiting and it's an asset flip full of free and purchased assets from the asset store. The game itself looks dead with almost no AI besides some pre-scripted sequences they made for the showcase. It looked terrible. Then the game comes out and it's not the large open MMO they promised, but it's instead the most generic extraction shooter imaginable on tiny maps. An even bigger slap to the face was that right before release in their Discord they said #notanextractionshooter, trying to downplay the situation. For $40 dollars you got a game that was an asset flip with no original art, models or probably even sound effects. Even the gameplay features were pre-made assets, like the inventory system and gunplay. It's almost like they made nothing in-house, not even code.

Despite all the red flags that game had up until launch, people still bought it anyways, and tried to defend the practices by saying they can patch it or update it later. The game was the most barebones thing imaginable despite years of delays, and had hardly any effort put into it, even despite being $40. And then not even 24 hours later or something, FNTASTIC immediately delists the game and gives up instead of giving the game time, trying to run with the money. Mytona, their parent company, offered refunds, but not everyone got them, and FNTASTIC still made a profit.

It's a huge thing, there's a great video from Matt McMuscles talking about it. It's insane how deep the rabbit hole goes.

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouLWhYdNtp4

People just never seem to look into the past or future and only care about the present. I was talking to Punji about this a while back and I told him that this sort of stuff is why I'm holding off on buying Grand Theft Auto VI. Everyone's so hyped about it saying it's going to revolutionize the industry, but me personally, I don't think that'll be the case.

• GTA Online is heavily monetized.
  • Despite GTA still holding the world record with insane numbers of sales and making so much money, it's not enough and they keep finding more ways to milk the crap out of the playerbase.
  • Shark cards to buy in-game money.
  • Overpriced content and underpaid rewards to encourage people to buy said shark cards.
    • They'll add a new car in the latest update, it could be the most generic and boring sedan imaginable, but because it's part of the latest update, it costs GTA$6,300,000 for no apparent reason.
    • The Imponte Dukes was a base game vehicle in the game since launch. Later on, they added a Beater Dukes, which is a crappier, worn version of the vehicle. For some reason, this version costs more than the regular Dukes. Why?
  • GTA+ Subscription
    • This is unnecessary, they already had shark cards and were already making bank on the game, now they wanted players to pay them monthly too?
    • The existing base game content and vehicles were locked off behind this new subscription, to incentivize players to subscribe.
    • One of the "rewards" as a GTA+ subscriber is access to member-exclusive shark cards. Basically, "thanks for giving us money every month, as a reward, here's more ways for you to give us money".
• We never got our GTA V singleplayer DLC
  • And no, I'm not counting the Online DLC. They always implied since the beginning it was going to be for singleplayer.
• They keep pulling a Bethesda and rereleasing the same game numerous times so they can make more money, especially off of new and returning Online players.
  • "Why did I move here? I guess it was the weather."
• Rockstar Games is owned by Take-Two Interactive, one of the scummiest corporations out there next to Embracer Group.
  • Regardless of whether it's Rockstar's or Take-Two's fault for why things are terrible, at the end of the day, somebody's got to start taking responsibility for these actions eventually, and by buying stuff, my money goes to both of them anyways.
• The GTA Trilogy: The Defective Edition
  • Rockstar easily could've properly remastered these games themselves, they certainly had the budget for it too, instead they outsourced it to a bunch of amateur developers.
  • The remaster was half-assed by using AI upscaling on existing textures which led to a lot of texture issues and incorrect and/or illegible text.
  • The studio behind the remaster was already infamous for their mobile and 360/PS3 ports of the trilogy.
  • Despite porting to a new engine, they somehow brought over bugs from the mobile and 360/PS3 ports and didn't fix them.
  • The game looked like utter shit and some features were part of the base Unreal Engine or Unreal Marketplace, such as the lighting or day-night cycle.
  • The trailers were made to deceive people, showing as little of the game as possible so we couldn't see how bad it was.
  • It got updated a couple times, but years later it STILL looks and plays like shit.
  • The original Trilogy was delisted, yet modders made the original Trilogy look better than the Definitive Edition a long time ago, and they did it for free, long before the Definitive version came to fruition. Maybe they should've hired modders instead to make it, instead of a studio that already had a shitty track record.
  • When the game came out, it relied on a connection to the Rockstar Games Social Club DRM. Due to some issues, the first few days people couldn't even obtain access to the game that they bought.
  • Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick claimed that "they don't just port games", and also claimed that if they're going to remaster a game, they'll do it with some TLC. Instead, what we got was something made to make a quick buck, because Take-Two/Rockstar is a cash cow.
  • The game was so broken, unstable, and ugly as fuck at launch that it's actually amazing it managed to even remotely pass QA testing.
• Red Dead Online was completely abandoned because they thought GTA Online was more profitable instead of giving RDO the love it deserved.
• Most if not all of the original team of Rockstar left the studio once Red Dead Redemption 2 came out. The people who helped make the original Rockstar games so amazing in the first place aren't even working at Rockstar anymore.
  • I don't think many people understand this. GTA VI is being made by completely different people, and there's no guarantee that they'll be able to carry on the HUGE and revolutionary legacy the original team had with previous games.

So yeah, people are going to say GTA VI will be the greatest game of all time, but I'm holding off on that. Rockstar may have made some great games in the past, but I've seen where they are now, and I've seen where they're heading. If they want my trust and respect, they need to earn it. If people buy/preorder GTA VI and it turns out to be a huge fluke, they'll have nobody to blame but themselves for being so quick to give in.

Like Ross Scott said, I yearn for the day when we buy games, not because of shady practices or because a game was a cash grab, but rather on the simple fact of whether we like the game or not.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

It does, but (in some cases) it can also reduce the amount of work needed in other areas, such as AI for enemies. It's always a case of trade-offs. Let's not forget that those problems often come with advantages too - the pay-to-win model, horrible as it is, is a frequent offender. Keeping up with the Joneses only works if there are Joneses around with whom to keep up.

I'm not saying that gaming companies shouldn't be making this effort. It would make for a better game in the long run. What I'm saying is I think it would do more harm than good to try and enact such rules retroactively.


All games these days feature constant patches. It's a model not dissimilar from the 'Early Access' one. Get the game out soon, even if it's a fishy buggy mess, and you can start monetising it earlier, plus if the bugs aren't too bad you can get some goodwill back from the community when you fix them later. This can also help with companies like Sony / PlayStation who won't allow early access on their stores - No Man's Sky got away with it pretty well. I mean, I'd love to see a day when post-release patches aren't needed, but I think that would be unrealistic.


I reckon an awful lot of them manage to succeed in spite of, or in some cases because of shady practices. Hopefully people are getting wiser to it, because I totally agree that it's bad for the industry. Frankly though, I see people gripe a lot but still hand over their cash anyway if the game is good enough. If I see a game using, i.e., loot boxes, but the game is good and I want to play it, I'm not going to boycott it out of spite, I just won't buy the loot boxes.

There totally IS a problem with preserving historic video games though, and some people are working to try and resolve that issue. To that end, what I'd like to see is your Goal #3 - rather than some backbreaking fines that could end up punishing the wrong people - is a rule that says a live-service game that has its servers taken off-line should become legally open source so that fans could maintain it.

So overall, yeah, I agree. There's a lot of factors involved with this stuff but taking action is still needed and it doesn't justify letting things slide. Ross always uses the "boiling frog" argument with stuff. We gradually get more and more okay with things and it gets worse and worse, and by the time we want to do something, it's too little too late. We need to nip this stuff in the bud as soon as possible, in fact we probably should've a while ago.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

UK Parliament has made a statement and responded to the petition!

Screenshot

Captured with Lightshot

prnt.sc

The full response:

Those selling games must comply with UK consumer law. They must provide clear information and allow continued access to games if sold on the understanding that they will remain playable indefinitely.

The Government recognises recent concerns raised by video games users regarding the long-term operability of purchased products.

Consumers should be aware that there is no requirement in UK law compelling software companies and providers to support older versions of their operating systems, software or connected products. There may be occasions where companies make commercial decisions based on the high running costs of maintaining older servers for video games that have declining user bases. However, video games sellers must comply with existing consumer law, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA) and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs).

The CPRs require information to consumers to be clear and correct, and prohibit commercial practices which through false information or misleading omissions cause the average consumer to make a different choice, for example, to purchase goods or services they would not otherwise have purchased. The regulations prohibit commercial practices which omit or hide information which the average consumer needs to make an informed choice, and prohibits traders from providing material information in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner. If consumers are led to believe that a game will remain playable indefinitely for certain systems, despite the end of physical support, the CPRs may require that the game remains technically feasible (for example, available offline) to play under those circumstances.

The CPRs are enforced by Trading Standards and the Competition and Markets Authority. If consumers believe that there has been a breach of these regulations, they should report the matter in the first instance to the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133 (www.citizensadvice.org.uk). People living in Scotland should contact Advice Direct Scotland on 0808 164 6000 (www.consumeradvice.scot). Both helplines offer a free service advising consumers on their rights and how best to take their case forward. The helplines will refer complaints to Trading Standards services where appropriate. Consumers can also pursue private redress through the courts where a trader has provided misleading information on a product.

The CRA gives consumers important rights when they make a contract with a trader for the supply of digital content. This includes requiring digital content to be of satisfactory quality, fit for a particular purpose and as described by the seller. It can be difficult and expensive for businesses to maintain dedicated support for old software, particularly if it needs to interact with modern hardware, apps and websites, but if software is being offered for sale that is not supported by the provider, then this should be made clear.

If the digital content does not meet these quality rights, the consumer has the right to a repair or replacement of the digital content. If a repair or replacement is not possible, or does not fix the problem, then the consumer will be entitled to some money back or a price reduction which can be up to 100% of the cost of the digital content. These rights apply to intangible digital content like computer software or a PC game, as well as digital content in a tangible form like a physical copy of a video game. The CRA has a time limit of up to six years after a breach of contract during which a consumer can take legal action.

The standards outlined above apply to digital content where there is a contractual right of the trader or a third party to modify or update the digital content. In practice, this means that a trader or third party can upgrade, fix, enhance and improve the features of digital content so long as it continues to match any description given by the trader and continues to conform with any pre-contract information including main characteristics, functionality and compatibility provided by the trader, unless varied by express agreement.

Consumers should also be aware that while there is a statutory right for goods (including intangible digital content) to be of a satisfactory quality, that will only be breached if they are not of the standard which a reasonable person would consider to be satisfactory, taking into account circumstances including the price and any description given. For example, a manufacturer’s support for a mobile phone is likely to be withdrawn as they launch new models. It will remain usable but without, for example, security updates, and over time some app developers may decide to withdraw support.

-Department Culture, Media & Sport

Thanks to everyone who signed the petition! Now to get it to 100,000 signatures!

 

[Faust]

That statement is worthless. The EULA of any online game will contain disclaimers noting that that the game may not be available indefinitely.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

I don't know how it is in the UK but in some countries they have "fine print" laws.

 

[unknownaspect]

Whether anything comes of this in terms of UK law or not, I do hope the noise generated will encourage more people to be concious of what they are buying into with these games. Companies like Ubisoft do it for profit and I do hope the backlash against them is strong enough to hit them in their pockets.

I do hope we reach the 100,000 signatures to trigger the debate, that will mean so much more than that statement.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

Whether anything comes of this in terms of UK law or not, I do hope the noise generated will encourage more people to be concious of what they are buying into with these games. Companies like Ubisoft do it for profit and I do hope the backlash against them is strong enough to hit them in their pockets.

I do hope we reach the 100,000 signatures to trigger the debate, that will mean so much more than that statement.

EULAs suck too because most of the time, you can't even read and accept a EULA until after you already bought it and installed it.

I've been looking into physical copies of this game and been noticing some things. A lot of copies internationally don't even say directly regarding internet on the box. In most cases, this game is sold on store shelves right next to all the other regular games that don't require a connection. What's worse, is most game cases will at best only mention a required connection in some very small text on the back of the box where you barely see it. And usually it's pretty vague, only saying it's required to only install it or to access multiplayer features.

They know for a fact that the average consumer does not look at that stuff because it's super vague and super fine print so you barely see it. It's stupid. I think I even saw a Russian copy that doesn't say anything about internet required pretty much anywhere on it.

 

[Faust]

EULAs suck too because most of the time, you can't even read and accept a EULA until after you already bought it and installed it.

They're largely unenforceable too, that's why they can't stop people trading and selling physical copies of the games to each other, but if the detail is in there, and the EULA is public (like, for example, Fortnite or Apex Legends) I expect that any court of law would accept it as fair notice to the end user that the game's servers may not be permanent.

It would be interesting to see such a case actually tested in a court of law, but let's also not forget that these are companies with deep pockets and fancy lawyers.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

They're largely unenforceable too, that's why they can't stop people trading and selling physical copies of the games to each other, but if the detail is in there, and the EULA is public (like, for example, Fortnite or Apex Legends) I expect that any court of law would accept it as fair notice to the end user that the game's servers may not be permanent.

Yeah I never understood why so many people are quick to accept ToSs and EULAs as the law of the land when it really isn't. Besides, what's even the point in having consumer rights and stuff if all it takes is you signing agreements to just about everything you use? Like if it's that easy for companies to weasel out of it then it makes consumer rights redundant.

 

[unknownaspect]

Yeah, it would be beneficial to have games clearly state that an internet connection is required. I have come across physical game cases that fail to do that and I've once returned a game because of it.

Consumer awareness is easily needs to be a big focus. If that means slapping a big fat sticker on each box and a big fat warning on digital store pages, I'd be up for that. There is a mentality among people that you buy a game, complete it and then there never being a desire to play it again. I had friends who would never have more than a handful of games in their collection because they'd complete them and then take them back. Sure, people wouldn't be able to get money back if games are shut down like with The Crew, but there's plenty of folks out there who see games as a disposable item and it boggles my mind.

 

[Jack Foxtrot]

Mhm. Like I said, developers are tired of it too. A developer for Ridge Racer Type 4 can still put a disc in their PS1 and play their game. A developer for The Crew can't do the same with their game. It's lost media.

Hell, a lot of people say too that if they knew the exact date that a game would shut down, it would determine whether or not they'd purchase a game. EULAs always say it can be at any point in the future, but that could mean anything. You could buy a game and it could be shut down in a week. Or that game could last 10 years. You never know, it's basically up in the air.

Regardless, online-only is still bullshit. Almost all of these online-only games can be easily played solo so it seems unnecessary. You could play a large scale MMO and never see any signs of player life for the entire time you're playing, did you need a constant internet connection for that? With The Crew, I barely saw anyone, in my hundreds of hours I probably at most only saw 2 or 3 people at a time. Though that had to do more with the sectored map. But I still played the entire campaign solo.

 

[unknownaspect]

Indeed, online-only is a bullshit concept for the vast majority of games out there. Having played a few MMOs over the years, the bulk of the experience can be enjoyed without needed a connection, given that plenty of quests etc can be handled independantly, with cooperation with others only occuring where is forced through game design. Even multiplayer-only shooters could be set up with bots (of which I would hope would be smarter nowadays, given advances in AI) to allow people to experience the game in some regard without needing the servers.

Online gaming has its place, no doubt, but it should be supplementry and not the norm. I'd rather not have companies dictate to me when I can and cannot play a game.