I'm not going to lie, if I was a Chinese spy, I would absolutely troll my American counterpart by flooding my internet suggestions with Chinese porn for zero reason, just for typing "fuck China".
The campaign to stop companies from killing games.
- Thread starter Jack Foxtrot
- Start date
If you live in the EU, I thought I'd share this. This could be a massive win for everybody.
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1fyden8/the_eu_is_drafting_model_laws_that_can_help_make/
And a reminder to sign the EU citizen's initiative petition if you haven't already.
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1fyden8/the_eu_is_drafting_model_laws_that_can_help_make/
And a reminder to sign the EU citizen's initiative petition if you haven't already.
UK petition is up again!
petition.parliament.uk
Petition: Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold
The government should update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling video games (and related game assets / features) they have already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them. We seek this as a statutory consumer right.
petition.parliament.uk
Here we go again!UK petition is up again!
Petition: Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold
The government should update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling video games (and related game assets / features) they have already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them. We seek this as a statutory consumer right.
Attachments
Yeah well, we had to lol. The other one got cancelled (as well as all other active UK petitions at the time) due to the upcoming British election. But now that's over we had to open a new one. I don't know if it'll have as much traction as the last one though.
The UK petition has received a response, unfortunately it doesn't answer the petition, and is mostly copy-pasted from the previous response. The same response that, might I add, the Petitions Committee found unsatisfactory, and asked for a better response (which we didn't get due to the election canceling active petitions).
Ross had made a statement on the matter.
View: https://youtu.be/cI2G4xLBVkY?si=S6UK8oxIFbHjTAf0
Let's focus on continuing to sign, hopefully we can skip this department and directly reach parliament about the matter.
Ross had made a statement on the matter.
View: https://youtu.be/cI2G4xLBVkY?si=S6UK8oxIFbHjTAf0
Let's focus on continuing to sign, hopefully we can skip this department and directly reach parliament about the matter.
Jack, I hate to necro the thread on you...
But I've gotten some disturbing rumor word that with SKG being seriously considered in the EU, some companies are retaliating now.
In particular, I'm told Unity nuked some of their networking protocols and it wound up breaking the online servers for one of the games I used to play eons ago - Moon Hunters. That game's reduced to Steam Remote Play for online play. And it also leaves me wondering if other companies are doing the same in response to the initiative.
((EDIT: I'll be exact with a response I heard to this, too: "Unity has provided alternative solutions, including Netcode for GameObjects and Unity Gaming Services, as well as third-party options like Mirror". Any significance in that? Like any of them being corporate pay-gated walls?))
Can you confirm any connection of this sort going on and whether there's active retaliation involved here (and that this notion of retaliation isn't just coked-up hearsay like so many damn things on the Internet are)? I had this nagging feeling the companies were not going to play ball if it wasn't going to be on exactly their terms, but I get the feeling we're regressing back to the days of player-hosted servers that require knowing the IP address (which was the thing back in the '90s) if there's really something like this happening.
But I've gotten some disturbing rumor word that with SKG being seriously considered in the EU, some companies are retaliating now.
In particular, I'm told Unity nuked some of their networking protocols and it wound up breaking the online servers for one of the games I used to play eons ago - Moon Hunters. That game's reduced to Steam Remote Play for online play. And it also leaves me wondering if other companies are doing the same in response to the initiative.
((EDIT: I'll be exact with a response I heard to this, too: "Unity has provided alternative solutions, including Netcode for GameObjects and Unity Gaming Services, as well as third-party options like Mirror". Any significance in that? Like any of them being corporate pay-gated walls?))
Can you confirm any connection of this sort going on and whether there's active retaliation involved here (and that this notion of retaliation isn't just coked-up hearsay like so many damn things on the Internet are)? I had this nagging feeling the companies were not going to play ball if it wasn't going to be on exactly their terms, but I get the feeling we're regressing back to the days of player-hosted servers that require knowing the IP address (which was the thing back in the '90s) if there's really something like this happening.
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Oh yeah, companies are definitely retaliating. The biggest thing is that a major video game lobbying group in Europe (led by EA, Activision, Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, you get the idea) has made a statement in response to SKG surpassing the Citizens' Initiative threshold (and by the way, it also surpassed the threshold for the UK petition as well).
www.videogameseurope.eu
Basically, their response is bullshit. And everybody knows that. In fact, a couple members of the EU parliament have now spoken up in support of the campaign, which is fantastic to see. Companies are literally shitting their britches right now. I never thought I'd live to see the day where companies start to show fear.
Since the initiative passed though, a couple things are happening:
Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE
We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when...
www.videogameseurope.eu
Basically, their response is bullshit. And everybody knows that. In fact, a couple members of the EU parliament have now spoken up in support of the campaign, which is fantastic to see. Companies are literally shitting their britches right now. I never thought I'd live to see the day where companies start to show fear.
Since the initiative passed though, a couple things are happening:
- Companies are now trying to change their EULAs to affirm once more that you don't own anything. People have brought up Ubisoft's EULA now saying you must uninstall and destroy all of your games after support ends, but this isn't a recent change, it's been part of their EULA since 2023 if I remember rightly.
- EA announced the shutdown of Anthem, and it's another The Crew situation where it was a game sold like any other but will be left completely unplayable as well as have everyone's licenses revoked. Doesn't matter if it wasn't a popular enough game, people still deserve to enjoy it in at least some sort of way.
- Yes, I can confirm that Unity is making some backend changes, and as you said, they've completely nuked networking protocols. Moon Hunters have not only confirmed it, but they're not the only ones who are having issues. Not all games are affected though, of course. Some go through external services, and some go through Valve's Steamworks API and/or peer-to-peer. This isn't the only thing Unity has nuked. Unity has also made a recent decision to completely nuke local projects. If you're developing a project in Unity, you are now REQUIRED to develop it entirely on Unity's cloud. Local project storage has been disabled.