Louis Rossmann just made 2 big videos talking about Stop Destroying VideoGames initiative explaining many things about it and his opinion:

Part 1 (25 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dibEZ9-Psss

Part 2 (1 hour)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7c1DjeQbI0

And an interview with Ross Scott (3 hours):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd2_FvvqyR0

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For those that do not know, Louis Rossmann has been fighting big lobby companies for a while focusing on Open Source and user data protection, user/consumer freedom of choice, defending the 'Right to Repair' movement, 'FLOSS', 'FOSS' movement, small and inventive companies and so on.

The point is not to look after devpubs. It's to look after consumers. Whether it's on a doomsday clock doesn't matter. License owners who bought the game should always be able to play it even if they made a shitty decision to buy a live service game in the first place - just like offline SP games. Just because the distribution or licensing rights to automakers have ended doesn't mean that it can't be played 20, 30, 40+ years in the future.

Consumers should be telling devpubs how things should be run properly since these are the end users who will still be using these products year after they've been discontinued. And failing that over multiple 'good faith' attempts, then politicians, regulators, and the legislation needs to get involved as a last resort. Especially when these big corporations are making more than dozens of millions in revenue and profit every year. Whatever privileges afforded by physical copies of console games (i.e., playable years after abandonment) should be the same for digital copies too.

Because "consumers" have done such a great job of advocating for their rights in the past, right?

Firstly, there's the term, consumer. A degraded version of customer, which was closer to patronage. A consumer demands to be right in all matters, even when factually, physically, or scientifically incorrect. Secondarily, most of them would be happy with someone giving them orders and/or telling them what to think.

Thirdly, what exactly is the individual supposed to do about a company such as Ubisoft, whose reach is far greater than most people, and whose employ often has state backing as well?

Just that if I'm able to raise these matters as untrained lay, it stands to witness the destruction of the initiative at the hands of professionals as it enters dissemination.

Yep. One thing we can be sure of now is that the aaaaAaaaAAAAAaa industry will just start lobbying harder to pull the correct strings and steer this in the direction they want.

Didn't read all the posts but although I don't think people habbits should had the need to be "regulated", alchool, drugs, cigarettes, gambling, etc, all ended up being regulated one way or another, for better or for worse. i.e. regulation usually come via taxes.



I believe I already made a similar post on the older thread but also didn't believe the Right to Repair movement would go anywhere. Isn't anywhere perfect but is a start, perhaps the SKG initiative is also a start for something better down the line.

That said, still not think SKG is going to win any meaningful c̶a̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ consumer rightsdown the road, and, any changes might be actually a trigger to pivot towards something far worse than we have at the moment.

Distribution of intellectual properties has been regulated for centuries now, by copyright laws (defending the rights of the content creator) and ownership laws (defending the right of consumers). It has existed for so long that it is pretty much ingrained in our psyche at this point as a natural way of doing business for sold goods. It is very intuitive.

If they didn't want stronger laws regulating the industry, they shouldn't have messed with ownership to the extend that they did.

At this point, industry overshoots very much dictate regulations. It's either that or decades from now, we will have lost countless games and piracy will not be a crime (after have people have been burned enough by the gaming industry).

1) I don't know about you, but I don't have time or mental energy for lingual semantics.

2) Consumers can be incorrect on issues, no doubt. The point of regulations is to protect them from market failures and negative externalities, which is where we seem headed with all of these abandoned live service games despite consumers wanting the opposite.

If the climate changes one day culturally, economically, corporate responsibility, etc., then society can deregulate it. At least use it as a bargaining chip to signal to them that they should be building in end-of-life plans in their projects and other pro-consumer actions anyway because people are not happy with how this has been trending.

3) Fight fire with fire. Individuals can't do anything by themselves. And the free market isn't working as how it's supposed to, so that's why regulations have to come in. The video game industry is already lobbying policymakers, no doubt like Sony, ABK, etc. on US antitrust laws. However, I don't see anything else improving in the meanwhile and nothing else has worked so far.

Like many others here, I personally could hardly give a shit about the fate of these live service games since I don't benefit, mass market consumers deserve their stupidity, and yada yada. But I do see the value of starting to de-DRMifying everything and restoration of other pro-consumer behaviours that can see some other gains elsewhere. There has been overall an erosion of consumer practices in past years in the name of chasing profits for shareholders and I don't know when consumers will actually stand up for themselves and do something about it.

Totally agree with you but also agree:

What still puzzles me the most, is that in this day and age, I rarelly see GOG stated as a alternative to actually owning videogames whenever the discussion is brought upon. Be it a random Youtuber, Reddit or whatever it's cool these days. Look no further than SKG initiative.
On a personal note, I did watch some youtube about videogames, say, 10 to 5 years ago. In any place that I watch there was no mentioning GOG other than a brief remark, ranging from popular channels like ModernVintageGamer to Linux/Open Source/free software advocates. PC Videogames= Steam!
I came to GOG to get a old game from Google search. After a few months, saw a random youtube comment that actually mentioned GOG installers and that's why I stay.

GOG is far from perfect and it's sufucating push towards Galaxy is less than ideal, disregarding there's no actual visible mention of GOG best feature anywhere, even when they actually burry the Installers the best they can.
That said, by far the best option I'm aware of to the issue in discussion.

Well, it depends on the game, if its a simple action game I wouldn't care that much about the code being copyrighted, but I know people love to create mods like crazy, in almost any game that becomes popular, so if you refuse to be a least a little more flexible with the public I can assure you that the game won't be as successful than originally thought.

And what's unreasonable about it is that it is simply an overreach:
Why shouldn't the company put any (legal) measure on their software they like in order to protect themselves? It's their product, nobody is forced to buy their crap after all. Their house, their rules.

But once it's unavailable and its support ends, this type of control over the product becomes an absolute sham.
Don't wanna put in the resources to keep your product running anymore? Then simply handover the key to the user.

I'm so glad this will probably succeded.
Frankly I've found much more opposition here on gog (where the users should be much more pro-consumer than average) than any other community and I find it very depressing because it means that this community is not really against DRM but only "against the system" (which is like saying "I'm part of an elite that has understood everything").
I'm not like that at all.
I really am against DRM and any other anti-consumer practice. That's why on top of only buying DRM-free games (not only on Gog) I also support anything that will make things better for the majority of people that still do not understand what DRM is.
That's why even with all its flaws I support the European Union and I want everyone in Europe to think themselves not only as part of their own nation but also Europeans.
I'm not just Italian, I feel European and I want the European Union to do everything to make things better for everybody.
As much as politics can disappoint me sometimes, I want to believe that there are people who represent me. I vote for those who I think can make things better.
And when I see what happens in countries like the USA or Russia I often find myself thinking that Europe with all its defects is 100 times more attentive to its citizens.

I don't know if the initiative will actually pass or if there are a lot of fake signatures and therefore it won't pass, but I really hope that it passes and that things improve so much as to convince even the skeptics that Europe is going in the right direction.

I'm anti-DRM, and I know this initiative will not abolish drm completely, but it will still be a step in the right direction. It's not pro-DRM like some here said, it is DRM-neutral at worst... but I'm sure it will have some positive effect on DRM removal because some companies will decide that the end of support will be DRM removal.

I will still not support those games but I'm still glad we as humanity will be able to preserve more games.
And I'm sure a lot of companies, since they actually prepared before a drm-free patch, they will try to profit it even before end support so it will be a bost for DRM-free releases and that will help getting more DRM-free games and also more players that will know what DRM is.

Finally, consumers (even the unaware ones, of which we have all been part and I bet we all have old purchases blocked by DRM and we ended up here on Gog for this very reason) pay for a product and have the sacrosanct right to use it without time limits (unless these limits are clear before the purchase and not simply hidden in the EULA and without clear limitations but simply "when we feel like it").
Consumers have the right to buy a license (which is the product I'm talking about) that is not unfair. The software is sold under license because otherwise anyone could reproduce it and resell an infinite number of copies and make a profit, but this does not mean that the license should limit the use of the purchased copy in a completely arbitrary way, there must be limits.
If you sell me the license of a game and not the rental of the same for a limited time, the latter must give me ownership of my copy forever.

I will always fight for a fair system. I leave the legal quibbles to someone else. I think it is important to interpret the rules and even go against the law (to change it) if the latter is wrong.

Right now in Europe it is actually a grey area, but Europe actually say EULAs formulated in this way could be illegal, and that is why the initiative was born, and that is why I think it will be successful. It fills a legislative void by making clear what European citizens want, namely a fair law that protects them from corporation that decided to exploiting the lack of a law to do something that may already be illegal and for sure it is not right at all.

If this initiative is successful, it is also possible that others will arise to regulate in a fairer way the problem of DRM that prevents the making of private copying and who knows, maybe in the future it will be possible to prevent this injustice too.

Those here on gog who have said they are against it are playing the corporations' game, basically they are shooting themselves in the foot, basically those who are against the initiative are making similar arguments to the users on steam who defend drm (maybe even denuvo). Realize what you have become and go back to being those who that distant day discovered the DRM-free alternative and the pro-consumer philosophy.

Because... wait for it... leaving DRM in games then quietly going out of business is exactly what's historically "killed more games" than anything else.

"But.. but... but... SKG means you can sue and threaten studios!"

This whole thing has developed a 'tunnel vision' obsession with games like The Crew made by a handful of Ubisoft / EA, etc, sized mega studios. It's blatantly obvious that no-one behind it has thought of - You won't know if a smaller game studio / self-publishing developer completely ignored any SKG preservation requirements until after it's too late to sue them in the event the reason they pull a game from the store is because they go out of business on the same day...

This is exactly why removing DRM isn't some "optional overreaching feature", it's literally the first step in preserving games. See virtually any 'Abandonware' site or source-port that applies 'NoCD's as a starting point to making them playable. People actually promoting leaving DRM in need to pull their heads out of the backsides and see the obvious "logic gap" - SKG only works against companies that remain in business forever. For smaller most at risk studios, eg, tiny self-publishing developers, even with SKG you'll still be left with a shit-load of broken games with abandoned DRM and a legal threat that's completely useless against defunct companies.

Hoping every single game developer & publisher remain in business forever so you can sue them in 30 years as some proclaimed substitute to removing the DRM when claiming to want to "preserve" games is 'naivety on steroids'.

Having a legal leverage can be a powerful tool to bend the industry. See Nintendo

And this guy called me a conspiracy theorist nutjob...
I'm no legal expert, but I'm quite sure simply going out of business doesn't save you from being sued.
In this one dimensional simplistic scenario that you've created here:
SKG would make an positive impact on anything that isn't a small, at risk studio.
While on small, at risk studios what exactly happens? Oh, it would stay the same as it is now. It would just be the status quo. The horror! That means by your own logic, it would make a positive impact overall then.
couldn't describe such an own goal better. Kudos
(apparently this forum does the Youtube comment thing of blacklisting absolutely ordinary words and phrases, since I needed to make tons of changes for this message to get even displayed here. So this is the point where I will probably stop writing here)

Nice but my guess is nothing will happen like more often than not. Reps will be like 'oh this shit again' before moving on to the next issue. Still good to get eyes on the issue I guess? I just wish something anything would happen. Life is boring.

Considering you spent the past week claiming "GOG has been putting DRM in their games" because you seem to be one of 'those people' who can only talk SKG up by talking DRM-Free down by inventing baseless claims of how 'broken' all DRM-Free games are (and received one moderator warning about), I'd day that's an objectively accurate description...

You certainly are no legal expert. You can't sue a company for civil redress issues (that aren't 'criminal law' crimes like embezzlement, etc) after they've gone out of business. See various examples of holiday companies going under where people have to claim with the credit card company to get their money back because there's no-one left to sue.