Good, let Rockstar, Ubisoft and others push hard against an initiative that has gotten quite a bit publicity by now and is under a fair amount of public scrutiny.

I want them to get all the publicity that they deserve.

They've dealt with worst publicity before nothing ever came of it, as others mentioned its always going to be a legal battle. In the end the once with the most finacial backing wins, heck Nintendo will easily throw there hat in also. Once people find something else to occupy their time public view will fade away also.

You do know this is the second time the exact same petition was placed in front of the UK Parliament? It doesn’t even require that many signatures. The first time was in May last year, and not much came of it, nor did it get much publicity. I think there was a small article on the BBC website, but that’s all I saw, at least.

It was around the same time another petition was submitted to Parliament, about how the footballs on road signs were incorrect and should be changed... those signs didn’t change either...

What’s really going to impact UBI et al isn’t something like this petition, it’s more likely something like the lawsuit currently ongoing in California, which has already had an effect even though it’s not finished yet.

They think it's pro-DRM because this campaign doesn't take an explicit anti-DRM stance, so it fails their purity test.

It's the same weird complexities a good chunk of vegans have, in that general improvements aren't a concern to them anymore. It's all about projecting their insecurities onto others by obsessing themselves with how their lifestyle differs from the rest.

Anyway: this petition will very probably succeed tomorrow already. Thanks to all the people who signed it :)

I haven't read through most of the rhetoric. What are they saying when this initiative forces live service games to have an end of life plan made for them when they're about to end services? Doesn't that extra financial and logistical burden discourage the live service model, the most malicious form of DRM?

I mean those games prob won't ever make it to GOG, but I'd think of it as a first step to 'de-DRMifying' everything. Big complex problems are usually solved with multi-pronged solutions and the people overall still keep choosing Steam and other DRM platforms over GOG, resulting in clear market failure. Consumer re-education hasn't worked much at all. Regulation might be the only catalyst that gets the ball rolling.

1 this is the EU ONLY so Australia, Canada and the US need not apply
2 the outcome doesn't really matter as much as the PR side of things
a company that makes an online only game is really only looking for a quick buck... the fack they have a list of peoples names and locations is what they really want from the game and if they end/ kill the game the backlash cost more in the long term than what allowing gamers to keep playing would cost

this is the actual real life result because the same company that started all this now wants to make a sequel

3 reguardless Gog dropped the ball on this one... could not be assed is the clear take away we get from their efforts

There's bigger logistical rakes to step on before even considering the logistics of "always online" deactivation plans. I doubt any company worth any salt would want to pay dividends to the Player's Association(s), logos, teams, and more just to keep an obsolete roster of stats & appearances that nobody cares about.

Every single numbered uniform on a playing field has a cost. An absurdly high cost that even salaries of people paid to run amok around a field and feign injuries aside, could best be applied elsewhere.

And situations like that, I'm not sure if they were, have been, or intend to be addressed by the initiative.

As I pointed out in my opening post, and I'm frankly unsure if anyone managed to directly address, if a game contains a Proper Noun of a Known Entity (Brand, Persons, Place, Thing and more!), then it is automatically on a death clock, because frankly put, there's literally nothing going to stop a property owner from withdrawing.

Oh, you want to keep playing this game that has a Ford Fiesta in it? [HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO] Too bad, there was an unforeseen safety recall and Ford wants to erase any evidence of the Fiesta existing. That's an absurd scenario. An easier one would be that they want to redesign a major line or a sports arena gets bought out and the new owners don't feel too keen on renewing the contract without renegotiating. Or a golf course undergoes some major landscaping.

Addendum: Don't you think it'd be neat to see horror genre precursor Sweet Home released on modern platforms? Well, SOL. It was based on a movie and I doubt anyone involved is really all that interested in contacting all the rights holders (they're much more complicated in Japan due to individual rights of musicians and such) including [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Home_(1989_film)#Release_and_lawsuit]figuring out this mess here[/url], where the rights were basically split between who actually made the film.

But we come back to the problem that people were OK with that shite in the first place. They bought it, despite being very obviously anti-consumer and accepted the terms and conditions of the purchase. You really can't rule against people being dumb or not reading what their money is getting them.

If it wasn't mentioned at all, then there would be a case. But it is always explicitly stated for the affected games that the owner might pull the plug at any time for whatever reason and that you own jack squat. You don't get to spend money on something and then 10 years later realize you didn't like the conditions you agreed to and go *le gasp* when they get applied.

What needs fixing is the customer mentality of allowing themselves to be shit on by any corporation and the constant encroachment on their agency. But that would require the application of principles and occasionally limiting one's consumerism. No legislation is really going to help with that.

And I don't really trust mostly clueless politicians, least of all the EU, to do something relevant/ positive about this.

If the initiative had an explicit anti-DRM stance, it would get immediately thrown out. Then it would actually be unreasonable. Like it or not, most people either don't care about DRM or are in support of it. DRM only becomes a problem at end of life and an end of life plan is exactly what this initiative is calling for. To require all newly-developed online games to have an end of life plan. The solution is not mandated. Developers / publishers are free to choose an option that suits them best, for their own convenience. Whether that means offline mode, LAN, Peer 2 peer, server binaries, etc. The decision is theirs, as long as the game remains playable in some way.


Indeed. Thank you to everyone whole signed and helped spread awareness.

Because they don't associate with drm which Ross mentioned he's fine with.

Agreed. Most people won't care about drm until actually impacts them when the servers shut down.

For big providers like Steam, that could be 10 or 20 years from now or even more. I don't want to wait until a giant like Steam shuts down for something to be done about it.

GOG is still the most proeminent mostly drm-free store (hence why I am still here), but yes, by trying to be like Steam for a while, they dropped the ball on a lot of things.

I think if they had done more work to stay on mission, they'd have a stronger footing on the drm-free ecosystem and more of a moat around their business model (based on in-house expertise preserving games and a community around tooling that both ties to their platform and offline) then they have right now having tried to be less Steam (except, less good at it of course).

There is always a risk when buying into anything. Most things have a shelf life, storess services, etc that's something that will ever change.

Gog has never tried to be like steam, their focus has always been drm free. But obviously steam is the bigger profile store and the fact steam doesn't really care if devs add more drm has prevented alot of newer games from ending up on gog. Not to mention being the only store to make sure alot of older games work on modern hardware and the one click mod installs.

Fact is GOG was never going to compete in a DRM heavy ecosystem.

Galaxy is definitely a clear cut Steam copy attempt, down to a t.

A pro-consumer drm-free oriented effort would have made an integration that both ties to their platform and offline (something I'm hoping the initiative will either push for or facilitate), but they didn't go there. They opted to do it the Steam way.

And in the process, they segmented all the game installers into two groups: Those that tie into their drmed platform and the offline ones that don't interact with their platform at all and are guaranteed to be drm-free (although sometimes more gutted in features). That was quite a bit of work on their part for the sake of being more like Steam.

Also, there is the Hitman fiasco and other cases where they were lax.

I'm not saying GOG is where Steam is at (they have offline installers, have listened to community pushback on drm and thus I'm here), but I think the result from the initiative will be a good additional guardrail to keep them on mission.

GOG is a corporation, not a non-profit dedicated to consumer rights or game preservation. The majority (hopefully overwelming majority, we don't have the numbers) of their community leans in that direction and the rest of the gaming ecosystem is taken so it makes sense for them to go there and I'm glad they do, but that can change later as the gaming landscape evolves.

Corporate entities are not a replacement for good laws.

Massive traffic or a deliberate ddos attempt.