I don’t know, and I don’t really care enough to spend much effort on it. But I do know that if you want change, you need to make people care enough to make that change happen, and that includes lawmakers. Just getting people to sign a petition isn’t going to make them care. To get lawmakers to act on a petition, you first need to make them care. Simply putting it in front of them will never be enough. SKG approached this the wrong way. The petitions should be one of the last steps, not one of the first. That’s why it failed.

If you want to have an impact on a business, then once again, a petition to lawmakers isn’t going to accomplish much. Something like the lawsuit against Ubisoft currently happening in California is far more impactful, because it targets what they actually care about - money. Even if the lawsuit ends up being thrown out, it still costs Ubisoft money to fight it, and they’ve already started making changes internally to avoid future lawsuits.

And I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - if you want change, you need to get people to change.

First of all, don’t be sanctimonious and tell people to f*** off if they don’t agree with your specific agenda. I’m usually the one who reminds others that humans are social animals, and therefore all our actions are inherently political. However, not all actions carry deep meaning. If I want to play Azrael’s Tear, I’ll buy it from GOG, because GOG is currently the only place that sells it. There’s no activism or deeper political statement behind that action - I just want to play Azrael’s Tear. The same goes for Enshrouded on Steam. There’s no ‘pro-DRM’ sentiment or political motivation - I just want to play Enshrouded. Let’s not forget that, at the end of the day, GOG is a store that sells games, it is not a political platform or activist stronghold poised to change the world.

Secondly, if what you truly care about is game preservation, then you should support organizations that actually focus on preserving games (and those are not for-profit stores driven by commercial goals). That includes local museums, libraries that are beginning to preserve games, archives specializing in digital media, and organizations like the Video Game History Foundation, the Videogame Heritage Society, the Internet Archive, or the Embracer Games Archive. These are the groups genuinely working to preserve games for future generations, and, like all nonprofit organizations, they need your support.

Make it law to release all paid games sans DRM into the public domain after 10-15 years and let gamers fix any issues. Simple as.

Implausible. The Ford Motor Company is not going to allow that. Slipknot, who was paid for their tracks, would not allow that. And so on.

Now, if you have a program that can automagically debrand games and remove cheeky brand references, then by all means, go ahead and stop thinking about the implications and ramifications of what you've just suggested.

(The system isn't ready.)

Funny thing, that! Imagine you're in Australia and your Mercedes has broken down. And there's maybe what, 3 extant models of your exact model year and make in the entire landmass? So even with the right to repair, spare parts might be hard to come by.

More to the point, John Deere tried to say, "No you don't", only to get schooled. Mostly. Quite a legal weasel hole if you wanted to replace the engine with an electric one since that would possibly entail those trade secrets or emissions controls.

Oh, simple. Open Source Initiatives, abolishing Capitalism, closing the stock market as a concept, a few small things like that.

As I outlined in many a post: Don't try to save "The Crew", make a game like it, made to last forever by virtue of being code of the community.
Instead of paying heed to faceless megacorps and trying to make their investor based behavior better, ignore them entirely. Starve them. Embrace Libre.

But if Ross had wanted to go though this the way he did, he should have stated local. Regional even. Brussels, or small countries like Estonia. Make a domino effect, don't try to shoot the moon when you haven't even researched gunpowder.

Oh, simple. Open Source Initiatives, abolishing Capitalism, closing the stock market as a concept, a few small things like that.

Ok ignoring the political implications of all that and I know you are purposely being yourself here and the fact that we have well discussed our differences in political and economic arenas in PM my friend you know well enough that is not going to happen at least in our lifetimes.

[i]As I outlined in many a post: Don't try to save "The Crew", make a game like it, made to last forever by virtue of being code of the community.
Instead of paying heed to faceless megacorps and trying to make their investor based behavior better, ignore them entirely. Starve them. Embrace Libre.[/i]

That I totally agree with, the problem is Ross didnt want to do this as it would mean more work and no offense to Ross, he isnt exactly a font of charisma so he couldn't even lead such a movement even if he wanted too alot of these people just want to stick it to corps (which I agree and support) but they only think in one path and thats by making them bend to their will instead of charting a new path and doing it open source.

But if Ross had wanted to go though this the way he did, he should have stated local. Regional even. Brussels, or small countries like Estonia. Make a domino effect, don't try to shoot the moon when you haven't even researched gunpowder.

that's the problem, Ross and his followers wanted results and wanted them NOW, they didnt want to wait 10 or 15 years for such a movement to grow naturally, they wanted the publicity and the press of sticking it to THE MAN and saving THE CREW that their impossible snowballs chance in hell longshot would afforded it should have it been successful.

Can't say I'm shocked things don't go Ross way and he folds, what a great inspiriation. Now Charlie is trying to put his hat in the ring and again failing to understand all the legal stuff behind it. At this point they'd have an easier time convincing Nintendo fans to stop supporting Nintendo products then this movement.

Looks like this Ross made almost everyone his enemy. All the hatred towards him and his campaign, looked like a counter-campaign to me all along. "Wrong direction" "Not anti-DRM" "focused on The Crew" "think about the code" "infeasible to do"... we all should know better than to 1) in-figt 2) squabble about minor differences and 3) let our egos get in the way. I bet that was the reason it failed. Ubisoft should give you all a thanks for doing their dirty work for them.

They got enough votes to bring it before the UK Parliament, and it was quickly voted down. This had nothing to do with infighting, the general approach was just simply wrong.

Some people are being too harsh towards Ross now. He actually attempted to do what nobody else bothered to do before.
And while having just a medium-sized Youtube channel, he still managed to involve people from multiple countries and collect ~500K signatures. You try to replicate that! O_o

He invested a lot of time, money and effort in this, so of course he's giving up now. He tried his best.
The initiative failed mainly because, as usual, people are too lazy or stupid.

Tells its own tale huh?



I am one of those who didn't sign too.

While I got sympathy for the idea of preserving games and think that the games industry kicked them self into the nuts with time limited licences for - basically everything - so they have to take games out of sale.
Already the start was idiotic. All that "fuck contracts and laws" at the start was hilarious.

But for me personally the nail in the coffin was the racing game that was the initial point for this.
Started as some online service game where everybody who wanted to know knew it will end.
Like with all the service games today, you sign up knowing it will be for a limited time. And the game that will closing down will most likely not even close to the game you started with...

But the best part was the claim, that millions of "customers" where robbed off, because the game was basically still in that high demand and on heavy rotation (with several successors...).
I just checked the steam charts and it was like a 1 diged to 2 diged number of players that game had each week. I just can assume, that the millions upon millions of other players must be on console then (for sure...)
And to my understanding the game was even handed away for free at last once. So good chance most of the newer owners never ever tried it in the first place.
But hey, inflating numbers is a normal thing these days.

There was so much twisting the truth like a Brezel by most likely one of the 10 people on this whole planed who still played that game, that it was to embarrassing to climb down that rabid hole any deeper.

And that still has nothing to do with infighting.

Also - what are you on about? The Warrantless Mass Surveillance Act is a U.S. law that allows U.S. military intelligence to spy on non-U.S. citizens outside of the United States.

Or are you referring to the Investigatory Powers Act, which was passed by the UK Parliament but has faced significant resistance, including from the European Court of Human Rights, but not the EU itself?

Because, as far as I’m aware, the EU doesn’t have a single 'Warrantless Mass Surveillance Act.' There are various pieces of legislation that permit surveillance under certain conditions, but not a unified act like that.

(Good thing Brexit happened and the UK no longer has to follow EU laws, hm?)

Whether this was the reason or an example, the game was ubisoft native and as such likely most players would have been on ubisoft and not steam. So much for twisting numbers until they fit. I also read that TC still was at least twice as popular than it's successor, The Crew 2, even a year or longer after that one started. I don't know if that was true or not.

And you obsessing over this game (example or reason) instead of the general principle (GAAS licensing even for SP games, enforced through online-boundness) is one example how the case was lost.
Edit: However, from the petitions overview page, Germany did manage to cross the treshold, so you not signing didn't have a direct negative impact. Trash-talking it may very well have had, though: it delayed my signature by several weeks, until I realized that it was neither Ross nor TC nor the "DRM is OK" (which, really, likely only was in there to have less counterattacks from publishers), but instead setting in motion something that will balance the anti-consumerist practices. If it had been heared, and if it had been proposed as a first draft as-is (which is totally unlikely all by itself), the final draft would have had no resemblance to it, as we've seen in countless legislation over the decades. Publishers are powerful enough to make sure nothing gets in that they don't like, we do not at all need to reinforce their point. /Edit
Oh, but it has. In fact, we (you and I) are in-fighting ATM, over exactly this, while it is completely irrelevant to the actual problem.
I was referring to 2006/24/EG , which I assume you knew already.
Because you obviously are trolling, which also is a form of in-fighting. So it reinforces my point.

*sigh*

I was suppose to know that something you called a "Warrantless Mass Surveillance Act" was the Data Retention Directive? because..... that is similar..... yeeeeesssss..... my fault, I guess....

Trolling is not a form of infigthing at all. And at this point, I am not sure who is trolling who here.

Thing is when he decided too do this he made himself the voice of the entire thing. Not everything goes well, him quiting highlights the movement was doomed from the start. He got some actual advice on approach and understood how long that would take maybe it would be better.

All this does is prove Ross movement was a failure from the start.