This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
If digital ownership isn't acknowledged, digital piracy doesn't exist. It's just copying something no one owns.
I mean I am a pirate as much as the next guy but this is missing the point. They acknowledge ownership. They just don't agree that it transfers to you when you buy a game. So that argument gets you nowhere.
If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't theft.
Yeah, no. You buy services all the time, without owning the thing or person providing the service.
If games are or should be a service is a completely different question. I wholeheartedly think that they are not, but that is irrelevant to the argument. But I can't stand those polemic phrases that miss the point completely.
They force it on to us that we cannot own products anymore but instead they are "a service" where we are stripped of our rights, are costantly fed with restrictions locked behind more payments and broken products never to be finished as they don't care about it: they already got their money. And since we don't have rights, as stated in the user agreements, we can just go fuck ourselves.
So you may be right, that it doesn't work "like that", but that's something those fucked up companies forced upon us without consent. Stop defend those companies dude.
Pointing out bullshit arguments isn't defending anyone, it's just being intellectually honest. Not sure what's better, you being serious or arguing in bad faith.
Your argument is basically "according to their made up rules it doesn't work like that, so your arguments are bullshit".
That sounds a lot like defending them.
As a customer you basically have zero rights, when you sign their user agreements. Even when a restaurant kills your partner in a themepark, because they once signed the user agreement for their streaming service (Disney). As a pirate I have more rights than paying customers. You can say what you want but this is factually true. Legally it works like this.
So when I get angry about how they force people into their fucked up world with stupid rules and restrictions they made up, you may be right it doesn't work like that when you follow their rules. I don't pay them, I didn't sign their agreements, so their rules do not apply to me. If I get busted for having an illegal copy of their content I'll pay a fine and it's done (happened when I accidentally downloaded something when I went to Germany once).
Back in the days a pirated copy of something was less than the real thing. Worse quality, missing the DVD extras, no updates etc. These days the pirated version has less restrictions and limitations than the real service. No ads, better quality, not lacking behind a season, never pulled from the platform, never broken because they stopped support and only even though it's an offline game a connection to the now csncelled sever is mandatory, offline download is actual offline download, no locked content like DLC's, etc.
You can save your breath, I am with you that corporations try to fuck us over at every turn. If you try to not see a villain in someone disagreeing with you, you could've seen that from the beginning.
There is also no need to put words in my mouth what my argument was, because it is really simple. The statement "I paid for it therefore I own it" is as false as "if I don't own it after buying, then there is no such thing as piracy". The question is whether or not games are a service.
I am probably as pissed off about the hyper-capitalistic encroachment as you are. you should try to not let your emotions impact your reasoning though.
When I go into Steam and see a nice game, I buy it. Only in the user agreement it states that purchased games are merely a service and can be revoked at any time for any reason.
Commercial risks are something businesses have to consider themselves, it's not government's job.
Legal risks are exactly their problem to solve.
Company is a body of people, and its moderation can't be more or less safe, in principle, than moderation by some other body of people with responsibility for that.
Excuses.
Hang on, arent these the same fuckers who greenlit AI training on IP they don't own?
Sort of. But it's easy to understand their thinking.
A long time ago they were a left winged party. But nowadays they're so afraid of the far right that for each decision they ask themselves "what would people absolutely not expect from a left winged party? Let's do that!" Which has led to several more right winged policies than the previous right winged government.
If left wing is progressive then they're still fairly progressive, imo. For example, making railways public again and banning no fault evictions were some recent things they've done.
As long as the button says buy, then its ownership and should be treated like physical goods.
Most of the responses of the ministers(?) covered in the article seem to be pretty solid.
But then:
Responding to the arguments, the government’s representative, minister for sport, tourism, civil society and youth, Stephanie Peacock MP, acknowledged consumer sentiment behind Stop Killing Games, but suggested there were no plans to amend UK law around the issue.
“The Government recognises the strength of feeling behind the campaign that led to the debate,” she said. “The petition attracted nearly 190,000 signatures. Similar campaigns, including a European Citizens’ Initiative, reached over a million signatures. There has been significant interest across the world.”
She continued: “At the same time, the Government also recognises the concerns from the video gaming industry about some of the campaign’s asks. Online video games are often dynamic, interactive services—not static products—and maintaining online services requires substantial investment over years or even decades.”
Peacock claimed that because modern video games were complex to develop and maintain, implementing plans for games after support had ended could be “extremely challenging” for companies and risk creating “harmful unintended consequences” for players.
Handing online servers over to consumers could carry commercial or legal risks, she said, in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
On the subject of ownership, Peacock claimed that video games being licensed to consumers, rather than sold, was not a new phenomenon, and that “in the 1980s, tearing the wrapping on a box to a games cartridge was the way that gamers agreed to licensing terms.”
“Licensing video games is not, as some have suggested, a new and unfair business practice,” she claimed.
Yeah, full on corpo spin. Fuck her.
Some of the quotes are good, yes.
And I agree the more because entertainment involving social interactions is as important as political spaces. It's not aristocrats complaining about bad cake when people don't have bread. Most of my social interactions were, actually, concentrated around
The bullshit about it being hard to design anything without a kill switch is irritating. A kill switch is the additional expense and complication. Something without a kill switch might not be readily available to run after the company shuts down its servers, but nobody needs that really. Simplifying things, there are plenty of people among players capable of deploying infrastructure.
In any case, when the only thing you need is documented operation and ability to set the service domain name and\or addresses, where the former the company needs itself and the latter is trivial, it's all farting steam.
TBH this is just how petitions in the UK work: enough people sign it, it goes to parliament, they say a bunch of stuff about it that often sounds reasonable enough, then they do nothing about it. It's just a way to give the public the illusion that they're being listened to without having to actually do anything. It was the same with the digital ID petition, which I still signed but with 100% expectation that it wouldn't actually achieve anything.
On the subject of ownership, Peacock claimed that video games being licensed to consumers, rather than sold, was not a new phenomenon, and that “in the 1980s, tearing the wrapping on a box to a games cartridge was the way that gamers agreed to licensing terms.”
This is absolute bullshit and not at all how it works, now or back in the 1980s. You can't agree to terms without seeing them first, and even then such agreements aren't necessarily legally binding. For someone who is supposed to write laws, she should be removed from office for showing such gross incompetence.
I'm pretty sure (not absolutely) this has appeared in court and even click-wrap licenses, where one clicks to agree to a license with a higher word count than King Lear are not valid due to the end user high administrative burden (reading 20K+ words in the middle of a software install).
There was a period in the 1980s where end users automatically were assumed to agree to licensing, but also licenses were extremely lenient and allowed unlimited use by the licensee without any data access rights by the providing company. 21st century licenses are much more complicated and encroach a lot more on end-user privacy.
Handing online servers over to consumers...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is Stop Killing Games specifically against this? This sounds like some Pirate Software bullshit. My understanding is we want the tools to host our own servers if the parent company decides to take theirs offline.
SKG doesn't specify how companies need to solve the problem, only that games need to continue to function after the company stops supporting them.
For some games (e.g. Assassin's Creed), that could be as simple as disabling the online aspect and having a graceful fallback. For others, that could mean letting people self-host it. Or they can provide documentation for the server API and let the community build their own server. Or they can move it to a P2P connection.
Game companies have options. All SKG says is that if I've purchased something, I should be able to keep using it after support ends.
SKG doesn’t specify how companies need to solve the problem, only that games need to continue to function after the company stops supporting them.
And that's the friendliest to companies way possible, just people used to setting laws in their favor think it's still rude to them.
Some solutions here are technically illegal to make laws about. The government cannot force a company to give away its copyrighted server code, not even in compiled form. Since there are alternatives that don't require giving away copyrighted material, it's better to keep it vague.
So it's both the friendliest to companies and the easiest to pass as a law.
Hell just allowing people to build their own emulators of the server could be plenty.
Look to games like ragnarok online. While currently active, if and when it sunsets. All that would be required is the company not sueing the tits off people for running the game locally on a homebrewed server.
There's an entire offline version of an mmo made from scratch!
Much of the time the biggest limitation is the legal ramifications of preserving the game after it's sunset. Many companies just need to not do anything at all and they would be perfectly fine. But instead they choose to sue and litigate those who attempt to keep the games going.
They need not build it for us to come. They simply need to allow us to come on our own.
And ideally give enough forewarning that the community can build it before they shut the servers off.
If you don't want to give the sever away (including the ability to use it) then don't shut it down or otherwise make the game unplayable.
Or release API documentation for the server and help the community create a replacement. Companies have options here.
Hell, I'll just take not getting sued into the ground by the company for a copyright infringement. Don't even need the API. If a game is loved enough we will find a way. We just don't have the money to fight lawsuits!
"digital ownership must be respected"
gets into bed with Meta and OpenAI
in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.
Piss off. This just means they won't be able to rely on companies to control what people get to say.
More proof that the current "Labour" government is in the pockets of rich companies and not on the side of consumers.
"Digital ownership must be respected."
Yeah, that's what this entire thing is about.
The same govt that saw the overwhelming support for petition against the Online ID verification Act & went nahhhhhhh we don't listen to our citizens.
They don’t need to “hand online servers” just publish the API and do one last update to accept self hosting.
And new releases should always support self host.
That only covers games that are loosely using servers for communication, piracy and cheating. That also puts game companies into the realm of losing their IP if they shut down temporarily in an acquisition. If you start a studio, run out of cash and get aquired, you'll actually want that game you made to still be worth something, it doesn't just affect those AAA players.
I think you need to add something like an escrow with x months of running costs. Once that well runs dry you need to go down to the providing a working server. I've been through the industry and I can confidently tell you that an API isn't enough for a hell of a lot of games. Some of the stuff I've seen, it would take the actual game team a half a year to bring it back up with the source because the stuff they were using when they went under was ancient. You don't want to buy a server authoratative game and wait around a year while the community tries to ressurect it.
These current politicians dont know a single thing about what you said but I agree
Such a brain-dead stance on the matter. Nobody is asking for your garbage DRM servers, we literally want the opposite of that.
Losing a monopoly on specific game servers certainly can have a commercial risk. Are you entitled to that at all, let alone when you stop hosting them?
Legal risk of what? Others will have that responsibility, unless you've done something you don't want others to see?
Safety - Yes someone might have less moderation than you - that's up to the users to decide if it's okay. We still have the right to change our car's break pad - the thing that stops a large mass moving fast from hitting children.
