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Stop killing games!

pendragon1

pendragon1

Cat Can't Scratch It
2FA
Joined
Oct 7, 2000
Messages
75,934
not owning the games and/or consoles we buy is bs. who knows if anything will even come of it, but its worth a try...
i will not "own nothing and be happy", dammit!

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

"Stop Killing Games" is a consumer movement started to challenge the legality of publishers destroying video games they have sold to customers. An increasing number of video games are sold effectively as goods - with no stated expiration date - but designed to be completely unplayable as soon as support from the publisher ends. This practice is a form of planned obsolescence and is not only detrimental to customers, but makes preservation effectively impossible. Furthermore, the legality of this practice is largely untested in many countries.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmkCQJrc9n4


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgZvTloDhtk


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTRmCilHhbY
 
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The you must make an stop caliing home DRM game patch if any is there before you shut down the server that make it work seem an interesting, not many downsides to that idea here that make a lot of sense.

Same for if the game could be played offline, the part that would force open source or never using external live service API (AWS, google, etc...) do seem way more controversial (i.e. binary like quake 3 arena days would not work here, even if the community is ready to pay for AWS credits)
 
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It is true that for some product, people associate the users doing stuff instead of the product itself (no one blame microsoft Word for an racist text wrote in it, but if for year it would have auto-corrected away racist word they would start with), people did for AI image generator that made racist content from racist prompt too.

It is not consistent, but that not made up, Call of duty has a reputation, Crypto has a reputation, Instagram shorts, etc... coming from the userbase usage. No one associate the microphone used by podcaster with their content, but they do X/twitter with what get written on it or youtube for what is available on youtube, it is not a exactly the same for everything.

It is not necessarily rational, ink sellers seem never targeted by what get written with their inks, same for papers, but cloudfare, ISP, to some they do.
 
There was a scandal of racist AI generated image made from racist prompt about the product itself in a way we would have never made a scandal of MSPaint/word making racist content when the user controlling them try to make it.

When talking about the usage of a product can reflect on its image (think crypto scam scandal, people do not anymore link the Internet itself to it like they would have in the 90s) you cannot do an analogy using any others products to proof or disprove it, and it is not something necessarily rational.

Crypto is affected by many of its usages, 4chan is. And it is not necessarily an issues, toyota Hilux/Tacoma is a bit the terrorist truck but people when it come to car have some distance and that make it look a good choice if you want something that will be easy to maintain and durable.
 
LukeTbk said:
There was a scandal of racist AI generated image made from racist prompt about the product itself in a way we would have never made a scandal of MSPaint/word making racist content when the user controlling them try to make it.

When talking about the usage of a product can reflect on its image (think crypto scam scandal, people do not anymore link the Internet itself to it like they would have in the 90s) you cannot do an analogy using any others products to proof or disprove it, and it is not something necessarily rational.

Crypto is affected by many of its usages, 4chan is. And it is not necessarily an issues, toyota Hilux/Tacoma is a bit the terrorist truck but people when it come to car have some distance and that make it look a good choice if you want something that will be easy to maintain and durable.
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cvinh said:
I had an aneurysm trying to figure out what his point was.
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you need to have seen the video just above my message and have a good decoders.

One reason some publisher do not want to open Source old games, is for keeping brand controls, the person in the video find them crazy to thinking that it is possible, because people do not do it for kitchen knife and knife maker.

But we do, for a lot of products, anime branding is associated to some to a list of things, that come from how people handled those ips in fan made content, twitter/4chan are associated with how their users use it.

Which is a different subject, than does that give them the right to keep a tight IP control on game they do not support anymore (if it is a valuable IP making money, keep server for it open then....), but it is not a crazy point made by publisher.
 
Yeah Developers send free copies of their games for review only to put them down. Doesnt make alot of sense for developers. Just what Nvidia is doing with their lower end cards no review samples.
 
LukeTbk said:
It is true that for some product, people associate the users doing stuff instead of the product itself (no one blame microsoft Word for an racist text wrote in it, but if for year it would have auto-corrected away racist word they would start with), people did for AI image generator that made racist content from racist prompt too.

It is not consistent, but that not made up, Call of duty has a reputation, Crypto has a reputation, Instagram shorts, etc... coming from the userbase usage. No one associate the microphone used by podcaster with their content, but they do X/twitter with what get written on it or youtube for what is available on youtube, it is not a exactly the same for everything.

It is not necessarily rational, ink sellers seem never targeted by what get written with their inks, same for papers, but cloudfare, ISP, to some they do.
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So how people play a game they literally officially stopped supporting will hurt their reputation? This is clearly false. This argument falls apart by the mere fact that there are tons of old games that still work, and none of them hurt the original publisher's reputation.
Youtube/other platforms are not a good analogy, because they are only hosts for content, not providing the content itself. So their reputation is entirely dependant on user uploaded content.

The real reason they want to kill games is so they don't provide competition for their next product. If stop killing games fails we will get to the point where FIFA 27 will stop working when FIFA 28 comes out.
 
M76 said:
So how people play a game they literally officially stopped supporting will hurt their reputation? This is clearly false.
Click to expand...
If the game is part of an IP

M76 said:
Youtube/other platforms are not a good analogy, because they are only hosts for content, not providing the content itself.
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Each analogy would have a difference, (the original point being you cannot just use an analogy here to make a point either way), but if an old Call of duty game, become community server/mod a popular Zionist versus Palestinian multiplayer war game that degenerate a couple of time into mediatized real world insident between players, it is something that it is not crazy for an publisher to imagine having marginal downside effect on their brand.

Which is a different subject that giving it the right to do something about it of course, specially if they stop providing server they control (i.e. if the IP is valuable and possible to hurt, that sound like it would be possible to pay to maintain the old games)

The real reason is way more the one you point out, but the idea that user usage of a product (specially a cultural one) cannot taint/color it in some way to the mainstream public eye is not a crazy idea they have. Just think masking if you have the flu in 2019 vs now, the view of it and readiness to do it changed among some just by seeing how the typical high profil masked person talk and act.
 
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There are NO perfect solutions

But throwing out a solution that will be a historic, massive, unprecedented, net-positive win for consumers because "it doesn't perfectly solve the problem" is EXACTLY what benefits the status quo.

"How will IP holders control their IPs after a handover of source code/documentation?"

Not sure, but it's a hell of a lot better, for FAR more people than the solution of IP holder saying "Fuck'em"

"This will make games cost more"

As opposed to...... the timeline where this WASN'T already happening? And in our current systems, games cost more AND can be bricked by server shutdown 🥰🥰

"This will reduce the incentive to make Live Service games"

Yes, this will reduce the incentive to make Live Service games. That's an argument FOR the act.
 
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LukeTbk said:
If the game is part of an IP
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You're ignoring the point. Show me where a game's afterlife as abandonware negatively affected the original IP holder. It's the exact opposite actually, companies are praised for supporting the community and releasing the source for their old games. (That's just an example, stop killing games wouldn't require them to release any source code)
LukeTbk said:
Each analogy would have a difference, (the original point being you cannot just use an analogy here to make a point either way),
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Then why did you bring up social media specifically as analogous?
LukeTbk said:
but if an old Call of duty game, become community server/mod a popular Zionist versus Palestinian multiplayer war game that degenerate a couple of time into mediatized real world insident between players, it is something that it is not crazy for an publisher to imagine having marginal downside effect on their brand.
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Fabricating a crazy outlandish doomsday scenario that has no precedence is not a valid argument. This is the same as carmakers saying you'll get graped in a dark alley if right to repair passes.
Ironically what you're saying is happening in active games like minecraft and roblox, not in abandoned games. Political activism seeks out the most popular platforms, not 10+ year old forgotten games with a meager but enthusiastic community. Activists would be squashed in a second who tried to politicize the game.
LukeTbk said:
Which is a different subject that giving it the right to do something about it of course, specially if they stop providing server they control (i.e. if the IP is valuable and possible to hurt,
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There is no mention of a transfer of rights in the proposal, it's only about leaving games in a functioning state instead of deliberately shutting them down.
LukeTbk said:
that sound like it would be possible to pay to maintain the old games)
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They already got paid upfront for the game, asking for more money to be able to use a product you already paid for is probably illegal, and if not it should be.

"They can't be expected to keep the servers online indefinitely" They should've thought about that when they were raking the money in. They made their bed. Not as if keeping a server online capable of serving the remaining concurrent players is such a financial burden.

LukeTbk said:
The real reason is way more the one you point out, but the idea that user usage of a product (specially a cultural one) cannot taint/color it
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I'm not saying the reason I gave is a good reason, but it is their real reason, while the other one is just lobbyist fantasyland BS.
LukeTbk said:
in some way to the mainstream public eye is not a crazy idea they have.
Click to expand...

Can you not see how ridiculous this sounds? "somehow Palpatine returned"
LukeTbk said:
Just think masking if you have the flu in 2019 vs now, the view of it and readiness to do it changed among some just by seeing how the typical high profil masked person talk and act.
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You are comparing the cultural effects of a community supported abandoned game to a worldwide pandemic that directly affected all people on the planet and was on mainstream news 24/7 for 2 years straight. Do you honestly think that is reasonable?
 
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Where are people getting the idea that SKG means "keeping the servers turned on forever"?

It instead says "at the end of a products viable life, give your customers basic documentation and source files so they can choose to build, code and host the product themselves".

So either they do that, or design the game in a way that such a measure isn't needed, such as private dedicated servers with closed source.

Its literally cheaper with SKG's solution of 'let the customer tank the cost of hosting after a while'. But the publishers aren't concerned with cost, their concerned with CONTROL.
 
KazeoHin said:
Where are people getting the idea that SKG means "keeping the servers turned on forever"?
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Keeping the servers online is the easiest and cheapest way to comply if you were dumb enough to make a game that doesn't work offline. But they don't want that, they want the stragglers out of the previous game and spending money on the next thing. What they don't realize is that people forcefully booted out of a game will never spend money with you again. At least I certainly wouldn't.
 
M76 said:
So how people play a game they literally officially stopped supporting will hurt their reputation? This is clearly false. This argument falls apart by the mere fact that there are tons of old games that still work, and none of them hurt the original publisher's reputation.
Youtube/other platforms are not a good analogy, because they are only hosts for content, not providing the content itself. So their reputation is entirely dependant on user uploaded content.

The real reason they want to kill games is so they don't provide competition for their next product. If stop killing games fails we will get to the point where FIFA 27 will stop working when FIFA 28 comes out.
Click to expand...
There was an article earlier this year I think it was that said over 70% of game time last year was spent on games made before 2015. This is exactly why publishers want to kill games because they feel like they're competing with themselves now. I think Nintendo explicitly said something like this about game preservation using emulation, asking why would you want to play an older Mario game when a new one is available.
 
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Armenius said:
There was an article earlier this year I think it was that said over 70% of game time last year was spent on games made before 2015. This is exactly why publishers want to kill games because they feel like they're competing with themselves now. I think Nintendo explicitly said something like this about game preservation using emulation, asking why would you want to play an older Mario game when a new one is available.
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It wasn't games before 2015, rather 60% of all playtime of games 6+ years old. But it was the Forever Games (i.e. Live Service games) basically eating up all the gametime of players.

These 10 games basically compose half of all the gametime spent on video games.
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M76 said:
Then why did you bring up social media specifically as analogous?
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Because i responded to a video (without that context it would make non-sense) of someone saying that it was impossible (going from restaurant to everything) for the usage of a product to ever reflect on the product itself, which is obviously ridiculous.

M76 said:
Fabricating a crazy outlandish doomsday scenario that has no precedence is not a valid argument.
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I think you are trying to see an argument to a different conversation (I imagine you have not watch the video I responded too), it is obviously possible for product use (specially something online) to reflect on the product, it is not a crazy idea. Which is not an good argument to go against stop killing game per say, because if there is something valuable to protect, that mean there is money to pay for server or the work needed (if you want to keep it close because running them is part of your competitive advantage) to let the community pay for it if they want.

M76 said:
Do you honestly think that is reasonable?
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You have really not seen the video I am responding too (that was not reasonable), but call of duty lobby became a meme/expression for a reason and has you say game without strict control (because they are too big or open server) Ironically what you're saying is happening in active games like minecraft and roblox, can happen which you will gladly accept if it make a lot of money, but if you make zero easy to see why you will want to avoid it. The smallest of cost become burden if there is zero revenues for them

It is easy to see why if it in exchange of zero dollars game company would not want to continue and maintain code for the third party API they use, have people in control of their IP, etc... (not only the main reason reduce competition of their next product, and here we need to be consistent is it niche abonned affair thus no competition or would actually be popular and thus competition), it make sense it is not crazy like the video make it sound.

And obviously, reason why paying customer
1) Want a single player game to still work, that obvious
2) be able to play a multiplayer one if they pay for the server time to also still work, make a lot of sense.

There is no crazy party of the argument here.
 
LukeTbk said:
Because i responded to a video (without that context it would make non-sense) of someone saying that it was impossible (going from restaurant to everything) for the usage of a product to ever reflect on the product itself, which is obviously ridiculous.
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you ever think it might be the language barrier? thats not what i took from that vid.
and you also didnt quote it in your reply, which started the confusion...
 
KazeoHin said:
There are NO perfect solutions

But throwing out a solution that will be a historic, massive, unprecedented, net-positive win for consumers because "it doesn't perfectly solve the problem" is EXACTLY what benefits the status quo.

"How will IP holders control their IPs after a handover of source code/documentation?"

Not sure, but it's a hell of a lot better, for FAR more people than the solution of IP holder saying "Fuck'em"

"This will make games cost more"

As opposed to...... the timeline where this WASN'T already happening? And in our current systems, games cost more AND can be bricked by server shutdown 🥰🥰

"This will reduce the incentive to make Live Service games"

Yes, this will reduce the incentive to make Live Service games. That's an argument FOR the act.
Click to expand...
I am thinking a main reason publishers do not want to hand over code to run self hosted servers for example, is because these studio's just re-use the same code base over and over and over for all their games past, current and future for server hosting, so giving it out is too much of a risk.

But, you would think they could at least do a final patch to a game to make it Single player only, remove multiplayer options and be done with it (for those that have SP and MP)? Or provide a closed source server install that can be done and runs local like the good old days of games...
 
MrGuvernment said:
I am thinking a main reason publishers do not want to hand over code to run self hosted servers for example, is because these studio's just re-use the same code base over and over and over for all their games past, current and future for server hosting, so giving it out is too much of a risk.

But, you would think they could at least do a final patch to a game to make it Single player only, remove multiplayer options and be done with it (for those that have SP and MP)? Or provide a closed source server install that can be done and runs local like the good old days of games...
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, those days are long gone, and there's abstraction layers upon abstraction layers that probably couldn't be easily replicated. And no company is going to want to spend a year developing stuff for a game that no longer has more than minimal interest.
 
Nytegard said:
Unfortunately, those days are long gone, and there's abstraction layers upon abstraction layers that probably couldn't be easily replicated. And no company is going to want to spend a year developing stuff for a game that no longer has more than minimal interest.
Click to expand...
It's almost like this initiative is attempting to PREVENT publishers from creating over-complicated, non-essential, anti-consumer and predatory server structures for their software 🤔🤔🤔
 
I can still play Call of Duty 4 online without any third-party patches nearly 20 years later, so I don't want to hear the bullshit "it's impossible" excuse. This used to be the default in the industry.
 
This is obviously not impossible (what could be when it come to computers), but it is not nothing to say you cannot use any third party API call (to an AWS or others) that would have changed over time or that if you do you need to open source them if you stop support, they are reasonable ask (enough that game would continue to be made) but not nothing either. Those service and ability to scale on demand are really hard to compete with price wise.
 
LukeTbk said:
This is obviously not impossible (what could be when it come to computers), but it is not nothing to say you cannot use any third party API call (to an AWS or others) that would have changed over time or that if you do you need to open source them if you stop support, they are reasonable ask (enough that game would continue to be made) but not nothing either. Those service and ability to scale on demand are really hard to compete with price wise.
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Once again, what does an online service with peer-to-peer matchmaking need with AWS API calls?

Microtransactions, Antipiracy, metrics, analytics, data collection, moderation... all predatory, anti-consumer things that are not needed for a 'dead game' that is no-longer financially relevant.

Taking an existing game with these deeply woven integrations and retro-fitting the "escape plan" to comply with SKG would be hard!

But designing a game from the ground up to not have these deeply tangled, matted up API calls for things that ultimately have NO bearing on the actual gameplay.... That's not difficult.
 
KazeoHin said:
Once again, what does an online service with peer-to-peer matchmaking need with AWS API calls?

Microtransactions, Antipiracy, metrics, analytics, data collection, moderation... all predatory, anti-consumer things that are not needed for a 'dead game' that is no-longer financially relevant.
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the ability to run on them and scale on demand ? I am not sure why microtransaction is more AWS ? AWS is almost purely compute agnostic. World persistance database can be run on them for example, just anything really. You do not need it for anything, it is just cheaper to use them.

If you want to go from 10,000 players in down hours to over 100,000 in high peak time it is quite useful, you have worldwide low latency presence out of the box, DDOS protection, pay as you go model.
 
Former Rockstar dev who worked on GTA 5, RDR2, and GTA 6

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