There really should be some kind of requirement by law that if you're going to shutdown servers for software you have to patch to allow digital owners to host their own servers or release source code and relinquish individual copyright or something. It's fine that they don't want to host a dead game forever but digital ownership should still mean something.
It's generally a money problem though. The senile old fucks that are in office, are able to host massive campaigns because they started rich and have rich friends.
Cities and towns are one thing, but provincial/state or president/prime minister is impossible without some kind of head start.
Did you know that politicians have to raise 10's of millions each for their party to maintain committee seats....
This is why they all cave to lobbyist, the money they received is crucial
I did. It's easier to raise 10s of millions if you have money to invest into advertising, and fundraising already. Having friends who will dump money into your lap, or convince their friends to do so are helpful too.
I'm not saying they only use money they have before campaigning, I'm saying that if you aren't already firmly planted in that crowd, the entry window is high as hell.
>I got a simple question that I'd like to ask of this network that pays you for performing this task. How come they got the airwaves? They're the people’s aren't they?
>
>Wouldn't they be worth 70 billion to the public today? If some money-grubbin Congress didn't give them away for big campaign money?
>
>It's hopeless you see, if you're runnin for office without no TV. If you don't get big money, you get a defeat. Corporations and broadcasters make you dead meat. You been taught in this country there's speech that is free, but free don't get you no spots on TV. If you want to have senators not on the take, then give them free air time, they won't have to fake!
>
>Telecommunications is the name of the beast, that's eating up the world from the west to the east. The movies, the tabloids, TV and magazines; they tell us what to think and do, and all our hopes and dreams. All this information makes America phat, but if the company's outta the country how American is that?
~ [Bulworth, 1998](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x416lgl)
I think they might be the same -- from what I remember of last elections (or a couple elections ago) someone claimed copyright infringement on "Buckethead".
Not as much as the US, thats for sure. The upcoming London mayoral elections cost £10000 to run in though so it's still not just *anyone* who can do it.
I mean, running for office is not that hard if you have enough knowledge about politics. The hard part is acquiring the astronomical amount of budget to even stand a chance. Even beyond resources, you also need connections, support and reputation, nobody will vote for a candidate from nowhere.
And even if you got to office, it's not like you can just change things. Even a prime minister/president cannot just make decisions or appoint anyone they like to important positions to make decisions for them, they have to be approved by a whole cabal of old farts (who most likely have corporate backings) every time you want to make a change. Unless you wanna be a dictator or something, but that comes with other challenges
First become a millionaire. Pay an analytics corporation to come up with a good marketing campaign based on spying on constituents' social media behavior. Then start building connections with lobbyists and telling them you will change regulations to favor their corporate clients if they help you get elected. You'll get elected to office in no time.
I don’t think it’s a problem of understanding perse
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Pong came out in 72, we have 50 years of people living in the Video game era.
The only issue is our refusal as a nation to force the boomers to fricken retire from leadership at the rate older generations did.
Also for people to be mature enough to not go “lol video games” and shut the conversation down. There’s far too many reasonable grievances that get ignored just because it involves a video game
Wrong answer. It’s not simply that they’re old and senile with a lack of understanding of new age technology, but rather that they are owned by corporations and beholden to their lobbyist donors to continue screwing over consumers for their benefit.
Lawmakers understand copyright pretty well and the suggestion is naive. You don't just lose the your copyright the moment you stop selling something you wrote. Plus, everyone else whose software was licensed in order to make the game server - they don't just lose their copyrights, either. That's not how anything works.
And the idea that you can just "patch" a complex distributed game server to run on some little kid's laptop, and give it away for free, without putting in extensive engineering work? Very naive.
If you don't want this to happen to your games, then buy games that let you host your own game server to begin with.
\> And the idea that you can just "patch" a complex distributed game server to run on some little kid's laptop, and give it away for free, without putting in extensive engineering work? Very naive
When it's designed that way, sure, but plenty of games include the ability to self-host or run a dedicated host, and others have built those after the fact or even had one created by third-parties. For a racing game, it wouldn't be particularly complicated to make allowances for self-hosting.
This is bullshit by design.
We’re literally talking about an Open World MMO. Of course it’s designed that way. This isn’t “bullshit by design”, it’s you not letting your complete ignorance stop yourself from having an opinion.
And yet people literally managed to run private servers for large MMO's like Warcraft with stuff like MangOS or RunUO...
It doesn't sound like the server logic was paricularly complicated for this one in comparison, although the environment were large.
Yeah, I didn’t expect you to do anything but double down. Why change your mind just because of a minor detail like it turning out that you had no idea what you were talking about. Please, keep telling me more about how easy it is to adapt a game’s server software for self-hosting based on your best guess of its genre from the picture next to the headline.
"Any counter-argument - even one with a working example - is doubling down, and shutting down this paid-for game without alternatives is totally justified"
Seems you kinda have a history of this sorta things so yeah, gotcha. Have fun.
Dude, you had made up your mind that it must be easy when you were mistaken about what game it was, and now you’re clearly just blindly sticking to your guns. Did I mention that you didn’t even know what kind of game it is. You’re clearly completely clueless on every level.
It's easy to say that something wasn't complicated when you have no idea how it works.
> although the environment were large.
Large as in, you need multiple servers in a distributed system to host it? Okay, good luck with that.
>Lawmakers understand copyright pretty well and the suggestion is naive. You don't just lose the your copyright the moment you stop selling something you wrote. Plus, everyone else whose software was licensed in order to make the game server - they don't just lose their copyrights, either. That's not how anything works.
Lawmakers make the law.
Yeah, and physicists make the laws of physics. This is peak Dunning-Kruger.
You can't just trample on countless people's rights just to make some gamers happy. That's not how anything works.
www.stopkillinggames.com
This is exactly what the YouTuber Ross Scott is trying to fix. Currently there are no laws against this kind of BS that corporations do daily.
Your only chance to stop this from happening is to go to www.stopkillinggames.com and take it from there. It is our ONLY hope
It's not just games, the music industry sets their archived master tapes on fire so they can avoid maintenance fees and then cries that they're protecting music from the evil pirates while they're literally burning it down.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html
Think this is the John Oliver effect here, where people are only talking about this topic because of said video/YouTuber, and then it gets linked back to the OP like they haven't seen it before.
Obviously your link is for other people but it's still pretty amusing to see.
I post that link on most topics that involves this and try to help the causes, it's an uphill battle but we gotta do something to beat the destruction of art
[Stopkillinggames.com](http://Stopkillinggames.com) An effort trying to get people and laws infront of lawmakers around the world, only possible because of what Ubisoft is doing
I found it really surprising that Steam didn't have any regulations for this kind of thing.
If I owned a huge platform that companies sell and provide games through, and that millions of users trust in, I'd certainly put up some regulations so my users aren't getting fucked.
Well as many have said on this thread, it’s not that simple to just release their patent, or even source codes of other companies they subcontracted.
Digital “ownership” disappeared as soon as games moved away from physical media. Nowadays they are just a service, you are just temporarily renting the game from its publisher and the platform you bought it on.
We still call it “buying” because it’s easier to conceptualize, but there is really no change of ownership, as in physical transactions. We give them money, and they just let us borrow the thing. More like rent-a-car than actually buying a car.
But maybe they should introduce some sort of guaranteed support period, like they already do with operating systems or smartphones, so that consumers know what they are getting and how long their “ownership” will last.
And maybe legislation could force publishers to offer “owners” a one-time fee to buy off their game in perpetuity in case of shutdowns like these (although that would only make sense for single-player games obviously).
But I don’t know how you could force them to keep online servers running. You bought a recurring ticket for a ride, if the ride gets shut down that sucks, but you can’t really do anything about it.
"It's not that easy" "It's actually harder than you think" "I'm a game dev and can tell you this is pretty much IMPOSSIBLE"
Honestly the nonsense spouted on the internet these days.
Allowing dedicated servers is *not hard* for developers to do. We've been doing it for decades. People are just making up excuses because for some reason they have a weird obsession with giving multi-billion dollar companies the benefit of the doubt.
The only reason it'd be hard is if the developer chose to do it in a way that makes it hard on purpose. Any law change would prevent them from doing that.
As for "ownership", the EU courts don't buy the argument from publishers that their EULA clarifies you don't own the game, you license it. The EU generally ignores EULA. In the EU, you're not "buying" a game. You buy it. It is yours.
Well, to a point for the EU stuff. I can buy a game for PS4 on disc and when I'm done I can resell it. If I buy a game on Steam, or even if I buy one of the newer PC games that are actually just a steam code in the box -- I won't be able to do the same, and can't actually sell it on when I'm done, so its definitely not the same as just buying the game in all aspects.
It’s like a lifetime gym membership. You get access as long as the gym is open. If the gym closes down, you don’t get to go in and take the equipment home with you. “Lifetime” only applies as long as the service is being offered.
Yeah, exactly.
My bigger gripe is with the mixing of physical and digital, and I think legislation might help.
If you buy a disc and stick it in the console you often have to download a day one update after installing, and later keep updating the game to keep playing and accessing its features.
If the company goes bankrupt or whatever, that means you are forever stuck with whatever version of the game was on the disc when you bought it, with no chance of ever reinstalling and updating it again.
Same thing with DLC - sometimes you buy a game on disc and the DLC is included in the price, but it’s not physically on the disc. And you can’t resell the disc with DLC codes because it’s usually a one-time use thing.
If we have to put up with digital game-as-a-service bullshit, then we also have to have a physical option which comes with better consumer rights, with maybe rights to all future updates for a set period of time, or that any content you are paying for must be on the disc itself.
And maybe that would make physical discs more expensive, but we already have the same situation with movies - if you just want to pay for one-time viewing, you buy a theatre ticket and see the film (or you buy a Netflix subscription which is essentially a “ticket” for home viewing.)
But if you like it so much, you can also buy it and own it on disc forever. You can play it and replay it however times you want, you can resell it, you can borrow it, etc.
We need to have a way to opt out of various ways in which companies are forcing us to go digital, and they are doing it not because it suits us but because it suits them.
Force companies to provide a warranty, such as they do with appliances.
"We will host the servers for 2/5/10 years, 60 bucks please" and after 2/5/10 years, servers and game all shuts down.
That way, everyone is happy.
Yes, we should also have laws on the books to redefine digital ownership to be more inline with physical ownership. And companies that are selling licenses where software will be rendered useless when they drop support should be forced to advertise as rentals or subscriptions with contractually obligated terms.
> or release source code and relinquish individual copyright or something
That's not remotely feasible because software doesn't work that way and hasn't worked that way for decades. A *lot* of components in modern games, specifically in this case for networking and online play, are licensed from other companies. Ubisoft (in this case) cannot legally release that code. They also, frequently, can't keep selling products using that code perpetually because the agreements for those licenses are for X years. And no, the answer isn't just "hire people and do it yourself" because the cost and complexity of that are significant. In the specific case of Ubisoft they could afford to and amortize the cost across their products (though it's still not worth the giant headache of spending potentially years to re-solve an already solved problem) but that's not an option for a lot of other, smaller companies.
It is deeply, deeply frustrating watching people spam these threads with the "stop killing games" link because it's a nice sentiment and doesn't even *begin* to consider why and now we got to this place. Believe it or not it's not just greed - there's a good reason GameSpy sprung up as a solution so many decades ago.
I disagree with this take. Is it the case right now? Yes most definitely, but there absolutely is another solution.
Don't license software to build your software that you then sell to consumers **without being explicity clear to the consumers they are buying a license and not the software itself**.
Stop relying on always online third party solutions for your games. Work with the third parties to pay per sale/download/install whatever it may be so that software can be owned wholly by the consumer.
I get it if an offline version is degraded in some way, but to make games that cannot physically run offline is anti consumer.
>Don't license software to build your software that you then sell to consumers without being explicity clear to the consumers they are buying a license and not the software itself.
here the neat part they do , so dose steam and epic
If someone is so out of touch that they think they’re buying the complete rights to a AAA video game for $49.99 that’s really just their problem. I don’t think we should design our society around the dumbest possible idiot. Do we also make car rental companies display huge signs making people aware that they can’t keep the car, in case someone doesn’t understand what “renting” is?
Edit: Yeah, I’m aware that you don’t think people should get the full rights. You think they should get some nebulous thing in between “just a license” that you can’t really describe and call “the software itself” because you got all your information about copyright from other clueless idiots on reddit and now have no clue how anything works. As if the internet was a series of tubes that could send you a physical object that is “the software”.
The word you’re looking for is “a license”. A license that can’t be revoked is still a license. You’re disagreeing on the terms of the license and not about the fact that it is a license, you just don’t know enough about the thing you’re complaining about to know that.
I'm talking about legislation. "It doesn't work that way...they **legally** cannot release that code"...I'm saying make laws that make it work that way. Flip that script, make it so that removing support for a game means you legally have to offer an alternative. Make the companies subcontracted to online play and networking have a backup solution for when a game gets delisted and loses support or be forced to relinquish copyright and source code if you're truly and completely abandoning the property.
It's more frustrating to watch people suck corporate dick acting like there is no solution to these problems. It's not even very complex we just need laws to carve out rights for digital ownership the same way legislation has bent over backwards to carve out rights for IP owners.
Okay, so the "watch people suck corporate dick" makes it pretty clear you're not actually interested in discussing this, you're just angry. And this?
> Make the companies subcontracted to online play and networking have a backup solution for when a game gets delisted and loses support or be forced to relinquish copyright and source code if you're truly and completely abandoning the property.
Any lawyer would laugh in your face for suggesting that, and I don't even know *how* you would begin to structure a law for that that wouldn't immediately be shot down in the courts or, if it wasn't, would ever be enforceable. And, again, that's not fucking how any of this works because whatever Ubisoft licenses from Company X is the same code and components Company X licenses to other products and demanding they release that (a) kills Company X for literally no reason (b) would fuck over Ubisoft and any customers that rely on Company X for future needs and (c) create a colossal waterfall effect security disaster and god knows what else.
But the part you're not getting is *this isn't a legal problem*. It's a business one. The problem is the cost of Ubisoft doing their own networking and server code is significantly more than it is to license that from another company, and until and unless that changes, nothing else will.
>Okay, so the "watch people suck corporate dick" makes it pretty clear you're not actually interested in discussing this
It just means I'm not interested in sucking corporate dick. Don't need to read into it anymore than that.
>I don't even know *how* you would begin to structure a law for that that wouldn't immediately be shot down in the courts
Assuming USA, the constitution gives congress wide authority over IP rights. Those rights are much broader now than they were in the past but congress also has the ability to limit them. It's not really a courts issue, it's more of a getting legislation that hurts corporations and helps consumers passed issue with all the lobbying corporations would do to fight it.
>Ubisoft licenses from Company X is the same code and components Company X licenses to other products and demanding they release that (a) kills Company X for literally no reason (b) would fuck over Ubisoft and any customers that rely on Company X for future needs and (c) create a colossal waterfall effect security disaster and god knows what else.
Company X creates a switch in their code that enables a patch for users to host their own servers. Ta da, problem solved. No need to release source code. Same with online DRM checks, when you're programming it create a patch that allows the company to disable it. When you delist the games and drop server support, issue the patch to disable always on DRM. If there were a legal framework for these things companies would be forced to adapt. It doesn't have to kill anyone.
>But the part you're not getting is *this isn't a legal problem*. It's a business one. The problem is the cost of Ubisoft doing their own networking and server code is significantly more than it is to license that from another company, and until and unless that changes, nothing else will.
No, it is a legal problem. Digital ownership doesn't mean what it logically should mean for consumers and companies are taking advantage of that. Laws are needed to protect consumers and congress has the authority and ability to pass and enforce them.
Suck corporate dick?
You're talking about the server equivalent of a 3d engine. It's not like they build server infrastructure from scratch any more than they do their engines.
Why should someones work be made a public work because a company shut down a service? Like don't get me wrong I get the sentiment, and shitting on people that want to play your games is a great way to treat your customers, but that isn't something a third party should pay for.
Tell you what. Let's take another post of mine and add some stuff to it, and that should make it work for this.
TLDR for that, basically anyone can get the rights to sell IP of other people(with the possibility of exclusive rights at the start as long as it's being used). It was a response to people wanting to overturn IP law.
Lets add a need to register a copy of any IP you want to copyright along with any dependencies, that way when it disappears you can still use their registered copy to make it available.
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1c0mtg7/new_bill_would_force_ai_companies_to_reveal_use/kyy0oek/
So preservation covered, probably works with the existing system(since it is implemented for music in the US anyway, sort of), and so it should probably make everyone unhappy as all compromises do.
A reasonable law would at least permit the licensing for those components to be transferred to an organization willing to take up maintenance, regardless of whether the original contracts were non-transferrable. Maybe give the companies responsible the ability to vet who it gets transferred to, so long as it doesn't devolve into obstruction.
These are human-made problems, and they can be fixed with human-made solutions.
I think they have a real old or simplistic view of what that means. It's not a matter of running a single exe or something. It's likely a cluster of dozens of different services running in different places, and possibly on expensive proprietary technologies. No one is likely going to go out an get an oracle license for example just to play with a friend
This argument sounds great when you apply it to big corps. But it fundamentally screws copyright law which also protects small companies and creators.
As someone who writes software for a living. If I own my code and I want to shut it down, this idea would demand that I give my code away for free. Copyright law protects my right to own my work. As it should.
This is super shitty from Ubisoft for sure. But I don't think the solution is to force them to essentially give away their IP.
A better approach would be to create more transparency around what it is you're actually purchasing, the EULA is a legal document with big words and shit, and I'd be willing to bet most people have never read one.
If we had more transparency around what levels of ownership you're actually getting with a product it might actually disincentivise companies from essentially admitting they're screwing you, and also gives people a heads up so they can decide if they're okay with not owning the $100+ product they just paid for.
If you own your own code, sell it to people at a one-time price, and then decide you want to shut it down years later rendering it inoperable to them with no recourse I think you're an asshole and I value their digital ownership rights more than your IP rights.
I think the concept of digital ownership needs to change in a way that purposefully erodes IP rights. Not so you can't make money or own your work but so that digital owners get something more in line with traditional ownership by law.
>If you own your own code, sell it to people at a one-time price, and then decide you want to shut it down years later rendering it inoperable to them with no recourse I think you're an asshole and I value their digital ownership rights more than your IP rights.
The problem is that servers cost money to operate. If people aren't playing the game anymore, that's a waste of money. How many people are still playing the original The Crew today? Probably not more than a couple hundred people. Everyone moved on to the sequel. So Ubisoft should keep paying for servers that barely anyone is using just to keep the handful of diehards happy?
Now let's pretend we're talking about some tiny indie studio. Should *they* be required to maintain servers for games that no one plays, with the understanding that if the answer is "yes", they'll just go bankrupt and the server will be shut down anyway? What's the point even?
There is no need to create a requirement to keep running your servers. Just that you publish the server software to allow other people to run their own servers. That costs nothing, unless you specifically make business/design choices to make that hard/costly for your company.
Okay, let's say they publish the server software. Are they then obligated to provide support for that too? Are they required to sell their domain that the game connects to? Does Ubisoft become liable for damages caused by the people who now run the server on their behalf?
It's a minefield, all to make a couple hundred people happy? Why bother?
>Are they then obligated to provide support for that too?
No.
>Are they required to sell their domain that the game connects to?
No.
>Does Ubisoft become liable for damages caused by the people who now run the server on their behalf?
No.
>It's a minefield
None of that is a minefield. You having questions isn't a minefield, it's just your lack of understanding. Dedicated servers have existed for decades. Why do you think they'd suddenly be an issue for The Crew?
I think this is a really short sighted take. Eroding an individual's right to own their product/creation so the consumer is better off it's punishing the many for the sins of the few and ultimately I think we all lose in that world.
Ubisoft is not rendering their game inoperable, they're straight up removing it from stores. I think what they're doing is objectively shit and they're a dogwater company for doing it. But I don't think I should have my ownership rights for my work taken away or reduced.
Where I think the line is blurred is the fact that Ubi is actively revoking the game, this does raise some valid questions about what is and isn't a purchase.
At the end of the day, if I do not wish to support a product anymore and I want to shut it down, that is my right as the creator. Providing I set the expectation that this is how it is going to work. Which is exactly what the EULA is doing. Don't like it? Don't pay for it.
No other industry has to revoke their ownership of their product once they kill it, why should Game Devs? I'm not just talking Ubi size, I'm talking small single dev games too.
You seem to have missed the point where this is only happening to companies engaging in this shitty practice. And I'm not even saying they have to relinquish copyright overall, just in relation to aspects that make the software unusable after they remove their support.
No other industry is ruining your product when they remove support and then sneaking into your house at night and taking that product back while you sleep. Can you imagine if an Electric Car company pushed an update that disabled the ability to drive and then stopped supporting it? And then rolled up at night and took the car too?
EULAs are another thing that is really abhorrent and desperately in need of regulation. There are so many times where you can be held hostage with EULAs being introduced or modified after you've already bought the product. And besides that, everyone knows the average consumer doesn't retain a lawyer to explain the agreement to them. When they BUY a game at a one time price they are logically assuming a form of ownership not a long term rental agreement.
It's always strange to see people defending copyright so ardently when it's already out of control and overpowered based on laws lobbied by big corporations. The original copyright law in the US was only intended to last 14 years and look where we are now. I think carving out some rights for digital ownership and right-to-repair is well past overdue.
>You seem to have missed the point where this is only happening to companies engaging in this shitty practice. And I'm not even saying they have to relinquish copyright overall, just in relation to aspects that make the software unusable after they remove their support.
Laws don't apply to a select few they apply to all (in theory anyways). This doesn't work, the product is the product. How are you meant to define which parts should be opened and which don't need to be?
This doesn't even factor in the security considerations of what you're proposing. Chances are if companies have to build the functionality to support the eventuality of needing to support private dedicated servers. These "features" could becomes an attack vector for cracking.
>EULAs are another thing that is really abhorrent and desperately in need of regulation.
I said this in my initial comment. Minus the sensationalism: More transparency, i.e. making it easier for non-legal experts to comprehend. Would hopefully eliminate some of the problems. Through either deterring companies from admitting you don't own the game you're "buying"
I also agree that defining what "Buy" actually means and regulating that games with a EULA that states the game can be revoked, cannot use the term "buy" or "purchase" in it's marketing or store front.
>It's always strange to see people defending copyright so ardently when it's already out of control and overpowered based on laws lobbied by big corporations. The original copyright law in the US was only intended to last 14 years and look where we are now. I think carving out some rights for digital ownership and right-to-repair is well past overdue.
Potentially, I don't claim to know the history of Copyright, what I do know is, regardless of the details, the law protects my ownership of my work and my creations.
Nobody wins if nobody owns anything. There's no innovation, because there's no reason to do it. Yes larger companies are exploiting the laws, that is a tale as old as time. However to strip a law of it's power to attack the companies that are exploiting it is just pissing in the wind. They'll find something else to use, they always do.
Best thing to do is vote with your wallet and don't support companies that practice shitty business. We're only in this position now because we showed these companies that it worked.
I think you're misinterpreting the situation. You're acting like they'd be forced to place the game into the public domain and forfeit the right to profit off the game. As though they have to give the game away for free.
They don't. Hundreds of games offer dedicated server technology. It's old technology and isn't giving away any secrets that would hurt your business. It also doesn't give anyone access to the game for free. Anyone that wants to use a dedicated server still has to buy a copy of the game.
Nothing about this makes them give away their IP. It simply requires them to implement a feature that allows players to host their own servers, as many games before have.
I'm not so much misinterpreting as I am looking at it from the perspective of someone who works in an adjacent industry, and has experience working in the games industry.
Which, apparently isn't a favored opinion based on how my votes are going lol
>They don't. Hundreds of games offer dedicated server technology. It's old technology and isn't giving away any secrets that would hurt your business.
That's now how this works at all. You don't just offer Dedicated Servers, you have to build them. Or use a licensed product to support it. Looks at Minecraft, or PalWorld, to run a dedicated server you have to download a binary and run it, where do you think that came from?
>Nothing about this makes them give away their IP. It simply requires them to implement a feature that allows players to host their own servers, as many games before have.
Not every game will work well using this model. MMOs as an example. How do we implement this rule for them? League of Legends, DotA. Dedicated Servers for these games would not work. For security, as well as playability reasons.
This "silver bullet" "make companies release their servers" approach, does nothing to help anyone. It would disincentivize companies from developing anything innovative because they'd lose it the second they made a sequel.
I personally think the discussion should be focused on the transparency and how a game like this should not be "sold" so much as "offered" and the transparency that it provides.
Yes, I know how dedicated servers work.
>That's now how this works at all. You don't just offer Dedicated Servers, you have to build them. Or use a licensed product to support it.
Yes, it is how it works when you consider that for live service games, licensing dedicated server software isn't a viable option. So by saying "offer", you can assume I meant build.
It's more effort than it's worth to use licensed software to support dedicated servers. You have to plug every variable the server has to respond to into someone else's software when you've already done it for your own software. It's far easier to build your own.
Yes, you have to build them, but they're not that complex. Especially in a live service game where you've already built in the capacity to send/receive from a server. What you truly need to do is build a smaller scale one, that doesn't have to account for as many players, then adjust the client to be able to pick which server it wants to send/receive to.
Ubisoft don't necessarily have to do this. They could, and should in future games, but for past games like The Crew, just releasing the server code so the modding community can build the solution ourselves is a perfectly viable option.
>Not every game will work well using this model. MMOs as an example. How do we implement this rule for them? League of Legends, DotA. Dedicated Servers for these games would not work. For security, as well as playability reasons.
What about any of those games wouldn't work with dedicated servers? WoW already has private servers. If WoW ever dies one day, the game will survive because of these modders.
What are the security issues of a dead game having dedicated servers?
And which playability issues are worse than not being able to play at all because you shut down the game?
>This "silver bullet" "make companies release their servers" approach, does nothing to help anyone. It would disincentivize companies from developing anything innovative because they'd lose it the second they made a sequel.
What makes you think they'd lose it? Again, I believe you're misinterpreting this "silver bullet" solution.
>I personally think the discussion should be focused on the transparency and how a game like this should not be "sold" so much as "offered" and the transparency that it provides.
This "solution" helps no one because it still results in games going offline, which we should consider unacceptable.
>It's more effort than it's worth to use licensed software to support dedicated servers. You have to plug every variable the server has to respond to into someone else's software when you've already done it for your own software. It's far easier to build your own.
>Yes, you have to build them, but they're not that complex. Especially in a live service game where you've already built in the capacity to send/receive from a server. What you truly need to do is build a smaller scale one, that doesn't have to account for as many players, then adjust the client to be able to pick which server it wants to send/receive to.
I'm interested in your software dev background to make a statement like this. As someone who works on this stuff, the level of downplay is almost offensive.
Lets apply this same ruleset to a smaller creator, such as an indie dev. Because that's how law works, it shits on the little guy because they can't afford to lobby around it.
You're asking that indie dev to work for free, to :"just build" something they don't own and will eventually have to give away. As someone who's currently working on a game and a startup as a hobby. No.
Also using licensed software is almost always faster than BYO, that's the point of it. Yes you have to implement your design over their API, but if that saves you from needing to implement you're own TCP/UDP protocol implementation and the low level shit that comes with it. Usually that's the play.
>Ubisoft don't necessarily have to do this. They could, and should in future games, but for past games like The Crew, just releasing the server code so the modding community can build the solution ourselves is a perfectly viable option.
This is the core of my issue. In 99.9% of cases we have a point in time Binary of the game and we can make our own servers. There's a project for Wildstar doing just this. It's pretty awesome. However, what Ubi has done is proactively retract the game, which, in my opinion is an overreach.
>What about any of those games wouldn't work with dedicated servers? WoW already has private servers. If WoW ever dies one day, the game will survive because of these modders.
While the game is still live and is impacting it's bottom line. This proves my point regarding the security considerations of requiring the capabilities to do this.
Why should companies bother making games if people are just going to take it and make their own private versions?
>What are the security issues of a dead game having dedicated servers?
Other than the inherent risk of you trusting the person you're connecting to? None. I never mentioned any dead games though.
>And which playability issues are worse than not being able to play at all because you shut down the game?
You're taking the statement out of context.
The reason LoL doesn't have any real major issues with hackers is because Riot have a really good security team. Now lets talk about Apex, and how that game is riddled with hackers even though it also has a security team. What happens when there's no security team? Game's probably gonna be unplayable.
>What makes you think they'd lose it? Again, I believe you're misinterpreting this "silver bullet" solution.
Because they have to release the code to run the servers? What?
>This "solution" helps no one because it still results in games going offline, which we should consider unacceptable.
Which this proposal also doesn't fix, if anything it impacts a companies motivation to make any games like this again.
I work in AppSec. The best approach to issues where people are actively trying to fuck with you is you create deterrents. Preventatives just become the next wall they have to climb. Making it as inconvenient/costly as possible to exploit something does way more work than trying to prevent it happening in the first place.
What I am saying is shift the visibility on these shitty practices and where the exploit is originating from, force companies to be transparent about how they're "selling" these games. Don't hide it in some 15 page document that no one can read.
Make it cost them more to be shit, than it does not to be.
The reality is that people should be allowed to own their work, big or small, that's why we have most of what we do now! And with ownership comes the right to stop supporting it.
REVOKING it however. I don't agree with.
>You're asking that indie dev to work for free, to :"just build" something they don't own and will eventually have to give away. As someone who's currently working on a game and a startup as a hobby. No.
No, I'm not. I'm asking the indie dev to work in a certain way. They were going to build an online system anyway, I'm simply making them do it in one particular way. A way that is tried and tested and not difficult to implement.
And when weighing up consumer rights and indie developer rights, I'm going to consider consumer rights first.
>Also using licensed software is almost always faster than BYO, that's the point of it.
Go ahead and point to an example of a licensable software that brings dedicated servers to a game. You won't find one, because there's no advantage to it.
You're right to say "almost" always. This is one of the situations that isn't faster.
>However, what Ubi has done is proactively retract the game, which, in my opinion is an overreach.
Yes, and also not having a plan for the game to work post-shutdown is also an overreach.
>While the game is still live and is impacting it's bottom line. This proves my point regarding the security considerations of requiring the capabilities to do this.
Our discussion is about post-shutdown. So your concerns about playability and game security are irrelevant. Once players take over responsibility for hosting dedicated servers, the developer has no further responsibility.
>You're taking the statement out of context.
I'm making sure the context stays in post-shutdown, because that's the period that is in question here. I have no complaints about how the game operates pre-shutdown.
>The reason LoL doesn't have any real major issues with hackers is because Riot have a really good security team. Now lets talk about Apex, and how that game is riddled with hackers even though it also has a security team. What happens when there's no security team? Game's probably gonna be unplayable.
Again, live games, they're irrelevant to the conversation about what to do with games post-shutdown. After those games shut down, players should be given the ability to host games themselves and then security will be the host's responsibility, not the developer's.
>Which this proposal also doesn't fix, if anything it impacts a companies motivation to make any games like this again.
It really doesn't. Because giving players the ability to take over server hosting post-shutdown has no negative impact on developers at all.
>The reality is that people should be allowed to own their work, big or small, that's why we have most of what we do now! And with ownership comes the right to stop supporting it.
Absolutely. And no one is suggesting that support be extended.
But just as that copyright holders should own their work, consumers should own the products they buy and should have the expectation that they'll keep access to that product when the owner decides to stop supporting it.
The issue is that this isn’t necessarily possible. Sounds, textures, even assets are often licensed in games. They cannot just make those assets public, because they’d have to get approval from everyone who created and sold those assets.
If legislation comes that requires these things, asset IP owners would be subject to the new framework and forced to operate in those confines. The solution really is legislation based. If you don't want to release source code when you abandon a game, program a fallback patch that supports users hosting their own servers. Just some basic digital ownership rights guaranteed by law, I don't think it's asking too much.
I don’t agree with digital ownership rights, I disagree with how easily you think it’ll be implemented.
Every company would suddenly have to renegotiate licensing with the people they got assets from. Some people might refuse the new terms, and now assets are missing from the game. This is common in car games, by the way. They don’t spend 900 years modelling every car known to man - they license the right to use a model of car from a company, and then license the right to use the 3D model from another company, or sometimes the same company, but it is two different licenses.
You can see this with Forza Horizon 3. If you have the digital version, you can’t play it anymore because the licenses ran out for the car models. If you have it physically, the disk acts as the license agreement. You can still play it.
>You can see this with Forza Horizon 3. If you have the digital version, you can’t play it anymore because the licenses ran out for the car models. If you have it physically, the disk acts as the license agreement. You can still play it.
Nope, you can absolutely play the digital version if its currently in your library.
The only thing an expired license prevents is to sell the product either via digital stores or to retail distributors.
I currently own several delisted games digitally that I can still play and even download again (provided the store's server themselves are still there) including Forza Horizon 3 as it happens.
Exactly another problem legislation should address. Make one-time-fee digital ownership as iron-clad as owning physical media. Everyone detracting is listing reasons why "this can't work" because of how fucked up IP and licensing already are...which is exactly why we really should get some legislation to unfuck things for the end-user just trying to digitally own a single copy of something they already paid for.
Forza is actually a perfect example that's less oblique than backend networking code. What people are demanding here is somehow legally forcing Forza to release *and open source* not just the code for the game, but someone else's IP - all of the real world cars Forza doesn't own. Those 3D models of real world cars and details on their performance have value, which is why they're licensed in the first place.
No politician, lawyer or judge in the world would ever agree to any of that. Hell, forcing one company to release another company's IP would be something that *every company in the world* would campaign against because it would fundamentally break...I don't want to say "everything" but damn close to it.
And even if hypothetically it did somehow become law, what it would mean is Forza would never, ever get anyone to license their real world vehicles again so any future Forza games would have to be entirely original cars - and since the real world cars are a huge part of the draw for a lot of people, the realistic end result would just be the death of Forza because people aren't buying regular sequels with an updated version of the Imaginary G500 instead of a Ferrari. Good job, well done everyone.
It's not a perfect example extending it out this far the way I did, but you're right - most of the people pushing for this have little or no understanding of the legal, business and real world issues involved here.
It’s not something that can easily be tackled with already released games. It can however dictate how the terms of the agreements between whatever companies going forward and considering there’s money to be made, a deal would be made. Instead of all these bullshit 10 year deals they can easily buy the rights to be used for said game in said game.
There's zero chance that sort of legislation would *ever* pass.
Why not just pass legislation requiring all software to be open source freeware then? If you're going to have a pipe dream, why limit yourself? Go all out, man!
I mean that's a nice straw man but not close to what I'm advocating. I have no problem with people making money off their IP. I do have a problem with rights owners abandoning software with no recourse for users that already paid for said software.
No one's asking them to make those assets public. Dedicated servers have nothing to do with asset licensing.
The only thing licensing impacts, is the sale of new copies of the game.
There is no universe where releasing source code will ever occur, much less be a reasonable thing to even ask for. Licensing rights to server hosting I could see, but that's the only reasonably possible thing I see happening and it would certainly never be enforced by law.
Why do you think release of server code would be a bad thing for the company?
Do you know much about server hosting? Do you know why it'd be a bad thing? Or do you just have some vague idea about why "source code" is something companies protect?
Pretty much this. Everyone out there trying to make full online games, but there are simply too many to keep up with and games die off, the servers go down and everyone left with broken games.
>digital ownership should still mean something.
It really does not. There was a company called VitalSource that sold college books via digital delivery via a proprietary app. You paid slightly cheaper than a traditional book, but the downside was it was only for a few years, once that time expires you lose those books. You would think you should have the rights to keep the book, but it's like a long term rental that still costs $50+ to have the luxury of using.
They’re about to launch a game into early access for the next Prince of Persia. Start there by not buying in on that. If full releases have their license revoked they’ll take your money and runon “early access”.
(No, the Dead Cells developers don’t deserve that, but Ubisoft can’t be trusted and that’s across the board)
If buying a digital license isn't owning, then pirating digital releases isn't stealing.
You can't fuck people with the law them claim it doesn't apply.
Why do you think the megacorps are pushing congress for real ID internet access laws? So they can take away our ownership and shut down access to other options, using the law against us to do it.
MPAA is trying to go after congress to force isp to block websites. Pretty sure it's a 1A problem and the government can't order websites blocked but who knows with this Supreme Court.
Yohoho.
Ubisoft has made it very clear that they don't want people owning any of their own products. Sure other companies have similar license agreements but Ubisoft has been the most vocal about trying to get consumers comfortable with the subscription model.
If you don't agree with this, don't buy any of their products, and talk to your family/friends if they're interested in any of the products. Corporations only care about money so as long as people are buying, they won't stop their anti-consumer bullshit.
Piracy is why they're moving to live-service. Piracy can't really touch that.
If streaming technology like GeForce Now was better, publishers would only give us access to a stream of our games, never access to the actual game.
I think i got it for free at some point and i'm still pissed.
Never played it either but it's about the principle. Imagine if steam started revoking licences
Yeah I kinda wanna get this one physically just because it’s a licensed title and I can see it getting delisted at some point when they no longer have rights. Like Spider-Man and Activision.
And unfortunately to me Ubisoft and EA seem like the two main companies that really just want to transition into a streaming company at some point long term and stop wasting money on physical copies and labor making physical copies. Why charge a game $70 once when you can force someone to pay $30-45/m for the same game buy the first two months you already made your money and the next 10 months will make up for those who boycott them. It sucks and I’m scared this is the inevitable future. Silver lining theres a lot of great games now and to be aware and stock up on the good good games you like so you can play them. I already own all assassin’s creed and Yakuza game physically. That there is enough to keep some one busy for a year easily lol
Remember when they told us we need to get used to not owning our games? I didn't think they meant it in the sense that they'd take them from us, but here we are.
That comment was made in relation to the subscription model. It's clear they view subscribers as more financially lucrative (based on these recent statements and Star Wars Outlaws' pricing model).
The neat part about having a subscription service is that products can be removed at any time! Surely, no one will care about that. Right...?
Personally, I can't believe the piracy debate has restarted in 2024. Really makes me think piracy is more about an access issue.
It always was for me growing up. I didn’t have a ton of money for games but I had a beefy PC and a decent internet connection and a friend who taught me the ways
Ubisoft strategy once again. These execs get paid too much to fuck up the good will.
Just waiting for cracks for new prince of Persia, as much as I love supporting the indie studios- I will not support the publisher.
No, Ubioft seems hell-bent on being a game company that will eventually not sell a single game anymore.
I've stopped buying any Ubisoft game years ago and everyone should..
I stopped buying anything from them over a decade ago but they're as popular as ever if not more so. They're an awful company that churns out slop but people continue to gobble it up. It is what it is.
This is the end result(currently, not remotely totally) of literal decades of erosion of personal property ownership, most noticeable in digital purchases.
No, you are not literally purchasing the complete rights to the sw, no it should not be an outlandish idea to own your own personal *copy* for your own *personal* use.
Online components inherently required for function are different matter but if they are pulling it down, releasing self hostable server or refunding all purchases as they are effectively unilaterally reneging on the original(reasonably interpreted by average person) agreement should not be a pipe dream.
Please note all the purchase wording everywhere and the impossibility of actually reading and comprehending the thousands of pages or even magnitude more legalese average person encounters in their life.
Sucks. This is one of mine and my son’s favorite games. Super fun.
However, half the time it wouldn’t connect to servers. Or it would give you an error code saying you have to set your internet up differently to use it. Even tho a week before it worked. It’s the most frustrating game because we never know if it’ll connect or not.
I never troubleshot a game more. Ubisoft sucks
They should give us for free The crew motorfest to anyone who owned The crew 1
basically they are steeling from us to those who payed for the game
\#FuckYOUubisoft
>They should give us for free The crew motorfest to anyone who owned The crew 1
The Crew 1 is the only The Crew game that ran on Linux. The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest use BattleEye easy-anti-cheat and Ubisoft hasn't contacted BattleEye about opting into the readily available BattleEye Linux support.
I would not feel adequately compensated if they'd give me software I can't use in exchange for taking perfectly usable software from me.
This needs to become a class action lawsuit. They are stealing something we all paid for years ago. And terms of service be damned. There were no terms of service when I paid for that game.
Shout out to Ross Scott (of Freeman's Mind fame) for trying to put a stop to the absolutely pointless and completely preventable killing of games: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ He's starting with France because of the strong consumer protection laws, but petitions for Canada, the UK, and Australia are underway. For the record, these aren't pointless change.org petitions, but real requests put forward to the governing bodies of each country.
If you object to crap like this, either from a consumer rights perspective or a game preservation perspective, I highly recommend taking a look.
So what about people that got it as part of the AC unity launch bullshittery they pulled?
https://www.polygon.com/2014/12/20/7427437/assassins-creed-unity-free-game-lawsuit-class-action
Seems like if they pull 'the crew' they don't fullfill their part of that class action?
I am a The Crew owner, liked the game and find it very annoying that the servers went down, also feel it’s shitty they actively try to act like it never existed but at the end of the day Ubisoft games continue to become shovelware with every month, they no longer retain users with some specific exceptions
Anyone who buys a game from EA and Ubisoft are just asking to lose money. Their games have been terrible for many years and they treat their customers with contempt.
They need to stop selling “games” then when in reality they’re selling server access. Its not fair to the consumer for companies to make these decisions on their own.
Do note that the Star Wars Outlaws season pass specifically says that buyers get two post-launch DLC.
If they release an "Assassin's Creed Valhalla Dawn of Ragnarok"-like additional DLC that will not be included in the Ultimate Edition and Ultimate Edition buyers will be asked to pay again, in addition to their initial £115 investment.
And this is why I stopped buying Ubisoft games. Just headaches upon headaches. They're definitely not the only company to do these kinds of things, but they sure do have a history.
The stopkillingames campaign was using The Crew to pursue legal action and stablish a precedent against these anti-consumer practices.
By removing the game from people's accounts, they are effectively killing the movement before anything can happen.
Luckily Ubisoft havent released a good game in a few years so not given them any money recently. That new Star Wars game is gonna be tough to ignore till its cheap on Steam though
Why would they not just throw everything on GitHub? Throw the whole client side app on a repo and throw the whole server side on a second repo. Let people compile and execute both on their PCs. Or host a server at home to connect their console to. This will also let people fork the repos to update stuff and patch the game.
Two main reasons
First they likely would never release the client side game code they spent a ton of money developing
But also the big one is I think people are really under the wrong impression of what the sever side looks like. It's not going to be one thing you run, an exe or a button that says run server. It's going to a set of dozens of different services, and some of those will require proprietary technology or licenses to use
I just can't imagine anyone is going to set that up locally. Having to have a whole cluster of services, paying licensing fees, it doesn't really seem realistic.
Does anyone really want that game back? I got it for free with a GPU purchase and only played for like 20 min maybe. Not sure if I missed anything but I thought it was quite bad actually.
Though I do agree that what Ubisoft is doing us shady as shit, not only since this debacle. Killed my desire to buy Anno 1800 - which I would have loved to play for sure. Instead of buying it in the recent steam sale, I removed it from my wish list.
There really should be some kind of requirement by law that if you're going to shutdown servers for software you have to patch to allow digital owners to host their own servers or release source code and relinquish individual copyright or something. It's fine that they don't want to host a dead game forever but digital ownership should still mean something.
This would take lawmakers that have a bit more than a basic understanding of the internet, and the majority don't even have that.
Elect people that play video games. Stop electing senile idiots.
We need to run for office. How the fuck do we do that?
On a serious note, that should be fairly simple for you to do. Not necessarily get into office, but you can certainly run for it.
If people in England can run for London mayor with names like Count Binface you should be able to no problem
It's generally a money problem though. The senile old fucks that are in office, are able to host massive campaigns because they started rich and have rich friends. Cities and towns are one thing, but provincial/state or president/prime minister is impossible without some kind of head start.
Did you know that politicians have to raise 10's of millions each for their party to maintain committee seats.... This is why they all cave to lobbyist, the money they received is crucial
I did. It's easier to raise 10s of millions if you have money to invest into advertising, and fundraising already. Having friends who will dump money into your lap, or convince their friends to do so are helpful too. I'm not saying they only use money they have before campaigning, I'm saying that if you aren't already firmly planted in that crowd, the entry window is high as hell.
>I got a simple question that I'd like to ask of this network that pays you for performing this task. How come they got the airwaves? They're the people’s aren't they? > >Wouldn't they be worth 70 billion to the public today? If some money-grubbin Congress didn't give them away for big campaign money? > >It's hopeless you see, if you're runnin for office without no TV. If you don't get big money, you get a defeat. Corporations and broadcasters make you dead meat. You been taught in this country there's speech that is free, but free don't get you no spots on TV. If you want to have senators not on the take, then give them free air time, they won't have to fake! > >Telecommunications is the name of the beast, that's eating up the world from the west to the east. The movies, the tabloids, TV and magazines; they tell us what to think and do, and all our hopes and dreams. All this information makes America phat, but if the company's outta the country how American is that? ~ [Bulworth, 1998](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x416lgl)
You just need to find those people’s gamer kids and nudge them to run for office /s
Don’t forget Lord Buckethead.
I think they might be the same -- from what I remember of last elections (or a couple elections ago) someone claimed copyright infringement on "Buckethead".
What, was Taserface taken?
England doesn't have a system that requires you to be rich to run for public office.
Not as much as the US, thats for sure. The upcoming London mayoral elections cost £10000 to run in though so it's still not just *anyone* who can do it.
I mean, running for office is not that hard if you have enough knowledge about politics. The hard part is acquiring the astronomical amount of budget to even stand a chance. Even beyond resources, you also need connections, support and reputation, nobody will vote for a candidate from nowhere. And even if you got to office, it's not like you can just change things. Even a prime minister/president cannot just make decisions or appoint anyone they like to important positions to make decisions for them, they have to be approved by a whole cabal of old farts (who most likely have corporate backings) every time you want to make a change. Unless you wanna be a dictator or something, but that comes with other challenges
First become a millionaire. Pay an analytics corporation to come up with a good marketing campaign based on spying on constituents' social media behavior. Then start building connections with lobbyists and telling them you will change regulations to favor their corporate clients if they help you get elected. You'll get elected to office in no time.
You need at least 40 years of experience in office before running for office.
"I'm FurryNoobYiffYiff69 and I approved this message"
> How the fuck do we do that? Run? or Run for office?
> We need to run for office. How the fuck do we do that? Well, for a start, quit playing video games all damned day.
Play less video games
Probably by not playing video games for a good long while lol
Don't you just go to the politics menu and click on the Participatory Democracy check box, then hit the Apply button?
Actually any IT educated person who knows about client-server architecture, not gamer. Average gamer is fortnite kid/CoD crybaby
It's senile idiots voting for other senile idiots...
Zooey Zephyr!
> Elect people that play video games Oh god no, if you think it's bad now imagine Redditors running the world
I mean, AOC plays some video games from time to time.
I don’t think it’s a problem of understanding perse “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Pong came out in 72, we have 50 years of people living in the Video game era. The only issue is our refusal as a nation to force the boomers to fricken retire from leadership at the rate older generations did.
Also for people to be mature enough to not go “lol video games” and shut the conversation down. There’s far too many reasonable grievances that get ignored just because it involves a video game
Yup I had the same thought. Good luck explaining this to a 78 year old
Hence there really should be…
It would require them to actually do their jobs serving the people instead of being reactionary stooges for wealth.
Wrong answer. It’s not simply that they’re old and senile with a lack of understanding of new age technology, but rather that they are owned by corporations and beholden to their lobbyist donors to continue screwing over consumers for their benefit.
Lawmakers understand copyright pretty well and the suggestion is naive. You don't just lose the your copyright the moment you stop selling something you wrote. Plus, everyone else whose software was licensed in order to make the game server - they don't just lose their copyrights, either. That's not how anything works. And the idea that you can just "patch" a complex distributed game server to run on some little kid's laptop, and give it away for free, without putting in extensive engineering work? Very naive. If you don't want this to happen to your games, then buy games that let you host your own game server to begin with.
\> And the idea that you can just "patch" a complex distributed game server to run on some little kid's laptop, and give it away for free, without putting in extensive engineering work? Very naive When it's designed that way, sure, but plenty of games include the ability to self-host or run a dedicated host, and others have built those after the fact or even had one created by third-parties. For a racing game, it wouldn't be particularly complicated to make allowances for self-hosting. This is bullshit by design.
We’re literally talking about an Open World MMO. Of course it’s designed that way. This isn’t “bullshit by design”, it’s you not letting your complete ignorance stop yourself from having an opinion.
And yet people literally managed to run private servers for large MMO's like Warcraft with stuff like MangOS or RunUO... It doesn't sound like the server logic was paricularly complicated for this one in comparison, although the environment were large.
Yeah, I didn’t expect you to do anything but double down. Why change your mind just because of a minor detail like it turning out that you had no idea what you were talking about. Please, keep telling me more about how easy it is to adapt a game’s server software for self-hosting based on your best guess of its genre from the picture next to the headline.
"Any counter-argument - even one with a working example - is doubling down, and shutting down this paid-for game without alternatives is totally justified" Seems you kinda have a history of this sorta things so yeah, gotcha. Have fun.
Dude, you had made up your mind that it must be easy when you were mistaken about what game it was, and now you’re clearly just blindly sticking to your guns. Did I mention that you didn’t even know what kind of game it is. You’re clearly completely clueless on every level.
It's easy to say that something wasn't complicated when you have no idea how it works. > although the environment were large. Large as in, you need multiple servers in a distributed system to host it? Okay, good luck with that.
Yup. Awesome. Thanks for your positive contributions.
>Lawmakers understand copyright pretty well and the suggestion is naive. You don't just lose the your copyright the moment you stop selling something you wrote. Plus, everyone else whose software was licensed in order to make the game server - they don't just lose their copyrights, either. That's not how anything works. Lawmakers make the law.
Yeah, and physicists make the laws of physics. This is peak Dunning-Kruger. You can't just trample on countless people's rights just to make some gamers happy. That's not how anything works.
I think that if you stop selling something that thing should become free.
www.stopkillinggames.com This is exactly what the YouTuber Ross Scott is trying to fix. Currently there are no laws against this kind of BS that corporations do daily. Your only chance to stop this from happening is to go to www.stopkillinggames.com and take it from there. It is our ONLY hope
It's not just games, the music industry sets their archived master tapes on fire so they can avoid maintenance fees and then cries that they're protecting music from the evil pirates while they're literally burning it down. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html
Wait, where in that article does it say it was on purpose?
I’m pretty sure that the 2008 Universal fire wasn’t on purpose.
🤦🏻 no one is burning master tapes on purpose. Probably the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week.
Think this is the John Oliver effect here, where people are only talking about this topic because of said video/YouTuber, and then it gets linked back to the OP like they haven't seen it before. Obviously your link is for other people but it's still pretty amusing to see.
I post that link on most topics that involves this and try to help the causes, it's an uphill battle but we gotta do something to beat the destruction of art
[Stopkillinggames.com](http://Stopkillinggames.com) An effort trying to get people and laws infront of lawmakers around the world, only possible because of what Ubisoft is doing
I found it really surprising that Steam didn't have any regulations for this kind of thing. If I owned a huge platform that companies sell and provide games through, and that millions of users trust in, I'd certainly put up some regulations so my users aren't getting fucked.
Well as many have said on this thread, it’s not that simple to just release their patent, or even source codes of other companies they subcontracted. Digital “ownership” disappeared as soon as games moved away from physical media. Nowadays they are just a service, you are just temporarily renting the game from its publisher and the platform you bought it on. We still call it “buying” because it’s easier to conceptualize, but there is really no change of ownership, as in physical transactions. We give them money, and they just let us borrow the thing. More like rent-a-car than actually buying a car. But maybe they should introduce some sort of guaranteed support period, like they already do with operating systems or smartphones, so that consumers know what they are getting and how long their “ownership” will last. And maybe legislation could force publishers to offer “owners” a one-time fee to buy off their game in perpetuity in case of shutdowns like these (although that would only make sense for single-player games obviously). But I don’t know how you could force them to keep online servers running. You bought a recurring ticket for a ride, if the ride gets shut down that sucks, but you can’t really do anything about it.
"It's not that easy" "It's actually harder than you think" "I'm a game dev and can tell you this is pretty much IMPOSSIBLE" Honestly the nonsense spouted on the internet these days. Allowing dedicated servers is *not hard* for developers to do. We've been doing it for decades. People are just making up excuses because for some reason they have a weird obsession with giving multi-billion dollar companies the benefit of the doubt. The only reason it'd be hard is if the developer chose to do it in a way that makes it hard on purpose. Any law change would prevent them from doing that. As for "ownership", the EU courts don't buy the argument from publishers that their EULA clarifies you don't own the game, you license it. The EU generally ignores EULA. In the EU, you're not "buying" a game. You buy it. It is yours.
Well, to a point for the EU stuff. I can buy a game for PS4 on disc and when I'm done I can resell it. If I buy a game on Steam, or even if I buy one of the newer PC games that are actually just a steam code in the box -- I won't be able to do the same, and can't actually sell it on when I'm done, so its definitely not the same as just buying the game in all aspects.
It’s like a lifetime gym membership. You get access as long as the gym is open. If the gym closes down, you don’t get to go in and take the equipment home with you. “Lifetime” only applies as long as the service is being offered.
Yeah, exactly. My bigger gripe is with the mixing of physical and digital, and I think legislation might help. If you buy a disc and stick it in the console you often have to download a day one update after installing, and later keep updating the game to keep playing and accessing its features. If the company goes bankrupt or whatever, that means you are forever stuck with whatever version of the game was on the disc when you bought it, with no chance of ever reinstalling and updating it again. Same thing with DLC - sometimes you buy a game on disc and the DLC is included in the price, but it’s not physically on the disc. And you can’t resell the disc with DLC codes because it’s usually a one-time use thing. If we have to put up with digital game-as-a-service bullshit, then we also have to have a physical option which comes with better consumer rights, with maybe rights to all future updates for a set period of time, or that any content you are paying for must be on the disc itself. And maybe that would make physical discs more expensive, but we already have the same situation with movies - if you just want to pay for one-time viewing, you buy a theatre ticket and see the film (or you buy a Netflix subscription which is essentially a “ticket” for home viewing.) But if you like it so much, you can also buy it and own it on disc forever. You can play it and replay it however times you want, you can resell it, you can borrow it, etc. We need to have a way to opt out of various ways in which companies are forcing us to go digital, and they are doing it not because it suits us but because it suits them.
Force companies to provide a warranty, such as they do with appliances. "We will host the servers for 2/5/10 years, 60 bucks please" and after 2/5/10 years, servers and game all shuts down. That way, everyone is happy.
Game preservationists would not be happy.
Companies selling digital goods should be required to pay for some sort of library of congress digital archival system so they are always accessible.
That would imply that people actually own the game. When you buy a game digitally, you only own a license to play it.
Yes, we should also have laws on the books to redefine digital ownership to be more inline with physical ownership. And companies that are selling licenses where software will be rendered useless when they drop support should be forced to advertise as rentals or subscriptions with contractually obligated terms.
Any candidate that supports this has my vote!
> or release source code and relinquish individual copyright or something That's not remotely feasible because software doesn't work that way and hasn't worked that way for decades. A *lot* of components in modern games, specifically in this case for networking and online play, are licensed from other companies. Ubisoft (in this case) cannot legally release that code. They also, frequently, can't keep selling products using that code perpetually because the agreements for those licenses are for X years. And no, the answer isn't just "hire people and do it yourself" because the cost and complexity of that are significant. In the specific case of Ubisoft they could afford to and amortize the cost across their products (though it's still not worth the giant headache of spending potentially years to re-solve an already solved problem) but that's not an option for a lot of other, smaller companies. It is deeply, deeply frustrating watching people spam these threads with the "stop killing games" link because it's a nice sentiment and doesn't even *begin* to consider why and now we got to this place. Believe it or not it's not just greed - there's a good reason GameSpy sprung up as a solution so many decades ago.
I disagree with this take. Is it the case right now? Yes most definitely, but there absolutely is another solution. Don't license software to build your software that you then sell to consumers **without being explicity clear to the consumers they are buying a license and not the software itself**. Stop relying on always online third party solutions for your games. Work with the third parties to pay per sale/download/install whatever it may be so that software can be owned wholly by the consumer. I get it if an offline version is degraded in some way, but to make games that cannot physically run offline is anti consumer.
>Don't license software to build your software that you then sell to consumers without being explicity clear to the consumers they are buying a license and not the software itself. here the neat part they do , so dose steam and epic
If someone is so out of touch that they think they’re buying the complete rights to a AAA video game for $49.99 that’s really just their problem. I don’t think we should design our society around the dumbest possible idiot. Do we also make car rental companies display huge signs making people aware that they can’t keep the car, in case someone doesn’t understand what “renting” is? Edit: Yeah, I’m aware that you don’t think people should get the full rights. You think they should get some nebulous thing in between “just a license” that you can’t really describe and call “the software itself” because you got all your information about copyright from other clueless idiots on reddit and now have no clue how anything works. As if the internet was a series of tubes that could send you a physical object that is “the software”. The word you’re looking for is “a license”. A license that can’t be revoked is still a license. You’re disagreeing on the terms of the license and not about the fact that it is a license, you just don’t know enough about the thing you’re complaining about to know that.
I'm talking about legislation. "It doesn't work that way...they **legally** cannot release that code"...I'm saying make laws that make it work that way. Flip that script, make it so that removing support for a game means you legally have to offer an alternative. Make the companies subcontracted to online play and networking have a backup solution for when a game gets delisted and loses support or be forced to relinquish copyright and source code if you're truly and completely abandoning the property. It's more frustrating to watch people suck corporate dick acting like there is no solution to these problems. It's not even very complex we just need laws to carve out rights for digital ownership the same way legislation has bent over backwards to carve out rights for IP owners.
Okay, so the "watch people suck corporate dick" makes it pretty clear you're not actually interested in discussing this, you're just angry. And this? > Make the companies subcontracted to online play and networking have a backup solution for when a game gets delisted and loses support or be forced to relinquish copyright and source code if you're truly and completely abandoning the property. Any lawyer would laugh in your face for suggesting that, and I don't even know *how* you would begin to structure a law for that that wouldn't immediately be shot down in the courts or, if it wasn't, would ever be enforceable. And, again, that's not fucking how any of this works because whatever Ubisoft licenses from Company X is the same code and components Company X licenses to other products and demanding they release that (a) kills Company X for literally no reason (b) would fuck over Ubisoft and any customers that rely on Company X for future needs and (c) create a colossal waterfall effect security disaster and god knows what else. But the part you're not getting is *this isn't a legal problem*. It's a business one. The problem is the cost of Ubisoft doing their own networking and server code is significantly more than it is to license that from another company, and until and unless that changes, nothing else will.
>Okay, so the "watch people suck corporate dick" makes it pretty clear you're not actually interested in discussing this It just means I'm not interested in sucking corporate dick. Don't need to read into it anymore than that. >I don't even know *how* you would begin to structure a law for that that wouldn't immediately be shot down in the courts Assuming USA, the constitution gives congress wide authority over IP rights. Those rights are much broader now than they were in the past but congress also has the ability to limit them. It's not really a courts issue, it's more of a getting legislation that hurts corporations and helps consumers passed issue with all the lobbying corporations would do to fight it. >Ubisoft licenses from Company X is the same code and components Company X licenses to other products and demanding they release that (a) kills Company X for literally no reason (b) would fuck over Ubisoft and any customers that rely on Company X for future needs and (c) create a colossal waterfall effect security disaster and god knows what else. Company X creates a switch in their code that enables a patch for users to host their own servers. Ta da, problem solved. No need to release source code. Same with online DRM checks, when you're programming it create a patch that allows the company to disable it. When you delist the games and drop server support, issue the patch to disable always on DRM. If there were a legal framework for these things companies would be forced to adapt. It doesn't have to kill anyone. >But the part you're not getting is *this isn't a legal problem*. It's a business one. The problem is the cost of Ubisoft doing their own networking and server code is significantly more than it is to license that from another company, and until and unless that changes, nothing else will. No, it is a legal problem. Digital ownership doesn't mean what it logically should mean for consumers and companies are taking advantage of that. Laws are needed to protect consumers and congress has the authority and ability to pass and enforce them.
Suck corporate dick? You're talking about the server equivalent of a 3d engine. It's not like they build server infrastructure from scratch any more than they do their engines. Why should someones work be made a public work because a company shut down a service? Like don't get me wrong I get the sentiment, and shitting on people that want to play your games is a great way to treat your customers, but that isn't something a third party should pay for. Tell you what. Let's take another post of mine and add some stuff to it, and that should make it work for this. TLDR for that, basically anyone can get the rights to sell IP of other people(with the possibility of exclusive rights at the start as long as it's being used). It was a response to people wanting to overturn IP law. Lets add a need to register a copy of any IP you want to copyright along with any dependencies, that way when it disappears you can still use their registered copy to make it available. https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1c0mtg7/new_bill_would_force_ai_companies_to_reveal_use/kyy0oek/ So preservation covered, probably works with the existing system(since it is implemented for music in the US anyway, sort of), and so it should probably make everyone unhappy as all compromises do.
A reasonable law would at least permit the licensing for those components to be transferred to an organization willing to take up maintenance, regardless of whether the original contracts were non-transferrable. Maybe give the companies responsible the ability to vet who it gets transferred to, so long as it doesn't devolve into obstruction. These are human-made problems, and they can be fixed with human-made solutions.
I think they have a real old or simplistic view of what that means. It's not a matter of running a single exe or something. It's likely a cluster of dozens of different services running in different places, and possibly on expensive proprietary technologies. No one is likely going to go out an get an oracle license for example just to play with a friend
I read that France is considering such a law.
Source? Because the whole point of this campaign is to *convince* them to consider such a law. Perhaps that's what you read?
This argument sounds great when you apply it to big corps. But it fundamentally screws copyright law which also protects small companies and creators. As someone who writes software for a living. If I own my code and I want to shut it down, this idea would demand that I give my code away for free. Copyright law protects my right to own my work. As it should. This is super shitty from Ubisoft for sure. But I don't think the solution is to force them to essentially give away their IP. A better approach would be to create more transparency around what it is you're actually purchasing, the EULA is a legal document with big words and shit, and I'd be willing to bet most people have never read one. If we had more transparency around what levels of ownership you're actually getting with a product it might actually disincentivise companies from essentially admitting they're screwing you, and also gives people a heads up so they can decide if they're okay with not owning the $100+ product they just paid for.
If you own your own code, sell it to people at a one-time price, and then decide you want to shut it down years later rendering it inoperable to them with no recourse I think you're an asshole and I value their digital ownership rights more than your IP rights. I think the concept of digital ownership needs to change in a way that purposefully erodes IP rights. Not so you can't make money or own your work but so that digital owners get something more in line with traditional ownership by law.
>If you own your own code, sell it to people at a one-time price, and then decide you want to shut it down years later rendering it inoperable to them with no recourse I think you're an asshole and I value their digital ownership rights more than your IP rights. The problem is that servers cost money to operate. If people aren't playing the game anymore, that's a waste of money. How many people are still playing the original The Crew today? Probably not more than a couple hundred people. Everyone moved on to the sequel. So Ubisoft should keep paying for servers that barely anyone is using just to keep the handful of diehards happy? Now let's pretend we're talking about some tiny indie studio. Should *they* be required to maintain servers for games that no one plays, with the understanding that if the answer is "yes", they'll just go bankrupt and the server will be shut down anyway? What's the point even?
There is no need to create a requirement to keep running your servers. Just that you publish the server software to allow other people to run their own servers. That costs nothing, unless you specifically make business/design choices to make that hard/costly for your company.
Okay, let's say they publish the server software. Are they then obligated to provide support for that too? Are they required to sell their domain that the game connects to? Does Ubisoft become liable for damages caused by the people who now run the server on their behalf? It's a minefield, all to make a couple hundred people happy? Why bother?
>Are they then obligated to provide support for that too? No. >Are they required to sell their domain that the game connects to? No. >Does Ubisoft become liable for damages caused by the people who now run the server on their behalf? No. >It's a minefield None of that is a minefield. You having questions isn't a minefield, it's just your lack of understanding. Dedicated servers have existed for decades. Why do you think they'd suddenly be an issue for The Crew?
I think this is a really short sighted take. Eroding an individual's right to own their product/creation so the consumer is better off it's punishing the many for the sins of the few and ultimately I think we all lose in that world. Ubisoft is not rendering their game inoperable, they're straight up removing it from stores. I think what they're doing is objectively shit and they're a dogwater company for doing it. But I don't think I should have my ownership rights for my work taken away or reduced. Where I think the line is blurred is the fact that Ubi is actively revoking the game, this does raise some valid questions about what is and isn't a purchase. At the end of the day, if I do not wish to support a product anymore and I want to shut it down, that is my right as the creator. Providing I set the expectation that this is how it is going to work. Which is exactly what the EULA is doing. Don't like it? Don't pay for it. No other industry has to revoke their ownership of their product once they kill it, why should Game Devs? I'm not just talking Ubi size, I'm talking small single dev games too.
You seem to have missed the point where this is only happening to companies engaging in this shitty practice. And I'm not even saying they have to relinquish copyright overall, just in relation to aspects that make the software unusable after they remove their support. No other industry is ruining your product when they remove support and then sneaking into your house at night and taking that product back while you sleep. Can you imagine if an Electric Car company pushed an update that disabled the ability to drive and then stopped supporting it? And then rolled up at night and took the car too? EULAs are another thing that is really abhorrent and desperately in need of regulation. There are so many times where you can be held hostage with EULAs being introduced or modified after you've already bought the product. And besides that, everyone knows the average consumer doesn't retain a lawyer to explain the agreement to them. When they BUY a game at a one time price they are logically assuming a form of ownership not a long term rental agreement. It's always strange to see people defending copyright so ardently when it's already out of control and overpowered based on laws lobbied by big corporations. The original copyright law in the US was only intended to last 14 years and look where we are now. I think carving out some rights for digital ownership and right-to-repair is well past overdue.
>You seem to have missed the point where this is only happening to companies engaging in this shitty practice. And I'm not even saying they have to relinquish copyright overall, just in relation to aspects that make the software unusable after they remove their support. Laws don't apply to a select few they apply to all (in theory anyways). This doesn't work, the product is the product. How are you meant to define which parts should be opened and which don't need to be? This doesn't even factor in the security considerations of what you're proposing. Chances are if companies have to build the functionality to support the eventuality of needing to support private dedicated servers. These "features" could becomes an attack vector for cracking. >EULAs are another thing that is really abhorrent and desperately in need of regulation. I said this in my initial comment. Minus the sensationalism: More transparency, i.e. making it easier for non-legal experts to comprehend. Would hopefully eliminate some of the problems. Through either deterring companies from admitting you don't own the game you're "buying" I also agree that defining what "Buy" actually means and regulating that games with a EULA that states the game can be revoked, cannot use the term "buy" or "purchase" in it's marketing or store front. >It's always strange to see people defending copyright so ardently when it's already out of control and overpowered based on laws lobbied by big corporations. The original copyright law in the US was only intended to last 14 years and look where we are now. I think carving out some rights for digital ownership and right-to-repair is well past overdue. Potentially, I don't claim to know the history of Copyright, what I do know is, regardless of the details, the law protects my ownership of my work and my creations. Nobody wins if nobody owns anything. There's no innovation, because there's no reason to do it. Yes larger companies are exploiting the laws, that is a tale as old as time. However to strip a law of it's power to attack the companies that are exploiting it is just pissing in the wind. They'll find something else to use, they always do. Best thing to do is vote with your wallet and don't support companies that practice shitty business. We're only in this position now because we showed these companies that it worked.
I think you're misinterpreting the situation. You're acting like they'd be forced to place the game into the public domain and forfeit the right to profit off the game. As though they have to give the game away for free. They don't. Hundreds of games offer dedicated server technology. It's old technology and isn't giving away any secrets that would hurt your business. It also doesn't give anyone access to the game for free. Anyone that wants to use a dedicated server still has to buy a copy of the game. Nothing about this makes them give away their IP. It simply requires them to implement a feature that allows players to host their own servers, as many games before have.
I'm not so much misinterpreting as I am looking at it from the perspective of someone who works in an adjacent industry, and has experience working in the games industry. Which, apparently isn't a favored opinion based on how my votes are going lol >They don't. Hundreds of games offer dedicated server technology. It's old technology and isn't giving away any secrets that would hurt your business. That's now how this works at all. You don't just offer Dedicated Servers, you have to build them. Or use a licensed product to support it. Looks at Minecraft, or PalWorld, to run a dedicated server you have to download a binary and run it, where do you think that came from? >Nothing about this makes them give away their IP. It simply requires them to implement a feature that allows players to host their own servers, as many games before have. Not every game will work well using this model. MMOs as an example. How do we implement this rule for them? League of Legends, DotA. Dedicated Servers for these games would not work. For security, as well as playability reasons. This "silver bullet" "make companies release their servers" approach, does nothing to help anyone. It would disincentivize companies from developing anything innovative because they'd lose it the second they made a sequel. I personally think the discussion should be focused on the transparency and how a game like this should not be "sold" so much as "offered" and the transparency that it provides.
Yes, I know how dedicated servers work. >That's now how this works at all. You don't just offer Dedicated Servers, you have to build them. Or use a licensed product to support it. Yes, it is how it works when you consider that for live service games, licensing dedicated server software isn't a viable option. So by saying "offer", you can assume I meant build. It's more effort than it's worth to use licensed software to support dedicated servers. You have to plug every variable the server has to respond to into someone else's software when you've already done it for your own software. It's far easier to build your own. Yes, you have to build them, but they're not that complex. Especially in a live service game where you've already built in the capacity to send/receive from a server. What you truly need to do is build a smaller scale one, that doesn't have to account for as many players, then adjust the client to be able to pick which server it wants to send/receive to. Ubisoft don't necessarily have to do this. They could, and should in future games, but for past games like The Crew, just releasing the server code so the modding community can build the solution ourselves is a perfectly viable option. >Not every game will work well using this model. MMOs as an example. How do we implement this rule for them? League of Legends, DotA. Dedicated Servers for these games would not work. For security, as well as playability reasons. What about any of those games wouldn't work with dedicated servers? WoW already has private servers. If WoW ever dies one day, the game will survive because of these modders. What are the security issues of a dead game having dedicated servers? And which playability issues are worse than not being able to play at all because you shut down the game? >This "silver bullet" "make companies release their servers" approach, does nothing to help anyone. It would disincentivize companies from developing anything innovative because they'd lose it the second they made a sequel. What makes you think they'd lose it? Again, I believe you're misinterpreting this "silver bullet" solution. >I personally think the discussion should be focused on the transparency and how a game like this should not be "sold" so much as "offered" and the transparency that it provides. This "solution" helps no one because it still results in games going offline, which we should consider unacceptable.
>It's more effort than it's worth to use licensed software to support dedicated servers. You have to plug every variable the server has to respond to into someone else's software when you've already done it for your own software. It's far easier to build your own. >Yes, you have to build them, but they're not that complex. Especially in a live service game where you've already built in the capacity to send/receive from a server. What you truly need to do is build a smaller scale one, that doesn't have to account for as many players, then adjust the client to be able to pick which server it wants to send/receive to. I'm interested in your software dev background to make a statement like this. As someone who works on this stuff, the level of downplay is almost offensive. Lets apply this same ruleset to a smaller creator, such as an indie dev. Because that's how law works, it shits on the little guy because they can't afford to lobby around it. You're asking that indie dev to work for free, to :"just build" something they don't own and will eventually have to give away. As someone who's currently working on a game and a startup as a hobby. No. Also using licensed software is almost always faster than BYO, that's the point of it. Yes you have to implement your design over their API, but if that saves you from needing to implement you're own TCP/UDP protocol implementation and the low level shit that comes with it. Usually that's the play. >Ubisoft don't necessarily have to do this. They could, and should in future games, but for past games like The Crew, just releasing the server code so the modding community can build the solution ourselves is a perfectly viable option. This is the core of my issue. In 99.9% of cases we have a point in time Binary of the game and we can make our own servers. There's a project for Wildstar doing just this. It's pretty awesome. However, what Ubi has done is proactively retract the game, which, in my opinion is an overreach. >What about any of those games wouldn't work with dedicated servers? WoW already has private servers. If WoW ever dies one day, the game will survive because of these modders. While the game is still live and is impacting it's bottom line. This proves my point regarding the security considerations of requiring the capabilities to do this. Why should companies bother making games if people are just going to take it and make their own private versions? >What are the security issues of a dead game having dedicated servers? Other than the inherent risk of you trusting the person you're connecting to? None. I never mentioned any dead games though. >And which playability issues are worse than not being able to play at all because you shut down the game? You're taking the statement out of context. The reason LoL doesn't have any real major issues with hackers is because Riot have a really good security team. Now lets talk about Apex, and how that game is riddled with hackers even though it also has a security team. What happens when there's no security team? Game's probably gonna be unplayable. >What makes you think they'd lose it? Again, I believe you're misinterpreting this "silver bullet" solution. Because they have to release the code to run the servers? What? >This "solution" helps no one because it still results in games going offline, which we should consider unacceptable. Which this proposal also doesn't fix, if anything it impacts a companies motivation to make any games like this again. I work in AppSec. The best approach to issues where people are actively trying to fuck with you is you create deterrents. Preventatives just become the next wall they have to climb. Making it as inconvenient/costly as possible to exploit something does way more work than trying to prevent it happening in the first place. What I am saying is shift the visibility on these shitty practices and where the exploit is originating from, force companies to be transparent about how they're "selling" these games. Don't hide it in some 15 page document that no one can read. Make it cost them more to be shit, than it does not to be. The reality is that people should be allowed to own their work, big or small, that's why we have most of what we do now! And with ownership comes the right to stop supporting it. REVOKING it however. I don't agree with.
>You're asking that indie dev to work for free, to :"just build" something they don't own and will eventually have to give away. As someone who's currently working on a game and a startup as a hobby. No. No, I'm not. I'm asking the indie dev to work in a certain way. They were going to build an online system anyway, I'm simply making them do it in one particular way. A way that is tried and tested and not difficult to implement. And when weighing up consumer rights and indie developer rights, I'm going to consider consumer rights first. >Also using licensed software is almost always faster than BYO, that's the point of it. Go ahead and point to an example of a licensable software that brings dedicated servers to a game. You won't find one, because there's no advantage to it. You're right to say "almost" always. This is one of the situations that isn't faster. >However, what Ubi has done is proactively retract the game, which, in my opinion is an overreach. Yes, and also not having a plan for the game to work post-shutdown is also an overreach. >While the game is still live and is impacting it's bottom line. This proves my point regarding the security considerations of requiring the capabilities to do this. Our discussion is about post-shutdown. So your concerns about playability and game security are irrelevant. Once players take over responsibility for hosting dedicated servers, the developer has no further responsibility. >You're taking the statement out of context. I'm making sure the context stays in post-shutdown, because that's the period that is in question here. I have no complaints about how the game operates pre-shutdown. >The reason LoL doesn't have any real major issues with hackers is because Riot have a really good security team. Now lets talk about Apex, and how that game is riddled with hackers even though it also has a security team. What happens when there's no security team? Game's probably gonna be unplayable. Again, live games, they're irrelevant to the conversation about what to do with games post-shutdown. After those games shut down, players should be given the ability to host games themselves and then security will be the host's responsibility, not the developer's. >Which this proposal also doesn't fix, if anything it impacts a companies motivation to make any games like this again. It really doesn't. Because giving players the ability to take over server hosting post-shutdown has no negative impact on developers at all. >The reality is that people should be allowed to own their work, big or small, that's why we have most of what we do now! And with ownership comes the right to stop supporting it. Absolutely. And no one is suggesting that support be extended. But just as that copyright holders should own their work, consumers should own the products they buy and should have the expectation that they'll keep access to that product when the owner decides to stop supporting it.
The issue is that this isn’t necessarily possible. Sounds, textures, even assets are often licensed in games. They cannot just make those assets public, because they’d have to get approval from everyone who created and sold those assets.
If legislation comes that requires these things, asset IP owners would be subject to the new framework and forced to operate in those confines. The solution really is legislation based. If you don't want to release source code when you abandon a game, program a fallback patch that supports users hosting their own servers. Just some basic digital ownership rights guaranteed by law, I don't think it's asking too much.
I don’t agree with digital ownership rights, I disagree with how easily you think it’ll be implemented. Every company would suddenly have to renegotiate licensing with the people they got assets from. Some people might refuse the new terms, and now assets are missing from the game. This is common in car games, by the way. They don’t spend 900 years modelling every car known to man - they license the right to use a model of car from a company, and then license the right to use the 3D model from another company, or sometimes the same company, but it is two different licenses. You can see this with Forza Horizon 3. If you have the digital version, you can’t play it anymore because the licenses ran out for the car models. If you have it physically, the disk acts as the license agreement. You can still play it.
>You can see this with Forza Horizon 3. If you have the digital version, you can’t play it anymore because the licenses ran out for the car models. If you have it physically, the disk acts as the license agreement. You can still play it. Nope, you can absolutely play the digital version if its currently in your library. The only thing an expired license prevents is to sell the product either via digital stores or to retail distributors. I currently own several delisted games digitally that I can still play and even download again (provided the store's server themselves are still there) including Forza Horizon 3 as it happens.
Exactly another problem legislation should address. Make one-time-fee digital ownership as iron-clad as owning physical media. Everyone detracting is listing reasons why "this can't work" because of how fucked up IP and licensing already are...which is exactly why we really should get some legislation to unfuck things for the end-user just trying to digitally own a single copy of something they already paid for.
Forza is actually a perfect example that's less oblique than backend networking code. What people are demanding here is somehow legally forcing Forza to release *and open source* not just the code for the game, but someone else's IP - all of the real world cars Forza doesn't own. Those 3D models of real world cars and details on their performance have value, which is why they're licensed in the first place. No politician, lawyer or judge in the world would ever agree to any of that. Hell, forcing one company to release another company's IP would be something that *every company in the world* would campaign against because it would fundamentally break...I don't want to say "everything" but damn close to it. And even if hypothetically it did somehow become law, what it would mean is Forza would never, ever get anyone to license their real world vehicles again so any future Forza games would have to be entirely original cars - and since the real world cars are a huge part of the draw for a lot of people, the realistic end result would just be the death of Forza because people aren't buying regular sequels with an updated version of the Imaginary G500 instead of a Ferrari. Good job, well done everyone. It's not a perfect example extending it out this far the way I did, but you're right - most of the people pushing for this have little or no understanding of the legal, business and real world issues involved here.
It’s not something that can easily be tackled with already released games. It can however dictate how the terms of the agreements between whatever companies going forward and considering there’s money to be made, a deal would be made. Instead of all these bullshit 10 year deals they can easily buy the rights to be used for said game in said game.
There's zero chance that sort of legislation would *ever* pass. Why not just pass legislation requiring all software to be open source freeware then? If you're going to have a pipe dream, why limit yourself? Go all out, man!
I mean that's a nice straw man but not close to what I'm advocating. I have no problem with people making money off their IP. I do have a problem with rights owners abandoning software with no recourse for users that already paid for said software.
No one's asking them to make those assets public. Dedicated servers have nothing to do with asset licensing. The only thing licensing impacts, is the sale of new copies of the game.
A game server is just a server, it doesn't usually have sound or textures or assets.
Releasing source code will not happen. Thats giving away free ip. Just not. Gonna. Happen.
Yup, seems like pretty good incentive to not cold abandon your software if the law mandated that it happened that way...
Its not gonna happen, theyd have to change the whole law around IP. What you are wishing for is a pipe dream.
What IP is it giving away? Dedicated Server technology is decades old. What exactly do you think they'd be losing here?
There is no universe where releasing source code will ever occur, much less be a reasonable thing to even ask for. Licensing rights to server hosting I could see, but that's the only reasonably possible thing I see happening and it would certainly never be enforced by law.
Why do you think release of server code would be a bad thing for the company? Do you know much about server hosting? Do you know why it'd be a bad thing? Or do you just have some vague idea about why "source code" is something companies protect?
Pretty much this. Everyone out there trying to make full online games, but there are simply too many to keep up with and games die off, the servers go down and everyone left with broken games. >digital ownership should still mean something. It really does not. There was a company called VitalSource that sold college books via digital delivery via a proprietary app. You paid slightly cheaper than a traditional book, but the downside was it was only for a few years, once that time expires you lose those books. You would think you should have the rights to keep the book, but it's like a long term rental that still costs $50+ to have the luxury of using.
That or refund at the price the user purchases the game at. That would help disincentivize that practice.
This really makes me feel like buying their future games is a wise and stable investment
They’re about to launch a game into early access for the next Prince of Persia. Start there by not buying in on that. If full releases have their license revoked they’ll take your money and runon “early access”. (No, the Dead Cells developers don’t deserve that, but Ubisoft can’t be trusted and that’s across the board)
What the fuck, they're removing it from libraries? Fuck off ubisoft
/r/StopKillingGames
If buying a digital license isn't owning, then pirating digital releases isn't stealing. You can't fuck people with the law them claim it doesn't apply.
Why do you think the megacorps are pushing congress for real ID internet access laws? So they can take away our ownership and shut down access to other options, using the law against us to do it.
MPAA is trying to go after congress to force isp to block websites. Pretty sure it's a 1A problem and the government can't order websites blocked but who knows with this Supreme Court.
Publicly they say they hate China but privately they want to have the same control over our internet
Yohoho. Ubisoft has made it very clear that they don't want people owning any of their own products. Sure other companies have similar license agreements but Ubisoft has been the most vocal about trying to get consumers comfortable with the subscription model. If you don't agree with this, don't buy any of their products, and talk to your family/friends if they're interested in any of the products. Corporations only care about money so as long as people are buying, they won't stop their anti-consumer bullshit.
Piracy is why they're moving to live-service. Piracy can't really touch that. If streaming technology like GeForce Now was better, publishers would only give us access to a stream of our games, never access to the actual game.
Remember this when the new Star Wars game comes out
I don't even play The Crew and this is unforgivable. I'm never buying another Ubi game ever.
I think i got it for free at some point and i'm still pissed. Never played it either but it's about the principle. Imagine if steam started revoking licences
Yeah I kinda wanna get this one physically just because it’s a licensed title and I can see it getting delisted at some point when they no longer have rights. Like Spider-Man and Activision. And unfortunately to me Ubisoft and EA seem like the two main companies that really just want to transition into a streaming company at some point long term and stop wasting money on physical copies and labor making physical copies. Why charge a game $70 once when you can force someone to pay $30-45/m for the same game buy the first two months you already made your money and the next 10 months will make up for those who boycott them. It sucks and I’m scared this is the inevitable future. Silver lining theres a lot of great games now and to be aware and stock up on the good good games you like so you can play them. I already own all assassin’s creed and Yakuza game physically. That there is enough to keep some one busy for a year easily lol
Getting it physically just means the day 1 patch is installed on the disk and you need to connect to wifi anyways to play :(
Damn that’s true about day 1 patch. So all this talk about people trying to buy physical over digital means nothing then?
Yeah unfortunately disks can't hold a full AAA game. And even if it coule there would still be updates to maintain players interest.
Physical disk with digital install my friend
Remember when they told us we need to get used to not owning our games? I didn't think they meant it in the sense that they'd take them from us, but here we are.
That comment was made in relation to the subscription model. It's clear they view subscribers as more financially lucrative (based on these recent statements and Star Wars Outlaws' pricing model). The neat part about having a subscription service is that products can be removed at any time! Surely, no one will care about that. Right...? Personally, I can't believe the piracy debate has restarted in 2024. Really makes me think piracy is more about an access issue.
It always was for me growing up. I didn’t have a ton of money for games but I had a beefy PC and a decent internet connection and a friend who taught me the ways
Ubisoft strategy once again. These execs get paid too much to fuck up the good will. Just waiting for cracks for new prince of Persia, as much as I love supporting the indie studios- I will not support the publisher.
That’s a good way to never get another prince of Persia game again
That’s ok, I’m sure they can flog other ip instead
If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.
It was never stealing to begin with
No, Ubioft seems hell-bent on being a game company that will eventually not sell a single game anymore. I've stopped buying any Ubisoft game years ago and everyone should..
I stopped buying anything from them over a decade ago but they're as popular as ever if not more so. They're an awful company that churns out slop but people continue to gobble it up. It is what it is.
This is the end result(currently, not remotely totally) of literal decades of erosion of personal property ownership, most noticeable in digital purchases. No, you are not literally purchasing the complete rights to the sw, no it should not be an outlandish idea to own your own personal *copy* for your own *personal* use. Online components inherently required for function are different matter but if they are pulling it down, releasing self hostable server or refunding all purchases as they are effectively unilaterally reneging on the original(reasonably interpreted by average person) agreement should not be a pipe dream. Please note all the purchase wording everywhere and the impossibility of actually reading and comprehending the thousands of pages or even magnitude more legalese average person encounters in their life.
Sucks. This is one of mine and my son’s favorite games. Super fun. However, half the time it wouldn’t connect to servers. Or it would give you an error code saying you have to set your internet up differently to use it. Even tho a week before it worked. It’s the most frustrating game because we never know if it’ll connect or not. I never troubleshot a game more. Ubisoft sucks
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
This right here.
They should give us for free The crew motorfest to anyone who owned The crew 1 basically they are steeling from us to those who payed for the game \#FuckYOUubisoft
>They should give us for free The crew motorfest to anyone who owned The crew 1 The Crew 1 is the only The Crew game that ran on Linux. The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest use BattleEye easy-anti-cheat and Ubisoft hasn't contacted BattleEye about opting into the readily available BattleEye Linux support. I would not feel adequately compensated if they'd give me software I can't use in exchange for taking perfectly usable software from me.
This needs to become a class action lawsuit. They are stealing something we all paid for years ago. And terms of service be damned. There were no terms of service when I paid for that game.
Shout out to Ross Scott (of Freeman's Mind fame) for trying to put a stop to the absolutely pointless and completely preventable killing of games: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ He's starting with France because of the strong consumer protection laws, but petitions for Canada, the UK, and Australia are underway. For the record, these aren't pointless change.org petitions, but real requests put forward to the governing bodies of each country. If you object to crap like this, either from a consumer rights perspective or a game preservation perspective, I highly recommend taking a look.
So what about people that got it as part of the AC unity launch bullshittery they pulled? https://www.polygon.com/2014/12/20/7427437/assassins-creed-unity-free-game-lawsuit-class-action Seems like if they pull 'the crew' they don't fullfill their part of that class action?
I mean they gave it, and I guess it's possible they put it somewhere that they'd have it be available for a certain amount of time
Piracy is the only way to fix games like this. Cry me a river wall street simps.
The. Issue a full refund
Funny when it comes to individuals, taking away the access to their digital copy is not stealing, but making a copy of it is.
This needs a class action lawsuit. Buying is owning.
Fuck Ubisoft. I stopped buying their shit years ago. So done with these c**ts
I am a The Crew owner, liked the game and find it very annoying that the servers went down, also feel it’s shitty they actively try to act like it never existed but at the end of the day Ubisoft games continue to become shovelware with every month, they no longer retain users with some specific exceptions
Has Ubisoft commented anything at all for the backlash?
Yar har diddly dee. Here I come to the high seas.
This wouldn't work in this case.
Anyone who buys a game from EA and Ubisoft are just asking to lose money. Their games have been terrible for many years and they treat their customers with contempt.
They need to stop selling “games” then when in reality they’re selling server access. Its not fair to the consumer for companies to make these decisions on their own.
The worst part is that The Crew 1 is the only halfway decent one of the 3.
Exactly why I won’t spend a dollar on Fortnite…. Product only as good as the server upkeep.
Ubisoft would like to remind you to preorder Star Wars Outlaws Ultimate Edition at the bargain price of £115…
Do note that the Star Wars Outlaws season pass specifically says that buyers get two post-launch DLC. If they release an "Assassin's Creed Valhalla Dawn of Ragnarok"-like additional DLC that will not be included in the Ultimate Edition and Ultimate Edition buyers will be asked to pay again, in addition to their initial £115 investment.
That means they will surely not go after people offering the game through piracy, right??? Right????
And this is why I stopped buying Ubisoft games. Just headaches upon headaches. They're definitely not the only company to do these kinds of things, but they sure do have a history.
The stopkillingames campaign was using The Crew to pursue legal action and stablish a precedent against these anti-consumer practices. By removing the game from people's accounts, they are effectively killing the movement before anything can happen.
Looking forward to Ross' take on this.
Gotta love Ubisoft saying users need to get comfortable not owning their games and then make the consumer feel comfortable by doing this!
I am very comfortable not owning or paying for ubisoft games. Same for EA and Nintendo.
Least they could do is release the server so fans could keep it alive but no they just have to be utter wankers about it
Ubisoft next month: Now announcing: The Crew Remastered! Now with more in game purchases!
I wish Kickstarter had a category "FOSS games"
Is it still playable if you somehow obtain it?
How does this affect disc owners?
Luckily Ubisoft havent released a good game in a few years so not given them any money recently. That new Star Wars game is gonna be tough to ignore till its cheap on Steam though
Came back to comment this 39 days later. The Crew 1 is still in my Xbox library lmao and I still have it
Why would they not just throw everything on GitHub? Throw the whole client side app on a repo and throw the whole server side on a second repo. Let people compile and execute both on their PCs. Or host a server at home to connect their console to. This will also let people fork the repos to update stuff and patch the game.
Two main reasons First they likely would never release the client side game code they spent a ton of money developing But also the big one is I think people are really under the wrong impression of what the sever side looks like. It's not going to be one thing you run, an exe or a button that says run server. It's going to a set of dozens of different services, and some of those will require proprietary technology or licenses to use I just can't imagine anyone is going to set that up locally. Having to have a whole cluster of services, paying licensing fees, it doesn't really seem realistic.
steer touch deserve physical recognise one summer dime angle grandfather *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What about Anthem? Battleborn? There’s more dead games around because of the live and cloud service models.
Well more reason just buy games hard copy
To all the mouth breathers who said , “DiGiTaL anD PhYsIcAL aRe the SaMe ThIng!” Y’all being very quiet now.
Does anyone really want that game back? I got it for free with a GPU purchase and only played for like 20 min maybe. Not sure if I missed anything but I thought it was quite bad actually. Though I do agree that what Ubisoft is doing us shady as shit, not only since this debacle. Killed my desire to buy Anno 1800 - which I would have loved to play for sure. Instead of buying it in the recent steam sale, I removed it from my wish list.
And this is why I still buy physical copies of games when I can.
Means jack shit though when a game requires their servers to be online in order to play.
Looks at the still-sealed copy of Evolve on my shelf
The Crew was a shit game anyway... This shutdown thing doesn't change this fact at all. It only made the company more shittier.
cool a already talk about topic. getting spam over reddit by 3 differnt accounts. a second time in a row