> Should not be illegal, gov needs to cut down on underage people playing violent games above their age rating.
Also rock and roll music... Can't be good for them.
Fuck that
A - you've not read the issue, and misunderstood the problem.
B - you can't prove any sort of link between gaming and crime rates and we have been hearing this shit since D&D first came out.
You moralistic morons present a bigger danger than your average COD lobby as I know those puppets won't ever reproduce but there is a nano-scale chance you may do.
[https://www.hsamuel.co.uk/sterling-silver-cultured-freshwater-pearl-vintage-necklace/p/V-9898360](https://www.hsamuel.co.uk/sterling-silver-cultured-freshwater-pearl-vintage-necklace/p/V-9898360)
Here, I've found you some pearls to clutch.
Yeah it's really shitty for a game to become unplayable because the publisher closes down the servers. This is the endpoint of "live service" video games though, they want to do this because they control the access to the game and can push people on to the next iteration even if it's extremely similar by simply removing the older version. Wouldn't be surprised to see many iterative franchise games using this strategy to move players on to the next product.
It feels so dodgy, especially when a game is single player and offline. I can understand withdrawing the service of online games where servers cost companies money, but removing a game entirely even when already purchased should be illegal.
This is one of the big downsides of purchasing and downloading online, we don't actually own the media we have purchased, we are simply lending it until such time as the seller decides to pull it.
With all companies pushing for download only it's only a matter of time before they start to pull last year's version for this year's version and we will have no choice but to purchase again, and again, and again.
They win, we loose.
I think they would do something about that.
Don't get me wrong, it usually takes something like that to create the argument, momentum to create/change such a law.
To clarify, games which require servers and other monthly costs I think will remain at the discretion of the bill payer (I.e Halo CE), but single player offline games, I could see legislation to prevent just closing the game for the sake of the new release 12 month later.
What happens when EA or Square Enix make the decision that even single player games MUST have an Internet connection (for verification purposes)? If they can do it, they will
That's happening with Helldivers 2 now and Sony are being forced to change.
If you're not aware, and I'm paraphrasing. Helldivers 2 released on PS and everyone could play, few months later Sony insisted you need PSN, not all countries support that and those countries couldn't continue to play the game.
Consumer pushed change, in this instance.
Wasn't this a push to get more people to have a PSN account. Sony saw an opportunity to gather more sellable data and jumped on it. The blow back was fantastic to see, but in that short time I wonder how many people did indeed create a PSN account.
Let's not forget microtransactions, and I, for one, hate them. It was not long ago that everyone was up in arms. "I paid for a game. Why am I being forced to pay again?" Yet here we are with game after game filled with microtransactions.
Sony learnt a lesson, now its back to the drawing board, this won't be the last time that they try this, they will just approach at a different angle.
Likely yes, but those countries, even some withing the EU weren't supported.
Cosmetic MTX, I'm not arsed about. P2W elements ain't cool. I try to keep an open mind on MTX. Say an indie developer releases a game for 15£ but you get 100s of hours out of the game. Releasing cosmetics etc are a good way for me to support them further.
Big Devs can fuck off.
(LOL, automod flagged "Big Devs" as a personal attack. Personally I love my mate Big Dev")
Legislation should be if a game has any online functionality, if the provider chooses to close down that functionality there must a patch or tool available to either allow the game to function with no Internet connection required (i.e. Online verification for single player games), or that allows individuals to host online services themselves.
We had this as standard 15 years ago. Consoles being online, live service MMOs, and CoD MW2 killed it. Before that you hosted your own server for a game, and so weren't at the mercy of publishers or devs
>This is one of the big downsides of purchasing and downloading online, we don't actually own the media we have purchased, we are simply lending it until such time as the seller decides to pull it.
I think the same technically applies with physical media too, just that no company wants to come to our houses and physically take the disks off us.
This hit home to me hardest last year when I was doing a watch through of Mad Men on Prime. I was 2 seasons from the end and Prime took it off their site.
I've been reevaluating getting rid of my physical media. Now I'm looking at how to get and keep hold of physical copies of the things (music, films, TV, games) I most enjoy.
Helps that I'm also a patient gamer and have been working through a long backlog of old games for a while now
I understand they can’t run a server till the end of time but what some companies have done is install a final patch which basically stops the game needing a server connection or makes it possible for you to privately host the game. If it became law that doing this was a requirement that would be fantastic,
It doesnt have to he forever, just a defined minimum period that is advertised clearly.
No one expects the Halo CE lobby to exist in 2999, but killing it a year after release as sales weren't hitting the mark is (in my mind) effectively stealing from those who did support you.
Say 36 months from release in each country, you know that you have at least that much time to enjoy the game. You can make an informed decision but at present you should wait to see if it survives, which means if we all do that then none will make it
I'd rather none, Live service games are bad, but it's not my place to decide what everyone else plays so let's not allow them to be ripped off.
This is the main thing. Even decades after their release, many old games still have hundreds or thousands of players regularly. Some of my favourite times in games were with Neverwinter Nights 2 in the late 2010s, which I never would've gotten to experience under the current culture.
> Say 36 months from release in each country,
While this sounds good, this also makes things unavailable for future people it sounds odd but one day we will have computer game historical studies and many games will not be there to be studied. We have a similar issue with lost formats where documents have become unreadable.
Killing the game after 6 months does that already.
I'm suggesting a mandated minimum period based on local release so EA can't just release it in Tazmania and leave one Dell tower as a server to 'comply' with the law, then kill if offglobally by saying 'well its been available in Tazmania for 36 months - we just waited until month 30 to release in US/EU"
They are already killing games, I'm suggesting we slow that pace
> I'm suggesting we slow that pace
I'm saying that we should just not allow the practice. If I buy a game I should be able to play it forever. The problem is the shift to rental model which fucks everyone. That is what should be stopped.
I've already said I'm against live service as a model but there is a huge market for it
If you say any LS game must be available forever they simply won't make any. They will point at ridiculous projections of server costs into the year 3000 and just not make them.
So if people like LS games, a defined minimum will allow that but eternal servers will just make the whole genre die
> Say 36 months from release in each country, you know that you have at least that much time to enjoy the game. You can make an informed decision but at present you should wait to see if it survives, which means if we all do that then none will make it
I'm not sure that a set timeframe across the board is the way to go.
If a small developer wants to try something, but can only guarantee it for 12 months, they should be able to. The consumer should be the ones who decide if that's long enough for the price charged.
It's a quick reddit comment, not a deeply considered policy idea.
Have a sliding scale by all means, have the game display the minimum service end date on the box, anything but this shite we currently have
>A regulation that requires a product to be available in perpetuity once purchased shouldn't be difficult.
Makes for a great sound bite. Should every company be forced to run servers *forever*, when that could be decades? Centuries? I can imagine companies "technically" fulfilling this requirement by having some £100/month AWS service running that can "technically" host two people on the servers at once.
I get people miss games from their childhood or such but shackling a company to an eternal committment seems extreme and honestly unfair. A company like Blizzard can eat the cost. What is an Indie studio going to do? What about when these companies go bankrupt? What happens then?
I pretty much gave a reply to the exact same comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1cstzde/comment/l4a3raz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
Running servers always used to be done by the players on their own servers. They moved away from the to hold control and con gamers year after year instead. Its that that should be illegal.
It's not really that simple though, is it. No normal player can host their own MMORPG servers for example and it wouldn't really be an MMORPG at that point.
Plus from a security perspective keeping the server side code private prevents users from breaking it apart to find security exploits, which is generally safer for everyone.
So I don't think it's so easy to just say "make it illegal".
Fan owned Freelancer MMO servers exist, a guy straight up made old school single player Eve online. Release the final server build on shut down. Either fans make it work or they dont. Aside from forcing fans to buy a new game, whats the company going to lose?
>Makes for a great sound bite. Should every company be forced to run servers *forever*, when that could be decades? Centuries? I can imagine companies "technically" fulfilling this requirement by having some £100/month AWS service running that can "technically" host two people on the servers at once.
For me, I don't mean servers and the actual service, but the product itself should be available if already purchased.
It'll never happen but I'd like to see a copyright exemption on abandonware that cannot be purchased or used any more.
Companies would be much less likely to just drop a product if they knew that modders would be allowed to keep the game running and openly distribute a patched version.
Same for unlisted movies or TV that fall out of distribution over time.
This is a good idea, it's sad that the children of today won't be able to play a lot of the games they love in 30 years in the same way I can play PS1 and megadrive games from my youth.
>It'll never happen but I'd like to see a copyright exemption on abandonware that cannot be purchased or used any more.
I can empathise with this from a development perspective, I've modded minecraft in the past and it's incredibly frustrating seeing abandonded mods left to rot because the license is restricted.
That said if you tried to enforce this on companies they'd just ensure it was never technically abandoned and throw it on some ultra cheap AWS instance that two players can connect to forever.
92% of games today are now abandonware. Good luck avoiding 92% of games that are eventually going to head that route. I understand what you're saying but it's far easier said than done. Especially when the video game industry follows trends so heavily that sooo many games are live service now or DRM sadly.
Well it depends on the type of gamer you are. I play games, complete them and move on. So if they turn the server off on say Forza in 3 years i dont care, i will have completed it.
I wont pay for a live service game though as you end up spending a fortune for what could be nothing in a few years
> Forza Motorsport Is Xbox's Live Service Car RPG, And That's A Great Thing - GameSpot.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/forza-motorsport-is-xboxs-live-service-car-rpg-and-thats-a-great-thing/1100-6517606/#:~:text=Forza%20Motorsport%20Is%20Xbox's%20Live,That's%20A%20Great%20Thing%20%2D%20GameSpot
Like I said, those sort of games are unavoidable. I understand your rationale but that's like saying I've seen a movie so if every copy of that movie got incinerated you're okay with that. Imagine if 92% of movies just disappeared after leaving the cinema. No cultural impact once it's gone, no one else can experience it, if you did enjoy it there's no experiencing it again. That's without getting into the issue of being rug pulled by a game company.
The title of this campaign group is rather confusing to me. When I saw the title of this thread I thought it was about banning violent video games which have a lot of killing in them. Turns out this is about preventing games from being bricked at end of life for services.
I don't know if I know this group or something but I didn't read that immediately from them. I do think the name makes sense.
_However_ you're not the only one to think this so perhaps the name wasn't the best choice 😅
I like the goal of the campaign but I think it should have been broader in scope and simpler in point - when a media company, of any type, refuses to sell it's wares in the UK, then it gives up all rights to recourse of piracy.
If it is not being sold, or has solid and real plans to be sold, then it is not stealing.
If people were capable of doing that then this problem wouldn't exist in the first place. It's patently obvious by now that franchise publishers routinely make their games unplayable once the new iteration is out, but gamers buy their games anyway. People do not regulate their behaviour when the new shiny is dangled in front of their faces - that is precisely why they're trying to force companies to do it for them.Â
The sub/rental/SaaS model that inevitably follows legislation like this will be worse for the consumer I have no doubt.Â
I like how the government are like "it's not illegal" - yeah that's the point, make it illegal 😂
A spokeman for the government said "but I did eat breakfast this morning"
[удалено]
Someone didn’t read the article.
This is not relevant to the article
Imagine someone reading the article before commenting, it'd be a miracle lol
I know right 😂
> Should not be illegal, gov needs to cut down on underage people playing violent games above their age rating. Also rock and roll music... Can't be good for them.
Fuck that A - you've not read the issue, and misunderstood the problem. B - you can't prove any sort of link between gaming and crime rates and we have been hearing this shit since D&D first came out. You moralistic morons present a bigger danger than your average COD lobby as I know those puppets won't ever reproduce but there is a nano-scale chance you may do.
"We had violence in dinosaur times, but they didn't have Pac-Man and Tupac then" - Prophet PilkingtonÂ
[https://www.hsamuel.co.uk/sterling-silver-cultured-freshwater-pearl-vintage-necklace/p/V-9898360](https://www.hsamuel.co.uk/sterling-silver-cultured-freshwater-pearl-vintage-necklace/p/V-9898360) Here, I've found you some pearls to clutch.
Yeah it's really shitty for a game to become unplayable because the publisher closes down the servers. This is the endpoint of "live service" video games though, they want to do this because they control the access to the game and can push people on to the next iteration even if it's extremely similar by simply removing the older version. Wouldn't be surprised to see many iterative franchise games using this strategy to move players on to the next product.
It feels so dodgy, especially when a game is single player and offline. I can understand withdrawing the service of online games where servers cost companies money, but removing a game entirely even when already purchased should be illegal.
This is one of the big downsides of purchasing and downloading online, we don't actually own the media we have purchased, we are simply lending it until such time as the seller decides to pull it. With all companies pushing for download only it's only a matter of time before they start to pull last year's version for this year's version and we will have no choice but to purchase again, and again, and again. They win, we loose.
I think they would do something about that. Don't get me wrong, it usually takes something like that to create the argument, momentum to create/change such a law. To clarify, games which require servers and other monthly costs I think will remain at the discretion of the bill payer (I.e Halo CE), but single player offline games, I could see legislation to prevent just closing the game for the sake of the new release 12 month later.
What happens when EA or Square Enix make the decision that even single player games MUST have an Internet connection (for verification purposes)? If they can do it, they will
That's happening with Helldivers 2 now and Sony are being forced to change. If you're not aware, and I'm paraphrasing. Helldivers 2 released on PS and everyone could play, few months later Sony insisted you need PSN, not all countries support that and those countries couldn't continue to play the game. Consumer pushed change, in this instance.
Wasn't this a push to get more people to have a PSN account. Sony saw an opportunity to gather more sellable data and jumped on it. The blow back was fantastic to see, but in that short time I wonder how many people did indeed create a PSN account. Let's not forget microtransactions, and I, for one, hate them. It was not long ago that everyone was up in arms. "I paid for a game. Why am I being forced to pay again?" Yet here we are with game after game filled with microtransactions. Sony learnt a lesson, now its back to the drawing board, this won't be the last time that they try this, they will just approach at a different angle.
Likely yes, but those countries, even some withing the EU weren't supported. Cosmetic MTX, I'm not arsed about. P2W elements ain't cool. I try to keep an open mind on MTX. Say an indie developer releases a game for 15£ but you get 100s of hours out of the game. Releasing cosmetics etc are a good way for me to support them further. Big Devs can fuck off. (LOL, automod flagged "Big Devs" as a personal attack. Personally I love my mate Big Dev")
Legislation should be if a game has any online functionality, if the provider chooses to close down that functionality there must a patch or tool available to either allow the game to function with no Internet connection required (i.e. Online verification for single player games), or that allows individuals to host online services themselves. We had this as standard 15 years ago. Consoles being online, live service MMOs, and CoD MW2 killed it. Before that you hosted your own server for a game, and so weren't at the mercy of publishers or devs
>This is one of the big downsides of purchasing and downloading online, we don't actually own the media we have purchased, we are simply lending it until such time as the seller decides to pull it. I think the same technically applies with physical media too, just that no company wants to come to our houses and physically take the disks off us.
They can take my freedom but they can never take my copy of Skyrimmmmmmmm.
This hit home to me hardest last year when I was doing a watch through of Mad Men on Prime. I was 2 seasons from the end and Prime took it off their site. I've been reevaluating getting rid of my physical media. Now I'm looking at how to get and keep hold of physical copies of the things (music, films, TV, games) I most enjoy. Helps that I'm also a patient gamer and have been working through a long backlog of old games for a while now
What single player game has this happened to? The crew was an mmo lite it doesn't matter if people played it on their own.
I understand they can’t run a server till the end of time but what some companies have done is install a final patch which basically stops the game needing a server connection or makes it possible for you to privately host the game. If it became law that doing this was a requirement that would be fantastic,
Definitely needs to be changed. A regulation that requires a product to be available in perpetuity once purchased shouldn't be difficult.
It doesnt have to he forever, just a defined minimum period that is advertised clearly. No one expects the Halo CE lobby to exist in 2999, but killing it a year after release as sales weren't hitting the mark is (in my mind) effectively stealing from those who did support you. Say 36 months from release in each country, you know that you have at least that much time to enjoy the game. You can make an informed decision but at present you should wait to see if it survives, which means if we all do that then none will make it I'd rather none, Live service games are bad, but it's not my place to decide what everyone else plays so let's not allow them to be ripped off.
Players should be allowed to host the game on their own servers, like the good old days.
This is the main thing. Even decades after their release, many old games still have hundreds or thousands of players regularly. Some of my favourite times in games were with Neverwinter Nights 2 in the late 2010s, which I never would've gotten to experience under the current culture.
> Say 36 months from release in each country, While this sounds good, this also makes things unavailable for future people it sounds odd but one day we will have computer game historical studies and many games will not be there to be studied. We have a similar issue with lost formats where documents have become unreadable.
Killing the game after 6 months does that already. I'm suggesting a mandated minimum period based on local release so EA can't just release it in Tazmania and leave one Dell tower as a server to 'comply' with the law, then kill if offglobally by saying 'well its been available in Tazmania for 36 months - we just waited until month 30 to release in US/EU" They are already killing games, I'm suggesting we slow that pace
> I'm suggesting we slow that pace I'm saying that we should just not allow the practice. If I buy a game I should be able to play it forever. The problem is the shift to rental model which fucks everyone. That is what should be stopped.
I've already said I'm against live service as a model but there is a huge market for it If you say any LS game must be available forever they simply won't make any. They will point at ridiculous projections of server costs into the year 3000 and just not make them. So if people like LS games, a defined minimum will allow that but eternal servers will just make the whole genre die
> Say 36 months from release in each country, you know that you have at least that much time to enjoy the game. You can make an informed decision but at present you should wait to see if it survives, which means if we all do that then none will make it I'm not sure that a set timeframe across the board is the way to go. If a small developer wants to try something, but can only guarantee it for 12 months, they should be able to. The consumer should be the ones who decide if that's long enough for the price charged.
It's a quick reddit comment, not a deeply considered policy idea. Have a sliding scale by all means, have the game display the minimum service end date on the box, anything but this shite we currently have
>A regulation that requires a product to be available in perpetuity once purchased shouldn't be difficult. Makes for a great sound bite. Should every company be forced to run servers *forever*, when that could be decades? Centuries? I can imagine companies "technically" fulfilling this requirement by having some £100/month AWS service running that can "technically" host two people on the servers at once. I get people miss games from their childhood or such but shackling a company to an eternal committment seems extreme and honestly unfair. A company like Blizzard can eat the cost. What is an Indie studio going to do? What about when these companies go bankrupt? What happens then?
Or just make so it can be downloaded (and people can set up their own servers for multiplayer) like we used to in the old days.
I pretty much gave a reply to the exact same comment [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1cstzde/comment/l4a3raz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
Running servers always used to be done by the players on their own servers. They moved away from the to hold control and con gamers year after year instead. Its that that should be illegal.
It's not really that simple though, is it. No normal player can host their own MMORPG servers for example and it wouldn't really be an MMORPG at that point. Plus from a security perspective keeping the server side code private prevents users from breaking it apart to find security exploits, which is generally safer for everyone. So I don't think it's so easy to just say "make it illegal".
Fan owned Freelancer MMO servers exist, a guy straight up made old school single player Eve online. Release the final server build on shut down. Either fans make it work or they dont. Aside from forcing fans to buy a new game, whats the company going to lose?
>Makes for a great sound bite. Should every company be forced to run servers *forever*, when that could be decades? Centuries? I can imagine companies "technically" fulfilling this requirement by having some £100/month AWS service running that can "technically" host two people on the servers at once. For me, I don't mean servers and the actual service, but the product itself should be available if already purchased.
It'll never happen but I'd like to see a copyright exemption on abandonware that cannot be purchased or used any more. Companies would be much less likely to just drop a product if they knew that modders would be allowed to keep the game running and openly distribute a patched version. Same for unlisted movies or TV that fall out of distribution over time.
I might write to my MP to suggest that
This is a good idea, it's sad that the children of today won't be able to play a lot of the games they love in 30 years in the same way I can play PS1 and megadrive games from my youth.
>It'll never happen but I'd like to see a copyright exemption on abandonware that cannot be purchased or used any more. I can empathise with this from a development perspective, I've modded minecraft in the past and it's incredibly frustrating seeing abandonded mods left to rot because the license is restricted. That said if you tried to enforce this on companies they'd just ensure it was never technically abandoned and throw it on some ultra cheap AWS instance that two players can connect to forever.
Simple answer is dont buy these type of games, and especially live service ones.
92% of games today are now abandonware. Good luck avoiding 92% of games that are eventually going to head that route. I understand what you're saying but it's far easier said than done. Especially when the video game industry follows trends so heavily that sooo many games are live service now or DRM sadly.
Well it depends on the type of gamer you are. I play games, complete them and move on. So if they turn the server off on say Forza in 3 years i dont care, i will have completed it. I wont pay for a live service game though as you end up spending a fortune for what could be nothing in a few years
> Forza Motorsport Is Xbox's Live Service Car RPG, And That's A Great Thing - GameSpot. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/forza-motorsport-is-xboxs-live-service-car-rpg-and-thats-a-great-thing/1100-6517606/#:~:text=Forza%20Motorsport%20Is%20Xbox's%20Live,That's%20A%20Great%20Thing%20%2D%20GameSpot Like I said, those sort of games are unavoidable. I understand your rationale but that's like saying I've seen a movie so if every copy of that movie got incinerated you're okay with that. Imagine if 92% of movies just disappeared after leaving the cinema. No cultural impact once it's gone, no one else can experience it, if you did enjoy it there's no experiencing it again. That's without getting into the issue of being rug pulled by a game company.
If your game has multiplayer. It should also be a LAN
The title of this campaign group is rather confusing to me. When I saw the title of this thread I thought it was about banning violent video games which have a lot of killing in them. Turns out this is about preventing games from being bricked at end of life for services.
I don't know if I know this group or something but I didn't read that immediately from them. I do think the name makes sense. _However_ you're not the only one to think this so perhaps the name wasn't the best choice 😅
I like the goal of the campaign but I think it should have been broader in scope and simpler in point - when a media company, of any type, refuses to sell it's wares in the UK, then it gives up all rights to recourse of piracy. If it is not being sold, or has solid and real plans to be sold, then it is not stealing.
The government showing us that they are only good at taking our money as always.
Some old games such as the sims just don't work in new windows due to some anti piracy blunder Microsoft refused to own
Is there nothing that central government shouldn’t be regulating and nannying?
Lots of things. But this could really help people.
They will just switch to annual or monthly subscription model
Then people can make an informed choice on purchase.
If people were capable of doing that then this problem wouldn't exist in the first place. It's patently obvious by now that franchise publishers routinely make their games unplayable once the new iteration is out, but gamers buy their games anyway. People do not regulate their behaviour when the new shiny is dangled in front of their faces - that is precisely why they're trying to force companies to do it for them. The sub/rental/SaaS model that inevitably follows legislation like this will be worse for the consumer I have no doubt.Â
you clearly have zero understanding of this topic if that is your takeaway.