this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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Stop Killing Games
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[EU] Stop Killing Games:
The grassroots movement to regulate that games be left in a playable state after publisher support ceases.
Milestones:
(41.13%) Petition
7/7 Countries reached.
Statistics
Current: 4,746 signatures weekly
Target: 22,692 signatures weekly
Safe Target: 23,038 signatures weekly
Goals:
(53.47%) of the signatures will be reached at this rate.
183 days / 26 weeks / 6 months left.
Final Day: 31/7/2025.
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No, that’s not what stop killing games is about. What’s demanded is that the games remains in a playable state even if servers are shut down.
What about multiplayer games? The server side is always going to be a necessity for those games.
AFAIK the initiative calls for the publishers to release the software needed to host your own servers. If everyone can host their own servers(what is quite common for some games) Theres no need for the publisher to pay for their own servers.
So then release the server side data. Or unlock the game from the need of a server, or allow users to create their own servers.
My guess they won’t coz server code recycled for future games. Nobody will play for CoD MWBOCW187 coz with server code published you can just mod older server and pay the only fair price of new game which is 0.00 €$
Who's talking server side code? just releasing the compiled server binary should be enough. Just like games typically are released as binaries and assets, and not as source code.
Can you decompile the server binary? Yes you can! But you can also decompile the game to work without the server or with a makeshift server. Either is just a lot of work that few people are willing to do.
Protecting the server code is rather useless if the game can be cracked, since then you can also play the game for '0.00 €$'.
I mean this isn’t about asking the companies nicely to do this. We are asking law makers to enforce this by law. We are past asking corporations to not be crap.
Back in the old days you could host your own multiplayer server locally. Regardless of that, most multiplayer games have single player modes where you go against bots, which I'm sure will satisfy the "still playable" criteria.