"Stop Killing Games" is a new campaign to prevent publishers from taking their titles offline

[DragonSlayer101]

What just happened? A popular YouTuber has launched a campaign called "Stop Killing Games" to apply pressure on publishers to stop making their titles unplayable. The move comes days after Ubisoft shut down the servers of popular racer The Crew, rendering it inoperable for gamers everywhere.

The campaign was launched by YouTuber Ross Scott of Accursed Farms in an effort to highlight how developers and publishers are intentionally designing games to become unplayable as soon as support ends. According to the Stop Killing Games website, the practice lies in a legal gray area, largely because most governments do not have clear laws regarding this issue.

The campaign's goal is to convince authorities to examine the legality of this practice and, hopefully, pass legislation to end as it represents "an assault on both consumer rights and preservation of media." The Crew is said to have had a playerbase of at least 12 million people when it was taken offline, making this an ideal opportunity to hold a AAA publisher responsible for their actions.

The campaign is petitioning multiple governments to investigate the issue. While the main focus is France's Directorate General For Competition, Consumer Affairs And Fraud Protection (DGCCRF), people in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia will also soon be able to sign petitions to pressure their respective governments to look into this matter. Plans are also underway for the European Union, but Scott says this might be delayed "due to processing times."

The shutting down of games after a few years of launch is an all-too-frequent occurrence these days, affecting gamers everywhere. It impacts not just titles that rely on an active internet connection, but also single-player games that get delisted for one reason or another. It is easy to see why it's infuriating for people who spent their hard-earned money on a game just to see it suddenly stop working. This is especially frustrating for games that can easily be played offline.

That said, most modern games come with a disclaimer that gamers are buying not the game itself, but a license to play it for as long as it is supported by the publisher. The terms are meant to offer legal protection to the companies for when they turn the servers off, but they haven't been challenged in the courts in any major gaming market yet, so it's unclear if they will hold up under legal scrutiny. Gamers will no doubt hope that the campaign is successful in bringing this issue to the attention of regulators, bringing an end to this cynical practice for good.

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"Stop Killing Games" is a new campaign to prevent publishers from taking their titles offline

 

[llamapanda]

I remember seeing somewhere that licensing limits played a part in The Crew's demise, which kind of makes sense if they only had ten-year contracts for the music and cars, thinking the game wouldn't outlive that. A patch to remove all the affected content may not be trivial to produce, compared to simply adding a few more drops of playerbase hatred to Ubisoft's already-massive bucket of the stuff as the industry's favourite villain.

That said, if a company is using "we no longer support it, so you can't have it" as their reasoning, then why not just give it to the community under a suitably restrictive licence? They're making no further money out of it either way so have nothing to lose beyond the resources invested in preparing it for release. Better still, patch them to be playable offline and then keep selling it. Might shift half a million more units over the next five years at $5 a pop in the Steam sales, a pretty good return for a few hours of dev-time making an offline patch.

 

[Dimitriid]

I think a solution that could work (But that will be fought pretty hard by publishers) Would be this: If you have a significant online element and you decide to abandon the game in it's current state, then you automatically concede copyright for that specific/last version to anyone that wants to take up ownership and maintain it.

What this should do is make sure that if a publisher thinks the online game is no longer profitable and want to take it offline they concede any and all efforts for fans that might want to run their own unofficial servers to maintain said game and to an extent facilitate fans from doing so: Their copyright should never extend for them doing absolutely nothing and just taking away games but if in the future they want to revisit the game and create new versions then the fans are not entitled to run servers for that and have to just keep working on the older version that was initially abandoned, therefore still conceding their status as copyright holders with the exception being games being abandoned intentionally.

 

[cristianm]

Maybe they should sell the game with a fixed amount of years included. At least you know what you buy, and it makes sense to continue supporting the game they could sell yearly subscriptions. It is not reasonable to expect the game developer to support online play forever.

 

[yRaz]

I remember dedicated servers and servers browsers. When the company took down the server browsers you could just download a community made patch and the community would support a dedicated server browser. I still play the original star seige tribes and they have a patch brings you to a list of currently hosted dedicated servers

 

[llamapanda]

It is not reasonable to expect the game developer to support online play forever.

It is if they can make it profitable, as with all economic activity. The issue is that it may not be as profitable as other uses of the staff's time and a team might not be willing to hire juniors to delegate to.

 

[emmzo]

I think 10 years is reasonable for keeping servers online. Less than that is just greed. I can still play MGS V online, 8 years after launch. If Konami can do it, why not Ubisoft?

 

[Jim Lahey]

Admittedly I know little of software development specifics, but I do know that many games in the past relied on community servers/alternate hosting and survive with small, dedicated groups of players.

I personally enjoy Black Ops 3 Zombies, and it has gone through a number of pretty remarkable fan-based evolutions, as well as the Activision server-hacking backdoor issue that ended up being patched earlier by the player base than the company itself.

I can understand and appreciate that not every single game can be eternally maintained, but I fully support legislation that turns over the code in such a way as to make it playable and community-accessible.

 

[mgwerner]

Stop renting games from these people - you are not buying anything that they can take away later - and this crap stops. Same goes for streaming music sites. If you cannot have a physical copy that runs independent of a connections, it is not yours, and you fell for a scam.

But by all means, cry to the nanny state to fix it......

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Here's an idea, bring back community hosted servers and/or open source the official server when you want to
EOL the product. It's not that hard.

The harsh reality is that these always online systems are used for one reason: to force you to buy the newest Thing (tm) regardless of its quality.

Stop renting games from these people - you are not buying anything that they can take away later - and this crap stops. Same goes for streaming music sites. If you cannot have a physical copy that runs independent of a connections, it is not yours, and you fell for a scam.

But by all means, cry to the nanny state to fix it......

If the gaming community had that kind of self control we wouldnt have gotten here. Even if gamers DO boycott, there are millions of slobbering imbeciles that will buy the game anyway, regardless of scummy practices (dragons dogma 2 anyone?). Only the most obscene failures like Skull and Bones actually fail.

 

[Thanthan]

Stop renting games from these people - you are not buying anything that they can take away later - and this crap stops. Same goes for streaming music sites. If you cannot have a physical copy that runs independent of a connections, it is not yours, and you fell for a scam.

But by all means, cry to the nanny state to fix it......

This is a stupid argument.

Game developers are ceasing to make games that DONT function this way, because it gives them leverage over their customers, forcing them to buy new games, rather than playing old ones that are no longer making new money.

Gamers have no say in this, sure some developers may try to compete by not using this business model, but if that developer isn’t making anything you want to play, that doesn’t really matter. And most of the big ones will adopt it for the same reason => forcing customers towards newer offerings.

The only plausible way to deal with this is either legislation, or to stop being a gamer. Most gamers I know will prefer legislation.

 

[scavengerspc]

It's amazing the gutlessness of some people.
All the tech sector has to do is speak, and the soul less geeks bend over and grab their ankles.

How in God's name have people been treated like this and just let it go?

Say what you want of them, but Baby Boomers and my own Gen X could teach them a TON
about standing tall.

 

[toooooot]

then why not just give it to the community under a suitably restrictive licence?

They think that such generosity would result in people not buying their newer clones of 100 times remade games.
They must not enjoy our older games. Why, why would they spend no money playing the same old games when the future, the best of gaming, is in our quadruple a top of the art new games and in game shops.

 

[GoldenGoat]

I remember seeing somewhere that licensing limits played a part in The Crew's demise, which kind of makes sense if they only had ten-year contracts for the music and cars, thinking the game wouldn't outlive that. A patch to remove all the affected content may not be trivial to produce, compared to simply adding a few more drops of playerbase hatred to Ubisoft's already-massive bucket of the stuff as the industry's favourite villain.

That said, if a company is using "we no longer support it, so you can't have it" as their reasoning, then why not just give it to the community under a suitably restrictive licence? They're making no further money out of it either way so have nothing to lose beyond the resources invested in preparing it for release. Better still, patch them to be playable offline and then keep selling it. Might shift half a million more units over the next five years at $5 a pop in the Steam sales, a pretty good return for a few hours of dev-time making an offline patch.

Ubisoft said they killed the Crew because their licenses expired. But it was conveniently at the same time they released Motorfest. So Ubi obviously still has licenses for car branding. I don't know about music, but is it that hard to change/remove the music? It seems more like they just wanted to force people to move to the new version of the game for a minimum of $70 for the base game.

 

[3volv3d]

I played Guild Wars 1, I paid for the game, and its free to play, micro transactions on gold and items was a way they made more money.
And although I definitely got my moneys worth, I would always like a chance to return to that world, its just a shame it is dead. It will one day be removed from the internet. But I do think they should have a way for people to host their own games, even if they do modify it.

But then is that the issue that people would not buy a new game if they were giving old ones longevity?
Is it that copyright sucks, as flims after 50 years were meant to lose copyright and be everyones, or so was the theory, only to find they would somehow renew the copyright or change the laws.
Because there should be a point when they have made enough from a film or album that its just allowed to be accessed from an online Library for free by anyone.

 

[atomicgirl]

Stop renting games from these people - you are not buying anything that they can take away later - and this crap stops. Same goes for streaming music sites. If you cannot have a physical copy that runs independent of a connections, it is not yours, and you fell for a scam.

But by all means, cry to the nanny state to fix it......

This comment reeks of, "I lack complete insight into this entire problem, because I'm either too old and out of touch or a kid who pirates everything and therefore has no frame of reference as to what this issue is about."

So, let's try this again: people who pay for things legally were roped into an ecosystem involving third party clients and servers that promised to be more convenient for them (as in, cloud saves, faster download patches, etc.). Then the gaming and music industry abandoned hard copies entirely and forced everyone to convert to a digital format, which can be now kill switched at the discretion of the gaming publisher or music distributor. Nobody rented anything.

 

[scavengerspc]

Ubisoft said they killed the Crew because their licenses expired.

True, but this has happened with Steam games quite a few times.
They stopped selling the games, but if you already bought it, you can still install it and play.
But Ubi games bought there are still tied to Ubi, so those cant be played either.

Ubisoft ****ed people over to the convenience of only themselves, and there is no way to paint a pretty picture over that.

 

[Uncle Al]

I would just like to see more games that DO NOT require internet access to run. Fine for playing against lot of people but for those of us that don't care for that, we should be able to play with the internet turned off.

 

[atomicgirl]

I would just like to see more games that DO NOT require internet access to run. Fine for playing against lot of people but for those of us that don't care for that, we should be able to play with the internet turned off.

This wouldn't solve the problem entirely, because Microsoft has from time to time kill switched games with bogus "security" updates. For instance, even though it can technically run on Windows 7-11, The Sims 1 can't be played without jumping through hoops because MS dropped updates that crippled it.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

I don't know how all this works but I believe publishers either own part or all of the rights of the games?

I would think that if legislation is passed more than this will need to be changed in terms of ownership, copyright and licensing. This will not only affect games but other media as well. And it will take a long time and probably not a priority for Governments. Of course costs may go up too.

 

[The Talking Tech]

This is an excellent idea, hope more gamers help in this matter instead of just pretending like this issue doesn't affect them.

 

[toooooot]

I would just like to see more games that DO NOT require internet access to run. Fine for playing against lot of people but for those of us that don't care for that, we should be able to play with the internet turned off.

Devs always go for the things that is the most in demand. And that unfortunately is shooters, simple fast paced shooting games.
To see other types, unique and different games, people need to buy them more.
A good and fun single player game has no guarantee to even pay off. Consequently, nobody wants that risk.
At least, I am grateful for mods, anything I did not find in new games, I found in steam workshop.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

It could have stipulated a minimum period to keep the servers online after launch. Keeping it up forever seems unfeasible to me, after all it's not free.

 

[amghwk]

Online-only games are never sustainable. Bound to go off one day.

Nothing like going back to single player offline games. How games used to be previously. As for multiplayer games, there's nothing like playing with your friends using your own server or hosted by friends, via TCP/IP.

 

[atomicgirl]

I don't know how all this works but I believe publishers either own part or all of the rights of the games?
I would think that if legislation is passed more than this will need to be changed in terms of ownership, copyright and licensing. This will not only affect games but other media as well. And it will take a long time and probably not a priority for Governments. Of course costs may go up too.

Copyright and licensing are not relevant, because there's nothing about these concepts that gives companies the right to artificially shorten the life span of a product that consumers were led to believe they were owning for life.