want the government to have more control over games
Sure, any amount of new laws is technically the government having more control over something. I have no qualms admitting there are unanswered questions and this could explode into an EU bureaucratic nightmare, but what SKG is asking for is quite simple. Game developers that sell games with online dependencies must create a plan for twilighting the game ahead of time, so the product you bought continues to function in some reasonable way at end of support. From a technical standpoint, this is easily accomplished because developers will typically have pre-integration test builds anyway, using placeholders instead of AWS or fancy clustering databases. Licensing of third party components (game libraries) and content (music) is probably the biggest hurdle. The proposal does not ask for retroactive changes either and would only apply to new games created after the law goes into effect.
Companies are trying to stop this.
Companies would be fine with the government having control over games if they thought it benefited them in some way. Regulations typically benefit big corporations after all.
Companies are trying to ignore basic consumer protections wherein people who purchase something have a right to actually own it. This has been a principle of the free market for as long as there has been a free market. Rebranding a product as a service in an effort to get around those protections is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-market. You want to put an end to the WEF "You will own nothing" agenda? Lobbying governments to enforce the basic consumer protection laws that already exist is the bare minimum.
The “Stop Killing Games” petition, launched in 2024, demands that developers be required to preserve games in a playable form, even after official servers are shut down. Supporters argue that permanently removing access to purchased titles—especially those that could function offline—is a violation of consumer rights.
When they shut down Little Big Planet they didn't just wipr out millions of fantastic user creates levels. They made the game unbeatable, because there are levels you can't beat without teamwork. It was very fun while it lasted though.
Archive:
https://archive.ph/3KSO4
Honestly it reads like the group promoting the idea want the government to have more control over games. Companies are trying to stop this.
Sure, any amount of new laws is technically the government having more control over something. I have no qualms admitting there are unanswered questions and this could explode into an EU bureaucratic nightmare, but what SKG is asking for is quite simple. Game developers that sell games with online dependencies must create a plan for twilighting the game ahead of time, so the product you bought continues to function in some reasonable way at end of support. From a technical standpoint, this is easily accomplished because developers will typically have pre-integration test builds anyway, using placeholders instead of AWS or fancy clustering databases. Licensing of third party components (game libraries) and content (music) is probably the biggest hurdle. The proposal does not ask for retroactive changes either and would only apply to new games created after the law goes into effect.
Companies would be fine with the government having control over games if they thought it benefited them in some way. Regulations typically benefit big corporations after all.
Companies are trying to ignore basic consumer protections wherein people who purchase something have a right to actually own it. This has been a principle of the free market for as long as there has been a free market. Rebranding a product as a service in an effort to get around those protections is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-market. You want to put an end to the WEF "You will own nothing" agenda? Lobbying governments to enforce the basic consumer protection laws that already exist is the bare minimum.
When they shut down Little Big Planet they didn't just wipr out millions of fantastic user creates levels. They made the game unbeatable, because there are levels you can't beat without teamwork. It was very fun while it lasted though.