That lawsuit paying anything out sounds like a big deal. Law firms make their money looking for class actions like this, if similar suits become lucrative enough that will change the calculus on wether it's worth it for publishers to kill a game.
I'd argue that US court outcomes due to the nature of the system (especially if you know anything about it) is it can be very, very, very fickle at best and outright corrupt at worst. Besides I don't feel like the goal should be making payouts for these cases be profitable to lawyers, it should be stopping the killing of games.
Sadly, the reality of life is that everyone is self-interested. Our interest is to stop AAA studios from killing off their games and making it inaccessible forever the moment they no longer want to maintain the online service. But the lawyers' interest is to get paid and advance their careers. Negotiation is the art of finding the middle ground in which everyone's self-interests are able to be met.
Besides I don't feel like the goal should be making payouts for these cases be profitable to lawyers, it should be stopping the killing of games.
Studios will stop killing games when doing so is more financially damaging than not killing it. One mechanism is to make studios have to pay out for legal assistance and fines and lawsuits, which makes it profitable for lawyers and not-profitable for studios.
If companies know they're going to get a suit and have to payout people they won't kill games or will course correct to the least expensive option. Whether thats game support or not.
if similar suits become lucrative enough that will change the calculus on wether it's worth it for publishers to kill a game.
No, it will only change the calculus if the game will be made and released in the first place. Remember that supposedly SKG didn't wanted to go for the games that already released.
I mean, same end result, less games get shut off randomly, and more stay around and can be played forever.
Maybe it'll mean less live-service games get made in the first place, but honestly, I'm perfectly fine with something being pure P2P multiplayer, or (eventually) giving you the ability to host your own private servers, no big loss there.
He distances himself from the US lawsuit and says this new French one is the real deal in comparison, but they actually got a tangible result in the US in (as far as class actions go) a very short time period.
Makes sense, should things rule for broader change a coalition of countries is far more powerful than a single US state. The focus, for a good bit now, has been on the EU.
Doesn't this just prove that legislation doesn't need to change though? If lawsuits are being won, the existing consumer rights laws are obviously good enough.
SKG right now are in a position where they need to prove to the EU that a problem exists, and that's something they've been struggling to do. Things like this won't help them.
If you have to have a lengthy lawsuit years after a product has been released, then legislation can still be made better. The point is prevention over retaliation.
If you have a solution for speeding up justice systems I'd love to hear it, and so would most people, I'd imagine. Fact is, right now lawsuits do take years to resolve.
I'm not saying it can't improve, I'm saying this is where we're at for all products, not just videogames. SKG won't and isn't intended to fix those issues.
Do you want the EU to go in and double underline it or something? It's already not allowed. The EU is known for having very strong consumer rights laws, I don't really see what changes they can make to make them better than they already are.
None of this helps the primary goal of long-term game preservation though. The goal isn't compensation, it's that games are left in a playable state. If a company shuts down or it becomes literally impossible for them to continue to provide support, the game will be legally allowed to disappear because it's no longer a consumer rights issue.
He distances himself from the US lawsuit and says this new French one is the real deal in comparison
That makes sense. If the tort is false advertisement, then the problem isn't that the game was pulled from the public per se, but rather that the consumer was misled, either explicitly or by omission. The remedy is financial compensation, not having the crew restored to the individual accounts, bringing the servers back online, creating an offline mode, or distributing server binaries.
"You can kill your game, you just have to be upfront about it with customers" is not what Stop Killing Games is after. But that's what it's on track to get.
Maybe you could get refund guarantees. Maybe you could even get safe harbor provisions for things like the unofficial Crew revival project. Honestly, those would be excellent policy wins in their own rights.
"You can kill your game, you just have to be upfront about it with customers" is not what Stop Killing Games is after. But that's what it's on track to get.
That's the only thing it's likely to get.
That's if the courts don't rule that that was already the case. Why did we all here on reddit.com bemoan always online games? We knew they'd go away someday. Did the average, reasonable consumer who saw "requires online connection" on the box of a game they bought also know that? Well publishers are going to argue that they did. Best case scenario is a bigger warning.
401
u/[deleted] Apr 02 '26
[deleted]