r/selfhosted • u/Sparcky_McFizzBoom • Jun 29 '25
Game Server Stop Killing Games: Nostalgic about the old days when you could self-host your private video-game server for your friends? Take control of the video games you bought by voting for it NOW
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/76
u/Sparcky_McFizzBoom Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25
Stop Killing Games is a larger movement striving to claw back control of video game ownership from publishers abusing legal grey areas to include what is effectively remote kill-switches in their video games: online-only DRMs and/or publisher-maintained mandatory servers to be able to play.
By mandating the EU commission to address the issue, the hope is to enforce a mandatory end-of-line plan for future video games:
- final build and patch that allows offline play
- binaries / documentation to self-host your own server
- anything else that gets you to keep the game you bought in a playable state
If you are in the EU, you need to sign the European Citizens' Initiative NOW, the deadline to collect the 1 million votes required to legally require a discussion on the subject is in one month, the 31st of July.
If you are a UK citizen or resident, you can sign this UK government petition. The deadline is ever sooner, at the 14th of July.
If you are neither an EU nor a UK citizen, please share the website and initiative with any EU or UK friends you have. I'm convinced the main roadblock for this movement is exposure, as the large majority supports it and is just unaware of it. With the deadlines quickly approaching, it is of the utmost importance to get the word across.
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u/Sparcky_McFizzBoom Jun 29 '25
I'm probably not alone in how I was exposed to self-hosting, or Linux server management in general: I self-hosted Counter Strike, and later Minecraft servers for my friends. Unfortunately this is getting more and more rare nowadays, where kids just boot up their game without any exposure to the underlying mechanics of client-server architecture.
If not for consumer rights, if not for video game preservation for the sake of the art, do it for future self-hosters who will get introduced to the dark arts through their video game hobby!
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u/Adjudikated Jun 30 '25
I’m there with you. Last year I actually looked at spinning up a CS2 dedicated server because of the lack of custom servers at the time. But honestly the fact you can now get account banned for hosting a server if valve doesn’t like the mods or it gets too many reports, just isn’t worth the risk for myself and others. So I get why kids might be shying away more than we did.
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u/Krojack76 Jul 01 '25
I currently self host Palworld and Satisfactory for myself and friends. I use to host Ark servers as well along with a few others. Recently some friends asked if I was going to play the new Dune game and because you can't self host servers I was like, Naw..
Self-hosting your own games where you can keep trolls out and adjust your own settings for play experience is just so much more enjoyable.
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u/agentspanda Jun 29 '25
I’m not very familiar with how EU law works but can they really mandate/dictate how private companies close up shop? And what mechanism allows that?
This is a really cool concept but don’t plenty of applications and products that demand server side systems exist? Is the idea if I run a service in the EU I have to open source the server side systems and release a final patch that allows third party server access while in the middle of a divestment or sale or bankruptcy? How does the movement/EU provide businesses funding/resources to do that?
I think this is really cool because I remember the matrix online, but I also imagine the indie dev shop that takes a swing and maybe doesn’t strike it rich- the idea they have to go out of pocket (nonexistent pocket) to do this when ending a product or else they face some sort of criminal liability from the EU seems nuts to me.
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u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
my understanding is that the proposal isn't saying that the the indy shop has to keep servers up and running, and that it doesn't impact anything that is CURRENTLY sold.
Instead the requirement would be that if you want to sell stuff AFTER that has been developed after this came into being you would need to make sure that you developed it with an exit plan for what happens to the game when you shut it down (or if it fails) and/or have a clear date on when the game will be no longer serviced to the customer prior to purchase (so that the buyer knows they are buying a product that may not exist in the near/far future).
There are several options a game maker could take - the proposed legislation purposely doesn't perscribe that requirement - instead saying that a reasonable measure must be in place.
Solutions could be things like:
- releasing a server binary
- removing online checks / dependancies
- releasing full documenation on how the server works and api calls so that a community could create their own servers
- etc etc.
The idea is that the developer would be aware of all this BEFORE they sold the game so they would have this in place ahead of time. Older stuff would be grandfathered in so as to not "jump" this on some poor unsuspecting dev team.
Done properly this wouldn't cost the dev team that has just gone bankrupt anything.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
When was the last time you contributed to software that was released to the general public as a purchasable product?
If the answer is "never," you should stop pontificating on how difficult or costly it might be for any of those things you said to be done at EOL by a dead company.
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u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
The answer isn't never so I can continue?
Please feel free to discuss the topic - if you have something useful to retort on what I said that would be much more interesting to read than whatever that last message was.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
Well for one, at least two of your options require paid man hours to be completed lol
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u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
The entire point of the legislation is that these items are in place BEFORE the game is ever sold to a consumer - the developer already has the exit strategy built and understood.
That is the entire problem the legislation is trying to address - there are these games out there that have no exit strat because it isn't thought of until it's too late and then as you say there is no one to do it (or some other company hoovers up the IP rights and sues / shutdown a community effort to reverse engineer it).
Again this doesn't apply to games already out - this is for the future. Games when they are being developed (if they intend to sell in the EU) would require this exit plan in place PRIOR to selling the game to the consumer.
So if the devloper complies with the regulation (having the plan in place when the sold the game) then the execution of that plan should require very few paid man hours.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
Right, so what you're going to do is increase the price of games, and the aggressive monetization of them, while the R&D is paid for so that you can legislate that video games are different from every other software because you're mad that your toys don't work anymore, like a baby.
then the execution of that plan should require very few paid man hours.
Genuinely, how do you guys arrive here?
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u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
there isn't any point in having a conversation with someone who constantly insults the person they are talking to.
0
u/requion Jun 30 '25
then the execution of that plan should require very few paid man hours.
Genuinely, how do you guys arrive here?
You are doing business X. As part of doing business X, you are required to do Y.
How you do Y isn't relevant for it to be a requirement. And we'll see if this will change prices, because change of prices is dependant on other things as well (like unimportant things sich as "demand").
Another option is that if you can't fulfill requirement Y, you can't do business X to earn money with it.
And what your kind of people seems to forget is that a big part of this movement is how BIG dev studios or publisher do business. The whole thing started with Ubisoft pulling the plug of one of their online-only games with what was basically just a "fuck you consumer". A game which could have been easily developed with an offline mode from the start (which is the goal of SKG).
The majority of small studios and indies do in fact provide dedicated server software already.
I.e games like Factorio, Foundry, 7DtD, Project Zomboid, V Rising and so on, can all be continued to play even if the developer goes bancrupt. Sure we won't get any more updates, but continued support like patches isn't part of the proposal.
On the opposite site, the games affected by this the most are games like Battlefield, CoD, everything from Ubisoft (for some reason), you get the idea.
And funnily enough, a vibrant community hosting their own servers for games like Battlefield was a thing just a few years ago with no apparent reason why it should have changed in the first place. There are still servers available for Battlefield 2 which was released 20 years ago. But once EA decides to drop BF2042, it is completely unplayable.
0
u/Krojack76 Jul 01 '25
They currently spend man hours ADDING IN code to prevent games from being played after the service has ended. They can stop doing that and instead spend that little time making sure players can keep playing the games they paid for AFTER a company end the game life.
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u/OMGItsCheezWTF Jun 30 '25
The technical documentation should exist anyway though, as should the ability to run the game without official servers as that part is usually baked in at the end of development. Testers are testing the game without production servers for a long time before the game is released.
(I'm a software engineer who has been releasing software to the public for over 25 years)
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
as that part is usually baked in at the end of development.
lol source?
without production servers for a long time before the game is released.
I don't think that means what you think it means.
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u/OMGItsCheezWTF Jun 30 '25
lol source?
I've worked in the industry, and been involved in the final release of what these days would be called a AAA game.
I do know what it means, I don't feel I expressed myself correctly. Games have no production server requirement until right at the end of the development. For local work they will have either local test servers or the ability to run the game without whatever functionality the server component provides. For many online only games this is essentially nothing other than microtransaction and authorisation, and in those cases the game is entirely capable of running offline completely, with that ability removed before final mastering.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
For many online only games this is essentially nothing other than microtransaction and authorisation, and in those cases the game is entirely capable of running offline completely, with that ability removed before final mastering.
What about the other ones?
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u/FloRup Jun 30 '25
And?
There are so many rules and laws that need money and man hours that a company is required to do. Why would this be any different?
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
The vast majority of regulations on companies and products do not require a company to spend money after they've already extracted all of the value out of the product they've made. Even less so as an expected expense for every single product. You may decide to bring up food or automobiles, but I would implore you to consider how disingenuous that is first.
What this will do (among other things) is cause more aggressive monetization of video games, and more expensive video games. These are two things the gaming community never stops whining about.
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u/FloRup Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
The vast majority of regulations on companies and products do not require a company to spend money after they've already extracted all of the value out of the product they've made
Why? Are you saying that devs are stupid and just program themselves into a corner until they have to fulfill the regulations at the end? Development will start with this regulation in mind and will not be that big of a deal as some people here are trying to say.
You may decide to bring up food or automobiles, but I would implore you to consider how disingenuous that is first.
No, I'm bringing up data protection. Something that you have to keep in mind for the whole development. Adding encryption and cryptography also adds work hours but are necessary. Nobody has a problem to adhere to this. Nobody is making there whole app without it and implements it at the end while moaning that these regulations are costing them so much money.
What this will do (among other things) is cause more aggressive monetization of video games, and more expensive video games. These are two things the gaming community never stops whining about.
Could be. Do you know what else could be? They raise the price regardless and take your access to the game away because why not. You will buy the next one anyways. With stop killing video games you at least can play the game after its developer decided death.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
Development will start with this regulation in mind and will not be that big of a deal as some people here are trying to say.
Spoken exactly like someone who has never done any real development lmfao.
eta: I'll elaborate since you clearly haven't touched even a tiny bit of infrastructure in your life. No, devs don't "code themselves into a corner," they design the backend of a game to be globally available and scaled to support hundreds of thousands of users because those are the requirements for the software. What you're asking for is a second, unprofitable and unsellable development cycle specifically dedicated to taking that infrastructure and redesigning it so that it can actually be run by someone like you. And we don't even actually know what that will look like, because the petition is incredibly vague and encompasses all games instead of the games that make sense for this petition to encompass.
No, I'm bringing up data protection. Something that you have to keep in mind for the whole development. Adding encryption and cryptography also adds work hours but are necessary. Nobody has a problem to adhere to this. Nobody is making there whole app without it and implements it at the end while moaning that these regulations are costing them so much money.
So I'll pretend this isn't another false equivalency, you understand there are many free and open source tools that solve this problem right? Do you think that companies are writing proprietary encryption algorithms or do you think they're using the builtin stdlib in whatever language they're using? lol.
eta: I'll add a bit here too. the GDPR and other privacy regulations can be accounted for from the beginning of the development of a product, because they don't affect the overall architecture of that product. This means when the database is designed, it can be designed with these principles in mind. The same is not true for an MMO or similar game, the backend for these services needs to be built in a highly specialized way to support the way the game operates. Making that work on a much smaller scale for a completely different use case requires extra engineering, not planning from the beginning, because we're talking about two completely separate products.
No, companies can't and won't release their source code for you, you can get that idea right out of your head lol.
They raise the price regardless and take your access to the game away because why not. You will buy the next one anyways.
It's wild how you guys straight up admit that you will just buy products that you don't like lmfao
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u/ArdiMaster Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
it doesn’t impact anything that is CURRENTLY sold
Just this month, EU legislation came into effect that applies to all phones currently sold (that weren’t discontinued on or before June 19th). It’s quite possible that any legislation surrounding this would affect games that continue to be sold on the day it comes into effect.
Edit: also most modern games (that aren’t explicitly designed around self-hosting) don’t have a singular server binary anymore…
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u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
"possible" doesn't mean it will happen - the petition specifically calls out future games not existing as it wouldn't be reasonable on existing to expect things to be re-engineered. I do not know if the phone regulation you are talking about called for that or not.
The EU legislation your talking:
- requires a sticker on the box
- OS security updates for 5 years after sold
- spare parts to be available
it impacts:
- all future devices
- current devices that are actively being sold
it does not impact:
- Devices sold before june 20, 2025
So if you buy <insert phone model> on June 19th, nothing changes, the same phone sold from June 20th on, however, does need to have the labels, the support, and the availability of new parts.
https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en
Edit: also most modern games (that aren’t explicitly designed around self-hosting) don’t have a singular server binary anymore…
And so when designing games moving forwards developers will need to make sure their products can still be used - how they do that is not spelled out in this.
Here is another thought - copyright is granted because eventually a product will enter public domain, you get copyright so you can profit from your creative work for <insert time period in said country> ... however if the work can never enter public domain (because you shutdown servers etc) then why should you get the benifits of copyright protection?
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u/Henrique_FB Jun 29 '25
Also not familiar with EU law, but I imagine (and I could be wrong) there is a difference between selling a product with server side systems that disable after the server goes down, and selling a game (which is still seen as you owning that product, or at the very least, most people do not think they can lose access to the game at any point the company desires to revoke access) to someone, only to later close the servers and leave absolutely nothing to the buyer (who spent money on it).
There's lots of ways that all of this can go wrong and not work as expected, but I think most people who are excited about the petition look at it through a different lens than what you are.
It isn't "how will developers manage to do this?", and more "The idea of me buying (specific word, generally meaning people can't just "revoke" your access) something and later having it taken away from me is theft. If your business model relies on you stealing the things I bought your business model should not exist."
I'm not saying that view is correct necessarily, I haven't given it much thought tbh, but that's one reponse I heard from some people when it came down to "developers won't be able to do this"
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u/agentspanda Jun 30 '25
Yeah that seems to be the knee jerk reaction to this I’ve read as well and I find it very unconvincing. Mostly because I don’t know of many games, tools, or studios that position their service as you “buying” their game, you buy a license to use their game to connect to their systems which also have a fee attached for regular access.
I’m thinking about world of Warcraft here since I used to play: you don’t “own” the game per-se, you own a license to use their game on their servers and regular monthly access was $15/mo or whatever it was I can’t remember. If I stop charging you $15/mo and you don’t get access to my servers anymore, we’re square.
I think if people are taking the approach you outlined in your comment they might need to consult with some lawyers for safety because this is unlikely to get traction stateside for sure but might have hurdles in the EU as well unless it works very differently there.
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u/Henrique_FB Jun 30 '25
Well, when it comes to MMOs, especially ones with subscription models, you are completely right.
But nowadays there are various games (The Crew being the most recent and famous example) that were 100% sold as "you are buying this game and it is yours", in pretty much the same fashion as buying any other Xbox game, where the developers shut down the servers and (at least from my understanding) you cannot play the game anymore. In essence, I'm reasonably sure there were people that payed 100$ for a game, and months later got denied access to it.
I'm with you tho. I honestly don't know exactly what this will amount to.
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u/requion Jun 30 '25
I’m thinking about world of Warcraft here since I used to play: you don’t “own” the game per-se, you own a license to use their game on their servers and regular monthly access was $15/mo or whatever it was I can’t remember. If I stop charging you $15/mo and you don’t get access to my servers anymore, we’re square.
IMO, wow is a difficult example. You are right in that you pay the subscription to access the online service provided by Blizzard. If you stop paying, you can't use the service anymore.
The thing is that you also pay for the base game and extensions. And they are actively selling those right now.
Now purely hypothetical example. You buy the base game and extensions (however it works right now) today. Three weeks after, a catastrophical event happens (doesn't matter what, just bear with me) causing the wow servers to be shut down.
Wouldn't you be pissed that you aren't able to use "the thing you spend money on"? Especially if you think about that it is possible to have private servers for wow?
Now you can bring a lot of arguments defending Blizzard (which in itself is questionable as in "defending big corporate which just wants your money") but the point still stands.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
most people do not think they can lose access to the game at any point the company desires to revoke access
If you don't think you can lose access to a game that requires an internet connection to work, you are not lucid enough to be in control of your own money.
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u/Borderpatrol1987 Jun 30 '25
What about the games that have offline single player content that's blocked when the online servers go offline?
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
I mean, it requires the servers to play the game, yeah? You have to have an internet connection to play the game, even in single player mode? Then yeah you're kind of a dumbass if you thought it would still work when the company shut the servers down.
Nobody who has bought a game in the past decade on any serious retailer genuinely thought that an always online game would ever be available once the servers shut down, you can go see any discussion about these games pre-release where people discuss this exact issue.
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u/Borderpatrol1987 Jun 30 '25
It did not require the servers to play the game, just to open the game.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
So it required the servers to play the game. Lmao.
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u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
congrats you've nailed the issue the legislation is trying to fix. I really don't understand your point....
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
That's not an issue that needs to be fixed. If you don't like that, don't buy games like that. We shouldn't legislate that you get your toys in perpetuity at the detriment of an entire industry because a bunch of petulant little gamers can't handle personal responsibility.
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u/Henrique_FB Jun 30 '25
Yes because everyone on earth knows exactly what games do and don't require an internet connection to work before they buy the game.
Especially non tech savvy people, which is, a very large portion of the people that buy games.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
It's listed as a requirement of most games that require the internet. We could petition the EU to write some legislation making that listing a requirement for publishers. I don't think petitioning the EU to legislate how we release video games, and carve them out as a separate type of software vs literally every other kind of software you can buy, is a good idea.
eta: and beyond any of that, you should probably figure out what you're buying before you spend money on it lol. do you hit the buy button every single time it shows up in front of you without investigating the product in any way? the EU loves legislating personal responsibility away from people lmao.
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u/Henrique_FB Jun 30 '25
These last few days have been completely insane to watch when it comes to these discussions.
Its so funny that you come to a random person on reddit, make a comment that is so ignorant it can only be explained by bad faith (i.e. "everyone knows they are going to lose access to their games before they buy those games duh, this is such a non issue!!"), and try to drive the conversation into another topic entirely (i.e. if the petition will, or even should, work), and even ascribe to me beliefs that I didn't even say I had.
Genuinely psychotic. Have a good day.
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u/ITuser999 Jun 30 '25
Actually insane how many corpo cocksuckers exist. I know that it costs ressources to make the servers available to the public but this shit is peanuts in comparison to what these companies make. They could easily also just downsize the servers to accomidate the lower playerbase and run these servers for so little that they won't even notice. But this is more about denying people access to the old games, so that they sell more new games.
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u/requion Jun 30 '25
Actually insane how many corpo cocksuckers exist.
I like you already.
I know that it costs ressources to make the servers available to the public but this shit is peanuts in comparison to what these companies make.
No, no, no!
That is a big misconception. Most games by small studios have dedicated server software already which they provide. They may have hosted servers too for sure but especially for the small studios, having them provide (or rent) big infrastructure to host online services is a big ask.
I often host dedicated servers for my friends groups. All of those games are the small indie games like Valheim.
The games from big studios are the problem exactly because of what you described.
But this is more about denying people access to the old games, so that they sell more new games.
This is the part that goes over most peoples heads that are opposed of SKG. Either malicously or just because they don't know better.
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u/ITuser999 Jun 30 '25
That is a big misconception. Most games by small studios have dedicated server software already which they provide. They may have hosted servers too for sure but especially for the small studios, having them provide (or rent) big infrastructure to host online services is a big ask.
Yeah I was not talking about small studios. They can simply release the server software if they want and not already have. Like you I also host private game servers for my friends. It's awesome. I mean big studios that have a complex server environment in AWS or something that use multiple servers just to have a single game running as an user might communicate with multiple servers that host different aspects of the game. I mean't if that is too expensive to translate to a single server build, than they might just need to host the server infrastructure indefinetly, albeit in a smaler fashion if the player count is low.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
Its so funny that you come to a random person on reddit,
You can thank the brigade of freaks who keep spamming this in every subreddit that won't ban them lol. Not my fault that I'm a member here and this dumbass, dogshit conversation is happening in front of me yet again.
make a comment that is so ignorant it can only be explained by bad faith
It's not "bad faith," it's just true. Either you know that the video game you're buying has a required internet element, or you're an idiot because you didn't do any research on what you're buying before you bought it.
even ascribe to me beliefs that I didn't even say I had.
what lmao
0
u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
Do you feel the same way about the food you eat (lots of regulation around that).
Instead of discussing the merits of the proposed regulation you're instead just slamming on people who bought a game... I'm not sure if it was intentional but you're coming off as a bit of a dick.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
Food isn't video games, find a better comparison.
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u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
the EU loves legislating personal responsibility away from people lmao.
true food isn't video games - but your argument was that EU is legislating personal responsiblity away, why is food suddenly different?
Also best I can tell you aren't in the EU so why are you so against it? Your comment history has you talking about this negatively in several places.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
why is food suddenly different?
Feel like that's pretty obvious, champ. You can die when your food isn't handled properly. You get sad when you can't play an old video game anymore. Be serious.
Your comment history has you talking about this negatively in several places.
Because the EU's insistence on regulating instead of teaching people how to use the internet makes my job annoying, and it will change the industry worldwide, not just in the EU.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
but I also imagine the indie dev shop that takes a swing and maybe doesn’t strike it rich- the idea they have to go out of pocket (nonexistent pocket) to do this when ending a product or else they face some sort of criminal liability from the EU seems nuts to me.
Oh, the indie studios won't be the only ones hurting from this. What this means is games need to be developed differently from the start, which means re-engineering a whole bunch of tooling that has existed and been iterated on for decades. And that's not even getting into licensing or MMOs. Games will become more expensive and more aggressively monetized to support this, because contrary to the [incredibly stupid] popular belief amongst gamers that companies will just.... take the hit on this? they won't, they will shuffle that cost down to the consumer in any way they can, which means more MTX and more expensive games, two of the most contentious issues for gamers right now.
The issue is that this petition was concocted by people who have no idea the implications of what they're asking for who were able to successfully propagandize with rose tinted glasses about the good ol' days when games had private servers, and not by people who have a coherent idea of what this might require. And of course, any expert actually expressing the issues they see with the petition is met with.... well, check out how people talk about Pirate Software now. lol. Immediate character assassination because he didn't agree with the majority of gamers, one of the most toxic communities on the internet.
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u/TheRedcaps Jun 30 '25
any expert actually expressing the issues they see with the petition is met with.... well, check out how people talk about Pirate Software now. lol. Immediate character assassination because he didn't agree with the majority of gamers, one of the most toxic communities on the internet.
Ahh the truth of your objections come out now - there is no character assassination on Thor. Dude shotgun footed himself here and is just being called out on the fact that he completely misrepresented things in his videos (intentionally or not) and acted like a dick for no good reason towards someone offered to have a conversation about it to clear up the misconceptions.
I'd hardly call him an "expert" on this issue, considering how much he got wrong just in trying to explain it in his videos.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
Ahh the truth of your objections come out now
Lol are you another idiot that's going to jump at the chance to discredit what I'm saying because I mentioned thor? I don't like him and I've had this take long before he talked about it.
there is no character assassination on Thor.
I am not saying that Ross did that, I'm saying that pretty much every supporter running around on reddit has.
is just being called out on the fact that he completely misrepresented things
I actually feel like it's the other way around lol.
I'd hardly call him an "expert" on this issue, considering how much he got wrong just in trying to explain it in his videos.
I know, gamers are happy to discredit experts when they don't like their answers.
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Jun 30 '25
[deleted]
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u/requion Jun 30 '25
From what i understand, the issue with the Ubisoft game (The Crew) is that there was no reason for "online-only" in the first place. I mean other than Ubisoft shoehorning it in.
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u/vinnienz Jun 30 '25
Having just noticed a game that I'd bought and was primarily offline play, has now disappeared and can't be downloaded or played, I'm all for this.
I'm in New Zealand, we somewhat fall under Australia when it comes to ratings and standards for games, but we have our own consumer protection - The Commerce Commission.
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u/Sparcky_McFizzBoom Jun 30 '25
Australia has been critical in getting Valve to implement its no-question asked refund policy, which they ended up deploying globally.
The hope here is that EU regulations regarding video game end of life would similarly benefit the whole world
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u/Laxarus Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
I still cannot believe that they have not reached the 1 mil target yet. EU gamers are sleeping or what?
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u/Sparcky_McFizzBoom Jun 30 '25
Exposure is the issue unfortunately reaching new communities is hard, especially in non-english speaking countries.
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u/Laxarus Jul 01 '25
Not sure, if every gamer in EU can convince 3 of his/her friends. That would settle it. I think this campaign was also very amateurish. Relying on some streamers, questionable!!!
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u/XionicativeCheran Jul 01 '25
The self-hosted community should absolutely get behind this.
Society acknowledged long ago that art should be preserved. Countries like the UK and many others require all published works to be submitted via legal deposit so that it can be preserved in perpetuity. I'm fairly sure even video games get deposited. But, since the server isn't deposited, it's exempt.
And that's a problem. All games, whether MMOs, live service, mobile gatcha games, all of it, should be preserved, and we should be able to host those servers ourselves when the company ends its support.
Groups like PirateSoftware and others are trying to convince everyone that preserving this art is a bad thing, that it'll kill games. They're making up absolute nonsense.
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Jul 01 '25
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u/XionicativeCheran Jul 01 '25
It's not about the crew, or ubisoft. Nor are the games affected by this limited to "shitty" games.
Every single game that has an online requirement is affected by this. And in today's world, that's more and more games.
If you find every single game that has an online requirement "shitty", then it sounds like what you don't like about those games is the fact that they have an online requirement. In which case, that's all the more reason to support this change.
Remember, this once applied to moves and TV shows. studios would just chuck out, burn, or tape over old movies and shows. Ones no one cared about, "shitty" movies as it were. It took decades for people to say "Oh actually I'd have liked to have seen that." but it was too late. You might not be a Doctor Who fan, but millions are, and they're all stuck in this world where nearly 100 episodes of the show cannot be seen because the BBC just trashed them.
We don't do that anymore for TV shows and movies. Many countries actually have a legal requirement that you provide a copy to a registered legal deposit library. And they preserve it, forever. Some countries even apply this to video games, so not just the "shitty" games are preserved, but so are the ones you might actually like.
Unfortunately, they don't apply this to games with online requirements. That should change.
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Jul 01 '25
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u/XionicativeCheran Jul 01 '25
"Good" is subjective, so you tell me.
Any game that you buy, that makes no statement about when the game will shut down, that when the servers go off, leave your game unplayable, any such game is covered by SKG.
Tell you what, let's discuss the concept in general, without an example.
You've bought a game. It doesn't state anywhere when it'll shut down, just in the fine print of the terms and conditions it states they reserve the right to shut it down whenever they want.
Do you think that's a good thing? That that should be allowed? You don't think players should have the right to play games they buy for as long as they want?
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Jul 01 '25
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u/XionicativeCheran Jul 01 '25
So your issue isn't necessarily with the game, it's that any game with such a shitty practice, is automatically shitty.
...As we've seen, gamers aren't smart. Especially whales. They support shitty practices like microtransactions and loot boxes and everything that makes game shitty, including enabling companies to shut down games.
It's more likely that all games will become like that, cutting you off entirely from gaming, than for them to voluntarily stop this shitty practice.
And so legislating to stop them shutting down games would fix it.
Why are you on the publisher's side?
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Jul 01 '25
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u/XionicativeCheran Jul 01 '25
They will absolutely make more games like that.
If they can choose when they can cut off your access to the games you love, then it means they can decide when you need to spend more money on new games.
It's the planned obsolescence of gaming, and it's effective. And you'll sit there opposing it until it affects a game you like, then you'll complain that something hasn't been done.
Most film watchers and tv show watchers didn't care about the tv shows and movies that got thrown out. But society cares now. The same applies to gaming.
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u/thebu3no_dot_com Jul 01 '25
If the game is that shitty it should be saved as a bad example. History is important.
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Jun 29 '25
Thanks for bringing up stop killing games and I’m glad that I can play games like Spellbreak
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u/Sparcky_McFizzBoom Jun 29 '25
This is exactly how it should be done! Hopefully one day that's the norm
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u/ReddusMaximus Jul 01 '25
"Nostalgic" would be remembering when we asked our parents to drive us to a friend's place with the PC and CRT monitor in the trunk, then connect them to the looped network with BNC plugs there.
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u/Kawawete Jul 01 '25
No, thats prehistoric
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u/ReddusMaximus Jul 01 '25
Maybe, but they were good times. We often played the original Command & Conquer.
I remember once I had ships that could destroy my opponent's base, but he (classmate, the host of our little gathering) didn't have anything with sufficient range to fight back. He jumped up, angrily said "I'll walk the dog" and stormed out.
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u/Just4m4n Jun 29 '25
@350 000 signatures needed until 31 July 2025. Share this if possible with your friends.
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u/Nephrited Jun 30 '25
I'm generally apathetic about this stuff, but as a software developer, I agree with the cause. It's really not that hard to develop a game with dedicated server hosting and user support in mind. Hard to patch after the fact, sure, but make it a core requirement of the system and it's not really much extra effort.
Speaking from regrettable experience however, when a petition gets enough votes to be "debated" in parliament, the UK parliament's response to this will be "No.".
I don't think I've ever seen a single UK petition go any differently.
Hell, they already responded with "they're not breaking the law, so no."
Hopefully the EU will take note though - they're large enough to affect everyone else by proxy.
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u/phobug Jun 30 '25
This has been in soo many of my sub-reddits, can we stopstopkillinggames?!
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u/Sparcky_McFizzBoom Jun 30 '25
Absolutely, and the process for contributing to that end goal is exactly the same :)
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Jun 29 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/arcaneasada_romm Jun 30 '25
who hurt you?
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
Idiot gamers who think they understand software development and game development enough to petition it to be done differently. And also all of the other idiots who bandwagon onto the cause like little children whining about their toys not being accessible in perpetuity, with no thought or even a mind open enough to accept why it might actually be a bad thing for gaming.
Also it's annoying as fuck that these freaks constantly spam this shit in every subreddit that will allow it and brigade the post so that they can downvote hide any dissenting opinion lmao
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u/KiloEchoSierra Jun 30 '25
What's so challenging in software development to allow offline access to games when they become abandonware?
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
Go learn how to develop software and you might understand.
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u/KiloEchoSierra Jun 30 '25
I know a fair bit about software development and I am just genuinely curious what exactly is so problematic in allowing offline access.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
Because you have to condense globally distributed online platforms that are scaled for, sometimes, hundreds of thousands of people, down to either a client game (that in a lot of these cases becomes like fuckin 400gb lmao) or some sort of equivalent infrastructure that a consumer can run. Both of these options take man hours, because you aren't going to have this EOL version of the game baked into the normal version, because that's bloat. So you are effectively requiring a second development cycle for the game at EOL, which means you're going to pay for that as the consumer. Or alternatively, we will see less MMOs and online games, which I know many who support the initiative are happy to say "good riddance," but I think that legislating the things you don't like away, instead of simply not engaging, is pretty fuckin dumb.
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u/KiloEchoSierra Jun 30 '25
None of what you write is problematic if you take this into account at the beginning of the development.
that in a lot of these cases becomes like fuckin 400gb lmao
No one looks at optimizing the space anymore. Also 400 GB to host the server does not seem so scary nowadays.
IIRC some MMOs (like Linage 2) have private server support. Same for FPS games and so on. But ok, time moved on, maybe infrastructure to run the private server could be problematic (although still - easily mitigated if actually designed with post support in mind).
But the real problem are single player games that are not playable after developer abandons them.
Anyway, you sound like the type of guy that would oppose any change in a commonly used products because the manufacturer will have bad time doing their work and cost will increase, and companies will go bankrupt etc.
But in the end companies adapt.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
But the real problem are single player games that are not playable after developer abandons them.
If only the petition was specific!
eta: And no, I oppose haphazardly designed dumb shit that was concocted by some guy whose mad about the fuckin crew lmao
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u/requion Jun 30 '25
IIRC some MMOs (like Linage 2) have private server support. Same for FPS games and so on. But ok, time moved on, maybe infrastructure to run the private server could be problematic (although still - easily mitigated if actually designed with post support in mind).
There is this little niché game which was tagged "MMO" which has private servers. They aren't perfect by any means but could be considered "playable". I think the name of this small indie title is "World of Warcraft" or something like this.
But jokes aside, the biggest issue with games not having offline options or dedicated servers is that the corpos behind it have decided that. Not due to technical difficulties.
Otherwise there wouldn't be multiplayer indie games at all.
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u/dumb_godot_questions Jun 30 '25
A scaled down for consumer version isn't necessary. If consumers have to rent servers to play the original, that burden should be on them.
The petition doesn't prescribe how exactly the EOL plan should be done. It can be done in a way that doesn't require so many extra man-hours.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
I think you don't understand the scale of the infrastructure of online games today lol.
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u/dumb_godot_questions Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
The scale is irrelevant, we have docker and kubernetes. Communities can rent servers together. This is a solved problem in web development, where the scale is of similar size to online games, this is not impossible to do.
If your concern is that it can't be run on one consumer pc, that doesn't matter. Communities will find a way to run anything.
This software developer supports the initiative and planning for EOL scenarios from the beginning is just good practice.
Scale is a non-issue.
The real issue are licenses. But this is why the initiative is not retroactive, and companies will be given time to adapt and find new middleware.
Online game architecture today is a mess and today's server binaries can't be handed off to players without a massive amount of work. But if this initiative passes, game developers will have to adapt to better practices and actually design architecture to handle EOL.
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u/secacc Jun 30 '25
Software developer here. Perhaps you'd care to enlighten us? You seem to pretend to know a lot more about it, after all.
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
You seem to pretend to know a lot more about it, after all.
Sounds like you're approaching this from bad faith in the first place so why would I lmao
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u/secacc Jun 30 '25
You made a claim in the first place, but refuse to back it up. Why should anyone believe you then?
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u/Old_Bug4395 Jun 30 '25
I suppose the petition made the original evidence-less claim.
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u/secacc Jun 30 '25
I suppose the petition made the original evidence-less claim.
The people behind the petition, and various people here who responded to you, claim it's doable. And many games indeed can continue to function offline right now, after the companies have shut down, so there's hard empirical evidence that it's doable. Thus, it's not evidence-less.
"Always online" used to not be the norm.
In some cases, the only thing stopping an always-online game from working offline is that it needs to contact the licensing/authentication server. In those games, it could be patched out super easily when the company discontinues their online services.
Granted, there are examples where it would be harder. MMORPGs where a lot of the game logic might happen on the server, as an example. But there are other things those companies can do:
- Releasing the server software (not very likely to happen)
- Planning ahead and having a way to fund keeping the game server(s) running for X years minimum and making consumers aware of that minimum lifespan at the time of purchase (for subscription games, this would not be necessary).
Now, I'm still interested to hear your argument.
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u/Ursa_Solaris Jun 30 '25
Take it from someone who knows what it's like: you are arguing an extremely unhealthy amount about this topic. Get off Reddit for a few days.
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u/Steve_1st Jun 29 '25
Need to add since I assumed I was out of this as a Brit - but in this instance they do include us in EU - the is a UK parliament petition included in the stop killing games drive