This initiative was created quite a while ago, but it lost most of its steam after some bad assumptions were thrown around. I won't talk much about PirateSoftware or blame him because I felt that this initiative can affect more than just games in our current digital age. In a way, this is to bring awareness to this initiative and explain why I think it's important. It's not just about games, but I feel that it can have a lasting impact and bring some good legal law to help consumers (gamers and others alike). Why do I care? I care because I don't want the reality that Ubisoft said in the World Economic Forum about "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy." What they want is that our purchases is nothing more than a license to use the product, but they reserve the right to remove our access whenever they want.

Stop Killing Games

This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.
The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

The above objectives of this initiative can be found in the EU petition. From what I have seen in the interviews from GamersNexus, this initiative will not apply retroactively, and it will only apply to new games, such that developers and publishers will think about how to leave the game in a functional state.

What does it mean functional state? It is to remove the online features stopping people from playing Single Player Games, or some way for multiplayer games to have their own private servers. It does not require the developers to release their code or IP out to people, but they have to at least leave the bare minimum so that people can run the game in the future. It could be a major pain to run up the servers or apply the patch to make the game functional, but that is fine.

Why is it important?

I think that the entire thing is about the idea of digital ownership. When I bought games in past like for the Gamecube, I could always play them as long as I had a working game disk and console. Nowadays, developers and publishers have made it such that everything is connected online. I have been seeing more and more things require you to sign up your account to access anything. For example, I had a friend who bought a printer, but one day the printer stopped working because the company who made it decided to stop supporting it. The printer was perfectly fine and not broken at all. I just think that this will continue to happen unless the companies are forced to change.

As I said before, the entire question that I believe this initiative will bring up is the idea on digital ownership, and if it makes any changes, then corporations will be forced to consider the idea of digital ownership.

How to support it?

First off, there is two initiatives, and it is only available for people from the EU or UK. Unfortunately, I am not an EU or UK citizen, so I can't sign it. However, if you are, then I ask that you sign the petitions. The petitions will just ask the lawmakers to consider this issue, and they will created the finer details. It will just bring up as an issue that they should consider. Since the EU likes regulation, I think that this one has a good chance of working out. The EU petition is at 597,837 signatures out of one million, and the UK petition is at 38,798 out of 100,000. The deadline is later this month, so I don't know if there is enough time to get enough, but I think it is worth a shot to get the topic of digital ownership discussed. The links to the petition are found here: EU petition link and UK petition link.

Conclusion

Overall, I believe this is a question about digital ownership, and our consumers' rights to what we paid for. As it stands, companies are not punished for cutting off online support for any product they buy. Even if the hardware is perfectly fine, your item won't work because the company doesn't want to let it to work. Overall, this is a topic that lawmakers have not considered, and I think if the EU does make guidelines for it, I see it being applied to the rest of the world as well. I am biased towards this initiative passing because I would like to play the games that I paid for in the future, but I think that the ideas pushed by this initiative can affect things more than just games.

What do you think about Stop Killing Games and the idea of Digital Ownership?

Posted Using INLEO