[larschdk]

As a European, and avid gamer, I support part of the intent here, but I don't think that this has any chance of causing any kind of practical change. The petition is way too broad and doesn't address any specific instances of consumer deceptive practices.

- It's often not practical: There is a vast spectrum of business models where "playable state" requires significant investment, or is even not technically feasible. It could require the company to give up additional intellectual property (server side). It could require them to relicense 3rd party brands (such as The Crew had license for car models), or assets (music). It could involve 3rd party software re-licensing.

- There's a precedent of existing software licensing models. The EU would need to tear up such models completely to enable this.

- You already agreed to the EULA/ToS when you signed up for the service. You were informed that the service could go down. Chose other games if you don't like this.

- Out of scope: The EU will look at business practices if they involve deception and exploitation, but other than that, markets are generally liberal. We don't just demand specific services from companies. At best, we can hope for clearer information to ensure that consumers are well informed of what they are paying for (perpetual license vs time-limited subscription to a live service.

[nkrisc]

> You already agreed to the EULA/ToS when you signed up for the service. You were informed that the service could go down. Chose other games if you don't like this.

This information disclosure is the real issue. Companies use the EULA/TOS to bury information that they know consumers are unlikely to read but also fulfill their legal obligations.

Often it’s difficult to even find this information until after you buy it, and they’re certainly not telling you on their Steam store page that they will completely kill the game at some point in the future.

[matly]

There is an EU Court ruling that found that EULA/TOS are not applicable or enforceable in Europe, so that's kind of a non-issue. Also, this doesn't really change the outcome if a publisher would be forced to guarantee usability of their product after they shut down servers, does it?

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-128/11

[valval]

The great thing about long pieces of text you don’t feel like reading is that there’s always someone else who will.

Then again this applies for all things in life. Don’t worry if you don’t wanna do the thing. Someone else will.

[ndriscoll]

If they did decide to do this, the "intellectual property" thing seems like a complete non-issue to me. Third parties wouldn't have any customers if they didn't license things in a compliant way, so they'd just change their licensing to follow the law. This seems vastly easier than e.g. restricting the use of various chemicals in manufacturing, where you actually have to solve engineering problems and alter physical supply chains to make the change.

[jwueller]

I feel like it's not broad at all, it just demands that the company delivers what they advertised, since they don't usually openly disclose the temporary nature of your "purchase", because it would hurt sales. (No, hiding it in the EULA doesn't count as per EU courts.)

- Disagree on it being technically infeasible. It's basically trivial: You're probably already running the Kubernetes config on the cluster anyway. Just release the server binaries/config/docs. Laws are also usually not retroactive, so negotiating licenses that allow for this in the future seems trivial too.

- You don't lose IP by distributing anything, just like you don't lose it for distributing the client. I don't own Ford because I bought a Ford car. The only thing licensed IP in a product does it that you can't sell it anymore after it expires. It has no effect on previously sold copies.

- EULA/ToS is invalid if it contains unfair/unexpected clauses. They like to call it a service, but that doesn't mean that it actually is, legally. As opposed to SaaS, games are sold as a product with no expiration date. The EULA/ToS also always contain clauses like "terms can change at any time for any or no reason", which is inherently invalid. So the whole EULA/ToS could be invalid on its face too.

- This is just about basic ownership rights. If it's a rental/service (with a disclosed price for a specific time period), then it's fine. Otherwise it's a product and you have to abide by the regulation for products. Anything other than these two options is inherently unfair, because you can't assess the value of something if you don't know how long it may be used for.

[johnnyanmac]

>just demands that the company delivers what they advertised

I don't know any company that advertises "game will stay up for X amount of time and will always be playable". On the contrary I'm pretty sure every EULA specifies that they aren't. you're logging into someone else's server, so I should log in knowing that server won't say up forever

>EULA/ToS is invalid if it contains unfair/unexpected clauses.

how is it unexpected 30 years into the internet that "oh yeah, this is a server-based game, it won't stay up forever". It's unfair, but laws are rarely made with a goal of perfect "fairness".

> Disagree on it being technically infeasible. It's basically trivial:

Nothing is trivial in tech. Not unless you're talking on the scale of years. This isn't even a gamedev thing, it's just that there's always random footguns and pitfalls due to the nature of shifting to a attrition strategy instead of a retention strategy.

> You don't lose IP by distributing anything

if you distribute IP you do not own, you end up taking damages while also having the game taken down. very few games are made fully in house anymore.

[animuchan]

The Crew is a great example of a company behaving in a way that should be very illegal. They collected my payment for the product, then decided to kill the product presumably to save money on the cloud infra. There was no refund.

In any other industry this business technique is known as "theft".

[larschdk]

Please, by all mean, join the class action lawsuit. They will claim that you agreed to the Terms of Service that said that they could shut down the game at any time for any reason. There is no theft, when what you paid for was access to a service. You can't just demand that companies only sell you what you want, or even give it to you retroactively.

What you can do, is to demand transparent, non-deceptive, and fair terms of service. What you can also do, it to speak with your wallet and refuse to play online-only games. It's not a human right to play games, you know.

[animuchan]

This is so out there. Having a car is not a human right. Therefore I'll now take your car and sell it for parts.

I will also claim that you consented to that. Suddenly there is no theft!

(When I paid for the game, there were no ToS to sign either, so it's fair.)

[account42]

> It could require the company to give up additional intellectual property (server side).

Seems only fair to ensure the entire work eventually enters the public domain - otherwise what's the incentive for the rest of society to put up with copyright in the first place?

[CamperBob2]

DRM alone renders the notion of copyright as a bargain with the public domain a complete laughing stock. Rightsholders should be forced to choose between technical and legal protection. That should apply here as well.

[this_user]

I think the EU governments simply have much more important things to do than to regulate what are essentially toys. People who call themselves "gamers" especially seem lack perspective to recognise that this is just a silly hobby rather than something that actually matters and urgently needs to be addressed by the government.

[animuchan]

What requires regulating is not the hobby, but instead the 250-billion-dollar market built on predatory practices.

(E.g. we somehow have a lot of bodies regulating sport events, whereas playing football is just a silly hobby rather than something that actually matters. Same logic applies.)

[johnnyanmac]

There's a lot of predatory practices in games, but shutting down an unpopular game is not one of them. We mostly lost the lootbox war, so I don't see this law getting much more sympathy.

[animuchan]

Shutting down a live service game after collecting a generous up-front payment from many a customer is very much a rug pull, NFT style, is it not?

Free-to-play games, or even purely subscription-based games, I kind of agree. But a thing I bought for 60-100 reserve currency shouldn't just poof! and disappear, especially if the company pulling the rug is doing well (hi, Ubisoft).

[johnnyanmac]

Depends on the time active. If it was like the day before (2023) that pretended to be an MMO but couldn't even do that for 3 days, then yes. That should be punished. If it's your average games as a service that stays actively updated for 2 years and then shuts down I don't know if I can call that a "rug pull". That's still 2 years of actively updated entertainment, which isn't something most offline games can muster up.

I guess it comes down to how long is long enough for that 60-100 currency. I'm sure greybeards who stuck with WOW for 20 years wouldn't feel swindled if the game shut down tomorrow. Devestated, but a huge chunk of lifetime entertainment is far from a rug pull. Meanwhile you can feel betrayed by stuff like Babylon's fall that didn't even make a year (even if very few were optimistic to begin with).

[larschdk]

Agreed. They'd have a much better chance focusing on specific deceptive business practices. The EU would be more likely to require explicit and clear labeling of what it is that you are buying.

[paulmd]

I mean, the licensing thing exists as a separate anti-consumer behavior that is frankly unconscionable both artistically and in consumer rights in itself.

Companies shouldn’t be allowed to delete stuff out of my library because they don’t want to renew the contract for the music (f.ex). If they do that, they should be forced to refund the full original price of the purchase, at a minimum.

It’s also obscene for the creator of the work change the work retroactively. This should immediately surrender copyright protection on all materials covered by the first release, or the second release should not receive copyright protection (it's not a new work).

Not sure where the line is between a “remaster”/“director’s cut” but certainly by the time it’s in people’s libraries it’s over the line - I would be very upset to find out that, say, the ending of a movie changed to a version I specifically chose against purchasing (like a directors cut). If you want to release an extra ending, or a directors cut/remaster, fine, but don’t change the things people already bought.

This functionally will force them to sign perpetual licensing deals or not license the content at all. By setting the rules of the game, you can nudge them into the better behavior, and it becomes standard.

Like I'm sure they are used to abusing the consumer etc, because it's been legal to do so, and the way you stop that is attaching consequences for the behavior you want to stop. I'm sure that this will be a shift in how they negotiate contracts etc. And it will be a good one for the consumer.

Requiring separate licensing for playing my game in the cloud is also unconscionable and anti-consumer. Charging for managed-content-library services (like netflix/gamepass) is different but if I as a consumer buy a game and want to play it on a computer instance I rent from Amazon or Google, that should be legal.

In the sense that GDPR is forcing a shift in mindset for companies from "how we handle our data" to "how we handle the customer's data", there is a fundamental shift that needs to happen in the copyright mindset away from "licensing our content/protecting the copyright holders" to "protecting the customer's license". The idea of a license as an ephemeral thing that can be torn away from a consumer without consequence (because the lawyers put "haha eat shit" in some contract-of-adhesion) needs to stop. A significant number of license terms will need to be invalidated immediately etc, just like when other things are regulated (store regulations sometimes mean people can refund things today that they couldn't yesterday, etc). Mostly it will be fine / the consumer will be made whole from parties that are almost inevitably still around and actually able to pay (eg EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft haven't gone anywhere).