[PaulKeeble]

The game that kicked this particular petition off was The Crew, a game that you could happily play single player which Ubisoft made always online purely for DRM reasons its a prime example of the abuse of power that legislators should be doing something ab0out.

[robertlagrant]

This isn't exactly an abuse of power - you can just not buy it. UbiSoft has transformed itself into a terrible, bloated company and it probably die soon, but the better way to do this is to have industry standards similar to PEGI that describe the game's future support, not to hit them with EU-specific regulations.

[blargey]

"Let the problem fester until the negative externalities build up so much it overcomes the coordination problem and companies are subject to the same coercion (but through 'market forces' so it's good), one day, eventually, maybe" isn't a meaningful argument against legislation.

[soulofmischief]

Excellent summary of our current pseudocapitalist hellscape. How do we stop this ride when even the meta is a coordination problem.

[redeeman]

and yet it would be solved overnight if the consumers just stopped buying what they evidently dislike so much

[badsectoracula]

The problem is that these consumers realize they'd dislike some things of a product long after buying it (and often it isn't the entire product that is a problem, so someone might still dislike a lot some aspect of a product while liking another aspect of it).

And others may not even realize the negative issues at all but still they create network effects that drag other consumers along the ride anyway, regardless of if they like it or not.

[wkat4242]

> This isn't exactly an abuse of power - you can just not buy it.

This is the EU. We don't believe the market fixes everything. As an EU citizen I really applaud the restrictions on bad business practices of tech companies. A lot of those are US-based but they'll have to play by our rules if they want to operate here.

[m463]

Arguments like this are not very powerful.

It seems like "abstinence is a birth control method"

that said, more occurrences of this situation might make your argument more powerful over time.

[robertlagrant]

> It seems like "abstinence is a birth control method"

Only with very very poor pattern matching. If people don't buy something, there is a 0% chance it will exist. That's better than any birth control method you might recommend.

[wizzwizz4]

You have correctly identified a flaw in the economic model you're using – although you missed the step where you look at the real world, and take note of the discrepancy.

In the real world, things exist that are not bought.

[pjerem]

That’s the American/capitalist thinking : the market should sort itself out against bad actors.

[wkat4242]

Yeah and it doesn't work because the market isn't really free. Becoming a AAA game publisher requires so much money that has so many strings attached that there is no concept of a real free market.

Personally I don't believe a real free market can exist anyway. There always has to be a balance between socialism and capitalism.

All the big publishers are bound by these strings such as the wish for more recurring revenue. Hence the microtransactions and online models. You can't really avoid those.

[pjerem]

> Personally I don't believe a real free market can exist anyway. There always has to be a balance between socialism and capitalism.

I 100% share this but I can’t understand how even the most capitalist (ideologically) person in the world would not want to create rules to at least avoid actors to become too big.

Monopolies are a bug of the capitalism and they break it from the inside. When monopolies aren’t kept at bay, you aren’t even in capitalism anymore.

[robertlagrant]

> I 100% share this but I can’t understand how even the most capitalist (ideologically) person in the world would not want to create rules to at least avoid actors to become too big.

This is definitely true. I don't know if this is true, but my instinct is that it's much harder to create a monopoly if you don't have a government willing to write rules to enforce your existing advantages.

[Hamuko]

>you can just not buy it

Did Ubisoft clearly advertise the fact that the game would stop functioning entirely in the future when it was selling it?

[robertlagrant]

Hence:

> the better way to do this is to have industry standards similar to PEGI that describe the game's future support, not to hit them with EU-specific regulations.

[antonkochubey]

Coincidentally EU regulations are quite good at creating new industry standards