Stop Killing Games
I wanted to bring attention to this initiative in case people haven't heard of it, or if they have only heard some not-so-good counter arguments to it.
Stop Killing Games is an initiative to get the EU to consider new laws for games forcing publishers to have some kind of plan for when official servers are shut down to ensure the product you paid for is still functionable in some way.
One game that sparked this was The Crew by Ubisoft. This is a racing game where most of the content was playable in single-player but since the game was reliant on an internet connection, it became unplayable. Before The Crew, we had games like Test Drive Unlimited 1 and 2 that are very similar in structure, yet had offline modes. Heck, due to the backlash with The Crew, Ubisoft had promised the new The Crew games will have fully functional offline modes, which proves they have the power to do this if they feel like it.
If you want to sign the initiative (there is one for EU and for the UK), you can do so here: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
In case you know about the initiative and you believe it's harmful or a bad idea (maybe after watching a certain massive influencer), I want to add some of my own counter arguments to the counter arguments:
Q: Petitions are pointless. This will just get ignored.
A: The EU is legally obligated to take a look at this if it gets 1 million signatures.
Q: We can't trust lawmakers to make laws that are good for consumers.
A: I think the game industry has proven itself it's horrible at self-regulation. Publishers care about money foremost, and that's blatantly apparent with their practices: loot boxes, pushing FOMO on consumers, and their tendency to have layoffs while CEOs get bonuses. EU actually has a pretty good track record with creating pro-consumer laws. Like forcing Apple to start using USB-C cables for charging rather than their own proprietary cables. Or forcing a two-year warranty for digital goods. And if this passes, then this is very likely to apply globally.
Q: The initiative is too vague.
A: It's supposed to be vague -- you're not supposed to suggest exact law changes. You're meant to focus on describing the issue, and then experts and lawmakers will get involved to figure out the best way to handle the issue.
Q: But you don't even own games. You just own a license and you're bound by whatever's written in it.
A: The law supersedes license agreements.
Q: Won't this kill off live service gaming?
A: No chance. Live service games are extremely profitable for publishers. Even if they have to spend some extra money ensuring they have some kind of end-of-life plan, this type of game would still be extremely profitable for them.
Q: This would be too much work to apply to existing games.
A: This would apply to games moving forward, rather than games that exist right now. It's drastically easier and more feasible to make an end-of-life plan at the start of development rather than the end.
Q: It would even be too much work to apply to future games. It would be impossible!
A: 20 years ago we had many of the same multiplayer games we do today, but you could join a friend via IP. Many games are still player-hosted but since they rely on an official server for matchmaking, they become impossible to play when official servers are shut down. There are games where this would be a much tougher problem to tackle, that's true, but it wouldn't be impossible. And as mentioned earlier, multiplayer games earn publishers a lot of money, they will not stop making them. It's possible some games will be exempt, like subscription-based games.
Q: What about indie developers? There's no way they could handle this.
A: Indie developers would be affected the least. First of all, they're not bogged down by publisher red tape. They can handle any problem whichever way they want. Also, indies don't typically create massive MMOs or live service games, so almost no indie developer would even have to consider an end-of-life plan for their game.
Q: Won't this mean all multiplayer games will become single-player? Or that the developer has to support it forever?
A: There are many different ways to handle this. In some cases, adding an offline mode makes sense, like for The Crew. For games that are only meant to be played in multiplayer, an end-of-life plan could consist of adding a way to host and then be able to join any server, or partial source code release for server code, or specifications released for how the server and client communicate, so fans can create their own server.
Q: Server binaries being released would mean cheating goes out of control.
A: There are a ton of different ways to cheat in games. Sure, technically, having access to server binaries might give cheat makers new ideas how to make cheats, but it's not as if this is the only vector for creating cheats. If publishers are afraid of this specifically this, they could delay releasing server binaries until they've cut off official support, in which case things will play out the same way as today.
Q: If server binaries are released, that would make evil people DDOS official servers until they are shut down (just like with Team Fortress 2!), legally obtain server binaries when the company goes under, and then monetize those servers!!!
A: What the heck are you smokin -- okay, one fun fact about the Team Fortress 2 situation is that game supports player hosting and joining of any IP, so while there was a period while official servers are being DDOS'ed, you could still play the game just fine if you joined servers hosted by the community. And it's worth mentioning DDOS'ing is very much illegal. And even if a bad party managed to do all of this in order to get server binaries, then everyone else would also have access to those server binaries. Would you join a server that's free, or one that's heavily monetized? This scenario is extremely unrealistic.
Q: But a huge influencer is against the initiative and he worked SEVEN years at Blizzard!
A: Which he spent mostly as QA. As far as I know, he did zero programming while he worked there (and after looking at some of the code he's written, that's probably for the better). If you want takes by programmers who have experience with network coding, then I suggest watching these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdFiCt_3xlk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zb7euiV-Dw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAVNxAVal1U