I just received this email saying that the response “did not respond directly to the request of the petition”
You recently signed the petition “Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state”: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071
The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs who oversee the petitions system) has considered the Government’s response to this petition. They felt the response did not respond directly to the request of the petition. They have therefore asked the Government to provide a revised response.
When the Committee receives a revised response from the Government, we will publish this and share it with you.
Thanks, The Petitions team UK Government and Parliament
I’m curious on how signers of this petition think companies could afford to do this. Often times shutting a game down is because the interest of players has waned. Making a law to require them to keep that server and software running…forever? Is the end goal to kill any online game development?
It would make sense to require a company to release the code for players to host their own servers, which has been done by many games in the past. Not to continue to run it themselves.
Ross and the team have been very specific about not wanting to force companies to pay for server infrastructure forever.
They’ve said quite a few times that what they want is for game companies to at least patch their games so they can keep running without the online connection or provide players the tools to host their own servers so that the company can end support without the game becoming a brick.
Hopefully by requiring games to be playable after support ends and the servers shut down it will also change the way games are made so that they no longer require the constant connection.
I would also wonder how this would work with MMOs where the server side, both in processing power and in bandwidth, is not insignificant. I mean I suppose “are required to publish the code, no requirement that it’s feasible for others to run” but…yeah.
He talks about that. I think the gist is that a lot of games that are online services could run locally, the publisher just chooses not to. That’s why Ross chose the Crew 2 as his hill to die on: there’s evidence that an offline does/did exist and just wasn’t enabled. That’s a practice that needs to be challenged.
The argument goes that a game that relies on server side technology to run in any form shouldn’t be sold as a product that you can own. This needs to be reflected in the price and licensing model. That seems fair.
The big question is why TF we’re at a point where a company should be allowed to sell you a product and say you own it then remove your right to use the product arbitrarily. I bet there’s IP in the server side code, but having a system where a corporation’s IP and ability to make money from the IP is more important that the concept of ownership is deeply fucked up.
Technology Tangents did a video where a game he bought on CD and tried to play on period-correct hardware won’t run because there was DRM that called a server to check the date and to make sure it wasn’t leaked early. Decades after the release, the server is gone and the game can’t run, ironically, because it’s so far outside of its release date. That’s the kind of bullshit that absolutely shouldn’t be tolerated.
You must not have been born during LAN party era where everybody’s PC was physicaly connected to each other.
I’m aware of good old fashioned multiplayer where an average Pentium 2 rig has enough grunt to host a multiplayer session and be one of the client machines, obviously games of that scale should be able to be run by enthusiasts. I’m talking about, what if something like WoW shuts down?
Wow private servers aren’t uncommon, although I do think they violate the TOS as it stands. I imagine people would continue to use those in the event blizzard shuts the official servers down.
Who says the companies need to keep the servers running? The petition is “to keep games in a working state”.
Looking at the petition itself it wasn’t very specific on the terms, which is why I questioned the very broadness of the request . “Keep” implies maintaining how it is currently, not a transition to open source and player run.
Being vague about the requirement leaves more options for game companies to find various solutions to comply. It’s quite accommodating.
Totally agree. You always leave yourself room to negotiate down.
Imagine not supporting this because you think it’s unfair to the industry, given the very specific examples that have been given.