Your take on preservation is very misunderstood. People dont want to preserve games because they think there will be a day where it'll be popular again. People want to preserve games because they want the option to play the game, period. We're seeing this through the fighting game community and Mavel vs Capcom. There was a whole movement years ago to remaster the older games because there was no way to play them officially. Eventually, Capcom was able to get momentum and now we have the MvC Collection coming soon! Will it outpace Street Fighter 6? No, but that wasnt the point! Now there's an official way to play these ingluential fighting games again. I dont think that's a big ask, even for live service titles going forward. Devs are smart and consumers are smart too. As Louis Rossmann said on this, "If this throws a wrench in the works, then this seems to be a wrench that needs to be thrown."
The thing about wrenches is that there is a lot of unintended collateral damage that people don't seem to be thinking about. This is a short sighted and reactionary view of the problems and won't work out the way you expect in the long run.
@@BraamBafflehelm "Can we PLEASE think of the companies!! They'll lose money and this CAN'T HAPPEN!" But what about unintended collateral damage to gamers? Or we supposed to pay $99 + tip, bend over and say thank you Mr. Developer for using lubricant today ☺
@@BraamBafflehelm I don't see why a live service which requires an online connection to check cheating/currency manipulation, your friends list and events cant be made into offline. The game runs locally all you would need to do is REMOVE the server check and I can play it (as well as all the events), as everything runs localy. That is 95% of live service games. MOBAS and MMOs as well as shooting games have a solution for MANY years already, take WOW, Vainglory (MOBA) and CS 1.6. They have all preserved their respective games as well as many others. The ONLY game I can think off would be flight simulator as that is on the cloud because of the nature of the game. However that can also easily be made into and offline game by making the ground "2D" thus the size of the game isn't a problem. OR simply force it to advertise like FF15 and other subscription based games.
Funny thing, is Thor and Louis agree on the issue. Also if the consumers are so smart then why even ask for this, why not just make the game local only why would you even need a dev to do it?
Its actually pretty simple, if you design your game specifically with anti-consumer practices in mind, don't be surprised when the consumer starts hitting you back. Valve has multiple live service games and people have always been able to host their own servers however they like. If you are anti-consumer, the consumer is going to be anti-you.
@@Brettlaken Very true. And I don't think killing a game service is wrong. The problem is that you sold the game copies. Just change your wording dude, there's no code change needed, tell the customer CLEARLY that they are renting / leasing your services, not buying your game and you can continue your business model, nobody would care. That's why Lol and apex arguments are flawed, those games are f2p, nobody has the expectation of eol for those games, because nobody bought them...
You would hope so, and I would hope people would vote with their wallets, but people are still buying Ubisoft games despite being screwed by them repeatedly for at least a decade.
@@arturpaivads Well, they also need to set some terms for the rent. Imagine trying to rent a car, and the company told you that you pay a one-time non-refundable fee to rent the car for a completely random time frame. This is obviously an unreasonable and unethical deal. It's not just the wording, they also have to change how they operate. For example adding a legal minimum for warning before servers shut down, sorta like the legal time frame landlords are forced to give to allow their tenants to vacate.
Didn't the "botting a game until it dies" almost happen to Titanfall 2? And guess what saved it? Northstar, a community run-private server launcher whose creators were in direct contact with EA, and even helped fix dangerous bugs in the game. I think community servers are a great idea, and possibly the best way to preserve a game going forward.
It is a good solution, but it’s not viable for all games, which are also targeted by the initiative because it does not specifically state that it doesn’t A lot of these multiplayer games would require server binaries to be released for communities to be able to get them running, which as stated in the video would promote developer abuse. Northstar is a very rare case where a lot of players get into TF|2 because of Apex, and OG players don’t like the direction of the series. This combined with titanfall 2’s small lobby count allows for them to run a private server hosting platform allows for a lot of people to make a bunch of lobbies. Which honestly is rather genius, because it takes off the requirement for lobby servers. But the downside is that it requires dedicated server hosters without any income going to them In the case of games like apex, or MMO’s it is not possible to preserve them, and even if you could it would require allowing developer abuse.
Theres probably a lot of contracts going on with EA in this example tho. So its not like anyone forced the server stuff out of EAs hands. EA most likely could've just refused and strike down any attempt at building private servers, like Nintendo would probably do. And besides Titanfall 2 isnt even part pf the issue discussed. I just recently played through the campaign without any problems and I was wondering a bit why the multiplayer option wasnt working but I guess I know now. But the singleplayer still works perfectly fine.
I feel private servers and nostalgic communities are getting horribly underrated. I also think it's a companies job to protect against bots and exploiters, and the successful companies are doing fine at it.
You can't just bring up the bot issue with TF2 and not bring up that community run servers were for the most part complete safe from them due them having active maintenance and moderation, that's not honest.
I mean, I don’t know much about these kind of things, but I feel like this doesn’t take away from the danger of the botting incident. I feel that both are separate topics that don’t really interact with one another. I saw another comment about titanfall 2 that seemed like much more of a correlation, where community servers actually helped counteract the botting.
guys oh my god im pretty sure he just didnt know lol you guys assume ill intent so quickly but he probably just saw how the internet so widely kept saying that "tf2 is dead valve didnt support it" and thought it was an obvious example. he's the blizzard guy, not the valve guy.
@@Chilevec shouldnt he do more research before speaking on the issue if that's the case? At what point does his ignorance become malice if he's going to speak about these issues? I'm not saying he is malicious, but if you're going to use something as an example - you should at the very least understand the example youre using to understand if it's actually going to bolster your argument or not. You're basically saying "This guy is probably so stupid that he read stuff online, didn't confirm any of it, then spoke to millions of people as an authority on the topic" .. So, the question must be asked, at what point does that stop being ignorance and become malice?
@@AlmarWinfield Ah okay, now that you bring it up, that would be more ignorant than I thought when he's trying to be so thorough. That said, what I was getting at is that in his shoes, the entire internet has been flamed with "Valve servers are getting botted and destroyed, the game is unplayable." In his shoes, especially without TF2 knowledge/experience, I would not expect there to be more to the story - that being the community servers and how TF2 actually started off being a community run game (the latter half I _actually_ didn't even know until these comments, and I have 770 hours in the game and owned it since like 2011, compared to Thor who I bet hasn't even touched TF2). Point being I can still see if Thor didn't research it because the information laid out to him already seemed conclusive enough and was already such a widely used example in other discussions, and in that case, I don't think that's malicious at all. However, you're right, it would be very uncharacteristically uninformed compared to how we're used to Thor being. (Editted for paragraph indents because oh my god, I can never type anything concisely.)
You claim to speak on behalf of developers, but I can use the same persuasion routine as you and say that ~as a developer~, you do not speak for me. In your previous video, you called the initiative "disgusting", but I find your views to be pretty insulting to game developers as creative artists. I am a programmer for a large AAA studio and even if my creative freedom is much smaller than those in other departments or in smaller studios, I still find my job to be very creatively fulfilling. I am not just a robot who completes my tasks before moving onto the next task. Games are not just products to purchase or services that end, they are works of art that hundreds of people spend several years of their lives to create. It's hard work as I'm sure you know. But you cannot seriously claim to be taking the pro-developer stance when saying that instead of peoples art continuing to be made playable by fans for years to come while it is no longer financially viable for the studio to do so, it's better for it all to just vanish into thin air? When games can now be in development for almost a decade if not longer, do you feel nothing for the developers who can no longer play their own games in fewer years after release than it spent in development? They spend so much of their limited time in the industry making something that ultimately disappears as if it never existed to begin with, nobody can ever play it again for the rest of time, does that really sound like a better reality to you than one where companies simply upload their closed source compiled server binaries to the internet? When the servers are no longer being officially hosted, from that point on it means nothing to me financially what happens with the game. But people playing my games is why I do my job in the first place. It would mean the world to me if someone goes out of their way to continue my work where I or my company no longer can, even if they make a profit off of my labour in doing so, the only impact it has on me is that something I helped create can continue to entertain and inspire more people. I do not understand how you can be an indie developer as you are, and yet completely disregard games as an artistic medium built by creatives and enjoyed by fans.
man that reminds me of Battleborn. Game died a year after release. it was so unique and quirky. i was always sad about it being gone, but i never thought about how the devs must have felt after how many years it must have taken to make.
Even though I'm not a developer, this is a large part of the principle for why I support this initiative (I have signed for the petition I was eligible for). Games as an art form are what I am interested in seeing preserved. I don't understand how Thor can dismiss the worth said art might have to someone simply because people aren't there to play it in large quantities. I guess because it's not important to him, he doesn't think it would be important to anyone else either? It's something Ross goes into in a much older "Dead Game News" video of his about-I think it was Wild Star? He's interested in exploring worlds, even empty worlds that were intended to be filled with other players. In my opinion that can be an interesting and unique transformation of the art, for it to go from a world filled with real people, and activities for those people to engage in, to an empty one. To me there is still worth in experiencing art like that. Same kind of appeal as that one channel that visits abandoned malls and amusement parks and such. One man's trash and all that. Personally, I would rather live in the world Thor describes where bots become a rampant issue-something I don't really believe would become as big an issue as he says it would, but I can't say for sure that it wouldn't-yet people still at least get to engage with the art in some way. Instead of the world we currently live in where art is destroyed or lost to time for no other reason than it no longer being lucrative enough to allow people to experience it, even though in most cases there are things that could be done to make it playable at no further cost to the developers and publishers beyond what would be required to implement the necessary changes. One of the greatest advantages of the digital medium is delivering information across all corners of the world and forward into the future, and yet it is being squandered.
this is not a good take. and its hard to believe your an engineer with this opinion. how is his opinion insulting to us? he's protecting us. explain please...
Thank you very much. Game development for me is only hobby(I submit patches to Xonotic, did some projects with minecraft), and it is sad for me to see Thor protecting buisness models and hiding it behind protecting genres.
@@hrotger thanks for proving to me that you have an opinion based on emotion, not logic. i stated that i think Thors opinion is protecting devs, and asked the OP to explain. instead of explaining...you call me a "pathetic fanboy". very telling. (also, if you think im a fanboy of Thor, thats hilarious. i only watch programming streams, Thor doesnt program on stream, he just games and talks about programming. so....)
Since he mentioned TF2 I think it's worth mentioning that the game didn't even launch with official servers, people had to host or join community made servers to play. Official Valve servers weren't implemented until 2011, 4 years after the game's release, and people are still able to play on custom servers to this day.
heck minecraft is still like that lol there are realms, but they are still controlled by players, to some extent all other mc servers are run by private people and entities
@@UnintelligibleYT oh no! Whatever will we do! The gigantic company making billions and completely ignoring their game is missing out on the... 300$ a custom server makes sometimes.
@@UnintelligibleYT Don't see what the problem is. The developer could always go after monetized servers if they wanted to. Games shouldn't be killed forever just because a third party can find a way to profit off of them. Hell, UA-camrs and streamers profit off video games by playing them.
The "The game is already dead, there's no point to making servers available." idea is so strange to me. People make servers for 20+ year old games and still get playerbases. Lan events can host competitions on fun old games with very low barriers to entry. Just because you don't think it would get players right now, doesn't mean there won't be nostalgia servers down the line.
I believe EverQuest is about to get another Expansion, and the playerbase for that MMO is a few hundred, at best. LotR Online is also in a similar camp, where content is still being made for a few hundred people. Warhammer Online has private servers, and I believe the community holds events, and whatnot. So, if these MMO's can do this, why cannot "Live-Service" games? Sure, something like ANTHEM is better off dead, but what about EVOLVE? I'm sure a few hundred, at most, would've loved to carry on with the game. Connect to IP - We did it nearly two decades ago, why can't we do it now?
Additionally, the risk is not about games that are already past their prime - the risk is that the proposed legislation would inadvertently provide an incentive for malicious actors to try to get a game shut down prematurely so that they can start monetizing private servers
He didn't quite connect it very clearly but it goes back to the first example. If, by law, when games die, they were required to provide the ability to run private servers, people can take advantage of that, attack the game so it dies, then run their own servers and monetize on someone else's work.
Not all of games can do that, but all developers would be on the hook because of it. Try understanding the motivation of devs versus people on the internet and you will soon find exploits as Thor said. If developers are not able to protect their creation due to these exploits, soon there will be no live service games anymore, if the players won't take the developers side on this, games will no longer be created. The idea that all developers have all the tools, knowledge, legal support, and a support team just to take care of a game that does not generate profit is naive, that's why there is no point in making servers available. Indie game companies don't have enough manpower to tackle that, making a live in game dev as it is today is not easy, with that initiative, it will be near impossible.
Comment from Running with Scissors Software on Ross's most recent video: Thanks for the shout out! We feel obliged to explain our position now, and why we care about what is going on here. We’re just an indie dev with no ‘live service’ plans, but we are a publisher and developer that have worked to keep our own games playable for literally decades at this point - even if it’s not in our best business interests, hence why we wholeheartedly support this initiative. In the unlikely event we did end up with a live service game, there would be an end of life plan built into it - if nothing else but so that our own developers, that would have spent years working on it, would not see their work just vanish one day. For our part, as long as we are around we endeavor to keep our games playable, at the very least on PC. We’re not perfect, but we do try ,given our limited means as a truly independent studio. Here is our (obviously written with our own bias) track record: POSTAL (1997) - We no longer update this game, so we made it open source and made it free. We have in the past rolled community updates into the base game, and will always try to make sure it survives any OS version updates. But if the time comes we’re not around, at least the source is out there for anyone interested to fix it up, should some OS update breaks it. POSTAL 2 (2003) and its DLC Paradise Lost (2015) - We sell and even update this game to this day. We’ve had to fight to keep it working during Windows and Linux updates. Sadly, Mac support is no longer that easy due to them dropping 32-bit support, although we did make a serious effort to try and get it sorted. We can’t release the source code because Unreal Engine 2 is not open source, which is a shame. The Mac situation bothers us though, so hopefully we can work that out one day. It was sold to Mac users, so they should still be able to play it, regardless of the paradigm shift Apple introduced with their hardware and software. Postal III (2011) - Not a game we developed or published, but we fought hard to get the game working again on Steam after the DRM servers went down (that we never agreed should have been a thing in the first place). We didn’t profit from that, it was just the right thing to try and do for those that paid for the game, and thankfully it worked out. POSTAL Redux (2016) - It’s come to our attention that there is a generation of CPU’s the game now crashes on due to it’s very old Unreal 4 version, so we’re currently looking into fixing that by updating the engine version, but it’s turned out to be more complex than we thought so it’ll be a while. This game is not a massive seller for us to be honest, but we can’t ignore the inconvenience for those it affects. POSTAL 4 (2022) - Still very much working on this game, about to add co-op, and soon workshop/modding support. Thankfully Epic does allow the source code sharing of Unreal 4 and 5 games, unlike Unreal 2, so once the workshop is out, it’ll be safe in the community's hands should we ever fold. And we’re looking to make sure that the servers for co-op can be maintained as long as anyone wants them to be. Anyway, to anyone that made it this far, thanks for reading. We just figured it was worth explaining why we’re supporting this cause - it’s because our own game preservation is important to us, and therefore understand why overall game preservation is vital. We obviously do care about money and paying the bills so we can keep supporting our devs, but we also care about the community - so we take the L in some situations financially, in order to look after those that help get us here. Best of luck in your endeavors Ross! And those supporting him!
this is great, I've always loved that they do this. The big problem is, like they said, they have no live service games. You can run an end of life plan on games like this and be completely prepared, the problem is with something that's massively multiplayer in my eyes. Games like WoW and a few others have released their server binaries while still being active, yes, but a lot of studios don't want to do this as it will detract from the number of players directly within their own servers: especially when the game is a subscription-based one. Final Fantasy 14, for example, refuses to release server binaries, as this would encourage players to stop using Square's servers, stop paying for their subscription, and just play the game on private servers who would be able to update just the same as the main servers, if on the concession of a few days/weeks later. Conversely: I do believe that, when a game studio decides the live service is at the end of its life cycles, releasing server binaries should be a thing they're at the very least encouraged to do so that loyal players can set up an environment where the game can be preserved in its final state and players who do still enjoy it can play it. I have thought and thought about this though: If, by chance, a company like Square were to go bankrupt tomorrow (not happening, i know). What legal/software stops would be put in to stop someone from running a server copy and forcing people to pay in order to join? They would effectively be stepping into the shoes square left behind and saying "no i'm not gonna update the game or balance anything you don't like or fix any bugs, but you need to pay me just like you did the company that you paid to do all those things." The company could put something in TOS, but then they're bankrupt - who's gonna enforce that? Well, we could make it an industry thing and give any game dev company rights to press charges over that sort of thing for defunct companies - but who's gonna make sure they pay attention to even care? The idea of keeping a game around after server shutdowns is a great one and i'm more than happy to entertain setting precidents on the topic, but we need to make sure we do so in a way that's not going to either discourage the creation of these games from over-regulation or destroy the communities around these games from under-regulation. Do I agree with the petition that started this whole conversation? Not entirely. Great idea, in all fairness, but it's been taken and spun in the absolute worst possible way. The platform it's running on is that "oh this isn't a super important conversation, just slap out a law that says "don't shut down live service games EVER," wash your hands, go home, and pat yourself on the back." That's wrong: this is a VERY important topic to the health and future of gaming as a whole. If this gets done wrong or thoughtlessly, we may never have another MMO again, because devs will be too scared to risk making something that's going to do nothing but drain the money from their pockets until they're bankrupt, and then when the company shuts down they're in legal trouble again because "we have no money and can't pay for the servers, so we can't follow the law and keep them running." Let's look at this like the problem it is, open a discussion in grand forum - not a petition that will get one person's voice heard - and speak with the devs of these games in a way that they're willing to talk with us about it so we can come to a consensus that not only keeps the games around in a way that the players are happy with, but allows the devs an out when they feel that supporting that game or service becomes untenable or potentially damaging to their company.
@@myschiefmuintir7357 it doesn't say "run the servers forever. It's leave the game in a "reasonably playable state" that could mean "access the game map in a completely enpty world you can run arounf in" you could argue is still a level of functional. Moreso than "open to the main menu with a "sorty we're closed" sign. It doesn't even affect subscription games. And let's be real, if your 8 player arena shooter absolutely cannot function without a cemtral server, you are lying.
Mate, again : most "live service" games are being sold as products, not services (with exception of subscription based games). As far as my understanding goes : no amount of EULA or TOS (to a certain extent can be called "club rules") do not change that these GAAS (games as service) are sold as products and bricking games thru turning off servers at the end of life for said product is retroactively destroying what was sold as a product. you do mention the wording that needs to change about GAAS, yet seem to ignore or handwave away the aspect of perpetual license points under which falls any game that is sold with one time purchase! Also I find the whole :"if this kind of law/rule gets implemented, we'll get less GAAS or multiplayer games" which, while is probable, to me sounds more like "clutching of pearls". -Yamiks
You have no idea what you're talking about dude. Games as a SERVICE games are sold as services not goods (what you seem to be confusing for as "product"). It's literally in the name. Games as a service. (i.e: they are not selling you a good. they are selling you a service". If you bought a physical copy of The Crew - the chattel ownership you gained from that transaction is the physical disk that comes in the box. If you bought a digital copy, you bought a license to a service because that is what Steam, GOG, etc are providing for your payment. If you want free access to actual substantive sources to inform your opinion, i recommended googling " consumer law uni notes" . You seem to be severely misinformed and so your condescending tone comes off as unbecoming
@shanegale6143 actually, in the EU, it was confirmed that, yes indeed, if you buy a games as a service product, you do indeed own the game! Thank you Ross Scott for teaching me about this fact with legal documents shown and provided in a video!
@@ConfusingZark-hj5bt Maybe in your fantasyland where you learn from youtube You can purchase a service. Look it up yourself dude, i already gave advice in my post
I wonder how the consumer base will respond to the first game that plainly states "You don't own this game that you just spent $100 for. We do. We are granting you a temporary license to play it until we say otherwise". Have that message popup on startup. Right before the company logo and safety advisory. I mean... that's how (live service) games operate right now, but I'm talking about witnessing the shock of waking up a sleeping public to the reality of it. I don't think they'd respond well to it and it would create a public backlash for the publisher/developer which they would rather not deal with, which is why they hide it in an EULA no one ever reads to begin with.
witnessing? i suggest delving into gacha games cause it happens often there, people spend 1000$ here even though they know the games will eventually reach EOS at some point of time.
Honestly though, that would be a good thing. If *anybody* hides critical information in the fine print of a legal agreement they know nobody is going to read, then they know damn well what they're doing is wrong. I liked Thor's suggestion in Pt.1 where he suggested a community curated list of games that have "always online" single player or other scummy business practices so consumers can avoid them. The only way things will ever change is when customers or legislators stop making those scummy business practices profitable.
To be honest I hope it does happen that way. Consumers deserve to be informed of what they are purchasing. Not tied up in a TOS or EULA. At point of sale front and center.
It would also have to be on all the advertising as well, to make it clear for the -buyer- renter. Because you know that people will -buy- rent the game and not read the message.
I don’t think you researched TF2 situation fully. The reason why TF2 was bot-infested was also Valve’s huge fault. The bots were infesting the game on their servers from matchmaking, while community servers(which is a thing that Ross wants in the games) were a much safer place to play. While the game was suffering from Valve’s laziness and not wanting to do the “treadmill work”, they continued to add new monetizations in the game regardless. The bots were attacking the game for 7 years and the whole ban wave wasn’t even their initiative, but purely their contractor’s(Joshie, who was hired to work on Steam Deck). It also doesn’t help that the reason why it was so easy for bots to take over the game was because of how awful Meet Your Match is. It’s an update which nearly killed TF2. The sessions were short, you have to wait so long until the voting ends and even if you voted for the same map, the game will force you to load the map regardless and etc. The game motivated you to leave in every way, which made it so easy for the bots to fill entire lobbies. This system is still here and it’s just a question of time when the bots will come back and invade the games because of this shit. Valve nearly killed this game and let this game nearly be killed by bots. Your argument doesn’t work here at all.
that and he framed it in a way that people botted TF2 to take over the game to prove his point of using bots to force a game to shutdown and monetize community servers. But as far as im aware thats not at all why people started botting the game.
The scenario you describe is coporate sabotage, which is already illegal. This movement does not legalize corporate sabotage. If what you described happens, it would be just as illegal then as it is now.
This is not corporate sabotage, Chinese gamers have entire online syndicates that farm gold or bot in games, they are entire businesses. They will if given the opportunity destroy your game and your company in order to gain legal methods to operate their own private servers. There is a reason Chinese gold farmers and botters are there because it's not illegal to do so in china, The chinese government or police do not give a single fuck about these criminal organizations, and trying to do something against them saying "but it's illegal" they will laugh in your face and continue anyway. These are real threats, And putting shit like this to law with vague wording, or ambiguous reach is going to destroy live service games forever. Some people might say that's a good thing, sure. They don't play those types of games, But how can you justify saying that to people that DO like playing those games.
It's a scenario that could play now out of spite between companies selling a similar service. Yet it doesn't really happen. And in that scenario, I want to think the company is dying due to reasons out of the sabotage in the first place. Because if your dying due to DDOS attacks maybe it wasn't too smart to make the game live service in the first place, if you can't deal with networking problems that every live service (not only videogames) face. Also, releasing the binaries to the public defeats the purpose of an attack to profit out of unnofficial services. People don't have to pay to keep playing, and companies can take legal actions. But if your company is dying anyway, Why would you bury the game as well? What we are really living is a scenario where companies can create a live service game, charge 60$ for a copy, and if the game flops or reaches end of life, remove it completely without any responsability towards the costumers. Devs creative freedom should not be above of costumer protection.
I feel like a lot of these points are non-sequitur. For example, after "what if the companies aren't around anymore?" the obvious response seems to be "then who is harmed by the IP being public domain?"
@@TKDMwastaken and at the point of them buying the rights off of the company, the responsibility for leaving the game in a playable state would also be transfered to them.
@@TKDMwastaken The only time the owner of the IP would be harmed is if they actually had a buyer. But in any case, if the IP isn't abandoned, then the answer to who would stop monetisation of a private server would be "the owner of the IP" and therefore Thor's tangent about there being an issue with enforcing it is moot. So back to the original point I was making: what was the point of the rant about monetisation of a private server and how is that a counterpoint to the initiative?
@@Hellspooned2 The implication I got from Thor's tangent there was that the he was talking about a hypothetical scenario where the IP was abandoned (inferred because he suggested there'd be no one around to enforce it after the company was gone). In the event the IP is not abandoned, then the entire line of questions about enforcement is entirely pointless. It would be the responsibility of the owner of the IP. The initiative isn't about monetising private servers.
If you are as representative of game devs as you claim to be, then the only thing you've convinced me of is that gaming industry won't acknowledge or change their poor business practices without government intervention.
My take from this is if I start making moves in getting into the industry, I will never ever align with this unethical side of game development. I simply can't stand this wishy washy attitude towards these issues. If you know what the problems are... how about you maybe start going to policy makers as a person in the know to maybe regulate against bad practices... but No that would probably impact your bottom line so why bother. Oh wait.. that's what this exact proposal is trying to bring attention to *facepalm*
@@h3llraizer ad hominem. I am not the person who makes money from views or even got a follower count that will influence millions of people. He being bad faith bigger issue than random commenter. Which in fact he is. Its so wild that people like you trying to defend a guy who has been in video game industry for 20 years, attack on a doodle of concept art and call for scrapping whole thing just because doodle is "too vague" to work on. EVERY. SINGLE. PROJECT. HAS. INFACY. STEPS. This guy acts like these steps never happens and expects fully ironed out law draft from normal people. There is no fvking way he isnt aware process, of course he is bad faith acting, if that wasnt case he wouldnt refuse to communicate with ross guy. THOR is absolutely without a doubt acting in bad faith. Or selfishness, whatever you like to call it is anti-consumer, biased towards only developers.
Didn't City Of Heroes shut down, only to be kept alive in private servers before the people running said servers got granted a license for the IP not long ago? Is this not a valid case study as for how this can be done???
There are cases of non GaaS being handed over to mod community, IL-2 1946 comes to mind. There was another where the fans raised $6k and got the source code (it was a naval / submarine game where the sub part or MP netcode never got finished). I'm sure many more examples exist. Treating "game developers" as high priests is wrong. We've seen many such cases were the modding community resurrected or kept games alive way longer beyond their hype. _Also, I assume because of this hackneyed defense that Mr. Thorson is developing a GaaS game? What's the title of the game?_
If the City of Heroes did it, then why even have a law against it? The issue is not that private servers don't work or can't work or that. It's about forcing the devs into something they may not want to do. There have been a few games that shut down, only to be sold and revived in some other country. Say a dev wants to shut down their servers and don't want private servers available in case some other publisher decides to buy their game. That is a very valid reason not to allow any private servers to operate.
Not an exhaustive explanation but the events basically went as follows(fact checks welcome): COH shut down and effectively the entire game code, server and client got leaked. A private server was set up, and at the same time, multiple efforts were under way to reverse engineer the game code/create successor games to fill the void. Fast forward several years, the private server's existence becomes known, things blow up, the code gets put out to the public, multiple other private servers(now open to the public) are spun up, lots of press happens, player counts are pretty high at this point(still are). Those private server dev-teams make modifications to the base game(qol, optimization, new costumes/powersets/missions, etc) effectively doing active development. The CoH: Homecoming team, one of the larger of said private servers, enters negotiations with the original IP holder to set up effectively a non-profit license to run their server, and as of recently, obtained said license. This had the benefit of removing the sword of damocles that pretty much all non-sanctioned private servers exist under. I personally feel that their route, while time consuming, was the correct one, but it only really worked because of a rather improbable confluence of events. Had the servers not already existed, I think it unlikely that the IP Holder would have given them the time of day, or the chance to prove that they could be responsible with the IP. That being said if more companies of games that have shut down would allow this style of deal, I'd be gleeful.(Battleborn, Wildstar, Evolve stage 2, etc)
As much as I love you Thor, I highly disagree with your stances especially the part about "the game has run its course, theres no need to preserve it." Gotham City Imposters and Battleborn were two of my favorite games that you can't play anymore due to GCI being delisted and Battleborne having its offical servers turned off but thankfully there are two wonderful communities that are keeping the games alive and Im so thankful for them.
i am an archivist and preservationist by nature, i would love to be able to launch any dead MMO and walk through through it like a museum. i also believe that art has the right to die. see: banksy's self destructing painting. this is a deeply philosophical issue not something easily solved by a lazy initiative
@@Borissh89 That's Thor's core point, in the TOS you agreed that you DIDN'T own the game, but people don't read that, so it should be clearly listed at point of sale.
@@itskdog and something that people gloss over, is that this has ALWAYS been the case, even with physical media. Of course it's much harder to revoke that licence for physical media (at least up until consoles started requiring an internet connection, and single player games requiring 3rd party launchers). They're also ignoring that he very clearly states, many times, that the whole practice of calling it a sale when it's not is scummy, even if legal. For the record, I don't agree with his opinion on the overall thing, in theory, as I too would love to see these games be preserved.
As a former TF2 server mod [I AM] I have to say TF2 is probably the worst example you could have picked. We innovated early on (We were one of the first to do melee only Sudden Death) private servers created unique and fun maps, game modes and so on. Were all safe or friendly? no. You could do some nasty things to people in the early days that made private servers a gamble and paid servers did exist. But you had the option between tens of thousands of servers at one point, most were perfectly playable. The vanilla servers were even smaller (24 vs. the more standard 32 for private servers)
@@KevKlopperrefuses to debate? What do you think these response videos are and answers in the comments section? Not to mention all the people taking shots in his live streams for hours on end? He’s literally taking the most popular arguments against his stance and offering reasonable counterpoints. Does he have to physically sit in a room or do a Zoom with someone to debate? Nope. Doing it this way gives him time to provide more thoughtful answers to people as well. This guy is so far from a villain it’s ridiculous. Some people will refuse to see that though, lots of different peeps in this world.
Why do u think he should at all?? Like it's an opinion. People are apparentally hating on him for it already. So going into the debate with a guy whose points are actually that politicians don't care . He's not going to accept those answer or opinion. Hes going to instead dump on him.
@badrinath5306 Ross has already shown himself to be very reasonable and professional. He released a video answering a lot of questions about the initiative, and even addressed Thor's concerns. He did so without insults, abuse, or even naming him or implying a controversy or drama. Either way, if he's going to insist people 'attack his arguments' then the least he can do is go talk to the person organizing all of this.
This first argument is so nonsensical. IP laws won't magically disappear. There are plenty of games/movies/books that are no longer being published. You still can't take a copy of that and monetize it outside of reselling your copy. 2:28 Wrong, IP laws already exist. Also, if the company is completely gone, then how would this even matter?
I was watching it and going like "So now laws are supposed to account for all the possible ways in which people might abuse them by doing other grossly illegal things?". So you know, let's not ask anybody for a legal address for anything ever because they can be doxxed. Let's not force people to get car insurance because maybe car insurance companies are evil and exploit people. This is mental gymnastics.
It would matter to the company BEFORE it dies because it would make it feasible to attack the company and force them out of business to monetize the server hosting. Server hosting would be different than reselling the game outright.
@@garynemis9041 It's still against IP law. It's still against other laws to attack a company to force them out of business. It's also the case that people would most likely not pay this company when there would be other free server hosting options. The whole scenario is as unlikely as a coin landing on the side. It relies on a series of extremely unlikely, and ILLEGAL things happening all at once.
@@garynemis9041 This is currently possible with the many games that have been preserved, and yet it has not happened on any significant scale, because that is illegal. This initiative would not change that, hell it can't even become a law, it only forces a conversation.
@@MaxieTheMax yeah that was the argument that i thought was best for not being on board with the movement (besides the problems in attitude with it) and it doesnt really hold up great, so i really just have to be with it then xD
Hey Thor, 14 year dev here. My issue with your take is that : 1. I think your security background is coloring your view. While your monetization scenario is a thing that I've dealt with for companies in the past, I think you're catastrophizing a bit with how widespread it is. That said, I have no problem with someone making money off a dead game from a dead studio. If there's someone that still holds the copyright and wants to file a claim, cool, but otherwise, who gives a shit? 2. No one is asking for a perfect snapshot of the community at its fullest. They're asking for it to remain mostly playable on a private server. I used to love Tabula Rasa, I can't play it anymore because it died years ago and the studio shut down. I played that game because I wanted to experience the world. While the other players were great, it wasn't the entire experience. 3. This treats our medium as fully disposable and that historical preservation is unneeded. Why? Why is our art more disposable than film?
is film less disposable? what happens if or when netflix decides to pull a netflix original series out from distribution from their catalogue? or if they go out of business? how about spotify, if an artist decides to use that as their sole distribution channel but then passes away and the inheritor of their estate terminates their spotify artist account? i'm not saying any of this is right, it makes me sad, and i generally feel like the all-digital future we move towards is dark.
Funnily enough, the game "The Matrix Online" popped into my mind when reading this. It was a mediocre MMO game from the early 2000's that expanded the Matrix Universe after 3 and set a new plot point with refugees who were attacking the matrix itself and bringing parts of it to Io (using mcguffins). A lot of plot points were shown with the most major being (spoilers) Morpheus dying and the 1999 simulation finally ending (by the game servers finally shutting down). The funniest part was, according to the Wachowski Sisters, it was all Canon, and laid the groundwork of the 4th movie that was in Development hell for over a decade, it explained why Morpheus and other characters never came back among other things that unfortunately would have actually gone down a little smoother for the fanbase if the movie wasn't left in limbo for so long. Star Wars Galaxies also comes to mind, along with BF2142 but those are being brought back to life.
@@--zero All things you can watch on netflix are aviable under Jolly Roger Flag, in worst case scenario but you are not making changes in movies. So when we are speaking about games, even single player one, that demands internet connection, after title will be "killed" by the owners, let's take AC Black Flag, for example, even after pirating it, 30%(amount out of ass) of game events will not be aviable because there will be no events or missions that were aviable with connection to Ubi servers.
Have you actually seen a fanmade private server of a dead game being monetized outside of an optional donation button to help server costs? Or are you just making this up as fearmongering? edit: So apparently this comment is blowing up so I just want to add that your theory is frankly insane. Thinking this would spawn pseudo criminal groups whose sole purpose is to play the long game by attempting to make a company shut down a game with years of bot abuse, so that the group themselves can take over it. Having to spend all days fighting against new anti-botting measures. Even if a group somehow manages to shut down a massive game, then they have to deal with logistical issues like getting players for their monetized server instead of a better one. All this years of planning for a few hundred bucks from some players.
fearmongering. from the very beginning the worst shit in servers was ads and paid perks, the good thing is that most of that garbage either dies out, or stays on niche modded gamemodes for whatever dolt is willing to play it (like modern zombie mode in counter strike 1.6)
@@bigcintra It's freaking hilarious/infuriating seeing the devs complain about theoretical illegal monetization when they've all but ruined AAA gaming with monetization.
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I am pretty sure this would be illegal in EU and USA, maybe rest of the world too. That would explain why we dont see it.
@@hipunpun "Obligated" is a strawman of what he said, Thor is free not to talk to Ross if he so desires, but so are we free to criticize Thor for not not debating properly. He doesn't want to talk to Ross, but he does want to broadcast in the direction of Ross from the top of his ivory tower - and I don't see it as anything other than cowardice.
This Ross guy literally stated the argument: "Politicians don't care about this stuff anyway." It's not unreasonable for Thor to think that he's going to mishandle this. Ross lost all credibility within the first few minutes of his video. Ross is coming off as: "I'm the champion of this cause but I have no idea what I'm doing. Smarter people than me will figure out the details" Sorry if that doesn't inspire confidence lol
@@ragingmonkey4592 I'd highly suggest fully watching the video Ross put out if you haven't, the part that Thor put on his last video is, in my opinion, cherry picking
Right? legit lost so much respect for him after his stance on stopkillinggames, and adding the awful example of TF2 really makes me wonder how much he actually knows about what he says anymore.
@@Saucy_Wiggles and I have no respect for someone like you who can't comprehend valid criticism of something as badly written as stopkillinggames I will admit, the TF2 point could have been better
@@ArtisticScratch There is no point with tf2. Community servers are the only reason why tf2 is playable during the bot crisis. Its literally contradicts his stupid "botting" argument
"it makes it legal to send bots and use exploits to sabotage your studio" HEH?! Where on earth did it say in the StopKillingGames initiative "you're allowed to commit corporate espionage when this act is passed". People can send bots right now and ruin your studio, people can do it after the act is passed, and in both scenarios it is not legal to do so. It might increase an incentive to do so, but the TF2 bot crisis that you described only happened by a source code leak. "It doesn't help with preservation because the players aren't there any more" It literally does the opposite tho, of course it's not going to have the same numbers as before and yes the players will inevitably go away. But the option to play it should be still there, and that is still preservation. It still allows players to experience the missions and quests they paid for, because they paid for the game not for the other people who are in the lobbies "For those calling for me to be silent, no I won't be silent on this" No arguments here, that's freedom of speech. The same reason I'm here and talking about this because I just don't agree with these takes. I think these ideas you've came up with are flawed and on some points are borderline crazy. The idea that this law would allow corporate espionage and would do nothing for preservation is outright false. Anyways, little rant over. Enjoy your holiday at defcon, see ya in a while crocodile
@@Sarmathal Except it isn't. Like, do you people genuinely even listen? Or is bandwagoning literally all you're capable of? I disagree with some of Thor's takes in both videos, but the whole point, is that the angle StopKillingGames is coming from, is potentially dangerous and if laws are passed, could negatively impact BOTH devs and gamers. This shouldn't happen. Gamers shouldn't be impacted negatively. Some devs (or publishers) are greedy assholes, but what about the much smaller fish? They shouldn't get screwed over either. If we want actual LAWS to be passed, we should make VERY sure that it doesn't make life worse for us, be it due to vague language or something else. Something does need to change. But not in the way it is presented right now.
@@Sarmathal I genuinely think you're just trying to gear up for a very cheap "gotcha" comment, but I'll answer in good faith anyway in the hopes of being proven wrong. The proposed changes could very realistically be turned into laws that affects developers. Which, I assume you agree with because you haven't addressed it at all. These laws, very much depending on their nuances, could make certain games financially unfeasible to make. Not for big shit companies like EA; they've got plenty. They might deem it financially unfeasible because they're greedy AF, but who cares if they decide against making their 543th copy paste football game. But, as already has been said, a new FF14 might not be made. Also think about the F2P live service games such as Path of Exile and Warframe (and many - MANY others). Those F2P games lower the entry barrier for people who don't have the money to spend on a "normal full priced game". I've seen so many people saying live service shouldn't exist in the first place - well great. Those are gone too, then. And those aforementioned people who don't have too much to spend, have far fewer options to choose from. Like I said, I too would like for things to change. But we as a collective should be a little bit more careful as to how we're advocating for it. It's a very complicated topic, one I do not know the answers to. But oversimplifying things can make things (much) worse. This whole "you're either with us or against us" tribal crap really needs to end.
Hey Thor, longtime viewer. You went with the most extreme argument from the dev side of things, so i think its fair to do so from the consumer perspective. Say a studio releases a live service game, but doesn't turn as much volume as expected. As a result, the publisher decides to shut down the server a few months later. Now a bunch of customers are out the money they spent on the game, including those that may have purchased the game very recently. Comparing this to your argument of a dev being exploited, I just tend to lean on the side of consumer rights over corporate rights. The rights of thousands (potentially millions in some cases) of consumers outweighs the devs in my opinion. Thanks for talking about this issue and giving your genuine opinion. I look forward to more of your videos in the future!
Honestly this. The problem is everyone is looking at it from one side. From the devs it's worried about having to spend a lot of money on servers or losing control of their creation. From consumers it's wanting to keep what they purchased. But the in between is helping devs make sustainable games and not destroying them as players. Thor is right that most games now a days are license copies not digital ownership of a copy. And communication on that is needed. But the real "stop killing games" is to hold devs to a standard and stop buying sup par or over priced games. Support the indie developers that are making amazing games that HAVE the capabilities we want as players, and as the market goes that is what will be made. Thor is right targeting the devs is counter productive. But leaving consumers high and dry isn't good either. Stop supporting 70+$ games. Stop settling for buggy messes. Stop paying people to do a half assed job.
@@N0FoxGiven This Initiative is not against devs. It is against stupid practices introduced by the big publishers. Like treating games as licences without saying anything about it beside fishy TOS.
@LucKysStream the wording to me seemed focused on all games like this. Which the problem isn't ALL games. It's the ones like ubisoft. That's why I say government intervention isn't necessary. Personal intervention and boycotting is. Be a consumer. Let what you buy choose how these things work. Yes like Thor said and I put in, more communication would fix 90% of this. But the government isn't the right way to handle this.
@@LucKysStream I think the problem is that people only ever think of big companies making big games, but never specify that. In the end, what usually happens is that the ones most negatively affected are those who can least afford it. In this case, indie companies.
Ya his response to this in the first part was basically, "you agreed to the TOS so sucks for you". The only thing he seems to kind of agree with is the requirement for "live service" games to be upfront about the "service" part but really doesn't seem to care about the consumer. Honestly, his entire take with this initiative is so shallow and bad I think he's effectively entrenched himself in the worst opinion and refuses to acknowledge it.
Thor could have been more diplomatic, but he called a spade a spade in this case. The way it was presented was absolutely gross and he simply fought fire with fire. “Politicians like easy wins” is an insult to the actual humans the initiative would eventually be working with, and it also isn’t true. Any wide-sweeping changes in a multi-billion dollar industry is not going to be “easy”. The big shops have lobbyists and lawyers and everything else. That’s why Thor was hot, amongst other things. Ross was being totally disingenuous, and frankly, unserious when he said that and some other stuff. It certainly worked and got peoples attention, so he gets points for that. But it’s a bad look for a serious real world initiative. Ross has even acknowledged as much from what I’ve seen. The fact remains is Thor is so far from a villain, and now that you have his attention, that might prove useful down the road. Maybe not on this initiative in it’s current form…but maybe after a lot of the minutiae gets sorted out.
@@XanKreigorsee my comment above. But unfortunately not much of this whole thing has been common courtesy. Thor has taken the usual death threat,doxxing, internet bizarro crap on the chin for being against this *in its current form*. it was immediately “you aren’t with us so you are against us and are therefore a greedy dev POS”. He’s good people, and I’m glad at least some of those in favor of the initiative are using him as a sounding board instead of “L take f777 you”.
@@cyberdemon1702 not interacting with the person who created the campaign isn't what anyone would call "diplomatic" he assumes intent, and goes extra way to avoid clearing any confusion. disingenuous more fitting word than "diplomatic" how Thor acts.
@@0Lameran0 That’s how far out of bounds Thor felt Ross was with the framing of the initiative. That’s his choice, and he has his reasons. But he clearly doesn’t need to talk to Ross directly to be involved in this process. Between the piles of internet trash being thrown there’s an active conversation he’s taking part in. Does he have to talk directly to Ross for people to want to listen? Some of them probably, but not all. If he never talks to Ross I get it. If he decides to eventually just to clear the air on why he did it in the first place, I’m cool with that too. Either way, having him involved is better than not when it comes to actually get something done, something that makes real world sense and takes into consideration alllll the little things. Whatever happens has to be ironclad, otherwise it’s doomed to failure or worse.
1) "Who is going to enforce so that these products cannot be monetized?" - The owners; in every other industry, whether it’s art or film, it is the responsibility of the product’s owner to ensure it isn’t misused. I don't understand why game companies should get differential treatment in this case. 2) "What if the studios get shut down?" - That product is still owned by someone (whether an individual or a group) and they can still fight against unauthorized monetization of their products. However, for the sake of argument, let's say that "no one owns the product anymore", then, again there is no issue since no one owns it, and no one cares about the monetisation rights. 3) "This might destroy live service games since it reduces the incentive to make those games." - I too like online games, and wouldn't want to see them go away. However, if it is a choice between having access to products I paid for versus companies possibly losing incentives; the choice is obvious. Also, companies will do what makes them money; if they believe that live service games remain lucrative (which more than likely they will), then they will continue to make them. 4) "This isn't preserving games because you aren't preserving the social aspects of it; no one wants to play a dead game." - While it's true that preserving the social aspects of a game is difficult, that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try to preserve what we can. Also, I personally enjoy playing these "dead games". There are multiple great games out there that continue through community efforts and funding (e.g., City of Heroes, Space Station 13, Elona, CDDA, etc.). 5) "This gives incentive for people to abuse developers." - While this might provide some incentive for bad actors, it doesn’t make their actions right or legal. If developers face abuse, they should take appropriate legal action to protect themselves (as some already do against bots and cheat creators). Also, remember that the reason this discussion even arose is due to the ongoing abuse customers experience due to the actions of some developers and companies. Basically, if I understood your argument correctly, what you say comes down to, "We shouldn't deter companies from having a possible (and a quite common way) of abusing the customers because the solution might incentivize individuals to abuse developers by committing likely illegal actions". In this case, I have to respectfully disagree.
Comparing live service video games to movies is a poor analogy I think a better one would be to compare it to a theme park or an amusement event as he said you’re not buying a game you buying a license the same way you buy a season pass when the park shuts down you demand that it reopened because you bought a lifetime pass the park is shut. It was too expensive to maintain, with not enough people give money to maintain it,
@@roharvanderbull7873 I think the theme park analogy is a bit less fitting. Parks need physical locations and significant resources; a game is easier and cheaper to preserve and thus can continue through community efforts/funding. Also, unlike a park, when a live-service videogame shuts down, the assets (code) still exist, so it can easily continue solely by community-driven efforts. Additionally, unlike physical constructs, video games don't deteriorate or become impossible to maintain, meaning the only reason for losing access to them is the company choosing not to support them. I get where you are coming from, but when people buy a game, they expect access as long as possible, not just while it is profitable. An analogy better than both of ours would be something like buying a lifetime-free secret sauce sandwich from a store. If the store changes its menu or goes out of business, revealing the recipe ensures everyone gets what they paid for, without anyone losing out.
@@TheSegonma Hello, professional programmer here. Games definitely deteriorate and can become impossible to maintain, even though maintaining them it is generally much cheaper then maintining a theme park. Server architecture also technically takes physical location, although consumer could replicate it. Big issue is, if you can be legally given acces to all tools (or get the acces youself) required to maintain the live game. PS: My personal take is, that it is a good thing to talk about, although I don't agree with this specific initiative, it's wording and presentation. It is incredibly difficult to set the law in a way, that doesn't make it easy to bypass (purchase licence, instead of purchase button in stores), but doesn't eliminate games. And I don't expect anyone to make it perfect first time.
@@lukaslicek7837 I appreciate your insights as a professional programmer. My main point was that theme parks require significant physical space and resources, making them impossible to maintain without substantial funding. In contrast, game server costs are generally low enough to be covered by a community or individual. Also, while it is true that games can deteriorate, this usually happens due to evolving technology and lack of support, rather than physical degradation like a theme park. I understand where you are coming from, as preserving a game requires at least some type of maintenance to make it so that it can run on new hardware. Personally, I think the law should protect the consumer's ability to access and use the products they have already paid for. This initiative, while far from perfect, is a good starting point to discuss and refine how we can achieve these goals. This discussion has been a long time coming, as some companies are actively making their products worse after selling them to customers (e.g., removing cars from GTA V or adding pay-to-mechanics to games that did not launch with them).
this is practically going nowhere at this point and the main issue is just being forgotten... singleplayer games having forced required server connection for no reason and not owning the games, just owning a license to it, which is just simply halfassed and wrong
That's not the main issue. The biggest games of our generation will not be playable in 10 years because they will be turned off. That doesn't need to be the case
By this logic, open source software wouldn't exist because someone can fork and monetize, then spam up the original with junk pull requests. How come that hasn't happened? Maybe because it isn't worth the effort, and to write off the entire argument is reductive and in bad faith?
Thor engages in a very fear mongering tactic. It's usually done by big corporations to scare lawmakers, very strange coming from our ex-blizzard employee...
Didn't stream labs try to do that. And also quite literally, there are so many OSS that tried to add a payment model just for some other person to fork it and then both die.
@@necrofangsays "normal open source software," yet the server on which he's writing this comment exists solely thanks to OSS. Open source doesn't mean poor quality or barebones. Open source software can be, and often is, far more complex than many "fully developed games" out there. Your comment makes absolutely no sense.
You are right. But it fits his World of Warcraft example. That game looks like an MMORPG, and sharing server binaries opens up a can of worms that are problems for developers. Problems big enough that the studio will just say No to making MMORPGs. You're arguing from a Consumer view in a vacuum, not understanding the issues on the Business/Legal side of the fence.
@@angel_cheon-sa I'm not arguing this in a vacuum. Issuing ToS with the use of server binaries would cover most of the "horribles" that Thor brings up, not to mention how many game/software ToS come with "as is" provisions.
That still doesn't solve the issue of inter-corp competition with bots and spam. That's the problem that has to be solved in the big picture of all this.
@@angel_cheon-sa His example was meaningless, he brought up that it would be a can of worms if they shared it while the company/game was ALIVE, not dead/shutdown. The PETITION (which is not the LITERAL law being proposed, that's not how freaking petitions work...) is just to get the law to forbid the act of shutting servers down making the game unplayable. If the game is playable without an online component, nothing is lost. If not, then the servers are shut down, then the company releases the server binaries. I dunno why people are so attached to this strawman issue of indie devs being targeted to secure their game so they can set up a private server? That is just silly to think that will suddenly start happening or somehow be made "legal" because of a petition being made a law somehow? (btw you can already destroy someone's community without breaking the law, shocker I know) I hope this passes because I dunno if Thor is just blatantly ignoring major facts or really likes that chinese money from Once Human, but this is factually a good thing for the gaming industry and consumers.
As an historian the idea of "The game is already dead, there's no point to making servers available" or not making the game accessible to posterity really worries me. It would be the same as modernists in the beginning of the 20th century like Picasso, Kandinsky or Amadeu Sousa Cardoso, torching paintings from Caravaggio or Rembrandt. Or even having those paintings completely inaccessible because "they're not popular anymore".....
Awful argument against monetization: "people might steal things and resell them, therefore allowing people to sell things creates incentive for abuse!" Sure, and this is already a problem in many aspects of life. As for enforcement of non-monetization: it'd be exactly as it's done now: by the rights holders. "What if the company shuts down?" Those rights remain owned by *someone* regardless. So either works just fine.
@@ReturnOfHeresy it’s like, yeah pro consumer regulation won’t make a perfect industry. But guess what, no industry is perfect, and pro consumer regulations make them better. His main complaint is that…… real life isn’t perfect?
This issue is exactly what will make private servers impossible to host. The big problem with licensing is, that things like brand image, endorsement, and so on are very important to brands, celebrities, and other entities. The issued license can and most likely does oftentimes include language that explicitly grants permission for only official servers. Even if we ignore Thor's arguments, which are legitimate concerns, with how licensing works today, we wouldn't be able to keep OO games alive after the end of service. Imagine a private server of some dead game that has a lot of luxury sportscars in it and the community of that server becomes some insane racist hate mob that starts causing trouble somewhere due to a lack of moderation and control. The negative attention that creates translates to the brands that gave permission to use their licensed products to this community, or at least that's how it's gonna be spun by the media. That's why they won't allow the use of their licensed things on any non-official server.
Not an awful argument at all. Yes people already steal. As it is currently worded, this would make stealing legal. I'm sure you can see why that would be bad. Same argument even if you're not allowed to monetize it. Private servers still get monetized under the guise of "donations".
But this isn't the argument... there are multiple lines, tables, special fictions of codes you have a right to use in your game, but absolutely doesn't have to right to share it on the open for literally everyone free to take, because you doesn't own the intellectual rights.. Sharing something you doesn't own is illegal, and fixing the issue would be costly for some indie devs.. Even if its your solution only, giving it away is like giving away the blueprints/design and engineering process for the Ford Model A for free.. it still holds an extreme intellectual value and secrets you don't want to share(trade secrets if you will, no one wants to share, that their game of the year game is driven by a hamster wheel, its a bad look and bad pr). Not to mention the right for them to monetize it... If you think its about money, you are just ignoring his points..
I fundamentally disagree with your position on preservation. Of course, no preservation initiative, even private servers, is going to be able to perfectly preserve a multiplayer game. However, I firmly believe that having an imperfect record of something is better than having no record at all. Any historian can tell you the immense frustration of trying to build an accurate model of something for which no record exists - having a biased or inaccurate record is always better than having nothing to work with. Giving future game developers and historians access to current games in any kind of playable state is an absolutely necessary step for any kind of serious games preservation movement.
I disagree with your position on preservation. It is the creator of a works right to decide if they want their work preserved or not. They owe you nothing. Unus Annus is a perfect example.
@@ispear6337 That might be more persuasive if you had some noble artistic integrity of having produced the game as art, a one off demonstration to the public never seen again but not so much if you dipped your grubby little fingers into the market and monetised it as a product. If you sold it to people I don't think you should retain sole rights to its destruction you chose to exchange that for money you should no more have the right to revoke it than an author should have to burn other peoples copy of his book. If you want the right to take it back from others you should at the very least be obligated to refund what was sold under false pretense.
@nocturem The difference is that the vast majority of authors actually sell you the book. When you "purchase" a video game, you agree to the terms that you are not buying the game. Instead, it is being licensed to you. They make you agree to this for the sole purpose of being able to revoke your access to it if they want. That's just how licensing works, and this idea that licensing shouldn't be a thing that I've seen floating around because of this is moronic.
@@ispear6337 oh don't worry it's not just games publishers I believe you will find just about any paid software you buy retail is not the software just a license to it's use. Games publishers have been only too happy to muddy the waters about what you are actually buying. However whether licenses should exist is actually quite a fine argument to have and indeed since it is laws that define the existence and enforcement of licensing the public may collectively agree to revoke that option if they feel they are being fucked by it. The onus is upon the business or the twisted little goblins that lobby on their behalf like yourself to articulate why the use of licenses is in the public's interest.
Please stop saying thay you represent devs. Your opinion is yours. Some agree with you. Some don't. There are folks, who are devs, who think Ross's initiative is reasonable and thay you're mistaken about at least some of this subject. Signed - another dev.
@@jackspacetime6248 The problem is, he is acting like this in every video response right now. Even if it's his opinion, he's still coming off as arrogant.
@@jackspacetime6248 is that an assumption if he demonstrated it openly after personally insulting the opponent then refusing a very polite invitation to a discussion? He claims here that his side is not heard in the argument when he himself refused to talk about it in a dialogue.
@@jackspacetime6248 you can't say he have an opinion when he deletes comments and have a following to force his view. That's not how it works. It's manipulative, he used many fake arguments and people listen to him because he has a cool voice.
The biggest mistake you're making Thor is that you're refusing to talk to Ross. Ross is a good guy. He's been an upstanding member of the video game community for over a decade. He's been a beacon of positivity in the video game space and he loves to celebrate old, niche games, exposing them to new generations. The fact that you paint him as some troglodyte shyster out to wound poor developers is strange considering under any other circumstance, you two would probably hit it off and have a great discussion/stream. But you're a grown-ass man and you're set in your ways. It's a shame you're unwilling to consider alternative perspectives on this matter. Especially since live service games aren't even the point of this initiative. It's about game preservation. You know, that silly-ass thing human beings like to do with all works of art.
Thor, your unwillingness to discuss with a main organizer but simultaneous grand standing on yt and twitch to the common folk shows disingenuous regardless of your intentions
If he really wanted to talk about it, he would've contacted the 2 guys that made the initiative in the EU, Ross is not from the EU, so he can't start initiatives here, I think this is also Thor watching over his own interests, as a publisher and as a dev, he is just looking for arguments to use against this, without having to say "I don't want this because it would hurt my proffit", since I've read he is going to publish or release his own live service game, I'd say he just likes that this anti-consumer practices exist, and doesn't want them gome for his own bennefit. Because I will say, even if there are some problems with live service games, or MMOs with this initiative, they're not impossible to solve, and he is not even trying to give ideas, instead just trying to run it to the ground, someone that really cared for consumers, would search for an equal ground, and try to make it better for consumers, while at the same time, not making bad for companies.
Ross has been an upstanding member of the wider video game community for over 20 years actually, honestly such a horrible move for anyone to try to paint him in a bad light
@@OlDirtyBaron Ross is one of the OGs. His Freman's Mind series is an enduring classic, and his advocacy for games preservation has always been spot on. Very disappointed in Pirate Software's take on this topic.
"Requiring binaries in order to be able to build private servers open routes for a problem" Yes, it might do. But we already have a problem anyway. So I doubt you will sway too many people with that point.
This, Thor keeps arguing from the point that the status quo is fine. It's not to a lot of people. Can the initiative make things worse? Possibly but the status quo is unacceptable so a chance at a positive change will win that argument for most.
@@mormacil Whats the issue exactly? When I buy a ticket to a movie theatre I don't expect to own the movie or the theatre after my access to it is complete. Same with live service games. Seems like people think they own the game and the devs when they purchase a live service game when its more like a ticket for access. Thors solution is 100% the right way to go. People who are okay with buying access will enjoy the games they want, people who want to own the game can look at something else, win win.
@@edd542 If I buy a copy of the movie on home media, I own a copy of that movie and can watch it whenever I want. When I buy a ticket to see a movie at a theatre, I am fully aware - and so is everyone else - that I am buying a single-use ticket to a single screening of a movie. They are two COMPLETELY different things which you are comparing as if they are somehow equal. If I pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft, I know I can only play for as long as I pay. If I buy a copy of something like The Crew, I have bought a copy of that game - it should not be a license that can be revoked at a later date. You're as deluded as the clown making these videos.
The worst part is he just mentions "this and this and this can be problems". That's about the weakest argument you can make against any regulation. Every regulation has drawbacks and new problems, this is inherent. A good argument would argue WHY those new problems are worse than the problem the regulation is trying to solve. And he just hasn't argued that successfully in either of his videos. Just spends a lot of time explaining the new problems.
@@JackMarcusonpersonal friend? Of course not. Friend to the gaming and developer community? 100%. I’ve seen enough of this man’s stuff to know it is unequivocally true. People piling into this situation with no idea of what Thor’s really about, under the pretense of his position on the current initiative….well they need to take a step back and realize where he is coming from, and that he has the potential to be a strong ally to real and tangible change in the industry. He only exploded in popularity within the last year. He’s actually been an insider (and outsider) for 20 years, and he’s just getting started.
@@0Lameran0 how would this change his job? His game Heartbound will always be available and when he dies he already has a trigger that releases his source code for free one year after his death. He’s not beholden to the status quo like you must think he is. He left Blizzard because he got tired of their BS, he won’t play Sony games because of what they did to the players and devs of Helldivers 2, God of War, etc. His entire starting point for his involvement, and he’s stated repeatedly, is the initiative is too vague, not that it’s a bad idea altogether. Uninformed people have taken that to mean he doesn’t want to change anything, and that’s not the case. It just has to make real world sense and have a shot at actually passing and not unintentionally doing more harm than good for gamers and the industry. And Ross framing of the initiative was a very bad look. It did get eyeballs on the initiative though so he gets points for that lol.
@@cyberdemon1702 "Friend to the gaming and developer community" bro, he's just here to advertise his game studio and make money. Don't need to glorify him
It used to be normal and expected that private server creation software was distributed with the game. Nobody did some absurd Machiavellian game of thrones scheme to destroy any of those companies.
Hell, I miss the days of Marathon Infinity; which came packaged with Forge & Anvil - and if those names sound familiar to you it's because Bungie reused them in later Halo games - because what they did was revolutionary. Forge let you build entire single player campaigns to play and share with friends, as well as multiplayer maps to do battle on. And Anvil let you modify every gun in the game and make new ones if you had spritework credentials. They CAME WITH THE GAME. If I had an operating system that could still launch the CDs I could go do that right now. No BS about licensing, I could spin up a server and anyone else with a copy could play with me. That needs to make its way back around.
The wild thing is - even these live-service games still have server executables. It's not like they're run magically off of the ether in the game studio. The server code exists, a plan for maintenance/replacements/upgrades exist, and so there are probably already hidden variables within the game executable to point it to a location where it can gather the rest of the data. Even if you have microtransactions and load-balancing, have you seen what people can do with their homelab? Hobbyists can handle this. Why is the idea that when the publisher is done with the game, they release those executables - and make one change to the game exe where you can point it to an IP, rather than setting that internally and privately, a bad idea? Thor thinks THAT will kill live-service games? WHAT?
5:14 that there is no constant player base does not mean that there will be no players. sure some games only work with x ammount of people in the lobby but games like that would be played on lanpartys, in friend groups, or people would set up bots on private servers.
Jedi Academy multiplayer still has players that play on community servers and on modded clients. It's probably not even a thousand people, but that doesn't matter. It's good that people can still enjoy their beloved game 20 years later.
@@vanjazed7021 also battlefield 2 is still playable on community servers after ea did shut down its servers. but you also need a modded client. would be nice to see an official end of life patch for games that just adds a config file where you can enter new server IPs. so people dont have to download random mods from the internet
He's thinking money in vs money out when it comes to hosting servers. If there's 1000 people left playing a game regularly and the cost to keep a server up is more than the income 1000 players generate then it doesn't make sense to keep hosting it.
Why the hell would anyone pay to play a dead game ? If the server binaries are released, and someone choose to monetizes their private server, there's nothing stopping me from creating my own without monetizing it
Idk if he's assuming that players are all braindead morons that would blindly tolerate p2w, cheating, and botting. Or if he thinks that once given free reign all the players would do is shady shit and nothing else.
@@ronansmith2566 Every example he's given, when taken to it's logical conclusion falls flat, especially because we already have examples that completely contradict everything he's said. In the video he mentions Apex at 4:50 but fails to realize R5Reloaded already exist and solves the exact problem the initiative is asking for. EA/Respawn can shut down Apex Legends today and tomorrow we can still play thanks to R5Reloaded. Apex has tons of issues with bots right now and no one is flocking to R5Reloaded because most people are still playing on the official servers. It's hilarious to me how a specific game he mentioned to try and prove his point completely disproves it.
This entire video just sounds like: "People got mad at me, so I felt like I had to say something in return." While he was starting to make some good points, most of them just effectively come across as: "Think of the poor corporations". IF, and only IF the movement gets strong enough where they might actually pull it into law -- I am personally OK with games having an offline-only patch added on game's shutdown. For MMOs it would make no sense to have it, but for games like Diablo 4? They shouldn't be online-only to begin with.
4:19 "They require a live service to run, and you shouldn't be able to take that away from people." But what are the companies doing right this moment? They're taking live service games away from players. Even those that don't necessarily need a live service at all, like The Crew. If the players had the option to host their own servers, then the companies couldn't take the games away from them anymore. Also even if some players were to monetize their private servers, as long as those binaries are out for everyone to use, people are just gonna play on the ones that are free, or make their own if everyone else made theirs pay to play.
@@jesseclark7966 It's also listed as Single-player on Steam. 99.5% of the game you spend playing alone, or co-op with your friend. The other players in the world were non-interactive, so they might as well have been bots. I spent ~300h in the game and didn't notice a server-wide event even once.
@@jesseclark7966 And basically the whole game was an always online single player with multiplayer aspects, it was never the focus of the game. It's literally the same as forza horizon, but you can play forza horizon offline too and have a lot of fun so what exactly is your point.
@@edwinwallberg6135 It's listed as single-player, but also as an MMO. Other MMOs like Path of Exile appeared in the single player category. Just because you're usually experiencing the game alone, doesn't mean that your gameplay doesn't need a server to run. In Path of Exile, I've played without interacting with other people at all on some runs. But I'm still earning items and experience that could be used in multiplayer if I choose to do so. Which means it has to run online so that I'm prevented from cheating.
Thor - "Developers need to be included in the conversation" Also Thor - "I don't want to talk to anyone at Stop Killing Games about this" Also Also Thor - " Developers risk their jobs if they talk about this" OK then who is left to be included in the conversation?
Publishers and other indie devs? Former because they are creating live service games and later because this broad initiative includes too. I don't understand why so many people think devs have a voice in how game will be published and when it will be shut down.
@@keldzh you could have said "so why people 100 years ago when abolishing slavery "attacked" slaves and not those who enslaved them and feeding slaves if it is economic model?". Thor with those videos does everything to convince regular people that this is devs vs gamers, not publishers vs everyone else. If you have read text of initiative, you would have noticed that it says PUBLISHERS.
@@libero2711_ Semantics, IMO. He later went on to say he doesn't respect Ross because of it, and why he won't talk to Ross because of it. To me, that sounds like he attaches the words to the person closely enough so much, where dialogue is completely shut down.
Also: “I will not be silenced” *goes out of his way to silence Ross in his comment sections* That hypocrisy guaranteed I’ll never take this guy seriously. There is NOTHING I hate in this world more than hypocrites.
"We need EULA to ban cheaters." No you don't! If you allow private servers from the start you can ban them from your own paid servers and they can still own the game and play on private servers. You can even publicize a list of cheater uids so private servers can ban them too if they want. The cheaters still own the game they payed for and can run their own private servers and you won't be infringing on their rights to their purchase. I don't understand how you can (rightly) argue against kernel mode anti-cheats because there are other creative ways to do anti-cheat but when it comes to EULA and banning people your creative mindset has left the building.
You don't have a right to cheat in an environment where there are other players present. If you agree not to cheat and then you cheat and get caught, well, actions have consequences.
@@MaxieTheMax Piratesoftware argues against kernel mode anticheat to detect cheaters. He sais there are other ways so according to him you don't. But when it comes to dealing with getting rid of cheaters he can't think of other ways except for screwing over all players by licensing instead of selling the game.
Your strange argument against live service game preservation makes no sense. You are right that it is not fun to play a multiplayer game that is dying - meaning, the concurrent player count is very low - but you know what's worse than that? Not being able to play it at all. I think you know that too. If life service games were forced to offer some sort of private server patch after going offline, I could at least get a small group of friends together to play that game... vs. Never being able to play it again, relegated to watching gameplay clips on UA-cam forever.
I’m not sure everyone will agree with that. If a live service is dead and still kept open, people will complain that no one plays the game anymore. If the live service was forced to make a private service patch, people assume that it would fix everything, but what if the studio is gone or the dev team doesn’t have enough money to do that. Bankrupting the company to focus on revamping the game to make a private service patch instead of moving on to a new game seems like it would more likely kill the studio. If people are arguing that it’s game preservation, then why are people defending this cause saying games are grandfathered into this cause. Then it’s not game preservation is it? I don’t like losing games that I paid for, feels irritating that I can’t play Destiny 2 expansions anymore, but I also am honest with myself that that game is just sitting in my library and I’m not gonna touch it anymore. If games were forced to be preserved, Destiny 2 would still sit there untouched, this cause would just make me feel better that I still technically have access to it, but I’ll probably never pop it open again. I’m more concerned with studios shutting down to bear this cost just so I don’t feel bad about losing a game I don’t play anymore.
@@hoshi-15people can complain that the game doesn't have players, but why would that be thrown to the developers? That would just be anger towards the lack of community
@@hoshi-15 They would know that when closing the servers they need to keep the game in a playable state, so if they didn't prepare that since the beginning, it's their own fault to go banckrupt, since when it's the consumer responability to pay for companie's bad decisions?
This feels like a bit of a strawman argument. There are a bunch of assumptions in Thor's argument here: 1) Malicious actors would purposely attack the company to destroy the experience and steal the binaries by causing the game to fail. This feels a bit unfounded. Sure, in a space of all possibilities, but I'm not sure many people would try to engineer this. And there are counters for this: a) don't release the server binaries-release a technical document on how the game state is processed server-side, b) stagger the server binary releases after the end of life, i.e., 1 to 2 years later, c) don't facilitate anything, but don't actively get in the way of reverse engineering efforts. 2) The monetization vs. non-monetization bit isn't something new. Minecraft Java has had this early on. Having a monetized server has been a thing for a while. So this isn't a new concept. 3) The IP issue is sort of a problem, but I would gather a lot of people might lean towards the position that current intellectual property law is sort of in an unhealthy state. If the game is being effectively abandoned, then at the very least, I think a case could be made that the specific instance of the IP should become some sort of limited public domain work. 4) The lack of community not being the real thing... Again, there are examples of old games being brought back: RuneScape, Ultima Online come to mind. Nostalgia is a powerful thing-hell, there are still Halo 1 Combat Evolved player servers running. In short, there is a world space where this could work. Yes, there are likely pitfalls, and something like this really isn't mapped out. But it's a problem space that can be explored, and solutions can be found.
Also Re: 1 , if the server binaries are public after EOL, not only the attacker but anyone can make a private server if I understood the concept correctly. So if you can have competing servers or community servers, the attacker doesn't have that much of a reason to get the game shutdown. In Fact there is no guarantee that the money they spent on attacking the game could be recouped by just launching their own monetized private server. Also many devs continuously launch new features and time limited events for their games. If the dev is forced to EOL the game early then the game might just decline in popularity very soon. This attack would only work for widely popular and complete games
I stand by Thors argument that its too vague. The EU is terrible at everything they do. Their favourite past time is making things as hard as possible for smaller businesses. I'm sure big companies would have no problem shoulering the burden of whatever sloppy mess the EU cooks up, but small studios will have problems. Whatever it is this inititave actually wants to achieve, it needs to be explained to EU politicians exactly. Best case they already get lawyers and people in the know to write up an example law. The EU can and will mess this up, if you dont tell them exactly how its supposed to be done.
I agree with most of your comment, but point (1.a) and (1.b) feels too unrealistic or straight up not good solutions tho. 1.a) I'd totally see games with a technical document stating "it's literally a carbon copy of the client game or close to a carbon copy, minus the rendering" for some games (thinking about stuff like minecraft there). And for some games, I feel like writing a technical document would be a nightmare, just release the server binaries like a good boy really 1.b) Having customers wait 1-2 years (even 1-2 months is waaaaaaay too much imo) after end of life before they get the tools to be able to play again just feels like a bad solution companies will try to abuse anyways But yeah, no amount of argument against dedicated servers will make sense to people who played with dedicated servers or hosted dedicated servers. Heck, some private servers with custom binaries were more popular than the official game's server (thinking about old Modern Warfare 2 on PC with AlterIW, IW4M, IW4X that added dedicated servers to the game with moderation and people would always get pissed when Activision would shut them down lol) The ONLY issue I could mostly agree with that goes against dedicated servers: security for the hardware that hosts the dedicated server (and potentially the whole network behind the server) And even that, I'd be like "welp, internet is a harsh unlawful meritocraty after all. You got skill issue'd" and would shrug it off if presented as an argument as of why dedicated servers shouldn't be a thing
Also, releasing binaries to allow community servers doesn't mean those servers own the IP. Companies like Ubisoft could release them with the condition of not monetizing them. And if someone tries, the companies can send them a C&D as rightsholders.
I don't get what's the problem with letting people host their own servers when the game is shut down by the studio. They are not interested in making money with the game anymore. So who cares if we host our own servers?
If you allow people to sell things then it incentivizes criminal behavior like theft, hacking, botting, and DDOSing. Though if we take this to the logical conclusion, then people should not be allowed to resell shirts they bought at Target because if that's legal it incentivizes stealing from Target. If you don't allow people to monetize the servers then there has to be enforcement. He says that enforcement isn't possible for some terrible reasons that ignore that someone owns the IP even when a company shuts down. I think that's a wild position to take, but that's his position.
because if you want to play that kind of game Ubisoft/EA/PirateSoftware wants you to have no choice but to buy the next game, even if it's inferior to the original.
Your absolute unwillingness to directly converse with the people leading this movement, specifically Ross, has me confused. I understand that you don’t agree with his position or his rhetoric, but given that you truly believe this initiative could threaten the industry, it seems counterintuitive to deny conversation. People are going to support this initiative regardless of whether or not you support it, so if protecting developers is your intention, this absolutist stance you are taking does nothing to help you in that regard.
He doesn't owe Ross or anyone else a direct response because he's addressed why the current talking points are problematic from the developer's side. The initiative is taking a player's stance, not both players and devs. That's his entire point. He even outright states in both videos that there is a specific problem that a similar but more concisely-worded initiative would be a good thing to implement: Developers that sell single player experiences that contain online functionality for the sole purpose of being able to revoke access to the otherwise said single player experience; or making language more clear to the consumer when they are buying a live service game that they are purchasing a license, not a product. For the first part, an example would be if Dragon's Dogma was suddenly no longer playable at all, despite that the Pawn system is completely optional to interact with for your friend's characters. THAT is something that should not be able to happen and consumers SHOULD be able to hold developers accountable for. Alternatively, any single player game that weirdly has some kind of leaderboard system in it. Those games SHOULD remain functional after the servers for hosting the leaderboards are shut down. The second part, a great example is the very one used in the initiative: The Crew. It was an online-only game. People paid $60 for a live-service experience that was no longer feasible to keep running from the company's perspective because the player base was all but extinct, the licenses the company paid for to use the cars were too expensive to reacquire for how few players it had, and there was no way to reasonably monetize it with so few players. It SHOULD have been made clear at time of purchase that this game had an undetermined end of life, or maybe even an estimated end of life for the duration of the car licenses, and the live service required to access the game would eventually be shut down. You as the consumer are not purchasing an ownable copy of the game, but a license to access the servers up until the end of life. Thor is simply saying, "Yes, there are problems that should be addressed for the sake of consumer protection but not at the expense of my intellectual property and creative freedom that I exercise for my job." Ross' side is more than welcome to come together first and say "Hey, how can we make this work for both sides?" However, the initial presentation was sloppy, underthought, and grossly negligent with comments such as "politicians want easy wins" and "this provides a distraction from more serious topics that politicians would rather avoid." If a politician wants to avoid a serious topic, I genuinely will not vote for them. I will actively vote against them, as a matter of fact. I don't want my government run by people who use smoke and mirrors tactics to avoid or worse, stealthily undermine, serious topics. I'm not really sure where you got "absolutist stance" from because Thor has been very clearly open to a discussion that actually makes an attempt to understand the developer's side of things and meet halfway. He's just also been honest that this current discussion is not that from his standpoint as not only someone with 20+ years of experience but also who is the head of his own studio. He isn't pulling words out of a hat and throwing them around. This isn't some weird corporate play with words like "synergistic growth" that mean nothing. He's explaining how the current roadmap of this conversation would disincentivize developers from making live service games, and how a loss of live service games would impact not only developers but also players (look at how many people have gotten married or found their lifelong best friends through WoW, FFXIV, League of Legends, etc) because, like it or not, some people DO like live service games. TL;dr: Just like you think Thor has some obligation to come to the table that he wasn't invited to before this initiative was publicized that seriously affects his career, Ross and others from his side could have reached out by now and said, "Hey, I see what you're saying and, while I don't necessarily understand or even agree with all of your points, you have a perspective I hadn't considered. As someone on the other side of the fence from the consumer, what are some of the logistical issues with the current framing of the issue and how can we meet halfway to better present it in a way that's beneficial for everyone?" He was invited to the table after it was publicized, expressed his concerns, and you all keep attacking him instead of sitting down and starting the conversation yourselves with people like me and Thor to figure out how this works for everyone. It's not our responsibility to come to the table you didn't invite us to before publicizing your disdain for a fair and legal practice that is currently the best case scenario. Are there bad actors who should be held accountable for misrepresentation of products and services? Yes. Should consumers be better informed at point of sale about the legal definitions of what they are purchasing? Yes. Should both of those things be the responsibility of the developer/publisher? Yes. Should an entire style of game (live service) be forced to radically change the architecture of the experience (release binaries, which may be used in other products and still be considered intellectual property or proprietary information, or restructure the entire experience into offline) in order to fit those constraints? No.
@@thesaintnoodle Okay but did you actually listen to Thor? He is literally arguing ON YOUR SIDE of that argument. He just also could not find any evidence to indicate malicious practice on Ubisoft's end with regard to The Crew. It was marketed as online only. They used a server to act as a True Copy of the game so people weren't teleporting to the finish line. If people had read the EULA and TOS, they probably would have found the exact thing that we're arguing should be better communicated to players before purchase. Additionally, a sequel came out in 2018 that the majority of players moved on to. They stopped support for a 10 year old game that a metric handful of people were playing because it didn't make sense financially to keep it going. On top of licenses for the cars, the game was dead and they had new installments in the IP that people were playing instead. Should original EverQuest be playable in perpetuity even though only 20 people are playing compared to the hundreds or thousands that are playing EverQuest 2?
@@JWaltz91 Brother god defending Corporate software over here, ain reading all that. Sure, he doesn't owe anyone anything just as he isn't owed people not judging his character over not talking it out with his opposition. He wanted devs to be in the conversation, he decided in his own words to be the face of devs and yet now he suddenly thinks a conversation is beneath him? God, actual tiktok kids are his fans now, anyone with a brain has left this loser.
@PirateSoftware What do you call games like Diablo 3 & 4? Games that people could play entirely single player but the publishers make it multiplayer even when you don't want to play with others? I'm assuming they don't count as a "live service game" under your definition like Leauge or XIV. Edit: For what you are talking about with buying a live service game, it should be called "Renting". That term has no expectation of ownership.
Just a fun comment, you can emulate Diablo 3 from Switch or PS3 (if you don't bother with playing earlier versions of the game) and the single player runs completely fine without any internet connection Should the servers ever die, I bet that will become the only way to play it, as I highly doubt Blizzard will ever give us an offline patch on PC, even though they already have it ready... That or running your own private server with Blizzless
@@Synest2 we'd have to trust the government to make and possibly enforce the categories of multiplayer, single player and single player with online functionality and by the government I mean every government
@@ymeynot0405 The reason you can't call it renting a game is because it is a one time purchase. "Renting" generally means a subscription based (repeated fees) game model, which isn't what one time purchases are. As soon as you buy a license, you have the game for eternity until you violate TOS. Hopefully this helps!
If XIV ran a private server you would only need 7 other players to run the content the game provides anyway, that's less players than your typical shooter, shooters we've been playing via LAN and p2p for decades now. Same with Diablo 3 and 4, you don't need a server to play those games, D2 runs perfectly fine without battlenet, granted you don't get battlenet features like certain drops. But you simply have to look at the last Sim City game, it was released as an always online product, and the first mod for the game that came out made it 100% perfectly functional without the need to connect to an online server and the game was better for it, even if EA could no longer monetize you indirectly. Games as a Service only works if the service is something that is desired. MMOs for example only work as a service because having servers and server techs sufficient enough to host thousands of players from around the world on them is difficult. But even then we saw that a handful of hobbiests can get a working copy of vanilla WOW working, and in an even more playable and stable state than what blizzard could provide years later. What Thor is scared of is losing control over the IP of live service code, which is where a lot of live service monetization happens, which is 100% avoiding the actual issue of live service games being randomly shut down and people who have paid good money for those games being left with no recourse.
@@sgtbigjake Said: "As soon as you buy a license, you have the game for eternity until you violate TOS. " But you don't. They can decide to shut down the servers anytime that they like. Additionally, it has been ruled, by law, that if you "buy" something you have the right to resell it anytime you like. Can you name one instance of someone "buying" a blizzard game through their online portal and then being able to sell it to another person? Legally, you should be able to do that with individual cosmetics in the game. Go to Bliz con just to get the free cosmetics and resell them to whales who couldn't make it. Also, renting could be the means of setting server end dates or a way to continue funding the servers. When the game comes out you rent it for until 2035, (10 years). So that as the years go by the price drops as you get closer to 2035. Everyone knows the servers will close in 2035 so they can evaluate if it is worth it for them. Plus if the game is a big hit, in 2035 they can ask for a $5-$10 "fee" to keep the servers open for another X years based on how many people decide they want to pay. If 10k pay, another 2 years. If 20k pay, another 4 years. It gives the companies an incentive to keep the games up, and for players to join a game that is already slightly old when they know it will still be around in 4 years.
I find the example of : 1. Attacking a developer 2. Forcing them to shutdown 3. Monetize private servers 4. Profit To be completely disingenuous. Like you said, lets assume the developer collapses, and is forced to release server binaries. Someone sets up a paid private server. Nothing, is stopping someone from hosting their own server. I don't join pay-to-play minecraft servers, , TF2 servers, ARMA servers... I just host my own. Because I can! This feels like the same scaremongering tactic used by large games in the past, against community servers. From mundane things like "Official servers are always better", threats like "You won't gain account progress on community servers" to fearmongering such as "Community Servers can give you malware". All of the above could be true. But they aren't problems I need to care about, if I can just setup my own server! You brought up the TF2 botting issue. That bot issue was only on official valve servers. Community servers had actual moderators, which banned bots! Community servers were better than official servers! Lets take the license issue as well. That's an issue for the License provider to resolve. Not us! Disney or Jaguar doesn't like a community server? They can sue the community server provider. You would obviously agree, that this sounds horrible. But the situation is already worse than this. We can't even try to keep playing! Simply having the option is better that not having it at all! But anyway, hope you enjoy the vacation Thor! I, can't even imagine not having a vacation for 5 bloody years. That sounds awful.
is the same scare tactic/argument car manufacturers used against right to repair saying that opening repairs will lead to you as an user being raped because it would make your can unsafe. Scare tactics which I find quite big coming from someone who called Ross being realistic about what most politicians are rather disgusting
I think you missed the point of the License statement. Sure; for Disney car manufacturers; they are not likely to disappear. But what about Respawn Entertainment? You know the devs who made Titanfall and Apex Legends? They are VERY likely to disappear. If Apex stops doing as well, or EA just wants to save more money and can them. Now what? There is no one there to tell you to not abuse the IP. Licensing and Trade mark laws are very complex. And while the private servers may have worked for TF2, it may not work for other games. Remember, the idea and fear is, you bully devs into shutting down to make your own server, so you can make money from it. So you get what? 10k+ users. First, are you even able to handle that much network traffic? And second, assuming you have like hand full of bots, we can say 1%, could you even handle that? That is like 100 bots. Up that to 10%, that is suddenly 1000 bots. It stops getting manageable quickly. So now you need to hire mods to help manage that. TF2 was the case that bots where mostly targeting official servers. Which allowed the private ones to work and handle the low volume of bots; but if the tables got switched suddenly... The Official servers are known to have bots everywhere and now the private servers do have bots, so what? You just make your own server to play and hope people join you, and hope you can manage the thing until someone else fixes the problem? People need to stop and they need to think. The reason Thor is not giving answers, is because there is no clear cut answer. There is no; "This just works." This is not a yes, no. It needs to be talked about, worked on and figured out, BEFORE reaching the government. Because they won't know what to do; and will just go off what is told. And either reject and never let us try again, or pass this, and utterly ruin Live service games as they are now. Right now. "Stop killing games" is not ready; and should not pass. However, the idea of what this wants, is a good thing and we need to talk and figure it out more. Just need people to be willing to see both sides and not just go; "I don't care for this other thing." Because it is that other thing... that will come back and bite someone.
All of those games you gave examples most likely had authentication servers, and these authentication servers can only be hosted by a single party. You can just bypass authentication or create your own, but then it'll fragment the player base, meaning you would need to register in multiple places for the same game, just to play on two different servers, like how Cracked Minecraft servers require you to "register" so that they can know that it's you logging in. Bypassing authentication means that bots can also log into your server freely and easily, meaning you would need to allocate more resources to combat this.
@@ZythriaSo you are saying that we are supposed to be fine with Thor not giving proper answers because there is no obvious answer. Ok. So... What now? Are we just supposed to wait for some miracle to come down from the heavens and solve the problem? I see people doing exactly what you say later. Trying to talk about it with Thor and work out his PoV. Why does that only apply to our side if it's supposed to be a conversation between two sides? Why do we need to constantly give him concrete answers and dismantle all his fears when he himself initially refused to engage in conversation properly? Also, I have no idea at all why are you acting like the INITIATIVE is on the brink of passing as a law. This is completely untrue and fearmongering, just like Thor's initial response to this whole situation.
@@Zythria The point of the hypothetical was not to point out how bots could ruin a game, but to claim that the bot hoster would be capable of taking the playerbase for themselves AND make a profit off of them, which is wrong for several reasons. First, there's no reason for people to consolidate to one community server instead of scattering. If the game has 10,000 players, they don't all go into one server, hosts can implement player limits (and multiple servers), usually ones the game already had. Second, the point was that the bot hoster would be the one making a profit, implying that every player (with no reason given) would only go to them. See the first reason, there's no reason for the bot hoster to hold a monopoly when anyone can host a server. If they use bots to take down other servers, that only add more suspicion on them because their servers are strangely safer than their competitors. Alternatively, they can hit themselves with the bots and take a financial hit running servers without any players to fund them. Quick Note: If the bot hoster loses their cover as a normal server host, then people won't play on their servers and, more importantly, pay them money. The community might even band together to take down their servers with bots in an ironic revenge. If, in the almost impossible scenario that they pull this off, they manage to hold a functional monopoly without getting caught, now they have to worry about recouping server costs, maintaining the servers when issues inevitably pop up, and implementing monetization in a way that doesn't make people to go smaller servers that popped up after they stop using the bots (because they can't run the bots forever without getting caught and/or running out of money). Realistically, the bot hoster would either end up as one of many server hosts and be unappealing to players due to poor monetization, or try to take down every other community server until they get caught and eventually run out of money (because they don't have any income from the game, which is meant to be the incentive to do this to start with). Thor's hypothetical relies on assumptions that are not accounted for or even addressed. This is a high risk, high effort, low reward plan that will fail with a bang or a whimper. It is not as simple nor as easy as "I create a private server and I monetize it." This is not a fundamental flaw that needs to be addressed, it is a poorly made excuse that ignores the big picture while failing in its own right. Bonus Note: A bot hoster taking down a live service game isn't presented as something people will become more capable of if Stop Killing Games succeeds, rather, Thor is claiming that it can happen right now with enough incentive. If that's true, pushing back Stop Killing Games means if a bot hoster with enough money decides to take down live service games *for fun*, or any other reason that isn't earning a profit, multiple communities will go up in flames, one after another.
Makes up a scenario where a bad person will do something shitty like charging for their private server. Ignoring the fact that if the binaries exist publicly, there will be good free servers. People shouldn't have consumer rights because others cheat?
I honestly clicked on this video thinking it might be an apology (or a partial one) and finding a middle ground between companies and players. I know Rivals 2 is coming out and its live-service. You can shove that game, Offbrand, and your company, waaay up your ass.
Rivals 2, its a live service game that Offbrand, that you work for, are publishing. I wouldn't give two shits if you were honest and said SKG was bad because its more work and less money for you.
@@HeroChaserDrillStar Servers do cost to own and maintain. But of the many reverse engineered MMO servers and games that allow players to host their own servers they are free to use by players. Some might ask for donations to help, but never outright charge players. If your gonna play semantics, at least have a good argument.
3:30 "You don't get to defy what players play and don't play." 5:04 "Why would you preserve a game in that state? This doesn't make any sense" Why he's trying to decide for me what I want to play and what I don't? How does that get told In one video by a single person?
You don't think it's different when a person says "why would you preserve a game", and when a governmential institute decides it for you, so you don't even have a choice over the matter? We are literally talking about laws which would affect a few hundred million people. Not just you, not just those a few thousand people who've signed. Hundreds of millions of people. You get to decide what they can play and what they can't. If the EU decides this law is good to support. God complex much?
@@PaweMateuszBytner Because the EU is one of the more massive economies in the world. What laws get passed there affect everyone. When the EU passed their information privacy act, many websites started putting the "accept all cookies" notification for every consumer everywhere, not just in the EU. When the EU said "Apple, you must make your iPhones with USB type C", Apple, the next generation, released USB type C phones everywhere, not just in the EU. Those two laws were good. If a bad law gets passed, however, that will be bad for everyone. He's petitioning people who live in the EU to not sign this because it will inevitably affect him if he tries to release a game in the EU.
@@OliviaSNava >because it will inevitably affect him Then we are getting to the point: what people are allowed to do or not to do affects others. That's why we do get to tell sometimes what other people can or can't do.
@@OliviaSNava yeah, and as we all know the cookie thing, the industry also found a way to trick you into clicking the wrong of the 3 or even more buttons
As a open source advocate, the simple solution to me is that if you wish to end your service after you have made your revenue and want to EOL it; simply release the repository in a public format and let these dedicated players figure out the rest if they want to. This concept of trying to black hole source code that no one will ever use again is absolutely corruptive to any software programming field; but especially game development. --- I wanted to address some of the comments: - Preservation, Not IP Release: My focus is on the preservation of games and software that users continue to enjoy, not on the indiscriminate release of intellectual property (IP). I never advocated for releasing assets that are still commercially active. My proposal is specifically about End of Life (EOL) software-where the game or service has been officially discontinued. While it's easy to cite high-profile titles like "Batman" as exceptions, those represent a small fraction of all software. Naturally, any proposal would need to account for such edge cases. - On Reusing Code in Future Projects: From my experience in production and open-source, the idea that companies will reuse old code in future games is often overstated. With the constant evolution of new engines, frameworks, infrastructure, and assets, most code from discontinued games becomes obsolete. I would estimate that 90% of games or software don't reuse their old code in new projects. While this is anecdotal, any software engineer would recognize that building on outdated code is generally a poor practice. The goal should be innovation and improvement, not recycling old solutions. A really good example of what I mean is `Project Cartographer`: A fan-driven initiative that revived the online multiplayer experience for HALO 2 on PC after official support was discontinued. This project exemplifies the potential of community-led efforts to preserve and enhance older games, allowing players to continue enjoying them in a way that would have otherwise been impossible. It stands as a powerful example of why releasing the source code for EOL games can be beneficial.
I love this in theory, but there are several issues with it. The most commonly cited one (e.g. in discussions about the death of Flash Player) is the cost of removing proprietary third party code (which usually breaks the codebase entirely, and cripples it even after it is repaired). That's a substantial amount of work to put into something you've already decided to kill because you can't afford to keep it alive. Furthermore, this would mean being forced to release your _own_ proprietary code, most of which is still being used in your still-living games.
If you advocate open source, the entire game would have to be open source from the start in that case. Releasing the source code of a dead game should still remain an option the game development studio could use. Id Software back in the day released the source code of their game Quake III Arena, a very popular multiplayer focused FPS game. They were able to do it, because first of all, their engine they used for the game, was already quite public and used in various other games, 3rd party to Id Software, so the engine was already free and open source, and second of all, the game code itself didn't really rely on any arbitrary source code that would fall under "still used in alive games" category that might jeopardize the livelyhood of the company (not to mention that Id Software as it was no longer exists, it has been bought out and incorporated by Bethesda couple of years ago).
Releasing code may not be the problem. But developers might not "release" trade marks and IP belonging to publisher or some other third party. Like Telltale for example. They could release sources. But not rights to a Batman, Fables and so on. Sadly.
@@keldzh Yeah, that's another issue. Games that rely on 3rd party IP being licensed to them obviously can't just release it for free for everyone, it's tied to the license. Source code might be released, but not the assets and other stuff that is licensed by a 3rd party. And if the game is literally built on those premises, then it doesn't make sense to release the source code, but not all the assets. Which is why Q3A source code being released for free makes sense. They do not include the game assets, just the source code. That way you can make your own version of Q3A, make modifications, etc. And provide your own assets to it. And that's how Open Arena was born. In code, it's essentially Q3A, but it looks different. The game assets were completely overhauled, there are different textures, models, even maps. It's an entirely different game.
TF2 has a bot problem because Valve's matchmaking is bad. Has NOTHING to do with community servers, because community servers ban those immediately, that's why they don't attempt to invade them
that's not the point, though. The point is that it's very much possible to bot a game to oblivion. And the people who botted TF2 had 0 monetary incentive and still caused that much destruction It's an example that the idea of someone botting a game to oblivion is not far-fetched
"You shouldn't have control over what is in my Steam library." Coming from the guy defending the practice of companies going into my library and bricking what I already purchased...
I found this bit ironic too. Steam could quite literally revoke every game you purchased. In fact you could potentially lose these games even if just Steam, itself, shuts down. Hey it’s in their license! A. General Content and Services License Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet. ---- Oh, as a kicker, you also can’t sue Steam. You’re required to go through binding arbitration.
@@XDRosenheim Thankfully Emperor Palpetine only wants the clones to save the Republic! And forced arbitration is ABSOLUTELY being evil. In fact some jurisdictions (California maybe?) have outlawed it.
@@XDRosenheim We're coasting on their goodwill, and that's the problem. I am glad that Valve is operating in good faith now, at least in this specific regard, but there's no guarantee it will be the case when it'll change ownership, Gaben is not immortal after all.
Yeah, of course. When the Mona Lisa becomes less popular, the paintings current owners should be able to burn it because they can't afford to display it anymore, I mean if future generations wanted to see it and experience it themselves they should have been born earlier When Warcraft reforged came out, everyone was mad because an old game was updated to have fewer features. When a GTA title was updated, everyone was mad to have music removed When devs claim "offline mode is IMPOSSIBLE," only to update an offline mode later, people have a right to be skeptical. Developers and publishers have been acting hostile towards consumers for years. Is it any wonder when publishers and devs have treated consumers so poorly- just for you to claim they have the right to dumpster IPs they'll never touch agan, you get pushback? A lot of your counterarguments on reddit is "you're looking at this at a consumers level" thats because serving the consumer is the whole point of the market
Ya that argument erked me too. At best it felt like his emotions peaking through. At worst a weak strawman. In reality we can never see things as truly were in the pest, it is more about having a chance to glimpse at what was.
As Thor mentioned in his previous video, we want to call out *specific* bad practices where an online only game is sold as a singleplayer experience and when the online only part is buried away in ToS and EULA's. SKG will target all live service games and we don't want it to because it would kill live service games due to the reasons mentioned in part 1. A type of game that many, including myself, really enjoy. It is not the job of the developers to keep servers open forever for a small playerbase that isn't making enough for the developers to cover server costs. You even gave an example, if the Mona Lisa becomes unpopular and it no longer makes enough money for the owners to keep it up, why should they keep it up? No one is entitled to see it, much like how no one is entitled to have live service games stay online forever when it isn't making the server owners any money. I agree with the concept of game preservation and that singleplayer offline games should be preserved by having a PC port/emulation of some sort to keep a record of it. But live service games don't work that way. They are designed in a way for them to work with an active playerbase and in some cases built to only last a certain amount of time due to licences and license renewals. Imagine playing Hell Divers 2 in single player, an MMO in singleplayer, or playing a MOBA in singleplayer it just doesn't work. Live service games can't last forever because it needs the playerbase active and spending money on the game to stay alive and if there aren't enough players then it goes down, which sucks but that's how it goes.
@@jametsu Then they could simply release the server binaries for the community to host the game at their expense in order to keep it in a playable state. About monetization, you dont HAVE to play on the servers which employ P2W practices and can just play on the player friendly ones. All servers may accept donations if upkeep is an issue, which most of the time it isn't if somebody just loves the game and has the money to keep it up.
@@mrhawkyy1 did you watch part 1 or even the video above? He explained why forcing devs to release server binaries is a bad idea. I’m not flaming or being rude I am genuinely asking because I also tend to type comments before watching the whole of a video.
@@jametsu No one is asking devs/publishers to keep dead online game servers up. We are asking for either server binaries or just the right to not get shut down/sued for making community hosted servers down the line ._.
Why, he got dragged by the one who wrote the initiative when he asked to sit down and talk this out! Oh wait, no he didn't. That was the most respectful request to talk things out. And then Thor refused while personally attacking the guy. And Thor has since privated the stream where he did so.
Okay I'll fight the argument you're presenting: 1. Providing server binaries open up developers to abuse, knowing that server emulation will be provided at end of life would encourage bad actors to ddos, hack, or do whatever else to kill the official game and take dominion over the servers: Besides being a very dark view of player communities in general, I disagree that one necessitates the other. To use League of Legends as an example, at a bare minimum to preserve the game you would either a) have an option in "create private match" that connects the players to the host directly in order to run the match (which is already an option the game gives you if memory serves me right, this is the way a lot of older games do it too) or b) let the player host it's own server that players can connect to by changing options in the launcher to connect to the private server rather than official (which is the way a lot of private servers operate by using re-tooled or custom launchers). I concede that option a represents a much lower risk on the part of the developer, but even if option b was the only viable option I fail to see how it allows malicious actors to do more direct harm to a company than what's otherwise already available to them (TF2's community hosted servers had to deal with all the same malicious actors, the only difference is they actually wanted to allocate resources to dealing with it) , and why customers should expect to lose access to their game completely as a misguided measure to "protect the developer from abuse". Lastly, the initiative clearly states that the developers are not responsible for the actions of private individuals hosting their servers, so the point of forcing developers to enforce private server monetization is moot. it would just exist in that "abandonware" grey area where customers are left to deal with any problems that might arise until further problem solving is done, and something tells me games companies would be very quick to lobby and plug those holes. A bad actor might be able to perform the doomsday scenario of "kill a studio & monetize their server" once before the legal system does its thing 2. Why would players want a preserve a game in a "dead" state - I find this argument completely unconscionable especially for someone who considers games to be art. Games are more than their peak experiences - they have maps, models, music, interesting game mechanics (like movement in Apex), and so many more pieces that are worthy of preservation. Some people just want to explore the map, some people want to revisit an old multiplayer game with their friends for nostalgia's sake. Even if its just one person that wants to spend a few hours sulking while they stare at the empty server listening to lo-fi hip hop thinking of better days - the only reason they're not able to do that for a growing list of games is this horrendous design choice where once a company ends support, the customer has to lose access to all of this completely. Personally I think this should be the mindset for all games, but since we're just focusing on where money is changing hands, this initiative at the very least helps reduce the scope of the utter graveyard that is being filled with modern games. The remainder of your arguments seem to focus on protecting developers from these bad actors, which again even if that does happen, I doubt the law would let it fly for very long before the multibillion dollar industry figures out a solution. You're so hyperfixated on the what-ifs that you're completely ignoring the actual reality happening today, it is actually astonishing the number of games that are no longer accessible due to this practice. I'll try to find the official list but if someone could post it in the replies I'd appreciate it. In summary, I understand your concern but think the industry can sort it out fairly easily with their lobbying power. And I'm appalled that you're unable to understand why people might want to preserve online games even when no one plays them anymore.
For point 1 - you dont seem to understand what a 'server binary' is. its not an option for someone to connect to a host. its a way for you to stand up our own server, identical to the official one. It would look just like the game, but hosted privately or by a third party. Its a duplicate of all the code used to run the official server. All you have to do is stand up your own server and copy the data and point folks to your machine and your the original game. (it is more complicated then this, but its a simplified version) You also dont seem to think that people would abuse the process if devs were forces to give up their game (which is what server binaries are) if they are forced to fail. I an guarantee that all of the bad actors who currently exist in the realm of content farms on steam would salivate at being able to just bot attack other games and steal them for profit with no work needed on their part. Is that a bleak view? prolly. but we've already seen the lengths these crappy content farms go too, including suing anyone who criticizes them. So being able to take and monetize someone else's game with little to no work is something they would jump at. How is abuse going to be prevented? Especially for indy devs? Your big 'AAA' companies like EA and Activision wont be effected by Bad actors like this, but the Indy scene absolutely will. Since they will lack the money and corporate power to defend themselves.
@@JohnDoe-bf7hb I get that a server binary (like a WoW or other service game private server) is a very separate thing from just hosting a listen server (like people do for TF2 or Counter-Strike). I was making the distinction myself because a lot of games that shut down in this way are intentionally doing the former when they could just as easily have it be done via the latter. To use Apex Legends as an example, instead of connecting to the main server and then selecting the "private match" option, the company could just give you a separate launcher that skips everyone to the private match without having to communicate with the main server. And again this would only occur once official support had ended. I didn't deny that malicious actors existed, but I do question the assertion that there is no way to prevent this abuse and it spells a death sentence for indie developers for a few reasons: 1. The steps he laid out are to attack the official server until the company goes bankrupt, host your own server via the released binary, and monetize the replacement server. So if we consider a game like palword or retail royale sold on steam (the prime target for this behavior) your content farm would have to perform all of these steps for every game it wanted to target rather than just poorly ripping off the mechanics and assets outright and throwing that up onto the store with a slightly different name. It seems like an obtuse and resource heavy way of stealing from indies. 2. Nothing says that if lawmakers wanted to make rules around this, they wouldn't attempt to limit it to larger entities/publishers. Its a more reasonable request from a major publisher than a small studio and the fact that this initiative does not make that distinction would not prevent that discussion from taking place. 3. This is a weaker point so I saved it for last, but given the larger resource requirements innate to developing and maintaining live service games, its hard to imagine an abuse on a product that require so much investment would not attract serious attention in the media and legal landscape. So if the doomsday scenario occurred, its hard to imagine it would last long before lawsuits started to fly. Even in the small business indie world. I won't deny there would be unfortunate casualties if such a scenario were to take place, but again if the goal of the initiative is the stop companies from Ubisoft from killing games like The Crew and cutting off all possible access without recourse, as a customer I'd prefer a temporary graveyard of small businesses as opposed to the growing graveyard of games which have so many resources poured into them and people form deep emotional connections to. Which is still a point that never gets addressed by these counter arguments.
@@JohnDoe-bf7hb Perhaps this is a blind spot of mine, or my memory is failing me, but I can't think of a single indie game that would actually be affected by this. Part of why I gravitate towards indie games in the first place is because I actually own the game I purchase and can play it forever, and don't have to deal with the live service business model. As you say, they don't have as much money as the big corpos, but that's also why they don't have more money than sense to be able to make a game that people won't even be able to appreciate at all after an arbitrary period of time has elapsed. Unless they aim to make an artistic piece about transience perhaps, though even games like that already exist where you play them once and the experience is over until you reset them somehow.
@@Neostriusthe industry become more on more diverse even within the indie industry. Now most of the indie only make single player or clienct server based game but when they have some capital to actually expend and make a live service game, this movement might make them to think twice before making them. For me this movement is more on stagnanting the live service game than making the overall situation better. Anyway, the problem still stand and bot attack can be done to any indie who want to make live service game such as mmo and by having them without having enough resource to counter, they might even lost their game even during their infant years. Because the game need to stay alive or else their code need to be given, that just make it worst than just claiming bankrupcy. Im not saying all indie is good and some developer even indie developer is shitty like those who make "tomorrow" or what not but in general, the situation just sux for an indie who trying to make live game or mmo as their first project.
Thor you only concentrate your argument on very few multiplayer live service games, but the market has a lot more of singleplayer live service games. Genshin Impact and other gacha games for example, those ARE singleplayer with maybe some multiplayer added in. Many people invest a lot of money into them and they simply shut down those games, leaving people with neither money or product. And excluding live service games in the law, just makes a gap for big companies to exploit. And live service games are not always good. There are many games that have ripped out content that should have been free, just to be sold as live service. In Destiny 2 more and more stuff is locked behind a paywall, despite selling the new content as an expensive Add-On. And some live service games are abandoned shortly after they have released, like Anthem...
@@-Pedry its not a new practise, its in literally every single gacha game. the nature of rotating banners means the game has to be live service to maintain the gacha system's integrity, as well as preventing people just hacking in currency. When you get into a gacha game, you should fully expect it won't last forever, that's how many things in life work.
I feel like he addressed this topic in his first video: he said that single player live service games are an issue but this movement doesn’t properly address this because it is to broad and vague
Fighting games and community efforts like fightcade are a perfect example as to why the "if the game is dead, why bother preserving it" is such a demonstrably ridiculous mindset. Nobody is saying community servers will revive an entire playerbase, we just need the absolute minimum amount to fill a match lobby or to do a raid or whatever. And in today's day and age it's absolutely trivial to gather a bunch of passionate people in a discord server to have fun together playing "dead" videogames. Also, using TF2 as an example as to why giving the community access to servers is exploitable is ridiculous. Bots and cheaters started flooding servers after years of utter neglect by Valve and the release of a horrible update that made community servers harder to access. And guess what, most bots/cheaters would flock towards Valve's neglected and automated servers because community servers were just better equipped and monitored to kick them out of matches. A community that's passionate enough to run their own servers won't sabotage the game they love when it's still alive and will actively filter bad actors, it's insane to claim otherwise.
Some games work with only a few active players, fighting games only require 2 players to get a match to spin up. I think his example of Apex is a good one, as it *requires* at least 100 players to get a single game running probably closer to 1,000 to keep matchmaking times reasonable
@@wyhiobcarlile4879 The example is irrelevant, I pointed towards fighting games because it's a community of people that fundamentally understands the human value of keeping older and obscure multiplayer games alive even if there's only a handful of people in the world willing to play them. The point is not to revive games back to their heyday, the point is to make abandoned games playable at all through community efforts. It might be more complicated to completely fill the lobby of a battle royale compared to other genres, but that doesn't mean these games should become lost media just because some of you decided online videogames are a perishable product.
That point was directed as MMO and other mass multi player games. Fighting game is just a two player games. It's not in the same scale at all. Gathering a bunch of decent players for some fighting game matches is very different from gathering 40 people of similar competency to do a boss raid or find 100 players to do a pubg match. You're also completely missing the point on exploit. Server exploit as currently is totally illegal, and it's already so hard to fight against. Imagine how it would be when it got practically legalized.
@@CelestialOrionX I’m assuming you meant don’t always have and not “always don’t have” but just in case you actually meant always don’t have most cods have a campaign or zombies which can be done offline and solo
@@centor111 YEAH! WE DON'T DESERVE OWNERSHIP! WE'RE JUST MONEY SACKS TO BE DRAINED AND RUN ALONG FOR ETERNITY. Didn't you watch the WEF? YOU WILL own nothing, and YOU WILL be happy. Centor is right, just embrace it.
@@Shakenmike117 he is mentally ill for being a sociopathic liar with grandiose fantasies of pushing regulation that isn't feasible nor maintainable. In a short period of time he has proven to be incompetent of placing the betterment of the industry ahead of his ego. You will understand when you grow up.
@@centor111 This is why is called a petition, it can't ve very specific. After the petition is approved, then is when they'll start working on legislation and talking with experts.
Because that would be saying the truth and acknowledging that he himself is acting in bad faith. He's dug himself in now and won't back down. Well guess I'll skip Heartbound, no idea when he will push a game breaking update and leave the gaming space, might even donitnout of spite judging by these videos and his comments.
@@christianlewis2008 in the first video as far as I can gather, not going to subject myself to that stupidity to find out, but called him things like "disgusting" and "greasy car salesmen" in the way he put across the campaign.
@@davep5698 Ah, that's why I was confused because I had just come from watching the first video and he never said those things about Ross, he said those things about Ross's arguments. Which I could see why that's easy to conflate. Specifically Ross's arguments that the initiative would be easy to pass on the basis that politicians don't care about video games, would see it as an easy win, and would welcome the distraction from more important topics. That last one specifically Thor railed into. Now I'm not saying Thor is right, he does seem to heavily be misunderstanding what people want out of game's preservation, but I also think that last argument is a bit icky.
Hitman 3: World Of Assasination is a mandatory online Live Service game even tho it's a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, you can't complete missions, challenges or unlock anything unless you have an internet connection, even when the game has no multiplayer component and fans have asked since Hitman 2016 to remove the mandatory connection to their servers, and guess what? fans managed to create a patch for the game in order to emulate official servers so now you can play the game, complete missions and unlock equipment even if you don't have an internet connection, you are telling me a small group of fans managed to create a solution to this artificial problem devs have created for arbitrary reasons that only punish people who actually bought the game (same as Denuvo ruining performance) but it's just too hard for a billion dollar company to release a small patch to remove that requirement? if devs working on a billion dollar company are actually unable to figure out how to remove this artificial constraint (what an incredibly disingenuous argument this is man, seriously, "it's too hard"?) then maybe you are just a mediocre developer
@@lolroflundxd On the contrary, if you watch his previous video he says that THOSE are the exact anti consumer practices that must be addressed. Single player games that are artificially made online-only without adding anything to the game.
I think your selling us meteor insurance here, like I believe games can get shut down by server attacks, but that's going to happen out of malicious intent and not because there's a .0125% chance they could be the first person to ever host a profitable third party server outside minecraft, during the period where multiple free servers will almost certainly pop up repeatedly, more if someone converts the server files into an easy to run executable
Right? Thinking some bad actor would actually profit from making and monetizing their own private server - when the server binaries would be publicly available for ANYONE to put up - is unhinged. Plus it's not as if making the server binaries available is even the only way to keep the game in a playable state. Really grasping at straws and lying, hope their vacation helps them calm down and see what an absolute buffoon they're being here.
It's so disingenuous that he brings up TF2 as an "example" of this when the TF2 bot crisis happened solely because Valve was doing literally nothing to stop them, and the instant they just banned all the bot hosters, the problem went away. That's it. They didn't overhaul their anti-cheat (well they started doing that for CS2, but it wasn't rolled out yet), they just banned a huge list of known conspirators carrying out the attacks and it fucking stopped. Because, as it turns out, even if your opposition has your source code, it's basically impossible for someone to maliciously take down your entire multiplayer system. And what was their motive? Nothing, they were just trolling. It had nothing to do with attempting to shut the game down.
Titanfall 2 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 had their servers attacked at the same time by the same people - the issue with Battlefront was resolved in a span of a week or two, where Titanfall 2 was borderline unplayable for close to 2 years (until a rogue dev fixed the issue by himself), both are published by EA - the difference was that Titanfall only had 3 people assigned to "maintain" it. If the devs won't fix it, the community will, with their Northstar client (not monetized, saved the game, noone profited from it)
@snintendog Seriously? He just has a different perspective and opinion on the issue, but instead of listening to his points, you just resort to what is essentially name-calling. There are good points on both sides of this argument, and there are also bad points. Neither side is perfect, just like in politics. But I don't understand why you guys are *so incredibly angry and hateful.* He even says that SKG has good intentions. He just disagrees with how they're going about it. It's okay to not 100% agree with an initiative like this. Are you guys seriously incapable of handling opposing perspectives and opinions just because they don't 100% align with your own? Did you even watch the full video, or did you just rush down to the comments to tear his character apart just because he said one thing you didn't like? That's sad, man.... You're really acting like he blew up an orphanage or something. You're allowed to disagree, but goddamn. It's really obvious you have no argument against him, because instead of giving counter arguments, you're just ripping his character apart, saying he's a bad person because you have a different perspective. And my god, we're talking about video games here. It's not as serious as you're pretending it is. And yeah, I know I'm basically Satan to you because I disagree with you. But before you throw total vitriol and hate my way, just think for one second about what you're doing. It's easy to tear people down and feel good about it when you're hiding behind a screen and there are no real consequences. Just cool it. You're not helping anything.
@@LookingGlass1865 He's working for the side of "let's kill games", while pretending that he isn't. His arguments are obviously disingenuous. Just read the rest of the comments under this video, or carefully watch the video. Sadly, his influence has spread. "You're really acting like he blew up an orphanage or something" What do you call a game that isn't working because it's daddy DRM server and mummy multiplayer server isn't available anymore? A game orphan. What did he blow up? The organizing place for those games. Attacking his character might be too far if done carelessly, but saying that he doesn't seem to do what he preaches, and that he has an incredible double standard is correct. Influencers are public persons just like politicians, and thus must live with some critique. If they didn't want to be in the lime light, they just have to step away from the camera.
As an European: no. I don't care about any contrary arguments any more. Game companies were absolutely comfortable selling products to us under false pretenses for decades now and then making the products we PAID for and should OWN unavailable to use or morphing it into some ungodly, unplayable concoction of mtx and always online trash. So I don't care any more. They had literal decades to self-regulate, instead they CHOSE to continue using the most unethical practices they could use as long as they gain them extra cents. So it's done. Devs and publishers had their chance to get their sh*t straight. Firstly: the customer is always first. The fact that the US has normalized corporation bribery and just renamed it as 'lobbying' doesn't make it not bribery. We *generally* don't do that shit out here. If game dev is not able to follow the law and provide with an expected level of support for the product that's been paid for then they'll be forced to. If a company is not able to do that, then they never deserved to exist in the first place and same goes for their 'games'. Secondly: If anyone still thinks it wouldn't work, virtually every massive corporation has bent their knees to EU after GDPR was introduced. Millions if not billions in fines and yet corps such as Meta and Amazon continue to work in EU and instantly just learned to follow regulations the moment it turned out it's real and actionable. And I've seen that from the inside myself. Even damn Apple had to back down on the USB thing despite it completely contradicting their approach and customers are better for it. It's a customer's market. Adapt or die.
@@axelolord Thank you. I'm all for calm and collected discussion but comments like yours are also completely valid. People love to pretend like there is no room for emotions in matters like those, but that's bullshit. We are allowed to be angry at the state of this and we are allowed to not give a damn about the "poor devs and publishers" after years of them not giving a damn about us.
As a fellow European I agree; he is very biased in both his American and developer ways, and just cannot seem to grasp that while corporations being people that can own the world is normal over there, we at least make an effort to put them in their place. Not to say we're doing a very good job of it mind you, but there's attempts being made to keep them in check.
We do not want to preserve it in its "dying" state. We want it, even if dead, we want it *playable* so that if, for example, we find 99 other people at an event who wanna relive the glory days of Apex after EA bled it dry, we can... *still play it*. Preservation isn't about keeping a player base and community alive. It's about keeping the game playable. Also, who is dealing with the upfront cost of buying a buncha game licenses then botting to kill the game just so that long run they can set up to monetize? Why would people even go to the monetized server? They'll stay on the free community servers. Because gamers are cool, that way at least. One would think you'd know.
Yeah that argument is real, “We need to prevent you from recording the radio so you can’t start your own station,” energy. And in fact, that hyperbolic comparison makes EVEN MORE sense than Thor’s reasoning.
And it's not even like that, games like Apex, LoL or DOTA like people are putting, are the extremes, what happens with games like, let's say, Genshin Impact, that game has hundreds of hours of single-player gameplay, literally, the only online parts of the game, are the login and gacha systems, which could be removed without repercussion to the game once the company doesn't want to run it anymore, they just need to develop a local save system, and change the gacha to either have everything farmable, or give us infinite currency and merge all into 1 banner, but instead, what would most likely happen, is that they will close the servers, and the game will be gone, hundreds of hours of story and exploration, gone, because the company didn't want to take a week, or a month, to change some code.
@@Acuas exactly, lol. when mihoyo reaches EoL for genshin, are they really gonna let that massive 1000 hour experience they built over 10+ years just become unavailable for the rest of time? what a waste.
@@LuciusC Do you have any idea of the sheer complexity of reverse-engineering a game like Genshin? This is precisely the kind of case that the initiative is trying to solve, or at least help solving. The publisher wouldn't have to keep Genshin's servers running forever, just helping enthusiasts with the reverse-engineering work would be enough. "We don't need a clear legislation because sometimes a few hard-working people solve the problem for us" is not a great argument.
* Releasing the server is not the same as releasing the IP nor should it allow you to profit from it. * Even if I trired to attack the servers to get a version of the binary - for a future profit - the binary would be open for everyone, why should I pay a subscription to your modified payToWin server when I could join a community server with only donations to keep the servers alive? * Legality has noting to do with this, you can setup a private WoW server in Russia or China or any other country and no one would be able to stop you.
Correct, any private server made wouldn't be allowed to make a proffit, because the company still owns the IP, and even if they tried, as you said, the wide availability of servers would make it so only the ones that didn't ask for money except to run the servers would survive, as for people who still tried, we all know how much people hate P2W, imagine what would happen to a private server that does that, and people know it's illegal, they would just need to report the server, and it would be shut down by the government in no time, not even need the company to take actions on it.
Or just bot it down. If you can bot and DDOS the original game despite it having actual developers trying to stop you, you can definitely bot and DDOS a pay2win server that only has access to a private server kit and not the whole game's sourcecode.
dude i made a joke that pirate software was going to make a crude MS paint diagram that doesnt really explain anything when i saw the first video. i didnt expect that it would become a fucking reality
@@ChrisMorray It's not his first really stupid take. He's charming when it suits him, which covers up a lot of idiotic opinions - this is just the first time he's said something dumb enough, loudly enough, for the pushback to be visible in the noise.
I'm an indie dev, and im 100% for this iniciative. First of all i dispise designing games as services when thay dont need to be. Not becouse idea of games as service is bad but becouse of psyhological trics used on players thare, that are manipulative at best. Secound its not hard to make single player option for the game while you are developing it. I agree that after development is finished it can take additional resources, and with some spaggeti code could require rewringing games. But what we argue here is that developers while developing the game need to think about servers shuting down. The problem with Thor is he is to stuck at thinking like a blizzard developer. In MMO games it should be the hardest to apply this initiative, and yet MMO-s are famous for private servers that are made without connection to developer server codes. Why developer should need server code for the game that dont exist any more?
>Why developer should need server code for the game that dont exist any more? The reason is simple. They need it if they decide to run it again, at some point. If your source files are available for free, you can't just sell your stuff again, because it's already in the internet. With current laws and agreements it's easy to resell the same stuff.
@@aldecotan But there are already situations where private server communities allow the original developers to re-take hosting completely to run the game completely as they like financially, and - since there have been private server communities - a large chunk of them are often supportive of the re-continuation of official support after years of having to figure out the server hosting themselves. For example, one of WoW's Classic Private servers respectively shut down their server once the official Classic server was announced. Many of that private server's community migrated into the official server and even helped with beta testing. This is one of the loudest examples, sure, yet there are many more like this. Framing these communities maliciously isn't helpful for the argument, and - instead - increases the risk of such malicious pay-to-play private server behaviour due to lack of developer-player trust.
@@SableLeaf I'm really surprised by that. For me, Blizzard is currently the clearest example of a developer that should never be trusted or respected due to their actions towards players. And so I was pretty much convinced that Blizzard had sent cease and desist letters to all the owners of WoW's Classic Private servers and that's why they were shut down. Hat's off to the players for this move though.
Thor well full anti consumer pro corpo mode and destroyed his own reputation in one day. Deleting Ross comments and refusing to talk to him was an icing on the cake.
> you shouldn't be able to decide what I get to play *2 minutes later* > you don't get to play apex with 5 people because that's not my idea of peak apex you can't make this up lmao
to play devils advocate, he gets to decide what's in his game cause he's making it. Your logic is like getting mad at an artist for painting a picture of a sunrise when you want it to be a sunset and being offended cause you interpreted it as "you can only buy my paintings of sunrises". No one is making you buy that piece of art, go and find someone who will paint you a sunset.
@@funnymanatwork "play" not "make". He's clearly thinking from an exec perspective, game is way past peak so shut it down (almost no dev loves this). If he's not making a game like this then he shouldn't have to worry. But even if he did mean "You don't get to decide what I make", then that logic is faulty too. There's plenty of rules devs need to follow if they want to market their games and release them on storefronts like steam. You can't put malware for instance. For GoG, they quality assess the game, and games generally need to be out of the box playable or at least easily fixable to be sold on GoG. GoG will not put your game on their store if it won't work without a lot of work from the consumer's side to tamper just to get the game to open. The "You can't tell me what to do" is a very elon twitter brained mentality. Everything obviously has rules that need to be followed. Besides, the way he's making it out to be (this is still assuming he's talking from a making games instead of playing games perspective which obviously isn't true), it sounds like he's being tortured and stripped of all cash. It doesn't, it's not a huge effort to make an end of life plan. Don't like dealing with that sort of stuff? Then don't make games that would require one (which is something almost no indie devs want to do anyway) If you don't like seeing dead games in your library (despite the fact that a lot of them can have decently sized communities, I saw someone announce that they got omd unchained working and back from the dead, absolutely insane and can't wait to play that again when I get the opportunity. This whole initiative just makes this process easier, OMD unchained could've had this happen to it soon after its service ended), then just don't play it. Steam also allows you to hide or completely remove games if you want. Thor is figuratively crying for a pro consumer move which won't affect almost all indie devs and most middle sized studios, and it's not a big deal and can even be preferable for big company devs who poured their hearts and soul into a game so it can be alive for people who truly want to play it. The only people it's harming (It won't impact execs and investors almost at all regardless, so even harm is a strong word. God forbid rich people are just slightly less rich) are ceos and execs.
Long time lurker and listener here, Unfortunately I'm in the camp of disagreement here Thor. WoW Classic became a thing because of Private Servers, I'm very certain you are familiar with the Nostalrius cease and desist/shut down back in 2015. The fact that Blizzard was able to shut down Nostalrius in the first place is because Blizzard owns the rights to WoW, SKG in the FAQ clearly states that it's not requesting IP's to be relinquished. I think it's a bit disingenuous to ask who would enforce it, The company you worked for prior has given you this example. Using Team Fortress 2 is also a poor example, Valve has no choice but to support the game in an official capacity because they overlapped a market of cosmetics which is shared with both DOTA 2 and Counter Strike 2. That's the fault of Valve if they planned to axe the game, if you're selling cosmetics and loot boxes for a game I as a consumer would expect the game to run and be playable as a product. If Valve were to shut down the game, then the market they cultivated for years would be disrupted. Players from their other titles would panic sell most likely, driving the price of high valued items down significantly and possibly to a crash. Valve would potentially lose a good chuck of money while also losing a stream of revenue. The game itself was able to survive, through community servers and private servers. TF2 was still being played by approximately 100,000 concurrent players still. It's nowhere near what would be considered a "dead game". Even during the Bot Crisis. In short it was primarily a Valve issue. Below were better examples such as Titanfall and honestly Little Big Planet would have served as a better example for your argument.
a lot of those 100000 players are bots, but the point still stands i feel like people constantly overestimate how many players it takes for a game to be playable honestly a couple thousand is enough to immediately find a server if the game is unranked
Titanfall 2 currently has a player made client called "Northstar" I believe, which allows people to still play the game multiplayer if they wanted and the single player is also still functional I think.
In the case of Blizzard shutting down private servers, Blizzard is still around and able to enforce their copyright. As he posits in the video at 2:39 , what if the company is dead and, as such, is unable to enfore their copyright? They can't, because they already don't have the money to keep the company afloat. This means that it's in an unscrupulous group's best interest to target smaller studios that would die from the failure of their live service game. Then said group can monetise the game that once belonged to the company they forced to shut down. I do agree that TF2 is a strange example to use. Valve is incredibly rich and, like you said, run by community and private servers. No further notes.
@@pravaris ip ownership doesn't just disappear, it goes to the parent company, publisher or the ceo of the company, who then can use the ip and copyright laws to enforce it and as many others have pointed out, nothing is stopping from someone else from running an alternative donation free server historically, in games that do have community servers, heavy monetization almost never flies
@@pravaris if there's no one to enforce the copyright then no one is hurt by server monetization either because the copyright holder simply does not exist
He's massive shill and he's attacked other devs' strategies in a way to make himself look better. People are just seeing behind his facade. Just look at Heartbound - alpha came out in 2016, was supposed to be fully released before 2018. He shits on Star Citizen(justifiedly) but he's doing the exact same thing - baiting customers with a "SOON" release date that's been delayed who knows how many times. And he's been deleting Ross' comment on his old video and then deleting any user comments that repost it, when they get popular enough to rise to the top.
in fact it cheers me on not to buy any games with bad devs which are mostly American companies. CD project red is "triple A" yet has legit business practices. Warframe, which is a free to play live service, is very good to their fan base. if players state "this is wrong, its a scam" they fix it. Heck, they even changed a rng plat loot create system for fur colors on pets after someone spent over 1,000 USD they refunded all the Plat he used then change it to be free. its just the pattern i'm noticing is if its USA company they will be scam artist in a suit. tho another nations don't do this type of stuff, another, then 1 bad apple out of 100. I'm ashamed of being American due to this. we used to be legit to providing the best services. Now we're just providing scams :/ like WHAT HAPPENED
There may well be thousands of developers quietly voting FOR the initiative, because most devs don't want their work to disappear as soon as a publisher loses interest. I'm a dev (and an EU citizen) and I voted for the petition, because games shouldn't disappear the moment they cease to be profitable.
That's okay. I'm done with him. We lived for decades without mega-corps pretending to release single-player games under the guise of a "live service". Client/server software combos were the norm, not the anomaly. You got access to the client. You got access to the server. TF2 has been running like this for decades, despite the bot problem. Killing these games is breaking the social contract we have with copyright and public domain. His arguments are weak and offer no solutions to the current problems SKG was addressing in the first f'ing place.
The argument of "You could construct a criminal scheme through which you could illegally obtain benefits from the law" isn't a good one. It is true that this law wouldn't - for obvious reasons - address that issue. That is because it is already criminal under several other laws.
Yeah he just outlined why individuals should not be allowed to sell goods because it incentivizes theft (so I guess we need to shut down ebay, craigslist, and other individual market places). OK, but that theft is still criminal, so maybe we stop it there.
Yeah he outlined why people being allowed to sell things is bad because it incentivizes criminal behavior. This is a known problem: see retail theft and reselling. Maybe we stop it at the point of the crime, not by banning other things because they *might* incentivize crime. First comment got auto-modded. EDIT: and now both comments are here... sigh...
@@ReturnOfHeresy this misses the fact that in your analogy individual market places are now FORCED to provide basically the blueprints for what they are selling. The point isn't "but people can maliciously attack them!" its "THIS INCENTIVIZES PEOPLE TO ATTACK"
@@snage-thesnakemage Rather than providing blueprints, it's more similar to right to repair. As in, they can't forcefully stop me from using or repairing something I purchased some time later after the transaction.
'You should not have control over what I have on my phone or Steam library' That applies to always-online live service games. They can somehow decide at what point they will disappear from my library outside of my control. Good job arguing against yourself
He contradicts himself a lot in this video. Video game devs shouldn't (after doing the bad practise of making a live service game in the firstplace) be forced to keep it online forever because that costs too much money and what if they go under then what. BUT also if you give people the ability to host these games themselves but at anypoint they charge money for it they are stealing profits from the game devs??? So which is it exactly? How is it both too costly but if you give people the chance to run it themselves at their own expense they can't ask for support to keep it running at their own expense?
@@NotTheWheel Charging money would be stealing the IP of said company for profit. You could fund private servers via donations instead, entirely skipping this moral dilemma.
@@finderOC Well yes of course that's what I mean. The donations themselves is to support the cost it takes to keep these things running. That's more in line with what I meant.
You should be able to keep your games in your library. And the devs should be able to shut off their servers when it costs more than it profits. He speaks out against the initiative, in part, because of this section 1:29 - 3:14 of the video. Under the initiative, if studios must release server binaries to the public at end of service, a monetary incentive is created for unscrupulous groups to force live service games from smaller studios to shut down, then run and monetise private servers without legal action from the now bankrupt studio.
@@NotTheWheel As he states at 1:29 - 3:14 , legally requiring studios to release server binaries at end of service creates a relatively easy opportunity for someone(s) to force a live service game from smaller studios to shut down, then run and monetise private servers without legal retaliation from the now bankrupt studio.
Ofc he would, he is missinforming his subs for his own interest, let's not forget he is a publisher and a dev, this would make him do something good for the people that buy his games, instead of shitting on them to get the most amount of money, he is just talking about his own interests, things like "developers need to be included in the conversation", then say "I'm one of the few that can talk about this because developers would risk their job if they talk about it", and then add "I don't want to talk about this anymore" says it all, he says they need to be included, but can't be included, but the few that can, won't because it's not in their best interest that this succeeds, it's clear that he just wants this to fail, because living in a non regulated space is more profitable.
this loser already banned him and bragged about how he has a 1k list of banned people, imagine being this old and going into power abuse just cz someone exposed your shitty arguments
Thor refusing to engage with the points that Ross and the SKG Initiative make because of how grossly they differ from his own beliefs and viewpoint shows a strange and visceral level of rejection of what is largely a reasonable proposition in concept, with the caveat of 'it's not that simple', and I think if Thor emphasized that much he would have good footing here. What he does instead is make nonsensical arguments as to the possible damage to developers done by such an initiative while disregarding the intentions of those who advocate for such an idea. SKG isn't particularly asking for dev resources to be dedicated to isolating and making functional 'single player' elements of a full game but instead retaining the fuctionality of server-dependent games where applicable and that would be held up through hosting game-compatible servers through published binaries/recompiled source code. While, yes, publishing server code is exploitable by causing damage to the company and developers constituting that company, that implies the scenario where the server code is freely available _while the game is in service,_ while the initiative targets games that are _exiting_ service and going onto EOL status. The publisher/developer would no longer be dedicating resources to the game at that stage. Private servers _could_ be selfishly monetized and _could_ end up with the playerbase for multiplayer games in EOL dying off, but on the same coin there is the idea that people would, in fact, find value in freely offering their own computing resources or rented computing resources to use instead. This also only applies to the model of massively-multiplayer or similar live service games where maintained large player counts are required for an intended experience. Arena shooters, MOBAs, strategy games, co-op games would be unaffected, as the communities for such games could reach critically low numbers and still be fully functional. Of this, Minecraft and many Valve titles offer a living example of the result of being able to host community servers through various methods, and the result is that some of the most popular servers are free to access/monetized through a donation model and not XaaS. There's also the viewpoint that many would locally host servers on their own machines for the sake of playing in private lobbies with friends, which is a legally protected/unrestrictable use case. He's only seeing it from one angle and misrepresenting what he interprets of the initiative as immutable when they're not and are yet still subject to legislation processes if it's considered. Nothing included in the SKG initiative is directly binding and any adherence to it at this stage is voluntary. Thor has an opportunity to propose amendments to the initiative that clarify uncertain terms using his expertise and append terms for the protection of developers and the live service model as it exists now but instead throws the whole thing in the bin. This level of disregard should have resulted in a refusal to comment, not a commentary that offers nothing of appreciable benefit for anyone involved. Thor recieves backlash that I find in some degree justifiable and he uses his platform to discredit an initiative that is clearly acting in good faith, if misguided. I'd venture to call it ad hominem with some of the language he's used. On a side note, I don't think his proposal of 'live service games should clearly state that they are wholly a service' works optimally either. I think the terms that result in the most fair transaction is when live service games are sold as a one-time purchase (including expansions that are acquired as a one-time purchase) and not a subscription (which automatically communicates that the game is, in itself, a service and would include the popular 'battle pass' scheme), that the underlying software is under perpetual license to use under the terms of the software license, but the services for which the publisher is responsible including providing updates and hosting infrastructure required for online features are a separate yet compatible service which is liable to be revoked according to the ToS for such services. Separating the game license and the service license associated with the game would reap the most benefit for all and would also cover hybrid models like with Helldivers 2 which offers access to game servers/online services alongside the game purchase but also includes a subscription model for specific online features/unlockable content. The battle pass is temporary, but the base game is not. Whether service-related content is retained or revoked is at the discretion of the publisher.
I feel like you're kind of ignoring the fact that some of these live service games have a lot more going for them than *just* being a social or competitive experience. They have beautiful worlds and stories, compelling gameplay experiences that can still be fun solo, things that would be lost if allowed to simply perish when a community has moved on. That's the part that bites, and the core of the Games Preservation angle. Yes, these games are at their best with large communities, and some literally do not function without a group of people to fill slots in lobbies, but there *are* games that still have something to them that is being lost when the game dies *besides* the communal play experience. Just, something to maybe consider. I get this isn't really some grand argument that nullifies the risks you've outlined, but I just don’t agree with dismissing the other facets of these experiences as being invalid or not worth consideration when discussing the preservation of pieces of art. Edit: Just to clarify, because people keep replying to this like I had an entire argument about why I fully support Ross' movement, I'm not trying to say I disagree with Thor's point about changing the language and being careful about how this kind of thing is approached, this comment was only about the percieved dismissal of value one could find in some of these live service games after their community is no longer large enough to provide the old communal experience. I'm not really lookin' to debate folks in a YT comment thread.
both guild wars games would be surprisingly enjoyable even if you were alone because they have enough going on outside the social experience. those games are a good example of being still functional in a reduced state should still be fought for. FF14 half its player base plays it exclusively for the story like a normal single player final fantasy game and wouldn't even care if the social aspect were missing. yeah FF14's story experience absolutely is worth preserving.
I don’t disagree but the problem is where do we draw the line? Who decides what should be preserved and what shouldn’t? If we take a hard line and have to preserve everything then that means preserving live service games in every state they’ve ever been in, which is completely impractical. So how do we decide what gets preserved and what doesn’t? We can’t, because almost everyone will have a different opinion on where that line is.
This is still ignoring the way EU legislation works, that is very different from US. I still disagree with Thor here. There is also the matter of the "disgusting" remark made in the previous video.
Americans as always know everything and everyone else is wrong xD All this "petition" does is giving topic for politicians to discuss about and prepare some ground to start making laws to protect consumer... in a future (probably A LOT OF YEARS)...
@@Chief-Spectre Yea my bad, generalisation is bad sorry for that, what i had in my mind when i was writing that was all those people who won't even check sources themself and rely on someone else to think for them.
@@mikemandalorian9226 Not even politicians only, in the EU, laws like this, also have people from within the industry helping, so there would be people from dev companies, people from publishers, consumers, and consumer rights people in the talk, to find a common ground, sure politicians would have the last say, but it's not like they wouldn't have inside from people in the industry.
@@Acuas Yes you're right. But as an European all these things for me are obvious and i forget that people from around the world might not know it. Thanks for clarification
The Nigtingale devs did something pretty neat. They essentially made a copy of the online version and turned it into an offline version in a way that both versions can be updated whenever necessary. It took them a few months but they also don't have a publisher that could've told them not to do that. Just as an example.
Hi, actual Dev here, as opposed to role-playing as one. The game that you're talking about has co-op online. An MMORPG Is coded completely differently than a co-op game. What you're talking about that takes a couple months in a co-op online game, takes years and years with an MMO. So I'm sorry to say this is completely irrelevant.
@@tsawy6 That's true. And not every dev can openly talk about templates like this. At least not the way how Thor does. If you have a big publisher, they essentially take away any kind of creativity in exchange for money from their sponsors. Which is not always the case, thankfully enough.
@@Manja500 It's still hosted on a server for the most part. They were only able to do that because they didn't have a CEO that would've fired them for writing an offline version that functions 1:1 the same as the online version.
"What about monetization of private servers?" If there are enough players to willingly pay for a privately hosted server for a game whose support has ended, maybe the company shouldn't have ended support in the first place. "This isn't actually preserving those games." If you think that just because the experience might be slightly different to the one people had while the game was still supported, every map, every model and every single gameplay mechanic should be deleted for everyone, that certainly is a take. In my opinion, a quite idiotic one.
As someone who plays private servers and mods like it's nobodies business, your 1st point is just straight up dumb. For an MMO say like BDO, that survives off of pay-for-convenience and costumes. A private server could offer those things for free but make the server extremely pay-to-win instead. Also want to mention that an MMO has long term time investments, and mmo private servers go down all the time without the need for cease and desist letters, killing hundreds if not thousands of hours of progress. If you played private servers you would know that his points are spot on exactly.
@@Antexous His point also assumes there'd be only one option for a private server when in reality there could be dozens, either competing with each other or existing just for a few friends. either way I don't see how this is a bad thing. one overly monetized private server pops up, people have an issue, so another one pops up with better monetization to compete.
@@Antexous And yet, those private servers for MMOs have never managed to kill the official game. Private servers didn't kill WoW, they didn't kill BDO, and they didn't kill Everquest. Your argument is cherry picking a hypothetical scenario that has never even happened. Besides, this is only about releasing server binaries WHEN THE OFFICIAL SERVERS SHUT DOWN. Most people are not demanding that the devs provide binaries while the game is actively in development (although that would be extra based).
It’s the same argument you see used against nuclear energy. “Oh ok, well nuclear/clean energy, isn’t 100% perfect so we should just keep relying on fossil fuels until the 100% clean and perfect energy source drops in our laps.”
Put simply, consumer protection is more important than business convenience. Thor disagrees with that sentiment, seemingly on the premise that a developer should be able to not only make whatever they want, but also be protected from any risk associated with certain business models at the expense of consumer protection. This is not how most industries' relationship with consumer protection works. There are rules you can play by if your goal is to make as much money as possible. You can ignore those rules and live with the threats and risks associated and hopefully make some, although less, money. And if none of that works out, you can make something purely out of passion as so many authors, painters, and sculptors throughout history have. Impacting developers negatively is a cost of consumer protection. Developers will adapt to the new legal ecosystem and yes, it will result in a different industry from what we have now. But what we have now is not the only way it can be. There will still be live service, there will still be mmos, but they will be different.
"...be protected from any risk associated with certain business models..." - if the risk is not currently inherent, and a movement for change would make that risk suddenly become inherent, then it's not about being protected from any risks, but rather about not wanting to inject new risks that very likely would discourage many developers from pursuing the now more risky game style. The type of game people are hoping to preserve would instead just stop being made in the first place, going forward. "There are rules you can play by if your goal is to make as much money as possible" - and in the existing paradigm, they do play by those rules; the issue is that this movement seeks to add a new rule, and players don't realize that it won't force developers in the direction that the players are hoping for. As previously mentioned, it will instead discourage developers from making these kinds of games in the first place, and that's why it's a bad idea.
and online gaming will die for good, dont EVER trust in good faith, if server binaries must be released at EoL, this will be used, abused, milked until there is nothing left but ashes, there will be corpo wars for game control, as this throws IP owning out of the window
If its an Online only game. It means that the only way to play it is online via their servers. You get banned for cheating, While you still have the software on your computer, you're unable to play the game. When the game dies. Sure the developers could tinker with the game to make it able to run on private servers, but its a cost that big companies won't wanna deal with, specially since its very risky to make a online game that could flop in a few months after release, and then add additional cost to make it still able to run privately? Small studios would avoid it even more as it could potentially be devastating for them. If they studio shuts down due to not having any money, who is gonna make that change? The petition should be that Single player games should be designed so that its playable after updates have stopped. Multiplayer games with campaigns in a single player setting, should allow for that part to be playable after servers shutdown. Studios should not be able to make a single player game that adds online features just to make it live service. And Live service games Should have clear instructions that the player buys a license, not a game. (Buy button should then instead be "Buy license"). If developers can and want to make changes to make games compatible with private servers after live service has been shut down, should be optional. Also theres the matter of licensing of brands in games. It is possible that they're simply not allowed to have it in the game, alive or not, after that license has run out. And yes there are old games with licensed models that you can still play but perhaps they had another type of license that made it eternal at that time. may not be the case today. Thor is on the same side, just not on the same page on how to reach the same goal. at least thats how I see things.
@@MrStyles784 can you say a example of thor's thesis actually happening? Like a new pro-consumer legislation killing a non predatory model in the gaming industries? Because if this didn't happened before than you two have just a idealistic view of the problem, you are just predicting consequences without imagining another bunch of variables that will exist when this get applied.
@@strangedogg5068 It's not hard to predict how we, as software developers, would react to legislation that would make specific types of software more trouble than they're worth. If I know that people actually have something to gain from sabotaging my product because of laws that would force me to give them proprietary software when I end support, I'll skip the headache and just focus on a different type of product that isn't hamstrung by that issue from the start. Legitimately live-service games aren't predatory - you're conflating them with games that don't need to be live-service, where developers injected unnecessary "features" to manufacture an excuse for the purpose of aggressive monetization. This initiative would certainly discourage developers from making the predatory variety, but the legitimate live-service games would by caught in the blast as well. It only seems like a good idea if you don't think about it too much.
Sorry pirate, I pretty firmly disagree with you here. First of all, you seem to be focusing on more mmo styled games, such as league of legends and Apex legends, while the example provided by the group was the crew. My understanding of the crew is that it was a racing game with both online and offline elements that was entirely shut down following the cessation of official support. Those games are the items of primary concern, however I also see no issue with making available the server assets for the more MMO focused games as well. You seem to be concerned about botting the game to death. I will admit I this is a possibility, however its more or less the cost of business of hosting an online game. You say at 3:04, that the proposed requirement would make the use of bots and corporate attack in order to steal assets and host a private server for a profit would be made legal. Thats just not true, the proposition wants game to be left in a playable state, the proposed requirements make no mention of compensated private servers, that is and has been a grey area. Botting is also a very grey area, and the usage you describe could be considered corporate sabotage which is illegal. However, either way the protection of the company's assets should be the concern of the company and/or the government, and should not impact the rights of the game owner. With regards to developer rights, you mention the difficulty of policing private servers after a game studio has shut down. Someone will almost certainly own the rights to that game, they may not choose to enforce their rights, but when a company closes down, it will almost certainly sell off their IP portfolio to maximize their liquidation value. If they fail to sell their portfolio then it will belong in part to the debt holders, or shareholders of the company, or they will have been disposed of as part of the liquidation agreement. If they choose to exercise their rights after the fact while there is contested ownership, thats a problem the owners need to settle in court, but either way the game ownership rights still exist, and if the ownership rights somehow dont exist, why would it matter if someone else makes a profit from it? The game has effectively entered the public domain. Further, if no one is making the effort to maintain a server, yes it should be able to be monetized. Its better for game developers, shareholders, and players if the game is being played in any form. Its not ideal, but the company that created the game in some way failed to make it profitable, thats not great, but if the game is still allowed to generate brand capital and recognition then thats still a bigger win for the company rather than simply letting this multimillion dollar asset disappear into the ether. The only entity that benefits from the permanent shutdown of a game is the studio when it re-releases it a few years down the line, charging the loyal player base a second time for a game they already bought. Also, if the game turns around and is successful enough on private servers then the game owner could theoretically leverage their ownership rights at a later date. Thats tough luck for the private server owners, and players but its a risk you take when running a server. On the bright side, game ownership for the player is preserved. Finally, games preservation is not the same thing as games maintenance. No, a private server hosted for you and your buddies might not hold all the glory of the game in its prime, but youre still able to play it, you're still able to experience the game, the game is preserved. You're acting like old games are like a dying animal that needs to be put down. Also do you honestly see no value in being able to explore old offline MMO's? Thats like saying "whats the point of history museums, we dont use that stuff anymore". And you're also assuming that all games supported in that method are going to be dead, but I've played several private servers for things like Maplestory 2 and dungeon fighters online, both of which died in the US, that had thousands of active players. So I just cant agree with your reasoning here. If you disagree so vehemently and truly do side with the players over the corporate machine thats actively killing our franchises, propose an alternative. I think the reason this series caught so much heat is it looks like you're just trying to shut down an attempt at games preservation.
The game preservation point is the most insulting thing to me. Old Roblox games can tell you quite a lot about the culture of both the site and the internet as a whole, and give a nearly perfect look at a lot of people's childhoods even without players present with them *and* old, broken scripts that only worked in older versions of the engine. If they can, older games can - the idea that they can't, and that you should just put them down, is incredibly disrespectful to the art form and to the people who put work into older games, and just shows me that Thor has absolutely no respect for the industry himself.
0:07 Reddit, comments, the public was saying that they disagree, so this "Yeah you were saying I am wrong, but actually I had hundred of messages that support me" sounds like gaslighting from the start to make people side with you a bit easier. I am not attacking you rn, I am pointing out what feels disingenuous to me. Also interesting to see who these devs are, and how many of them are corporate cogwheels or just people biased towards you because they know you and not Ross; 1:35 That's absurd to expect that a random Joe will be able to do that, and to believe that this will be happening en masse in the first place, it feels like paranoia to me to believe that (no offense, really). And overall, Asmon's take in his last video was right, "your brand damage is less important than my consumer rights"; 1:55 Maybe that's because the game is already abandoned and not moderated because of that? 2:17 If the game's profit is already $0, there's no loss in someone else monetizing their private server; 2:50 As I stated above, creator's abuse won't be happening as often as Thor tries to paint it here. Maybe like 1 game out of 10k will be abused like that, but that's a drop in the sea, positives that come out of that law overweight this by a long shot; 3:28 It won't kill live service games. It _may_ make it less incentivizing to make cash grabs for cash grabbing reasons, and there is no cultural loss in that as these game bring no cultural impact (which I personally care about more, but I could agree that's subjective), but games that actually bring something good or new to the table will still be developed 100%. And even then I strongly believe that cash grabs will still be developed at almost the same rate because they are made only and only to make a quick profit while the game is still alive, developers of these games don't care what will happen next. Or you say that it will be harder for such devs to develop new mtx-packed empty products because we'll have better games to play instead? Lol, make a better game then, that's not customer's problem and we are not at fault. It also seems that you think of all live service games being some kind of a "PvP kill all enemies" spiel like LoL or Valorant. There are games like Path of Exile that are pretty much single player experiences (yes there's trading and stuff, but the gameplay itself is complete PvE), that only require online connection because of some features like chat, trading, teams, leagues, etc. Why should it be lost only because of that? 3:47 No, it won't be incredibly difficult to make these games. Surely it will take some time to adapt, idk a year or two, but then it will become a norm and streamlined easily, with better decoupling and better architectural decisions. Maybe new libraries will rise up, new frameworks, open source even, like many multiplayer indie games made on Unity already depend on things like Mirror. Multi billion dollar companies should be able to do that, indie devs already do; 4:12 FF and LoL won't be affected by this law as it's not retroactive. Also LoL already have private servers, they are used during LAN tournaments; 5:04 First of all, it doesn't matter "why", if I want to keep what I paid for, I should be able to. Second, I personally would gladly play many games with my friends as we already do, and I am sure there are many people like that, not everyone is a hardcore WoW raider. Third, there are many games (even single player ones) that almost no one plays, like ones that are just very rare and lost to time, played on cartridges, etc, and only like 5 people have them. Shouldn't they be preserved? They absolutely should be; 5:53 The side that you presented is unreasonable, it either depends on unfounded fears of abuse, or takes like "preserving games like this makes no sense because I say so", or takes like "devs will have to do more work oh no". First two are extremely subjective, and the last one is based on either using existing games that won't be affected as the law is not retroactive as an example, or unwillingness to change - of course devs will have to adapt, but it will settle within a couple of years once architectural approach is fully redesigned. There are things like OSHA that also force you to do stuff in a certain way, should we abandon that? 7:00 Bans for cheating while the game is officially supported - alright, who opposes that? Bans for cheating on private servers when the game is abandoned - that shouldn't be company's concern; I am not a native English speaker and I think you felt that, just saying that in case some language I used sounds weird or aggressive
Also, I have no idea how he came up with "Dev needs to release server files at end of life" = "Anyone can monetize the private servers". Monetizing copyrighted content is already illegal under current laws, which this initiative is not trying to change. The abuse Thor is describing is illegal to perform now, and it will stay illegal. I agree with all of your points.
it is the same bullshit companies did when "everyone wanted to work onsite instead of home office", yet you havent met a single person who actually said that
@@ThinBear4 He literally said in the video - yes, monetizing copyrighted IP is illegal, but how are you going to enforce it? If the company has to do it, it's more money spent by said company on a dead game, and what if the company isn't even around anymore? I personally feel like even then monetizing private servers wouldn't be cool. If the government has to do it - how exactly?
@@freyawion5337 Well, how are we enforcing it right now then? Because private servers are already a thing. There's loads of dead games which are still going strong thanks to the communities hosting private servers. How is dev releasing the server files instead going to change anything in this context for the worse?
@@ThinBear4 Exactly. I am really disappointed that from Thors side it is not even considered to see a chance of transitioning to a secondary cycle of life service where the dev or original publisher gives another parties a license with support for private servers and earning a little extra after their primary life cycle has expired before giving it for free as abandoned ware (in a tertiary life cycle). There is no reason to not want a legal basis for that being possible!
Your take on preservation is very misunderstood.
People dont want to preserve games because they think there will be a day where it'll be popular again. People want to preserve games because they want the option to play the game, period.
We're seeing this through the fighting game community and Mavel vs Capcom. There was a whole movement years ago to remaster the older games because there was no way to play them officially. Eventually, Capcom was able to get momentum and now we have the MvC Collection coming soon! Will it outpace Street Fighter 6? No, but that wasnt the point! Now there's an official way to play these ingluential fighting games again.
I dont think that's a big ask, even for live service titles going forward. Devs are smart and consumers are smart too.
As Louis Rossmann said on this, "If this throws a wrench in the works, then this seems to be a wrench that needs to be thrown."
The thing about wrenches is that there is a lot of unintended collateral damage that people don't seem to be thinking about. This is a short sighted and reactionary view of the problems and won't work out the way you expect in the long run.
@@BraamBafflehelm "Can we PLEASE think of the companies!! They'll lose money and this CAN'T HAPPEN!"
But what about unintended collateral damage to gamers? Or we supposed to pay $99 + tip, bend over and say thank you Mr. Developer for using lubricant today ☺
@@BraamBafflehelm I don't see why a live service which requires an online connection to check cheating/currency manipulation, your friends list and events cant be made into offline. The game runs locally all you would need to do is REMOVE the server check and I can play it (as well as all the events), as everything runs localy. That is 95% of live service games. MOBAS and MMOs as well as shooting games have a solution for MANY years already, take WOW, Vainglory (MOBA) and CS 1.6.
They have all preserved their respective games as well as many others. The ONLY game I can think off would be flight simulator as that is on the cloud because of the nature of the game. However that can also easily be made into and offline game by making the ground "2D" thus the size of the game isn't a problem. OR simply force it to advertise like FF15 and other subscription based games.
Exactly lmao. Imagine if people stopped preserving certain paintings because they "weren't popular enough."
Funny thing, is Thor and Louis agree on the issue. Also if the consumers are so smart then why even ask for this, why not just make the game local only why would you even need a dev to do it?
Its actually pretty simple, if you design your game specifically with anti-consumer practices in mind, don't be surprised when the consumer starts hitting you back.
Valve has multiple live service games and people have always been able to host their own servers however they like.
If you are anti-consumer, the consumer is going to be anti-you.
@@Brettlaken Very true. And I don't think killing a game service is wrong. The problem is that you sold the game copies.
Just change your wording dude, there's no code change needed, tell the customer CLEARLY that they are renting / leasing your services, not buying your game and you can continue your business model, nobody would care.
That's why Lol and apex arguments are flawed, those games are f2p, nobody has the expectation of eol for those games, because nobody bought them...
Clearly Valve believes the positives outweigh the negatives and the benefits of allowing and at least somewhat moderating this is worth the cost
You would hope so, and I would hope people would vote with their wallets, but people are still buying Ubisoft games despite being screwed by them repeatedly for at least a decade.
@@arturpaivads Well, they also need to set some terms for the rent. Imagine trying to rent a car, and the company told you that you pay a one-time non-refundable fee to rent the car for a completely random time frame. This is obviously an unreasonable and unethical deal. It's not just the wording, they also have to change how they operate. For example adding a legal minimum for warning before servers shut down, sorta like the legal time frame landlords are forced to give to allow their tenants to vacate.
@@iminumst7827 You're completely right
Didn't the "botting a game until it dies" almost happen to Titanfall 2? And guess what saved it? Northstar, a community run-private server launcher whose creators were in direct contact with EA, and even helped fix dangerous bugs in the game. I think community servers are a great idea, and possibly the best way to preserve a game going forward.
@@ReloKai And who can say if Northstar was responsible for the botting in the first place? Who knows...
It is a good solution, but it’s not viable for all games, which are also targeted by the initiative because it does not specifically state that it doesn’t
A lot of these multiplayer games would require server binaries to be released for communities to be able to get them running, which as stated in the video would promote developer abuse.
Northstar is a very rare case where a lot of players get into TF|2 because of Apex, and OG players don’t like the direction of the series. This combined with titanfall 2’s small lobby count allows for them to run a private server hosting platform allows for a lot of people to make a bunch of lobbies. Which honestly is rather genius, because it takes off the requirement for lobby servers. But the downside is that it requires dedicated server hosters without any income going to them
In the case of games like apex, or MMO’s it is not possible to preserve them, and even if you could it would require allowing developer abuse.
That decision should be with the owner of the game - which is not the consumer, but the creator. It is that simple.
Theres probably a lot of contracts going on with EA in this example tho. So its not like anyone forced the server stuff out of EAs hands.
EA most likely could've just refused and strike down any attempt at building private servers, like Nintendo would probably do.
And besides Titanfall 2 isnt even part pf the issue discussed. I just recently played through the campaign without any problems and I was wondering a bit why the multiplayer option wasnt working but I guess I know now. But the singleplayer still works perfectly fine.
I feel private servers and nostalgic communities are getting horribly underrated. I also think it's a companies job to protect against bots and exploiters, and the successful companies are doing fine at it.
You can't just bring up the bot issue with TF2 and not bring up that community run servers were for the most part complete safe from them due them having active maintenance and moderation, that's not honest.
yeah like we're not dumb, that argument assumes we're dumb
I mean, I don’t know much about these kind of things, but I feel like this doesn’t take away from the danger of the botting incident. I feel that both are separate topics that don’t really interact with one another. I saw another comment about titanfall 2 that seemed like much more of a correlation, where community servers actually helped counteract the botting.
guys oh my god im pretty sure he just didnt know lol
you guys assume ill intent so quickly but he probably just saw how the internet so widely kept saying that "tf2 is dead valve didnt support it" and thought it was an obvious example. he's the blizzard guy, not the valve guy.
@@Chilevec shouldnt he do more research before speaking on the issue if that's the case? At what point does his ignorance become malice if he's going to speak about these issues? I'm not saying he is malicious, but if you're going to use something as an example - you should at the very least understand the example youre using to understand if it's actually going to bolster your argument or not.
You're basically saying "This guy is probably so stupid that he read stuff online, didn't confirm any of it, then spoke to millions of people as an authority on the topic" .. So, the question must be asked, at what point does that stop being ignorance and become malice?
@@AlmarWinfield Ah okay, now that you bring it up, that would be more ignorant than I thought when he's trying to be so thorough.
That said, what I was getting at is that in his shoes, the entire internet has been flamed with "Valve servers are getting botted and destroyed, the game is unplayable." In his shoes, especially without TF2 knowledge/experience, I would not expect there to be more to the story - that being the community servers and how TF2 actually started off being a community run game (the latter half I _actually_ didn't even know until these comments, and I have 770 hours in the game and owned it since like 2011, compared to Thor who I bet hasn't even touched TF2).
Point being I can still see if Thor didn't research it because the information laid out to him already seemed conclusive enough and was already such a widely used example in other discussions, and in that case, I don't think that's malicious at all. However, you're right, it would be very uncharacteristically uninformed compared to how we're used to Thor being.
(Editted for paragraph indents because oh my god, I can never type anything concisely.)
You claim to speak on behalf of developers, but I can use the same persuasion routine as you and say that ~as a developer~, you do not speak for me. In your previous video, you called the initiative "disgusting", but I find your views to be pretty insulting to game developers as creative artists. I am a programmer for a large AAA studio and even if my creative freedom is much smaller than those in other departments or in smaller studios, I still find my job to be very creatively fulfilling. I am not just a robot who completes my tasks before moving onto the next task.
Games are not just products to purchase or services that end, they are works of art that hundreds of people spend several years of their lives to create. It's hard work as I'm sure you know. But you cannot seriously claim to be taking the pro-developer stance when saying that instead of peoples art continuing to be made playable by fans for years to come while it is no longer financially viable for the studio to do so, it's better for it all to just vanish into thin air? When games can now be in development for almost a decade if not longer, do you feel nothing for the developers who can no longer play their own games in fewer years after release than it spent in development? They spend so much of their limited time in the industry making something that ultimately disappears as if it never existed to begin with, nobody can ever play it again for the rest of time, does that really sound like a better reality to you than one where companies simply upload their closed source compiled server binaries to the internet?
When the servers are no longer being officially hosted, from that point on it means nothing to me financially what happens with the game. But people playing my games is why I do my job in the first place. It would mean the world to me if someone goes out of their way to continue my work where I or my company no longer can, even if they make a profit off of my labour in doing so, the only impact it has on me is that something I helped create can continue to entertain and inspire more people.
I do not understand how you can be an indie developer as you are, and yet completely disregard games as an artistic medium built by creatives and enjoyed by fans.
man that reminds me of Battleborn. Game died a year after release. it was so unique and quirky. i was always sad about it being gone, but i never thought about how the devs must have felt after how many years it must have taken to make.
Even though I'm not a developer, this is a large part of the principle for why I support this initiative (I have signed for the petition I was eligible for). Games as an art form are what I am interested in seeing preserved. I don't understand how Thor can dismiss the worth said art might have to someone simply because people aren't there to play it in large quantities. I guess because it's not important to him, he doesn't think it would be important to anyone else either?
It's something Ross goes into in a much older "Dead Game News" video of his about-I think it was Wild Star? He's interested in exploring worlds, even empty worlds that were intended to be filled with other players. In my opinion that can be an interesting and unique transformation of the art, for it to go from a world filled with real people, and activities for those people to engage in, to an empty one. To me there is still worth in experiencing art like that. Same kind of appeal as that one channel that visits abandoned malls and amusement parks and such. One man's trash and all that.
Personally, I would rather live in the world Thor describes where bots become a rampant issue-something I don't really believe would become as big an issue as he says it would, but I can't say for sure that it wouldn't-yet people still at least get to engage with the art in some way. Instead of the world we currently live in where art is destroyed or lost to time for no other reason than it no longer being lucrative enough to allow people to experience it, even though in most cases there are things that could be done to make it playable at no further cost to the developers and publishers beyond what would be required to implement the necessary changes. One of the greatest advantages of the digital medium is delivering information across all corners of the world and forward into the future, and yet it is being squandered.
this is not a good take. and its hard to believe your an engineer with this opinion. how is his opinion insulting to us? he's protecting us. explain please...
Thank you very much. Game development for me is only hobby(I submit patches to Xonotic, did some projects with minecraft), and it is sad for me to see Thor protecting buisness models and hiding it behind protecting genres.
@@hrotger thanks for proving to me that you have an opinion based on emotion, not logic. i stated that i think Thors opinion is protecting devs, and asked the OP to explain. instead of explaining...you call me a "pathetic fanboy". very telling.
(also, if you think im a fanboy of Thor, thats hilarious. i only watch programming streams, Thor doesnt program on stream, he just games and talks about programming. so....)
Since he mentioned TF2 I think it's worth mentioning that the game didn't even launch with official servers, people had to host or join community made servers to play. Official Valve servers weren't implemented until 2011, 4 years after the game's release, and people are still able to play on custom servers to this day.
heck
minecraft is still like that lol
there are realms, but they are still controlled by players, to some extent
all other mc servers are run by private people and entities
Servers that are "monetized" to an extent, by the way.
Exactly he is a disingenuous prick who just lives listening to himself. Shame it took me so long to realize
@@UnintelligibleYT oh no! Whatever will we do! The gigantic company making billions and completely ignoring their game is missing out on the... 300$ a custom server makes sometimes.
@@UnintelligibleYT Don't see what the problem is. The developer could always go after monetized servers if they wanted to. Games shouldn't be killed forever just because a third party can find a way to profit off of them. Hell, UA-camrs and streamers profit off video games by playing them.
The "The game is already dead, there's no point to making servers available." idea is so strange to me. People make servers for 20+ year old games and still get playerbases. Lan events can host competitions on fun old games with very low barriers to entry. Just because you don't think it would get players right now, doesn't mean there won't be nostalgia servers down the line.
I believe EverQuest is about to get another Expansion, and the playerbase for that MMO is a few hundred, at best. LotR Online is also in a similar camp, where content is still being made for a few hundred people. Warhammer Online has private servers, and I believe the community holds events, and whatnot. So, if these MMO's can do this, why cannot "Live-Service" games? Sure, something like ANTHEM is better off dead, but what about EVOLVE? I'm sure a few hundred, at most, would've loved to carry on with the game. Connect to IP - We did it nearly two decades ago, why can't we do it now?
Additionally, the risk is not about games that are already past their prime - the risk is that the proposed legislation would inadvertently provide an incentive for malicious actors to try to get a game shut down prematurely so that they can start monetizing private servers
He didn't quite connect it very clearly but it goes back to the first example. If, by law, when games die, they were required to provide the ability to run private servers, people can take advantage of that, attack the game so it dies, then run their own servers and monetize on someone else's work.
Not all of games can do that, but all developers would be on the hook because of it. Try understanding the motivation of devs versus people on the internet and you will soon find exploits as Thor said. If developers are not able to protect their creation due to these exploits, soon there will be no live service games anymore, if the players won't take the developers side on this, games will no longer be created. The idea that all developers have all the tools, knowledge, legal support, and a support team just to take care of a game that does not generate profit is naive, that's why there is no point in making servers available. Indie game companies don't have enough manpower to tackle that, making a live in game dev as it is today is not easy, with that initiative, it will be near impossible.
@@cheepdude97 how does this benefits him in particular? please explain.
Comment from Running with Scissors Software on Ross's most recent video:
Thanks for the shout out! We feel obliged to explain our position now, and why we care about what is going on here.
We’re just an indie dev with no ‘live service’ plans, but we are a publisher and developer that have worked to keep our own games playable for literally decades at this point - even if it’s not in our best business interests, hence why we wholeheartedly support this initiative.
In the unlikely event we did end up with a live service game, there would be an end of life plan built into it - if nothing else but so that our own developers, that would have spent years working on it, would not see their work just vanish one day.
For our part, as long as we are around we endeavor to keep our games playable, at the very least on PC. We’re not perfect, but we do try ,given our limited means as a truly independent studio. Here is our (obviously written with our own bias) track record:
POSTAL (1997) - We no longer update this game, so we made it open source and made it free. We have in the past rolled community updates into the base game, and will always try to make sure it survives any OS version updates. But if the time comes we’re not around, at least the source is out there for anyone interested to fix it up, should some OS update breaks it.
POSTAL 2 (2003) and its DLC Paradise Lost (2015) - We sell and even update this game to this day. We’ve had to fight to keep it working during Windows and Linux updates. Sadly, Mac support is no longer that easy due to them dropping 32-bit support, although we did make a serious effort to try and get it sorted. We can’t release the source code because Unreal Engine 2 is not open source, which is a shame.
The Mac situation bothers us though, so hopefully we can work that out one day. It was sold to Mac users, so they should still be able to play it, regardless of the paradigm shift Apple introduced with their hardware and software.
Postal III (2011) - Not a game we developed or published, but we fought hard to get the game working again on Steam after the DRM servers went down (that we never agreed should have been a thing in the first place). We didn’t profit from that, it was just the right thing to try and do for those that paid for the game, and thankfully it worked out.
POSTAL Redux (2016) - It’s come to our attention that there is a generation of CPU’s the game now crashes on due to it’s very old Unreal 4 version, so we’re currently looking into fixing that by updating the engine version, but it’s turned out to be more complex than we thought so it’ll be a while. This game is not a massive seller for us to be honest, but we can’t ignore the inconvenience for those it affects.
POSTAL 4 (2022) - Still very much working on this game, about to add co-op, and soon workshop/modding support. Thankfully Epic does allow the source code sharing of Unreal 4 and 5 games, unlike Unreal 2, so once the workshop is out, it’ll be safe in the community's hands should we ever fold. And we’re looking to make sure that the servers for co-op can be maintained as long as anyone wants them to be.
Anyway, to anyone that made it this far, thanks for reading. We just figured it was worth explaining why we’re supporting this cause - it’s because our own game preservation is important to us, and therefore understand why overall game preservation is vital.
We obviously do care about money and paying the bills so we can keep supporting our devs, but we also care about the community - so we take the L in some situations financially, in order to look after those that help get us here.
Best of luck in your endeavors Ross! And those supporting him!
@@JakTheLombax Absolute W
MVP devs vs Blizzard devs
That's really cool that they run their company that way. That's no reason to force every company to operate that way.
this is great, I've always loved that they do this. The big problem is, like they said, they have no live service games. You can run an end of life plan on games like this and be completely prepared, the problem is with something that's massively multiplayer in my eyes. Games like WoW and a few others have released their server binaries while still being active, yes, but a lot of studios don't want to do this as it will detract from the number of players directly within their own servers: especially when the game is a subscription-based one. Final Fantasy 14, for example, refuses to release server binaries, as this would encourage players to stop using Square's servers, stop paying for their subscription, and just play the game on private servers who would be able to update just the same as the main servers, if on the concession of a few days/weeks later. Conversely: I do believe that, when a game studio decides the live service is at the end of its life cycles, releasing server binaries should be a thing they're at the very least encouraged to do so that loyal players can set up an environment where the game can be preserved in its final state and players who do still enjoy it can play it. I have thought and thought about this though: If, by chance, a company like Square were to go bankrupt tomorrow (not happening, i know). What legal/software stops would be put in to stop someone from running a server copy and forcing people to pay in order to join? They would effectively be stepping into the shoes square left behind and saying "no i'm not gonna update the game or balance anything you don't like or fix any bugs, but you need to pay me just like you did the company that you paid to do all those things." The company could put something in TOS, but then they're bankrupt - who's gonna enforce that? Well, we could make it an industry thing and give any game dev company rights to press charges over that sort of thing for defunct companies - but who's gonna make sure they pay attention to even care? The idea of keeping a game around after server shutdowns is a great one and i'm more than happy to entertain setting precidents on the topic, but we need to make sure we do so in a way that's not going to either discourage the creation of these games from over-regulation or destroy the communities around these games from under-regulation. Do I agree with the petition that started this whole conversation? Not entirely. Great idea, in all fairness, but it's been taken and spun in the absolute worst possible way. The platform it's running on is that "oh this isn't a super important conversation, just slap out a law that says "don't shut down live service games EVER," wash your hands, go home, and pat yourself on the back." That's wrong: this is a VERY important topic to the health and future of gaming as a whole. If this gets done wrong or thoughtlessly, we may never have another MMO again, because devs will be too scared to risk making something that's going to do nothing but drain the money from their pockets until they're bankrupt, and then when the company shuts down they're in legal trouble again because "we have no money and can't pay for the servers, so we can't follow the law and keep them running." Let's look at this like the problem it is, open a discussion in grand forum - not a petition that will get one person's voice heard - and speak with the devs of these games in a way that they're willing to talk with us about it so we can come to a consensus that not only keeps the games around in a way that the players are happy with, but allows the devs an out when they feel that supporting that game or service becomes untenable or potentially damaging to their company.
@@myschiefmuintir7357 it doesn't say "run the servers forever. It's leave the game in a "reasonably playable state" that could mean "access the game map in a completely enpty world you can run arounf in" you could argue is still a level of functional.
Moreso than "open to the main menu with a "sorty we're closed" sign.
It doesn't even affect subscription games.
And let's be real, if your 8 player arena shooter absolutely cannot function without a cemtral server, you are lying.
Mate, again : most "live service" games are being sold as products, not services (with exception of subscription based games). As far as my understanding goes : no amount of EULA or TOS (to a certain extent can be called "club rules") do not change that these GAAS (games as service) are sold as products and bricking games thru turning off servers at the end of life for said product is retroactively destroying what was sold as a product.
you do mention the wording that needs to change about GAAS, yet seem to ignore or handwave away the aspect of perpetual license points under which falls any game that is sold with one time purchase!
Also I find the whole :"if this kind of law/rule gets implemented, we'll get less GAAS or multiplayer games" which, while is probable, to me sounds more like "clutching of pearls".
-Yamiks
You have no idea what you're talking about dude. Games as a SERVICE games are sold as services not goods (what you seem to be confusing for as "product"). It's literally in the name. Games as a service. (i.e: they are not selling you a good. they are selling you a service".
If you bought a physical copy of The Crew - the chattel ownership you gained from that transaction is the physical disk that comes in the box. If you bought a digital copy, you bought a license to a service because that is what Steam, GOG, etc are providing for your payment.
If you want free access to actual substantive sources to inform your opinion, i recommended googling " consumer law uni notes" . You seem to be severely misinformed and so your condescending tone comes off as unbecoming
no they are not because they would say rent instead purchase. purchase has a distinct meaning.
@shanegale6143 actually, in the EU, it was confirmed that, yes indeed, if you buy a games as a service product, you do indeed own the game!
Thank you Ross Scott for teaching me about this fact with legal documents shown and provided in a video!
@@ConfusingZark-hj5bt Maybe in your fantasyland where you learn from youtube You can purchase a service. Look it up yourself dude, i already gave advice in my post
@@SprDrumio64 There are 0 legal documents in louis rossmans vid. I am again begging you to stop learning specific legal principles from youtube
I wonder how the consumer base will respond to the first game that plainly states "You don't own this game that you just spent $100 for. We do. We are granting you a temporary license to play it until we say otherwise". Have that message popup on startup. Right before the company logo and safety advisory. I mean... that's how (live service) games operate right now, but I'm talking about witnessing the shock of waking up a sleeping public to the reality of it. I don't think they'd respond well to it and it would create a public backlash for the publisher/developer which they would rather not deal with, which is why they hide it in an EULA no one ever reads to begin with.
witnessing? i suggest delving into gacha games cause it happens often there, people spend 1000$ here even though they know the games will eventually reach EOS at some point of time.
Honestly though, that would be a good thing. If *anybody* hides critical information in the fine print of a legal agreement they know nobody is going to read, then they know damn well what they're doing is wrong.
I liked Thor's suggestion in Pt.1 where he suggested a community curated list of games that have "always online" single player or other scummy business practices so consumers can avoid them. The only way things will ever change is when customers or legislators stop making those scummy business practices profitable.
To be honest I hope it does happen that way.
Consumers deserve to be informed of what they are purchasing.
Not tied up in a TOS or EULA. At point of sale front and center.
It would also have to be on all the advertising as well, to make it clear for the -buyer- renter. Because you know that people will -buy- rent the game and not read the message.
Yeah. Compared to likely public backlash this initiative looks tame.
I don’t think you researched TF2 situation fully.
The reason why TF2 was bot-infested was also Valve’s huge fault. The bots were infesting the game on their servers from matchmaking, while community servers(which is a thing that Ross wants in the games) were a much safer place to play. While the game was suffering from Valve’s laziness and not wanting to do the “treadmill work”, they continued to add new monetizations in the game regardless. The bots were attacking the game for 7 years and the whole ban wave wasn’t even their initiative, but purely their contractor’s(Joshie, who was hired to work on Steam Deck).
It also doesn’t help that the reason why it was so easy for bots to take over the game was because of how awful Meet Your Match is. It’s an update which nearly killed TF2. The sessions were short, you have to wait so long until the voting ends and even if you voted for the same map, the game will force you to load the map regardless and etc. The game motivated you to leave in every way, which made it so easy for the bots to fill entire lobbies. This system is still here and it’s just a question of time when the bots will come back and invade the games because of this shit.
Valve nearly killed this game and let this game nearly be killed by bots. Your argument doesn’t work here at all.
This 👆 shows how much Thor has researched everything he’s talking about… (which was not nearly enough)
that and he framed it in a way that people botted TF2 to take over the game to prove his point of using bots to force a game to shutdown and monetize community servers. But as far as im aware thats not at all why people started botting the game.
He knows, he's just trying really hard to misinform and make a case in bad faith.
@@maddog130 these people hosted bots because they wanted to boost their ego and see people giving them attention.
@@Brunoki22 exactly
The scenario you describe is coporate sabotage, which is already illegal. This movement does not legalize corporate sabotage. If what you described happens, it would be just as illegal then as it is now.
Bro wtf why does he have to exaggerate so crazy
I'm not familiar with corporate sabotage laws, what laws would the things he listed break specifically?
This is not corporate sabotage, Chinese gamers have entire online syndicates that farm gold or bot in games, they are entire businesses. They will if given the opportunity destroy your game and your company in order to gain legal methods to operate their own private servers.
There is a reason Chinese gold farmers and botters are there because it's not illegal to do so in china, The chinese government or police do not give a single fuck about these criminal organizations, and trying to do something against them saying "but it's illegal" they will laugh in your face and continue anyway.
These are real threats, And putting shit like this to law with vague wording, or ambiguous reach is going to destroy live service games forever. Some people might say that's a good thing, sure. They don't play those types of games, But how can you justify saying that to people that DO like playing those games.
@garynemis9041 Product tampering at a minimum, I would think.
It's a scenario that could play now out of spite between companies selling a similar service. Yet it doesn't really happen. And in that scenario, I want to think the company is dying due to reasons out of the sabotage in the first place. Because if your dying due to DDOS attacks maybe it wasn't too smart to make the game live service in the first place, if you can't deal with networking problems that every live service (not only videogames) face.
Also, releasing the binaries to the public defeats the purpose of an attack to profit out of unnofficial services. People don't have to pay to keep playing, and companies can take legal actions. But if your company is dying anyway, Why would you bury the game as well?
What we are really living is a scenario where companies can create a live service game, charge 60$ for a copy, and if the game flops or reaches end of life, remove it completely without any responsability towards the costumers.
Devs creative freedom should not be above of costumer protection.
I feel like a lot of these points are non-sequitur. For example, after "what if the companies aren't around anymore?" the obvious response seems to be "then who is harmed by the IP being public domain?"
owner of the ip. When company dissovles someone can buy those rights off them.
The company not being around does not mean that an IP is public domain.
@@TKDMwastaken and at the point of them buying the rights off of the company, the responsibility for leaving the game in a playable state would also be transfered to them.
@@TKDMwastaken The only time the owner of the IP would be harmed is if they actually had a buyer.
But in any case, if the IP isn't abandoned, then the answer to who would stop monetisation of a private server would be "the owner of the IP" and therefore Thor's tangent about there being an issue with enforcing it is moot.
So back to the original point I was making: what was the point of the rant about monetisation of a private server and how is that a counterpoint to the initiative?
@@Hellspooned2 The implication I got from Thor's tangent there was that the he was talking about a hypothetical scenario where the IP was abandoned (inferred because he suggested there'd be no one around to enforce it after the company was gone). In the event the IP is not abandoned, then the entire line of questions about enforcement is entirely pointless. It would be the responsibility of the owner of the IP.
The initiative isn't about monetising private servers.
If you are as representative of game devs as you claim to be, then the only thing you've convinced me of is that gaming industry won't acknowledge or change their poor business practices without government intervention.
This. all he said "we do not care about costumer, just don't put any accountability on our shoulders."
True.
My take from this is if I start making moves in getting into the industry, I will never ever align with this unethical side of game development. I simply can't stand this wishy washy attitude towards these issues. If you know what the problems are... how about you maybe start going to policy makers as a person in the know to maybe regulate against bad practices... but No that would probably impact your bottom line so why bother.
Oh wait.. that's what this exact proposal is trying to bring attention to *facepalm*
@@0Lameran0 That's as much of a bad-faith interpretation as you could have made. I'm impressed. If that's what you got out of this, I'm sorry for you.
@@h3llraizer ad hominem. I am not the person who makes money from views or even got a follower count that will influence millions of people. He being bad faith bigger issue than random commenter. Which in fact he is. Its so wild that people like you trying to defend a guy who has been in video game industry for 20 years, attack on a doodle of concept art and call for scrapping whole thing just because doodle is "too vague" to work on. EVERY. SINGLE. PROJECT. HAS. INFACY. STEPS. This guy acts like these steps never happens and expects fully ironed out law draft from normal people. There is no fvking way he isnt aware process, of course he is bad faith acting, if that wasnt case he wouldnt refuse to communicate with ross guy. THOR is absolutely without a doubt acting in bad faith. Or selfishness, whatever you like to call it is anti-consumer, biased towards only developers.
"Reaction was really positive"
I'm sure it was, if you scroll far enough, lol.
"It's not preservation. You're making it live on in a way that doesn't make sense"
Because dead and unplayable forever is better
He worked for Blizzard, he wants games to be a service so he can keep getting richer
@@OutsiderLabsworked being passed tense, he won't get richer now...
Yeah Thor is not logic-ing today, it's weird to see this side of him that's too stubborn to listen
also Thor: «you should not have control over what is in my Steam library or on my phone»
So you want free labor in cotton fields of codding? Because guess what, without source code you cannot update game to new hardware and software
Didn't City Of Heroes shut down, only to be kept alive in private servers before the people running said servers got granted a license for the IP not long ago? Is this not a valid case study as for how this can be done???
Sounds like it is, quite a few old MMOs are surviving on community servers.
There are cases of non GaaS being handed over to mod community, IL-2 1946 comes to mind. There was another where the fans raised $6k and got the source code (it was a naval / submarine game where the sub part or MP netcode never got finished).
I'm sure many more examples exist. Treating "game developers" as high priests is wrong. We've seen many such cases were the modding community resurrected or kept games alive way longer beyond their hype.
_Also, I assume because of this hackneyed defense that Mr. Thorson is developing a GaaS game? What's the title of the game?_
If the City of Heroes did it, then why even have a law against it? The issue is not that private servers don't work or can't work or that. It's about forcing the devs into something they may not want to do. There have been a few games that shut down, only to be sold and revived in some other country. Say a dev wants to shut down their servers and don't want private servers available in case some other publisher decides to buy their game. That is a very valid reason not to allow any private servers to operate.
One example. Doesn't mean everyone wants this
Not an exhaustive explanation but the events basically went as follows(fact checks welcome):
COH shut down and effectively the entire game code, server and client got leaked. A private server was set up, and at the same time, multiple efforts were under way to reverse engineer the game code/create successor games to fill the void.
Fast forward several years, the private server's existence becomes known, things blow up, the code gets put out to the public, multiple other private servers(now open to the public) are spun up, lots of press happens, player counts are pretty high at this point(still are). Those private server dev-teams make modifications to the base game(qol, optimization, new costumes/powersets/missions, etc) effectively doing active development.
The CoH: Homecoming team, one of the larger of said private servers, enters negotiations with the original IP holder to set up effectively a non-profit license to run their server, and as of recently, obtained said license. This had the benefit of removing the sword of damocles that pretty much all non-sanctioned private servers exist under.
I personally feel that their route, while time consuming, was the correct one, but it only really worked because of a rather improbable confluence of events. Had the servers not already existed, I think it unlikely that the IP Holder would have given them the time of day, or the chance to prove that they could be responsible with the IP. That being said if more companies of games that have shut down would allow this style of deal, I'd be gleeful.(Battleborn, Wildstar, Evolve stage 2, etc)
As much as I love you Thor, I highly disagree with your stances especially the part about "the game has run its course, theres no need to preserve it."
Gotham City Imposters and Battleborn were two of my favorite games that you can't play anymore due to GCI being delisted and Battleborne having its offical servers turned off but thankfully there are two wonderful communities that are keeping the games alive and Im so thankful for them.
i am an archivist and preservationist by nature, i would love to be able to launch any dead MMO and walk through through it like a museum. i also believe that art has the right to die. see: banksy's self destructing painting. this is a deeply philosophical issue not something easily solved by a lazy initiative
"There is no need to preserve" a thing I paid money for? Shouldn't that be my decision as the consumer?
@@Borissh89 That's Thor's core point, in the TOS you agreed that you DIDN'T own the game, but people don't read that, so it should be clearly listed at point of sale.
@@itskdog and something that people gloss over, is that this has ALWAYS been the case, even with physical media. Of course it's much harder to revoke that licence for physical media (at least up until consoles started requiring an internet connection, and single player games requiring 3rd party launchers). They're also ignoring that he very clearly states, many times, that the whole practice of calling it a sale when it's not is scummy, even if legal.
For the record, I don't agree with his opinion on the overall thing, in theory, as I too would love to see these games be preserved.
@itskdog TOS aren't really enforceable anyways.
Thor being a controlled op is not what I expected this year
Wasn’t on my bingo card. But someone going against Ross was so I take that as a win
As a former TF2 server mod [I AM] I have to say TF2 is probably the worst example you could have picked.
We innovated early on (We were one of the first to do melee only Sudden Death) private servers created unique and fun maps, game modes and so on.
Were all safe or friendly? no. You could do some nasty things to people in the early days that made private servers a gamble and paid servers did exist.
But you had the option between tens of thousands of servers at one point, most were perfectly playable. The vanilla servers were even smaller (24 vs. the more standard 32 for private servers)
Even better now that you can go up to 100 players so now some 64 players servers have been popping up.
It is just gaslighting anyway, the fact that he refuses to debate with anyone is clear evidence of him not interested in finding the truth.
You agreed with thor while trying to disagree here, Thor is right though, and private servers+mods killed TF2 for me and circle of friends
@@KevKlopper Gaslighting? Evidence? I don't think you know what you're talking about
@@KevKlopperrefuses to debate? What do you think these response videos are and answers in the comments section? Not to mention all the people taking shots in his live streams for hours on end? He’s literally taking the most popular arguments against his stance and offering reasonable counterpoints. Does he have to physically sit in a room or do a Zoom with someone to debate? Nope. Doing it this way gives him time to provide more thoughtful answers to people as well. This guy is so far from a villain it’s ridiculous. Some people will refuse to see that though, lots of different peeps in this world.
>Fight the argument I am presenting.
I'm sure Ross would love to... if you'd talk to him
He's blocking people on twitter asking him why he doesn't just have a discussion with Ross. Dude is a goof.
That would require thinking and actually caring.
Why do u think he should at all?? Like it's an opinion. People are apparentally hating on him for it already. So going into the debate with a guy whose points are actually that politicians don't care . He's not going to accept those answer or opinion. Hes going to instead dump on him.
@@badrinath5306 teenagers like you should not be able to use the internet, just worry about your classwork
@badrinath5306 Ross has already shown himself to be very reasonable and professional. He released a video answering a lot of questions about the initiative, and even addressed Thor's concerns. He did so without insults, abuse, or even naming him or implying a controversy or drama.
Either way, if he's going to insist people 'attack his arguments' then the least he can do is go talk to the person organizing all of this.
This first argument is so nonsensical. IP laws won't magically disappear. There are plenty of games/movies/books that are no longer being published. You still can't take a copy of that and monetize it outside of reselling your copy.
2:28
Wrong, IP laws already exist. Also, if the company is completely gone, then how would this even matter?
I was watching it and going like "So now laws are supposed to account for all the possible ways in which people might abuse them by doing other grossly illegal things?". So you know, let's not ask anybody for a legal address for anything ever because they can be doxxed. Let's not force people to get car insurance because maybe car insurance companies are evil and exploit people. This is mental gymnastics.
It would matter to the company BEFORE it dies because it would make it feasible to attack the company and force them out of business to monetize the server hosting. Server hosting would be different than reselling the game outright.
@@garynemis9041 It's still against IP law. It's still against other laws to attack a company to force them out of business. It's also the case that people would most likely not pay this company when there would be other free server hosting options.
The whole scenario is as unlikely as a coin landing on the side. It relies on a series of extremely unlikely, and ILLEGAL things happening all at once.
@@garynemis9041 This is currently possible with the many games that have been preserved, and yet it has not happened on any significant scale, because that is illegal. This initiative would not change that, hell it can't even become a law, it only forces a conversation.
@@MaxieTheMax yeah that was the argument that i thought was best for not being on board with the movement (besides the problems in attitude with it) and it doesnt really hold up great, so i really just have to be with it then xD
Hey Thor, 14 year dev here. My issue with your take is that :
1. I think your security background is coloring your view. While your monetization scenario is a thing that I've dealt with for companies in the past, I think you're catastrophizing a bit with how widespread it is. That said, I have no problem with someone making money off a dead game from a dead studio. If there's someone that still holds the copyright and wants to file a claim, cool, but otherwise, who gives a shit?
2. No one is asking for a perfect snapshot of the community at its fullest. They're asking for it to remain mostly playable on a private server. I used to love Tabula Rasa, I can't play it anymore because it died years ago and the studio shut down. I played that game because I wanted to experience the world. While the other players were great, it wasn't the entire experience.
3. This treats our medium as fully disposable and that historical preservation is unneeded. Why? Why is our art more disposable than film?
is film less disposable? what happens if or when netflix decides to pull a netflix original series out from distribution from their catalogue? or if they go out of business?
how about spotify, if an artist decides to use that as their sole distribution channel but then passes away and the inheritor of their estate terminates their spotify artist account?
i'm not saying any of this is right, it makes me sad, and i generally feel like the all-digital future we move towards is dark.
Funnily enough, the game "The Matrix Online" popped into my mind when reading this. It was a mediocre MMO game from the early 2000's that expanded the Matrix Universe after 3 and set a new plot point with refugees who were attacking the matrix itself and bringing parts of it to Io (using mcguffins). A lot of plot points were shown with the most major being (spoilers) Morpheus dying and the 1999 simulation finally ending (by the game servers finally shutting down).
The funniest part was, according to the Wachowski Sisters, it was all Canon, and laid the groundwork of the 4th movie that was in Development hell for over a decade, it explained why Morpheus and other characters never came back among other things that unfortunately would have actually gone down a little smoother for the fanbase if the movie wasn't left in limbo for so long.
Star Wars Galaxies also comes to mind, along with BF2142 but those are being brought back to life.
@@--zeroNetflix originals are all over the internet. Everything that you said will be available in some random site on the internet.
@@--zero All things you can watch on netflix are aviable under Jolly Roger Flag, in worst case scenario but you are not making changes in movies. So when we are speaking about games, even single player one, that demands internet connection, after title will be "killed" by the owners, let's take AC Black Flag, for example, even after pirating it, 30%(amount out of ass) of game events will not be aviable because there will be no events or missions that were aviable with connection to Ubi servers.
Thanks for reminding me of Tabula Rasa. . . Now I'm sad that I will never be able to play it again.
“What’s the most important aspect about any game? Well, being able to play it!”
James Rolfe, 2008
holy shit I haven't heard those words in decades.. what a legend. I need to go binge some AVGN now
Have you actually seen a fanmade private server of a dead game being monetized outside of an optional donation button to help server costs? Or are you just making this up as fearmongering?
edit: So apparently this comment is blowing up so I just want to add that your theory is frankly insane. Thinking this would spawn pseudo criminal groups whose sole purpose is to play the long game by attempting to make a company shut down a game with years of bot abuse, so that the group themselves can take over it. Having to spend all days fighting against new anti-botting measures. Even if a group somehow manages to shut down a massive game, then they have to deal with logistical issues like getting players for their monetized server instead of a better one. All this years of planning for a few hundred bucks from some players.
fearmongering. from the very beginning the worst shit in servers was ads and paid perks, the good thing is that most of that garbage either dies out, or stays on niche modded gamemodes for whatever dolt is willing to play it (like modern zombie mode in counter strike 1.6)
all private servers that had monetization were closed by the publisher/developer. this can easily be enforced.
25 years playing server browser community games 0 times this happened, BUT MONETIZATIOOONNN - Said the greedy developer
@@bigcintra It's freaking hilarious/infuriating seeing the devs complain about theoretical illegal monetization when they've all but ruined AAA gaming with monetization.
I am pretty sure this would be illegal in EU and USA, maybe rest of the world too. That would explain why we dont see it.
Thor: this initiative is missing the devs perspective
Also Thor: i refuse to talk to Ross, this initiative is disgusting and i don't agree with it
Are we living in a world where people are obligated to talk with people that they disagree with?
Absurd.
@@hipunpun "Obligated" is a strawman of what he said, Thor is free not to talk to Ross if he so desires, but so are we free to criticize Thor for not not debating properly.
He doesn't want to talk to Ross, but he does want to broadcast in the direction of Ross from the top of his ivory tower - and I don't see it as anything other than cowardice.
This Ross guy literally stated the argument: "Politicians don't care about this stuff anyway." It's not unreasonable for Thor to think that he's going to mishandle this. Ross lost all credibility within the first few minutes of his video. Ross is coming off as: "I'm the champion of this cause but I have no idea what I'm doing. Smarter people than me will figure out the details" Sorry if that doesn't inspire confidence lol
@@ragingmonkey4592 are you an idiot? Ross is based in the eu. Thor has no knowledge in eu law. Which is far different from ours in the state
@@ragingmonkey4592 I'd highly suggest fully watching the video Ross put out if you haven't, the part that Thor put on his last video is, in my opinion, cherry picking
The irony of someone with a channel called Pirate Software being so against this is almost funny.
Right? legit lost so much respect for him after his stance on stopkillinggames, and adding the awful example of TF2 really makes me wonder how much he actually knows about what he says anymore.
@@Saucy_Wigglesnah
@@Saucy_Wiggles and I have no respect for someone like you who can't comprehend valid criticism of something as badly written as stopkillinggames
I will admit, the TF2 point could have been better
@@ArtisticScratch There is no point with tf2. Community servers are the only reason why tf2 is playable during the bot crisis. Its literally contradicts his stupid "botting" argument
"it makes it legal to send bots and use exploits to sabotage your studio"
HEH?! Where on earth did it say in the StopKillingGames initiative "you're allowed to commit corporate espionage when this act is passed". People can send bots right now and ruin your studio, people can do it after the act is passed, and in both scenarios it is not legal to do so. It might increase an incentive to do so, but the TF2 bot crisis that you described only happened by a source code leak.
"It doesn't help with preservation because the players aren't there any more"
It literally does the opposite tho, of course it's not going to have the same numbers as before and yes the players will inevitably go away. But the option to play it should be still there, and that is still preservation. It still allows players to experience the missions and quests they paid for, because they paid for the game not for the other people who are in the lobbies
"For those calling for me to be silent, no I won't be silent on this"
No arguments here, that's freedom of speech. The same reason I'm here and talking about this because I just don't agree with these takes.
I think these ideas you've came up with are flawed and on some points are borderline crazy. The idea that this law would allow corporate espionage and would do nothing for preservation is outright false.
Anyways, little rant over. Enjoy your holiday at defcon, see ya in a while crocodile
Basically his entire argument is, "People might abuse the system so you shouldn't even try."
@@Sarmathal Except it isn't. Like, do you people genuinely even listen? Or is bandwagoning literally all you're capable of?
I disagree with some of Thor's takes in both videos, but the whole point, is that the angle StopKillingGames is coming from, is potentially dangerous and if laws are passed, could negatively impact BOTH devs and gamers. This shouldn't happen. Gamers shouldn't be impacted negatively. Some devs (or publishers) are greedy assholes, but what about the much smaller fish? They shouldn't get screwed over either.
If we want actual LAWS to be passed, we should make VERY sure that it doesn't make life worse for us, be it due to vague language or something else.
Something does need to change. But not in the way it is presented right now.
@@arjan127 How would gamers be effected negatively?
@@Sarmathal I genuinely think you're just trying to gear up for a very cheap "gotcha" comment, but I'll answer in good faith anyway in the hopes of being proven wrong.
The proposed changes could very realistically be turned into laws that affects developers. Which, I assume you agree with because you haven't addressed it at all. These laws, very much depending on their nuances, could make certain games financially unfeasible to make. Not for big shit companies like EA; they've got plenty. They might deem it financially unfeasible because they're greedy AF, but who cares if they decide against making their 543th copy paste football game.
But, as already has been said, a new FF14 might not be made. Also think about the F2P live service games such as Path of Exile and Warframe (and many - MANY others). Those F2P games lower the entry barrier for people who don't have the money to spend on a "normal full priced game". I've seen so many people saying live service shouldn't exist in the first place - well great. Those are gone too, then. And those aforementioned people who don't have too much to spend, have far fewer options to choose from.
Like I said, I too would like for things to change. But we as a collective should be a little bit more careful as to how we're advocating for it. It's a very complicated topic, one I do not know the answers to. But oversimplifying things can make things (much) worse. This whole "you're either with us or against us" tribal crap really needs to end.
@@arjan127 Live service games shouldn't exist because they're exploitative towards the customer base.
Hey Thor, longtime viewer. You went with the most extreme argument from the dev side of things, so i think its fair to do so from the consumer perspective.
Say a studio releases a live service game, but doesn't turn as much volume as expected. As a result, the publisher decides to shut down the server a few months later. Now a bunch of customers are out the money they spent on the game, including those that may have purchased the game very recently.
Comparing this to your argument of a dev being exploited, I just tend to lean on the side of consumer rights over corporate rights. The rights of thousands (potentially millions in some cases) of consumers outweighs the devs in my opinion.
Thanks for talking about this issue and giving your genuine opinion. I look forward to more of your videos in the future!
Honestly this. The problem is everyone is looking at it from one side. From the devs it's worried about having to spend a lot of money on servers or losing control of their creation. From consumers it's wanting to keep what they purchased. But the in between is helping devs make sustainable games and not destroying them as players. Thor is right that most games now a days are license copies not digital ownership of a copy. And communication on that is needed. But the real "stop killing games" is to hold devs to a standard and stop buying sup par or over priced games. Support the indie developers that are making amazing games that HAVE the capabilities we want as players, and as the market goes that is what will be made. Thor is right targeting the devs is counter productive. But leaving consumers high and dry isn't good either. Stop supporting 70+$ games. Stop settling for buggy messes. Stop paying people to do a half assed job.
@@N0FoxGiven This Initiative is not against devs. It is against stupid practices introduced by the big publishers. Like treating games as licences without saying anything about it beside fishy TOS.
@LucKysStream the wording to me seemed focused on all games like this. Which the problem isn't ALL games. It's the ones like ubisoft. That's why I say government intervention isn't necessary. Personal intervention and boycotting is. Be a consumer. Let what you buy choose how these things work. Yes like Thor said and I put in, more communication would fix 90% of this. But the government isn't the right way to handle this.
@@LucKysStream I think the problem is that people only ever think of big companies making big games, but never specify that.
In the end, what usually happens is that the ones most negatively affected are those who can least afford it. In this case, indie companies.
Ya his response to this in the first part was basically, "you agreed to the TOS so sucks for you". The only thing he seems to kind of agree with is the requirement for "live service" games to be upfront about the "service" part but really doesn't seem to care about the consumer. Honestly, his entire take with this initiative is so shallow and bad I think he's effectively entrenched himself in the worst opinion and refuses to acknowledge it.
"Fight the argument I am presenting" like you didn't set the bar with "greasy car salesman"
Yep. Don't expect people to give you the same common courtesy that you denied the other party.
Thor could have been more diplomatic, but he called a spade a spade in this case. The way it was presented was absolutely gross and he simply fought fire with fire. “Politicians like easy wins” is an insult to the actual humans the initiative would eventually be working with, and it also isn’t true. Any wide-sweeping changes in a multi-billion dollar industry is not going to be “easy”. The big shops have lobbyists and lawyers and everything else. That’s why Thor was hot, amongst other things. Ross was being totally disingenuous, and frankly, unserious when he said that and some other stuff. It certainly worked and got peoples attention, so he gets points for that. But it’s a bad look for a serious real world initiative. Ross has even acknowledged as much from what I’ve seen. The fact remains is Thor is so far from a villain, and now that you have his attention, that might prove useful down the road. Maybe not on this initiative in it’s current form…but maybe after a lot of the minutiae gets sorted out.
@@XanKreigorsee my comment above. But unfortunately not much of this whole thing has been common courtesy. Thor has taken the usual death threat,doxxing, internet bizarro crap on the chin for being against this *in its current form*. it was immediately “you aren’t with us so you are against us and are therefore a greedy dev POS”. He’s good people, and I’m glad at least some of those in favor of the initiative are using him as a sounding board instead of “L take f777 you”.
@@cyberdemon1702 not interacting with the person who created the campaign isn't what anyone would call "diplomatic" he assumes intent, and goes extra way to avoid clearing any confusion. disingenuous more fitting word than "diplomatic" how Thor acts.
@@0Lameran0 That’s how far out of bounds Thor felt Ross was with the framing of the initiative. That’s his choice, and he has his reasons. But he clearly doesn’t need to talk to Ross directly to be involved in this process. Between the piles of internet trash being thrown there’s an active conversation he’s taking part in. Does he have to talk directly to Ross for people to want to listen? Some of them probably, but not all. If he never talks to Ross I get it. If he decides to eventually just to clear the air on why he did it in the first place, I’m cool with that too. Either way, having him involved is better than not when it comes to actually get something done, something that makes real world sense and takes into consideration alllll the little things. Whatever happens has to be ironclad, otherwise it’s doomed to failure or worse.
1) "Who is going to enforce so that these products cannot be monetized?"
- The owners; in every other industry, whether it’s art or film, it is the responsibility of the product’s owner to ensure it isn’t misused. I don't understand why game companies should get differential treatment in this case.
2) "What if the studios get shut down?"
- That product is still owned by someone (whether an individual or a group) and they can still fight against unauthorized monetization of their products. However, for the sake of argument, let's say that "no one owns the product anymore", then, again there is no issue since no one owns it, and no one cares about the monetisation rights.
3) "This might destroy live service games since it reduces the incentive to make those games."
- I too like online games, and wouldn't want to see them go away. However, if it is a choice between having access to products I paid for versus companies possibly losing incentives; the choice is obvious. Also, companies will do what makes them money; if they believe that live service games remain lucrative (which more than likely they will), then they will continue to make them.
4) "This isn't preserving games because you aren't preserving the social aspects of it; no one wants to play a dead game."
- While it's true that preserving the social aspects of a game is difficult, that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try to preserve what we can. Also, I personally enjoy playing these "dead games". There are multiple great games out there that continue through community efforts and funding (e.g., City of Heroes, Space Station 13, Elona, CDDA, etc.).
5) "This gives incentive for people to abuse developers."
- While this might provide some incentive for bad actors, it doesn’t make their actions right or legal. If developers face abuse, they should take appropriate legal action to protect themselves (as some already do against bots and cheat creators). Also, remember that the reason this discussion even arose is due to the ongoing abuse customers experience due to the actions of some developers and companies.
Basically, if I understood your argument correctly, what you say comes down to, "We shouldn't deter companies from having a possible (and a quite common way) of abusing the customers because the solution might incentivize individuals to abuse developers by committing likely illegal actions". In this case, I have to respectfully disagree.
The "abuse developers" bit really just smells like a schizopost
Comparing live service video games to movies is a poor analogy I think a better one would be to compare it to a theme park or an amusement event as he said you’re not buying a game you buying a license the same way you buy a season pass when the park shuts down you demand that it reopened because you bought a lifetime pass the park is shut. It was too expensive to maintain, with not enough people give money to maintain it,
@@roharvanderbull7873 I think the theme park analogy is a bit less fitting.
Parks need physical locations and significant resources; a game is easier and cheaper to preserve and thus can continue through community efforts/funding. Also, unlike a park, when a live-service videogame shuts down, the assets (code) still exist, so it can easily continue solely by community-driven efforts.
Additionally, unlike physical constructs, video games don't deteriorate or become impossible to maintain, meaning the only reason for losing access to them is the company choosing not to support them.
I get where you are coming from, but when people buy a game, they expect access as long as possible, not just while it is profitable.
An analogy better than both of ours would be something like buying a lifetime-free secret sauce sandwich from a store. If the store changes its menu or goes out of business, revealing the recipe ensures everyone gets what they paid for, without anyone losing out.
@@TheSegonma Hello, professional programmer here.
Games definitely deteriorate and can become impossible to maintain, even though maintaining them it is generally much cheaper then maintining a theme park.
Server architecture also technically takes physical location, although consumer could replicate it.
Big issue is, if you can be legally given acces to all tools (or get the acces youself) required to maintain the live game.
PS: My personal take is, that it is a good thing to talk about, although I don't agree with this specific initiative, it's wording and presentation. It is incredibly difficult to set the law in a way, that doesn't make it easy to bypass (purchase licence, instead of purchase button in stores), but doesn't eliminate games. And I don't expect anyone to make it perfect first time.
@@lukaslicek7837 I appreciate your insights as a professional programmer.
My main point was that theme parks require significant physical space and resources, making them impossible to maintain without substantial funding. In contrast, game server costs are generally low enough to be covered by a community or individual. Also, while it is true that games can deteriorate, this usually happens due to evolving technology and lack of support, rather than physical degradation like a theme park.
I understand where you are coming from, as preserving a game requires at least some type of maintenance to make it so that it can run on new hardware. Personally, I think the law should protect the consumer's ability to access and use the products they have already paid for. This initiative, while far from perfect, is a good starting point to discuss and refine how we can achieve these goals.
This discussion has been a long time coming, as some companies are actively making their products worse after selling them to customers (e.g., removing cars from GTA V or adding pay-to-mechanics to games that did not launch with them).
this is practically going nowhere at this point and the main issue is just being forgotten...
singleplayer games having forced required server connection for no reason
and not owning the games, just owning a license to it, which is just simply halfassed and wrong
That's not the main issue. The biggest games of our generation will not be playable in 10 years because they will be turned off. That doesn't need to be the case
the main point isnt being talked about cause everyone agrees that singleplayer games having forced connection is wrong.
He already said that single player games shouldn't be forced to require server connection. Why do you all keep bringing this up?
@@nappygrimm6411 This. I even agree with it and said so in the last video.
I love how some people keep bringing up gacha games as example of 'singleplayer-game needing internet for no reason'
That's dumn af
By this logic, open source software wouldn't exist because someone can fork and monetize, then spam up the original with junk pull requests.
How come that hasn't happened? Maybe because it isn't worth the effort, and to write off the entire argument is reductive and in bad faith?
Thor engages in a very fear mongering tactic. It's usually done by big corporations to scare lawmakers, very strange coming from our ex-blizzard employee...
You can't compare normal open source software with fully developed games. THAT'S in bad faith and reductive.
@@necrofang There's a lot of open source multiplayer games and I haven't heard of single one with bot problem to "take it over" and monetize
Didn't stream labs try to do that. And also quite literally, there are so many OSS that tried to add a payment model just for some other person to fork it and then both die.
@@necrofangsays "normal open source software," yet the server on which he's writing this comment exists solely thanks to OSS. Open source doesn't mean poor quality or barebones. Open source software can be, and often is, far more complex than many "fully developed games" out there. Your comment makes absolutely no sense.
Star Wars Galaxies is a great counter-example to your arguments about "The game is already dead, there's no point to making servers available."
Go to the Wikipedia page for the game and look at the category labeled "Source code leak". I can't post the link because of filter
You are right. But it fits his World of Warcraft example. That game looks like an MMORPG, and sharing server binaries opens up a can of worms that are problems for developers. Problems big enough that the studio will just say No to making MMORPGs. You're arguing from a Consumer view in a vacuum, not understanding the issues on the Business/Legal side of the fence.
@@angel_cheon-sa I'm not arguing this in a vacuum. Issuing ToS with the use of server binaries would cover most of the "horribles" that Thor brings up, not to mention how many game/software ToS come with "as is" provisions.
That still doesn't solve the issue of inter-corp competition with bots and spam. That's the problem that has to be solved in the big picture of all this.
@@angel_cheon-sa His example was meaningless, he brought up that it would be a can of worms if they shared it while the company/game was ALIVE, not dead/shutdown.
The PETITION (which is not the LITERAL law being proposed, that's not how freaking petitions work...) is just to get the law to forbid the act of shutting servers down making the game unplayable. If the game is playable without an online component, nothing is lost. If not, then the servers are shut down, then the company releases the server binaries.
I dunno why people are so attached to this strawman issue of indie devs being targeted to secure their game so they can set up a private server? That is just silly to think that will suddenly start happening or somehow be made "legal" because of a petition being made a law somehow?
(btw you can already destroy someone's community without breaking the law, shocker I know)
I hope this passes because I dunno if Thor is just blatantly ignoring major facts or really likes that chinese money from Once Human, but this is factually a good thing for the gaming industry and consumers.
As an historian the idea of "The game is already dead, there's no point to making servers available" or not making the game accessible to posterity really worries me. It would be the same as modernists in the beginning of the 20th century like Picasso, Kandinsky or Amadeu Sousa Cardoso, torching paintings from Caravaggio or Rembrandt. Or even having those paintings completely inaccessible because "they're not popular anymore".....
Literally almost happened to van gogh
The "h" in "historian" is not silent in English like it would be in French. Therefore one says "a historian," not "an historian."
Awful argument against monetization: "people might steal things and resell them, therefore allowing people to sell things creates incentive for abuse!" Sure, and this is already a problem in many aspects of life.
As for enforcement of non-monetization: it'd be exactly as it's done now: by the rights holders. "What if the company shuts down?" Those rights remain owned by *someone* regardless.
So either works just fine.
@@ReturnOfHeresy it’s like, yeah pro consumer regulation won’t make a perfect industry. But guess what, no industry is perfect, and pro consumer regulations make them better. His main complaint is that…… real life isn’t perfect?
This issue is exactly what will make private servers impossible to host. The big problem with licensing is, that things like brand image, endorsement, and so on are very important to brands, celebrities, and other entities. The issued license can and most likely does oftentimes include language that explicitly grants permission for only official servers. Even if we ignore Thor's arguments, which are legitimate concerns, with how licensing works today, we wouldn't be able to keep OO games alive after the end of service.
Imagine a private server of some dead game that has a lot of luxury sportscars in it and the community of that server becomes some insane racist hate mob that starts causing trouble somewhere due to a lack of moderation and control. The negative attention that creates translates to the brands that gave permission to use their licensed products to this community, or at least that's how it's gonna be spun by the media. That's why they won't allow the use of their licensed things on any non-official server.
Not an awful argument at all. Yes people already steal. As it is currently worded, this would make stealing legal. I'm sure you can see why that would be bad.
Same argument even if you're not allowed to monetize it. Private servers still get monetized under the guise of "donations".
@@necrofang How would it make it legal to do criminal corporate espionage through DDOS attacks and the like?
But this isn't the argument... there are multiple lines, tables, special fictions of codes you have a right to use in your game, but absolutely doesn't have to right to share it on the open for literally everyone free to take, because you doesn't own the intellectual rights.. Sharing something you doesn't own is illegal, and fixing the issue would be costly for some indie devs..
Even if its your solution only, giving it away is like giving away the blueprints/design and engineering process for the Ford Model A for free.. it still holds an extreme intellectual value and secrets you don't want to share(trade secrets if you will, no one wants to share, that their game of the year game is driven by a hamster wheel, its a bad look and bad pr). Not to mention the right for them to monetize it... If you think its about money, you are just ignoring his points..
I fundamentally disagree with your position on preservation. Of course, no preservation initiative, even private servers, is going to be able to perfectly preserve a multiplayer game. However, I firmly believe that having an imperfect record of something is better than having no record at all. Any historian can tell you the immense frustration of trying to build an accurate model of something for which no record exists - having a biased or inaccurate record is always better than having nothing to work with. Giving future game developers and historians access to current games in any kind of playable state is an absolutely necessary step for any kind of serious games preservation movement.
I disagree with your position on preservation. It is the creator of a works right to decide if they want their work preserved or not. They owe you nothing. Unus Annus is a perfect example.
@@ispear6337 If someone purchased their work from them its no longer their work
@@ispear6337 That might be more persuasive if you had some noble artistic integrity of having produced the game as art, a one off demonstration to the public never seen again but not so much if you dipped your grubby little fingers into the market and monetised it as a product.
If you sold it to people I don't think you should retain sole rights to its destruction you chose to exchange that for money you should no more have the right to revoke it than an author should have to burn other peoples copy of his book.
If you want the right to take it back from others you should at the very least be obligated to refund what was sold under false pretense.
@nocturem The difference is that the vast majority of authors actually sell you the book. When you "purchase" a video game, you agree to the terms that you are not buying the game. Instead, it is being licensed to you. They make you agree to this for the sole purpose of being able to revoke your access to it if they want. That's just how licensing works, and this idea that licensing shouldn't be a thing that I've seen floating around because of this is moronic.
@@ispear6337 oh don't worry it's not just games publishers I believe you will find just about any paid software you buy retail is not the software just a license to it's use.
Games publishers have been only too happy to muddy the waters about what you are actually buying.
However whether licenses should exist is actually quite a fine argument to have and indeed since it is laws that define the existence and enforcement of licensing the public may collectively agree to revoke that option if they feel they are being fucked by it.
The onus is upon the business or the twisted little goblins that lobby on their behalf like yourself to articulate why the use of licenses is in the public's interest.
Please stop saying thay you represent devs. Your opinion is yours. Some agree with you. Some don't. There are folks, who are devs, who think Ross's initiative is reasonable and thay you're mistaken about at least some of this subject. Signed - another dev.
@@wholetyouinherePeople can't have their opinion now? Why not talk about his opinion instead assume the type person? You know him?
@@jackspacetime6248 The problem is, he is acting like this in every video response right now. Even if it's his opinion, he's still coming off as arrogant.
Yes as a developer the point he is making is removed from logic. The law doesnt hurt devs.
@@jackspacetime6248 is that an assumption if he demonstrated it openly after personally insulting the opponent then refusing a very polite invitation to a discussion?
He claims here that his side is not heard in the argument when he himself refused to talk about it in a dialogue.
@@jackspacetime6248 you can't say he have an opinion when he deletes comments and have a following to force his view. That's not how it works. It's manipulative, he used many fake arguments and people listen to him because he has a cool voice.
I think he doesn’t know the iniciative isn’t retroactive
Thor blatantly doesnt understand the initiative? nooooooo
The biggest mistake you're making Thor is that you're refusing to talk to Ross. Ross is a good guy. He's been an upstanding member of the video game community for over a decade. He's been a beacon of positivity in the video game space and he loves to celebrate old, niche games, exposing them to new generations. The fact that you paint him as some troglodyte shyster out to wound poor developers is strange considering under any other circumstance, you two would probably hit it off and have a great discussion/stream.
But you're a grown-ass man and you're set in your ways. It's a shame you're unwilling to consider alternative perspectives on this matter. Especially since live service games aren't even the point of this initiative. It's about game preservation. You know, that silly-ass thing human beings like to do with all works of art.
Thor, your unwillingness to discuss with a main organizer but simultaneous grand standing on yt and twitch to the common folk shows disingenuous regardless of your intentions
If he really wanted to talk about it, he would've contacted the 2 guys that made the initiative in the EU, Ross is not from the EU, so he can't start initiatives here, I think this is also Thor watching over his own interests, as a publisher and as a dev, he is just looking for arguments to use against this, without having to say "I don't want this because it would hurt my proffit", since I've read he is going to publish or release his own live service game, I'd say he just likes that this anti-consumer practices exist, and doesn't want them gome for his own bennefit. Because I will say, even if there are some problems with live service games, or MMOs with this initiative, they're not impossible to solve, and he is not even trying to give ideas, instead just trying to run it to the ground, someone that really cared for consumers, would search for an equal ground, and try to make it better for consumers, while at the same time, not making bad for companies.
Exactly, he should talk to Ross instead of being stubborn about not doing it.
Ross has been an upstanding member of the wider video game community for over 20 years actually, honestly such a horrible move for anyone to try to paint him in a bad light
@@OlDirtyBaron
Ross is one of the OGs. His Freman's Mind series is an enduring classic, and his advocacy for games preservation has always been spot on. Very disappointed in Pirate Software's take on this topic.
"Requiring binaries in order to be able to build private servers open routes for a problem"
Yes, it might do. But we already have a problem anyway. So I doubt you will sway too many people with that point.
This, Thor keeps arguing from the point that the status quo is fine. It's not to a lot of people. Can the initiative make things worse? Possibly but the status quo is unacceptable so a chance at a positive change will win that argument for most.
@@mormacil Pretty much why I won't play a blizzard game after Diablo 2, rent a game always online.
@@mormacil Whats the issue exactly? When I buy a ticket to a movie theatre I don't expect to own the movie or the theatre after my access to it is complete. Same with live service games. Seems like people think they own the game and the devs when they purchase a live service game when its more like a ticket for access.
Thors solution is 100% the right way to go. People who are okay with buying access will enjoy the games they want, people who want to own the game can look at something else, win win.
@@edd542 If I buy a copy of the movie on home media, I own a copy of that movie and can watch it whenever I want. When I buy a ticket to see a movie at a theatre, I am fully aware - and so is everyone else - that I am buying a single-use ticket to a single screening of a movie. They are two COMPLETELY different things which you are comparing as if they are somehow equal. If I pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft, I know I can only play for as long as I pay. If I buy a copy of something like The Crew, I have bought a copy of that game - it should not be a license that can be revoked at a later date. You're as deluded as the clown making these videos.
The worst part is he just mentions "this and this and this can be problems". That's about the weakest argument you can make against any regulation. Every regulation has drawbacks and new problems, this is inherent. A good argument would argue WHY those new problems are worse than the problem the regulation is trying to solve. And he just hasn't argued that successfully in either of his videos. Just spends a lot of time explaining the new problems.
I feel like i heard the phrase “you think you do, but you don’t” from some (former) blizzard employee before…
You think Thor is your friend but he isnt.
@@JackMarcusonpersonal friend? Of course not. Friend to the gaming and developer community? 100%. I’ve seen enough of this man’s stuff to know it is unequivocally true. People piling into this situation with no idea of what Thor’s really about, under the pretense of his position on the current initiative….well they need to take a step back and realize where he is coming from, and that he has the potential to be a strong ally to real and tangible change in the industry. He only exploded in popularity within the last year. He’s actually been an insider (and outsider) for 20 years, and he’s just getting started.
@@cyberdemon1702 nope, he just "we have common enemy but dont try to change my job" guy.
@@0Lameran0 how would this change his job? His game Heartbound will always be available and when he dies he already has a trigger that releases his source code for free one year after his death. He’s not beholden to the status quo like you must think he is. He left Blizzard because he got tired of their BS, he won’t play Sony games because of what they did to the players and devs of Helldivers 2, God of War, etc. His entire starting point for his involvement, and he’s stated repeatedly, is the initiative is too vague, not that it’s a bad idea altogether. Uninformed people have taken that to mean he doesn’t want to change anything, and that’s not the case. It just has to make real world sense and have a shot at actually passing and not unintentionally doing more harm than good for gamers and the industry. And Ross framing of the initiative was a very bad look. It did get eyeballs on the initiative though so he gets points for that lol.
@@cyberdemon1702 "Friend to the gaming and developer community" bro, he's just here to advertise his game studio and make money. Don't need to glorify him
Yeah, if there isnt an officiall way to play older games that I a want to, im busting out the pirate hats.
It used to be normal and expected that private server creation software was distributed with the game. Nobody did some absurd Machiavellian game of thrones scheme to destroy any of those companies.
Hell, I miss the days of Marathon Infinity; which came packaged with Forge & Anvil - and if those names sound familiar to you it's because Bungie reused them in later Halo games - because what they did was revolutionary. Forge let you build entire single player campaigns to play and share with friends, as well as multiplayer maps to do battle on. And Anvil let you modify every gun in the game and make new ones if you had spritework credentials. They CAME WITH THE GAME. If I had an operating system that could still launch the CDs I could go do that right now. No BS about licensing, I could spin up a server and anyone else with a copy could play with me.
That needs to make its way back around.
The wild thing is - even these live-service games still have server executables. It's not like they're run magically off of the ether in the game studio.
The server code exists, a plan for maintenance/replacements/upgrades exist, and so there are probably already hidden variables within the game executable to point it to a location where it can gather the rest of the data. Even if you have microtransactions and load-balancing, have you seen what people can do with their homelab? Hobbyists can handle this.
Why is the idea that when the publisher is done with the game, they release those executables - and make one change to the game exe where you can point it to an IP, rather than setting that internally and privately, a bad idea?
Thor thinks THAT will kill live-service games? WHAT?
5:14 that there is no constant player base does not mean that there will be no players.
sure some games only work with x ammount of people in the lobby but games like that would be played on lanpartys, in friend groups, or people would set up bots on private servers.
Jedi Academy multiplayer still has players that play on community servers and on modded clients. It's probably not even a thousand people, but that doesn't matter. It's good that people can still enjoy their beloved game 20 years later.
@@vanjazed7021 also battlefield 2 is still playable on community servers after ea did shut down its servers. but you also need a modded client.
would be nice to see an official end of life patch for games that just adds a config file where you can enter new server IPs.
so people dont have to download random mods from the internet
He's thinking money in vs money out when it comes to hosting servers. If there's 1000 people left playing a game regularly and the cost to keep a server up is more than the income 1000 players generate then it doesn't make sense to keep hosting it.
Star Fleet Elite Force still has an active playerbase and that's abandonware! Never underestimate people who want to play a game
@@terminallyonline5296but that's the point ffs. Leave it up to community if it wants to host their own servers or not
Why the hell would anyone pay to play a dead game ?
If the server binaries are released, and someone choose to monetizes their private server, there's nothing stopping me from creating my own without monetizing it
Idk if he's assuming that players are all braindead morons that would blindly tolerate p2w, cheating, and botting.
Or if he thinks that once given free reign all the players would do is shady shit and nothing else.
WHY DOES HE STILL NOT GET THIS?!!?
Minecraft has/had monetised servers.... so I don't play on those servers, like what ???
@@ronansmith2566 Every example he's given, when taken to it's logical conclusion falls flat, especially because we already have examples that completely contradict everything he's said. In the video he mentions Apex at 4:50 but fails to realize R5Reloaded already exist and solves the exact problem the initiative is asking for. EA/Respawn can shut down Apex Legends today and tomorrow we can still play thanks to R5Reloaded. Apex has tons of issues with bots right now and no one is flocking to R5Reloaded because most people are still playing on the official servers. It's hilarious to me how a specific game he mentioned to try and prove his point completely disproves it.
@@ronansmith2566 He does get it, he's just lying.
This entire video just sounds like: "People got mad at me, so I felt like I had to say something in return."
While he was starting to make some good points, most of them just effectively come across as: "Think of the poor corporations".
IF, and only IF the movement gets strong enough where they might actually pull it into law -- I am personally OK with games having an offline-only patch added on game's shutdown. For MMOs it would make no sense to have it, but for games like Diablo 4? They shouldn't be online-only to begin with.
This guy has learned the art of "saying the dumbest shit in a way that sounds informed". Total fraud.
4:19 "They require a live service to run, and you shouldn't be able to take that away from people." But what are the companies doing right this moment? They're taking live service games away from players. Even those that don't necessarily need a live service at all, like The Crew. If the players had the option to host their own servers, then the companies couldn't take the games away from them anymore. Also even if some players were to monetize their private servers, as long as those binaries are out for everyone to use, people are just gonna play on the ones that are free, or make their own if everyone else made theirs pay to play.
The Crew was absolutely a live service game. It says "never play alone" on the package and it's listed as an MMO on Steam.
You didn’t buy a game. You bought access to a digital theme park. They didn’t take anything from you, the park closed.
@@jesseclark7966 It's also listed as Single-player on Steam. 99.5% of the game you spend playing alone, or co-op with your friend. The other players in the world were non-interactive, so they might as well have been bots. I spent ~300h in the game and didn't notice a server-wide event even once.
@@jesseclark7966 And basically the whole game was an always online single player with multiplayer aspects, it was never the focus of the game. It's literally the same as forza horizon, but you can play forza horizon offline too and have a lot of fun so what exactly is your point.
@@edwinwallberg6135 It's listed as single-player, but also as an MMO. Other MMOs like Path of Exile appeared in the single player category.
Just because you're usually experiencing the game alone, doesn't mean that your gameplay doesn't need a server to run. In Path of Exile, I've played without interacting with other people at all on some runs. But I'm still earning items and experience that could be used in multiplayer if I choose to do so. Which means it has to run online so that I'm prevented from cheating.
Thor - "Developers need to be included in the conversation"
Also Thor - "I don't want to talk to anyone at Stop Killing Games about this"
Also Also Thor - " Developers risk their jobs if they talk about this"
OK then who is left to be included in the conversation?
Publishers and other indie devs? Former because they are creating live service games and later because this broad initiative includes too. I don't understand why so many people think devs have a voice in how game will be published and when it will be shut down.
@@keldzh live service is buisness model, not genre
@@uis246 so why people attacking devs and not those who run business and paying salary to devs if it is *business* model?
He is coming here with bad faith , that's it
@@keldzh you could have said "so why people 100 years ago when abolishing slavery "attacked" slaves and not those who enslaved them and feeding slaves if it is economic model?". Thor with those videos does everything to convince regular people that this is devs vs gamers, not publishers vs everyone else. If you have read text of initiative, you would have noticed that it says PUBLISHERS.
_"No you will not silence me with personal attacks."_
_Started this whole thing calling Ross disgusting_
tbf he said the things he said were disgusting. not HIM
@@libero2711_ Semantics, IMO. He later went on to say he doesn't respect Ross because of it, and why he won't talk to Ross because of it.
To me, that sounds like he attaches the words to the person closely enough so much, where dialogue is completely shut down.
@@libero2711_ Bro he literally referred to Ross as a "greasy car salesman". He insulted the guy gratuitously.
@@VCofdaG damn, you got a link for that?
Also:
“I will not be silenced”
*goes out of his way to silence Ross in his comment sections*
That hypocrisy guaranteed I’ll never take this guy seriously. There is NOTHING I hate in this world more than hypocrites.
"We need EULA to ban cheaters." No you don't! If you allow private servers from the start you can ban them from your own paid servers and they can still own the game and play on private servers. You can even publicize a list of cheater uids so private servers can ban them too if they want. The cheaters still own the game they payed for and can run their own private servers and you won't be infringing on their rights to their purchase.
I don't understand how you can (rightly) argue against kernel mode anti-cheats because there are other creative ways to do anti-cheat but when it comes to EULA and banning people your creative mindset has left the building.
You don't have a right to cheat in an environment where there are other players present. If you agree not to cheat and then you cheat and get caught, well, actions have consequences.
@@baronvonsatan Totally agree.
@@baronvonsatan So we _should_ have kernel mode anti-cheat, no?
@@baronvonsatan Yes. This is not in contradiction to what was just said.
@@MaxieTheMax Piratesoftware argues against kernel mode anticheat to detect cheaters. He sais there are other ways so according to him you don't. But when it comes to dealing with getting rid of cheaters he can't think of other ways except for screwing over all players by licensing instead of selling the game.
Your strange argument against live service game preservation makes no sense.
You are right that it is not fun to play a multiplayer game that is dying - meaning, the concurrent player count is very low - but you know what's worse than that? Not being able to play it at all. I think you know that too.
If life service games were forced to offer some sort of private server patch after going offline, I could at least get a small group of friends together to play that game... vs. Never being able to play it again, relegated to watching gameplay clips on UA-cam forever.
I’m not sure everyone will agree with that. If a live service is dead and still kept open, people will complain that no one plays the game anymore. If the live service was forced to make a private service patch, people assume that it would fix everything, but what if the studio is gone or the dev team doesn’t have enough money to do that. Bankrupting the company to focus on revamping the game to make a private service patch instead of moving on to a new game seems like it would more likely kill the studio.
If people are arguing that it’s game preservation, then why are people defending this cause saying games are grandfathered into this cause. Then it’s not game preservation is it? I don’t like losing games that I paid for, feels irritating that I can’t play Destiny 2 expansions anymore, but I also am honest with myself that that game is just sitting in my library and I’m not gonna touch it anymore. If games were forced to be preserved, Destiny 2 would still sit there untouched, this cause would just make me feel better that I still technically have access to it, but I’ll probably never pop it open again. I’m more concerned with studios shutting down to bear this cost just so I don’t feel bad about losing a game I don’t play anymore.
@@hoshi-15people can complain that the game doesn't have players, but why would that be thrown to the developers? That would just be anger towards the lack of community
@@hoshi-15 They would know that when closing the servers they need to keep the game in a playable state, so if they didn't prepare that since the beginning, it's their own fault to go banckrupt, since when it's the consumer responability to pay for companie's bad decisions?
This feels like a bit of a strawman argument.
There are a bunch of assumptions in Thor's argument here:
1) Malicious actors would purposely attack the company to destroy the experience and steal the binaries by causing the game to fail. This feels a bit unfounded. Sure, in a space of all possibilities, but I'm not sure many people would try to engineer this. And there are counters for this: a) don't release the server binaries-release a technical document on how the game state is processed server-side, b) stagger the server binary releases after the end of life, i.e., 1 to 2 years later, c) don't facilitate anything, but don't actively get in the way of reverse engineering efforts.
2) The monetization vs. non-monetization bit isn't something new. Minecraft Java has had this early on. Having a monetized server has been a thing for a while. So this isn't a new concept.
3) The IP issue is sort of a problem, but I would gather a lot of people might lean towards the position that current intellectual property law is sort of in an unhealthy state. If the game is being effectively abandoned, then at the very least, I think a case could be made that the specific instance of the IP should become some sort of limited public domain work.
4) The lack of community not being the real thing... Again, there are examples of old games being brought back: RuneScape, Ultima Online come to mind. Nostalgia is a powerful thing-hell, there are still Halo 1 Combat Evolved player servers running.
In short, there is a world space where this could work. Yes, there are likely pitfalls, and something like this really isn't mapped out. But it's a problem space that can be explored, and solutions can be found.
Hell, I recently played Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory because I discovered there are people still playing
Also Re: 1 , if the server binaries are public after EOL, not only the attacker but anyone can make a private server if I understood the concept correctly. So if you can have competing servers or community servers, the attacker doesn't have that much of a reason to get the game shutdown. In Fact there is no guarantee that the money they spent on attacking the game could be recouped by just launching their own monetized private server. Also many devs continuously launch new features and time limited events for their games. If the dev is forced to EOL the game early then the game might just decline in popularity very soon. This attack would only work for widely popular and complete games
I stand by Thors argument that its too vague. The EU is terrible at everything they do. Their favourite past time is making things as hard as possible for smaller businesses.
I'm sure big companies would have no problem shoulering the burden of whatever sloppy mess the EU cooks up, but small studios will have problems.
Whatever it is this inititave actually wants to achieve, it needs to be explained to EU politicians exactly. Best case they already get lawyers and people in the know to write up an example law.
The EU can and will mess this up, if you dont tell them exactly how its supposed to be done.
I agree with most of your comment, but point (1.a) and (1.b) feels too unrealistic or straight up not good solutions tho.
1.a) I'd totally see games with a technical document stating "it's literally a carbon copy of the client game or close to a carbon copy, minus the rendering" for some games (thinking about stuff like minecraft there). And for some games, I feel like writing a technical document would be a nightmare, just release the server binaries like a good boy really
1.b) Having customers wait 1-2 years (even 1-2 months is waaaaaaay too much imo) after end of life before they get the tools to be able to play again just feels like a bad solution companies will try to abuse anyways
But yeah, no amount of argument against dedicated servers will make sense to people who played with dedicated servers or hosted dedicated servers. Heck, some private servers with custom binaries were more popular than the official game's server (thinking about old Modern Warfare 2 on PC with AlterIW, IW4M, IW4X that added dedicated servers to the game with moderation and people would always get pissed when Activision would shut them down lol)
The ONLY issue I could mostly agree with that goes against dedicated servers: security for the hardware that hosts the dedicated server (and potentially the whole network behind the server)
And even that, I'd be like "welp, internet is a harsh unlawful meritocraty after all. You got skill issue'd" and would shrug it off if presented as an argument as of why dedicated servers shouldn't be a thing
Also, releasing binaries to allow community servers doesn't mean those servers own the IP. Companies like Ubisoft could release them with the condition of not monetizing them. And if someone tries, the companies can send them a C&D as rightsholders.
I don't get what's the problem with letting people host their own servers when the game is shut down by the studio. They are not interested in making money with the game anymore. So who cares if we host our own servers?
If you allow people to sell things then it incentivizes criminal behavior like theft, hacking, botting, and DDOSing. Though if we take this to the logical conclusion, then people should not be allowed to resell shirts they bought at Target because if that's legal it incentivizes stealing from Target.
If you don't allow people to monetize the servers then there has to be enforcement. He says that enforcement isn't possible for some terrible reasons that ignore that someone owns the IP even when a company shuts down.
I think that's a wild position to take, but that's his position.
because if you want to play that kind of game Ubisoft/EA/PirateSoftware wants you to have no choice but to buy the next game, even if it's inferior to the original.
@@tundrest ^ This. Thor is very much a publisher first now, then a developer second, a consumer third, and a gamer fourth.
He's not our friend.
@@VCofdaG He's a streamer first. His tiny dev projects mean mostly squat.
And why would anyone care IF they wanted to make money with it?
Your absolute unwillingness to directly converse with the people leading this movement, specifically Ross, has me confused. I understand that you don’t agree with his position or his rhetoric, but given that you truly believe this initiative could threaten the industry, it seems counterintuitive to deny conversation.
People are going to support this initiative regardless of whether or not you support it, so if protecting developers is your intention, this absolutist stance you are taking does nothing to help you in that regard.
He doesn't owe Ross or anyone else a direct response because he's addressed why the current talking points are problematic from the developer's side. The initiative is taking a player's stance, not both players and devs. That's his entire point. He even outright states in both videos that there is a specific problem that a similar but more concisely-worded initiative would be a good thing to implement: Developers that sell single player experiences that contain online functionality for the sole purpose of being able to revoke access to the otherwise said single player experience; or making language more clear to the consumer when they are buying a live service game that they are purchasing a license, not a product.
For the first part, an example would be if Dragon's Dogma was suddenly no longer playable at all, despite that the Pawn system is completely optional to interact with for your friend's characters. THAT is something that should not be able to happen and consumers SHOULD be able to hold developers accountable for. Alternatively, any single player game that weirdly has some kind of leaderboard system in it. Those games SHOULD remain functional after the servers for hosting the leaderboards are shut down.
The second part, a great example is the very one used in the initiative: The Crew. It was an online-only game. People paid $60 for a live-service experience that was no longer feasible to keep running from the company's perspective because the player base was all but extinct, the licenses the company paid for to use the cars were too expensive to reacquire for how few players it had, and there was no way to reasonably monetize it with so few players. It SHOULD have been made clear at time of purchase that this game had an undetermined end of life, or maybe even an estimated end of life for the duration of the car licenses, and the live service required to access the game would eventually be shut down. You as the consumer are not purchasing an ownable copy of the game, but a license to access the servers up until the end of life.
Thor is simply saying, "Yes, there are problems that should be addressed for the sake of consumer protection but not at the expense of my intellectual property and creative freedom that I exercise for my job." Ross' side is more than welcome to come together first and say "Hey, how can we make this work for both sides?" However, the initial presentation was sloppy, underthought, and grossly negligent with comments such as "politicians want easy wins" and "this provides a distraction from more serious topics that politicians would rather avoid."
If a politician wants to avoid a serious topic, I genuinely will not vote for them. I will actively vote against them, as a matter of fact. I don't want my government run by people who use smoke and mirrors tactics to avoid or worse, stealthily undermine, serious topics.
I'm not really sure where you got "absolutist stance" from because Thor has been very clearly open to a discussion that actually makes an attempt to understand the developer's side of things and meet halfway. He's just also been honest that this current discussion is not that from his standpoint as not only someone with 20+ years of experience but also who is the head of his own studio. He isn't pulling words out of a hat and throwing them around. This isn't some weird corporate play with words like "synergistic growth" that mean nothing. He's explaining how the current roadmap of this conversation would disincentivize developers from making live service games, and how a loss of live service games would impact not only developers but also players (look at how many people have gotten married or found their lifelong best friends through WoW, FFXIV, League of Legends, etc) because, like it or not, some people DO like live service games.
TL;dr: Just like you think Thor has some obligation to come to the table that he wasn't invited to before this initiative was publicized that seriously affects his career, Ross and others from his side could have reached out by now and said, "Hey, I see what you're saying and, while I don't necessarily understand or even agree with all of your points, you have a perspective I hadn't considered. As someone on the other side of the fence from the consumer, what are some of the logistical issues with the current framing of the issue and how can we meet halfway to better present it in a way that's beneficial for everyone?" He was invited to the table after it was publicized, expressed his concerns, and you all keep attacking him instead of sitting down and starting the conversation yourselves with people like me and Thor to figure out how this works for everyone. It's not our responsibility to come to the table you didn't invite us to before publicizing your disdain for a fair and legal practice that is currently the best case scenario.
Are there bad actors who should be held accountable for misrepresentation of products and services? Yes. Should consumers be better informed at point of sale about the legal definitions of what they are purchasing? Yes. Should both of those things be the responsibility of the developer/publisher? Yes. Should an entire style of game (live service) be forced to radically change the architecture of the experience (release binaries, which may be used in other products and still be considered intellectual property or proprietary information, or restructure the entire experience into offline) in order to fit those constraints? No.
@@JWaltz91 Finally someone who understands!!!
progress has been mad3!
If someone starts with 'this issue can be used by politicians to avoid talking about important things', I wouldn't want to talk to them either...
@@thesaintnoodle Okay but did you actually listen to Thor? He is literally arguing ON YOUR SIDE of that argument. He just also could not find any evidence to indicate malicious practice on Ubisoft's end with regard to The Crew. It was marketed as online only. They used a server to act as a True Copy of the game so people weren't teleporting to the finish line. If people had read the EULA and TOS, they probably would have found the exact thing that we're arguing should be better communicated to players before purchase. Additionally, a sequel came out in 2018 that the majority of players moved on to. They stopped support for a 10 year old game that a metric handful of people were playing because it didn't make sense financially to keep it going. On top of licenses for the cars, the game was dead and they had new installments in the IP that people were playing instead. Should original EverQuest be playable in perpetuity even though only 20 people are playing compared to the hundreds or thousands that are playing EverQuest 2?
@@JWaltz91 Brother god defending Corporate software over here, ain reading all that. Sure, he doesn't owe anyone anything just as he isn't owed people not judging his character over not talking it out with his opposition. He wanted devs to be in the conversation, he decided in his own words to be the face of devs and yet now he suddenly thinks a conversation is beneath him? God, actual tiktok kids are his fans now, anyone with a brain has left this loser.
@PirateSoftware
What do you call games like Diablo 3 & 4?
Games that people could play entirely single player but the publishers make it multiplayer even when you don't want to play with others?
I'm assuming they don't count as a "live service game" under your definition like Leauge or XIV.
Edit: For what you are talking about with buying a live service game, it should be called "Renting". That term has no expectation of ownership.
Just a fun comment, you can emulate Diablo 3 from Switch or PS3 (if you don't bother with playing earlier versions of the game) and the single player runs completely fine without any internet connection
Should the servers ever die, I bet that will become the only way to play it, as I highly doubt Blizzard will ever give us an offline patch on PC, even though they already have it ready... That or running your own private server with Blizzless
@@Synest2 we'd have to trust the government to make and possibly enforce the categories of multiplayer, single player and single player with online functionality and by the government I mean every government
@@ymeynot0405 The reason you can't call it renting a game is because it is a one time purchase. "Renting" generally means a subscription based (repeated fees) game model, which isn't what one time purchases are. As soon as you buy a license, you have the game for eternity until you violate TOS. Hopefully this helps!
If XIV ran a private server you would only need 7 other players to run the content the game provides anyway, that's less players than your typical shooter, shooters we've been playing via LAN and p2p for decades now.
Same with Diablo 3 and 4, you don't need a server to play those games, D2 runs perfectly fine without battlenet, granted you don't get battlenet features like certain drops. But you simply have to look at the last Sim City game, it was released as an always online product, and the first mod for the game that came out made it 100% perfectly functional without the need to connect to an online server and the game was better for it, even if EA could no longer monetize you indirectly.
Games as a Service only works if the service is something that is desired. MMOs for example only work as a service because having servers and server techs sufficient enough to host thousands of players from around the world on them is difficult. But even then we saw that a handful of hobbiests can get a working copy of vanilla WOW working, and in an even more playable and stable state than what blizzard could provide years later.
What Thor is scared of is losing control over the IP of live service code, which is where a lot of live service monetization happens, which is 100% avoiding the actual issue of live service games being randomly shut down and people who have paid good money for those games being left with no recourse.
@@sgtbigjake Said:
"As soon as you buy a license, you have the game for eternity until you violate TOS. "
But you don't. They can decide to shut down the servers anytime that they like. Additionally, it has been ruled, by law, that if you "buy" something you have the right to resell it anytime you like. Can you name one instance of someone "buying" a blizzard game through their online portal and then being able to sell it to another person? Legally, you should be able to do that with individual cosmetics in the game. Go to Bliz con just to get the free cosmetics and resell them to whales who couldn't make it.
Also, renting could be the means of setting server end dates or a way to continue funding the servers. When the game comes out you rent it for until 2035, (10 years). So that as the years go by the price drops as you get closer to 2035. Everyone knows the servers will close in 2035 so they can evaluate if it is worth it for them. Plus if the game is a big hit, in 2035 they can ask for a $5-$10 "fee" to keep the servers open for another X years based on how many people decide they want to pay.
If 10k pay, another 2 years. If 20k pay, another 4 years.
It gives the companies an incentive to keep the games up, and for players to join a game that is already slightly old when they know it will still be around in 4 years.
I find the example of :
1. Attacking a developer
2. Forcing them to shutdown
3. Monetize private servers
4. Profit
To be completely disingenuous.
Like you said, lets assume the developer collapses, and is forced to release server binaries.
Someone sets up a paid private server.
Nothing, is stopping someone from hosting their own server.
I don't join pay-to-play minecraft servers, , TF2 servers, ARMA servers... I just host my own. Because I can!
This feels like the same scaremongering tactic used by large games in the past, against community servers. From mundane things like "Official servers are always better", threats like "You won't gain account progress on community servers" to fearmongering such as "Community Servers can give you malware".
All of the above could be true. But they aren't problems I need to care about, if I can just setup my own server!
You brought up the TF2 botting issue. That bot issue was only on official valve servers. Community servers had actual moderators, which banned bots! Community servers were better than official servers!
Lets take the license issue as well.
That's an issue for the License provider to resolve. Not us! Disney or Jaguar doesn't like a community server? They can sue the community server provider.
You would obviously agree, that this sounds horrible. But the situation is already worse than this. We can't even try to keep playing!
Simply having the option is better that not having it at all!
But anyway, hope you enjoy the vacation Thor!
I, can't even imagine not having a vacation for 5 bloody years. That sounds awful.
is the same scare tactic/argument car manufacturers used against right to repair saying that opening repairs will lead to you as an user being raped because it would make your can unsafe.
Scare tactics which I find quite big coming from someone who called Ross being realistic about what most politicians are rather disgusting
I think you missed the point of the License statement. Sure; for Disney car manufacturers; they are not likely to disappear. But what about Respawn Entertainment? You know the devs who made Titanfall and Apex Legends? They are VERY likely to disappear. If Apex stops doing as well, or EA just wants to save more money and can them. Now what? There is no one there to tell you to not abuse the IP. Licensing and Trade mark laws are very complex.
And while the private servers may have worked for TF2, it may not work for other games. Remember, the idea and fear is, you bully devs into shutting down to make your own server, so you can make money from it. So you get what? 10k+ users. First, are you even able to handle that much network traffic? And second, assuming you have like hand full of bots, we can say 1%, could you even handle that? That is like 100 bots. Up that to 10%, that is suddenly 1000 bots. It stops getting manageable quickly. So now you need to hire mods to help manage that. TF2 was the case that bots where mostly targeting official servers. Which allowed the private ones to work and handle the low volume of bots; but if the tables got switched suddenly... The Official servers are known to have bots everywhere and now the private servers do have bots, so what? You just make your own server to play and hope people join you, and hope you can manage the thing until someone else fixes the problem?
People need to stop and they need to think. The reason Thor is not giving answers, is because there is no clear cut answer. There is no; "This just works." This is not a yes, no. It needs to be talked about, worked on and figured out, BEFORE reaching the government. Because they won't know what to do; and will just go off what is told. And either reject and never let us try again, or pass this, and utterly ruin Live service games as they are now.
Right now. "Stop killing games" is not ready; and should not pass. However, the idea of what this wants, is a good thing and we need to talk and figure it out more. Just need people to be willing to see both sides and not just go; "I don't care for this other thing." Because it is that other thing... that will come back and bite someone.
All of those games you gave examples most likely had authentication servers, and these authentication servers can only be hosted by a single party.
You can just bypass authentication or create your own, but then it'll fragment the player base, meaning you would need to register in multiple places for the same game, just to play on two different servers, like how Cracked Minecraft servers require you to "register" so that they can know that it's you logging in.
Bypassing authentication means that bots can also log into your server freely and easily, meaning you would need to allocate more resources to combat this.
@@ZythriaSo you are saying that we are supposed to be fine with Thor not giving proper answers because there is no obvious answer.
Ok. So... What now? Are we just supposed to wait for some miracle to come down from the heavens and solve the problem? I see people doing exactly what you say later. Trying to talk about it with Thor and work out his PoV. Why does that only apply to our side if it's supposed to be a conversation between two sides? Why do we need to constantly give him concrete answers and dismantle all his fears when he himself initially refused to engage in conversation properly?
Also, I have no idea at all why are you acting like the INITIATIVE is on the brink of passing as a law. This is completely untrue and fearmongering, just like Thor's initial response to this whole situation.
@@Zythria The point of the hypothetical was not to point out how bots could ruin a game, but to claim that the bot hoster would be capable of taking the playerbase for themselves AND make a profit off of them, which is wrong for several reasons.
First, there's no reason for people to consolidate to one community server instead of scattering. If the game has 10,000 players, they don't all go into one server, hosts can implement player limits (and multiple servers), usually ones the game already had.
Second, the point was that the bot hoster would be the one making a profit, implying that every player (with no reason given) would only go to them. See the first reason, there's no reason for the bot hoster to hold a monopoly when anyone can host a server. If they use bots to take down other servers, that only add more suspicion on them because their servers are strangely safer than their competitors. Alternatively, they can hit themselves with the bots and take a financial hit running servers without any players to fund them.
Quick Note: If the bot hoster loses their cover as a normal server host, then people won't play on their servers and, more importantly, pay them money. The community might even band together to take down their servers with bots in an ironic revenge.
If, in the almost impossible scenario that they pull this off, they manage to hold a functional monopoly without getting caught, now they have to worry about recouping server costs, maintaining the servers when issues inevitably pop up, and implementing monetization in a way that doesn't make people to go smaller servers that popped up after they stop using the bots (because they can't run the bots forever without getting caught and/or running out of money).
Realistically, the bot hoster would either end up as one of many server hosts and be unappealing to players due to poor monetization, or try to take down every other community server until they get caught and eventually run out of money (because they don't have any income from the game, which is meant to be the incentive to do this to start with).
Thor's hypothetical relies on assumptions that are not accounted for or even addressed. This is a high risk, high effort, low reward plan that will fail with a bang or a whimper. It is not as simple nor as easy as "I create a private server and I monetize it." This is not a fundamental flaw that needs to be addressed, it is a poorly made excuse that ignores the big picture while failing in its own right.
Bonus Note: A bot hoster taking down a live service game isn't presented as something people will become more capable of if Stop Killing Games succeeds, rather, Thor is claiming that it can happen right now with enough incentive. If that's true, pushing back Stop Killing Games means if a bot hoster with enough money decides to take down live service games *for fun*, or any other reason that isn't earning a profit, multiple communities will go up in flames, one after another.
Makes up a scenario where a bad person will do something shitty like charging for their private server.
Ignoring the fact that if the binaries exist publicly, there will be good free servers.
People shouldn't have consumer rights because others cheat?
I honestly clicked on this video thinking it might be an apology (or a partial one) and finding a middle ground between companies and players.
I know Rivals 2 is coming out and its live-service. You can shove that game, Offbrand, and your company, waaay up your ass.
Rivals 2, its a live service game that Offbrand, that you work for, are publishing.
I wouldn't give two shits if you were honest and said SKG was bad because its more work and less money for you.
You can take the man out of blizzard, but you can't take the blizzard out of the man
There not such thing as free serves
@@HeroChaserDrillStar Servers do cost to own and maintain. But of the many reverse engineered MMO servers and games that allow players to host their own servers they are free to use by players. Some might ask for donations to help, but never outright charge players.
If your gonna play semantics, at least have a good argument.
And just like that, Ubisoft magically patches the Crew to add an offline mode.
Wait what really?
3:30 "You don't get to defy what players play and don't play."
5:04 "Why would you preserve a game in that state? This doesn't make any sense"
Why he's trying to decide for me what I want to play and what I don't?
How does that get told In one video by a single person?
You don't think it's different when a person says "why would you preserve a game", and when a governmential institute decides it for you, so you don't even have a choice over the matter? We are literally talking about laws which would affect a few hundred million people. Not just you, not just those a few thousand people who've signed. Hundreds of millions of people. You get to decide what they can play and what they can't. If the EU decides this law is good to support. God complex much?
Also, why is he trying to decide what laws should or shouldn't be made in EU
@@PaweMateuszBytner Because the EU is one of the more massive economies in the world. What laws get passed there affect everyone. When the EU passed their information privacy act, many websites started putting the "accept all cookies" notification for every consumer everywhere, not just in the EU. When the EU said "Apple, you must make your iPhones with USB type C", Apple, the next generation, released USB type C phones everywhere, not just in the EU. Those two laws were good. If a bad law gets passed, however, that will be bad for everyone. He's petitioning people who live in the EU to not sign this because it will inevitably affect him if he tries to release a game in the EU.
@@OliviaSNava
>because it will inevitably affect him
Then we are getting to the point: what people are allowed to do or not to do affects others. That's why we do get to tell sometimes what other people can or can't do.
@@OliviaSNava yeah, and as we all know the cookie thing, the industry also found a way to trick you into clicking the wrong of the 3 or even more buttons
"i'm not owned! I'm not owned!!", I continue to insist as I slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob
As a open source advocate, the simple solution to me is that if you wish to end your service after you have made your revenue and want to EOL it; simply release the repository in a public format and let these dedicated players figure out the rest if they want to. This concept of trying to black hole source code that no one will ever use again is absolutely corruptive to any software programming field; but especially game development.
---
I wanted to address some of the comments:
- Preservation, Not IP Release: My focus is on the preservation of games and software that users continue to enjoy, not on the indiscriminate release of intellectual property (IP). I never advocated for releasing assets that are still commercially active. My proposal is specifically about End of Life (EOL) software-where the game or service has been officially discontinued. While it's easy to cite high-profile titles like "Batman" as exceptions, those represent a small fraction of all software. Naturally, any proposal would need to account for such edge cases.
- On Reusing Code in Future Projects: From my experience in production and open-source, the idea that companies will reuse old code in future games is often overstated. With the constant evolution of new engines, frameworks, infrastructure, and assets, most code from discontinued games becomes obsolete. I would estimate that 90% of games or software don't reuse their old code in new projects. While this is anecdotal, any software engineer would recognize that building on outdated code is generally a poor practice. The goal should be innovation and improvement, not recycling old solutions.
A really good example of what I mean is `Project Cartographer`: A fan-driven initiative that revived the online multiplayer experience for HALO 2 on PC after official support was discontinued. This project exemplifies the potential of community-led efforts to preserve and enhance older games, allowing players to continue enjoying them in a way that would have otherwise been impossible. It stands as a powerful example of why releasing the source code for EOL games can be beneficial.
I love this in theory, but there are several issues with it.
The most commonly cited one (e.g. in discussions about the death of Flash Player) is the cost of removing proprietary third party code (which usually breaks the codebase entirely, and cripples it even after it is repaired). That's a substantial amount of work to put into something you've already decided to kill because you can't afford to keep it alive.
Furthermore, this would mean being forced to release your _own_ proprietary code, most of which is still being used in your still-living games.
If you advocate open source, the entire game would have to be open source from the start in that case. Releasing the source code of a dead game should still remain an option the game development studio could use. Id Software back in the day released the source code of their game Quake III Arena, a very popular multiplayer focused FPS game. They were able to do it, because first of all, their engine they used for the game, was already quite public and used in various other games, 3rd party to Id Software, so the engine was already free and open source, and second of all, the game code itself didn't really rely on any arbitrary source code that would fall under "still used in alive games" category that might jeopardize the livelyhood of the company (not to mention that Id Software as it was no longer exists, it has been bought out and incorporated by Bethesda couple of years ago).
This only makes sense if a company isn't using any of that code in any live or in-development projects, which almost never will be the case.
Releasing code may not be the problem. But developers might not "release" trade marks and IP belonging to publisher or some other third party. Like Telltale for example. They could release sources. But not rights to a Batman, Fables and so on. Sadly.
@@keldzh Yeah, that's another issue. Games that rely on 3rd party IP being licensed to them obviously can't just release it for free for everyone, it's tied to the license. Source code might be released, but not the assets and other stuff that is licensed by a 3rd party. And if the game is literally built on those premises, then it doesn't make sense to release the source code, but not all the assets. Which is why Q3A source code being released for free makes sense. They do not include the game assets, just the source code. That way you can make your own version of Q3A, make modifications, etc. And provide your own assets to it. And that's how Open Arena was born. In code, it's essentially Q3A, but it looks different. The game assets were completely overhauled, there are different textures, models, even maps. It's an entirely different game.
I like how the thumbnail is him throwing the initiative in a dumpster. Lmao the arrogance.
Also ironic considering in that clip/meme the dude is kinda in the wrong
TF2 has a bot problem because Valve's matchmaking is bad. Has NOTHING to do with community servers, because community servers ban those immediately, that's why they don't attempt to invade them
TF2 does not have a bot problem because valve just banned like 50k of them
@@XAMERENhaven't kept track of it since a few weeks. Is official matchmaking still playable?
@@qunas101 i dont play ranked but casual is chill
that's not the point, though. The point is that it's very much possible to bot a game to oblivion. And the people who botted TF2 had 0 monetary incentive and still caused that much destruction
It's an example that the idea of someone botting a game to oblivion is not far-fetched
Tf2 casual bots absolutely had a monetary incentive. You could pay to have them not target you. They were used for hack publicity.
"You shouldn't have control over what is in my Steam library." Coming from the guy defending the practice of companies going into my library and bricking what I already purchased...
I found this bit ironic too. Steam could quite literally revoke every game you purchased. In fact you could potentially lose these games even if just Steam, itself, shuts down. Hey it’s in their license!
A. General Content and Services License
Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.
----
Oh, as a kicker, you also can’t sue Steam. You’re required to go through binding arbitration.
@@ExtraTrstl Thankfully, Valve is not an evil company and is just covering their own ass.
@@XDRosenheim Thankfully Emperor Palpetine only wants the clones to save the Republic!
And forced arbitration is ABSOLUTELY being evil. In fact some jurisdictions (California maybe?) have outlawed it.
@@XDRosenheim not evil for now doe
@@XDRosenheim We're coasting on their goodwill, and that's the problem. I am glad that Valve is operating in good faith now, at least in this specific regard, but there's no guarantee it will be the case when it'll change ownership, Gaben is not immortal after all.
Yeah, of course. When the Mona Lisa becomes less popular, the paintings current owners should be able to burn it because they can't afford to display it anymore, I mean if future generations wanted to see it and experience it themselves they should have been born earlier
When Warcraft reforged came out, everyone was mad because an old game was updated to have fewer features.
When a GTA title was updated, everyone was mad to have music removed
When devs claim "offline mode is IMPOSSIBLE," only to update an offline mode later, people have a right to be skeptical.
Developers and publishers have been acting hostile towards consumers for years. Is it any wonder when publishers and devs have treated consumers so poorly- just for you to claim they have the right to dumpster IPs they'll never touch agan, you get pushback?
A lot of your counterarguments on reddit is "you're looking at this at a consumers level" thats because serving the consumer is the whole point of the market
Ya that argument erked me too. At best it felt like his emotions peaking through. At worst a weak strawman. In reality we can never see things as truly were in the pest, it is more about having a chance to glimpse at what was.
As Thor mentioned in his previous video, we want to call out *specific* bad practices where an online only game is sold as a singleplayer experience and when the online only part is buried away in ToS and EULA's. SKG will target all live service games and we don't want it to because it would kill live service games due to the reasons mentioned in part 1. A type of game that many, including myself, really enjoy. It is not the job of the developers to keep servers open forever for a small playerbase that isn't making enough for the developers to cover server costs. You even gave an example, if the Mona Lisa becomes unpopular and it no longer makes enough money for the owners to keep it up, why should they keep it up? No one is entitled to see it, much like how no one is entitled to have live service games stay online forever when it isn't making the server owners any money.
I agree with the concept of game preservation and that singleplayer offline games should be preserved by having a PC port/emulation of some sort to keep a record of it. But live service games don't work that way. They are designed in a way for them to work with an active playerbase and in some cases built to only last a certain amount of time due to licences and license renewals. Imagine playing Hell Divers 2 in single player, an MMO in singleplayer, or playing a MOBA in singleplayer it just doesn't work. Live service games can't last forever because it needs the playerbase active and spending money on the game to stay alive and if there aren't enough players then it goes down, which sucks but that's how it goes.
@@jametsu Then they could simply release the server binaries for the community to host the game at their expense in order to keep it in a playable state. About monetization, you dont HAVE to play on the servers which employ P2W practices and can just play on the player friendly ones. All servers may accept donations if upkeep is an issue, which most of the time it isn't if somebody just loves the game and has the money to keep it up.
@@mrhawkyy1 did you watch part 1 or even the video above? He explained why forcing devs to release server binaries is a bad idea. I’m not flaming or being rude I am genuinely asking because I also tend to type comments before watching the whole of a video.
@@jametsu No one is asking devs/publishers to keep dead online game servers up. We are asking for either server binaries or just the right to not get shut down/sued for making community hosted servers down the line ._.
"No you will not silence me with personal attacks." - receipts, please? 🤔
Why, he got dragged by the one who wrote the initiative when he asked to sit down and talk this out! Oh wait, no he didn't. That was the most respectful request to talk things out. And then Thor refused while personally attacking the guy. And Thor has since privated the stream where he did so.
Okay I'll fight the argument you're presenting:
1. Providing server binaries open up developers to abuse, knowing that server emulation will be provided at end of life would encourage bad actors to ddos, hack, or do whatever else to kill the official game and take dominion over the servers: Besides being a very dark view of player communities in general, I disagree that one necessitates the other. To use League of Legends as an example, at a bare minimum to preserve the game you would either a) have an option in "create private match" that connects the players to the host directly in order to run the match (which is already an option the game gives you if memory serves me right, this is the way a lot of older games do it too) or b) let the player host it's own server that players can connect to by changing options in the launcher to connect to the private server rather than official (which is the way a lot of private servers operate by using re-tooled or custom launchers). I concede that option a represents a much lower risk on the part of the developer, but even if option b was the only viable option I fail to see how it allows malicious actors to do more direct harm to a company than what's otherwise already available to them (TF2's community hosted servers had to deal with all the same malicious actors, the only difference is they actually wanted to allocate resources to dealing with it) , and why customers should expect to lose access to their game completely as a misguided measure to "protect the developer from abuse". Lastly, the initiative clearly states that the developers are not responsible for the actions of private individuals hosting their servers, so the point of forcing developers to enforce private server monetization is moot. it would just exist in that "abandonware" grey area where customers are left to deal with any problems that might arise until further problem solving is done, and something tells me games companies would be very quick to lobby and plug those holes. A bad actor might be able to perform the doomsday scenario of "kill a studio & monetize their server" once before the legal system does its thing
2. Why would players want a preserve a game in a "dead" state - I find this argument completely unconscionable especially for someone who considers games to be art. Games are more than their peak experiences - they have maps, models, music, interesting game mechanics (like movement in Apex), and so many more pieces that are worthy of preservation. Some people just want to explore the map, some people want to revisit an old multiplayer game with their friends for nostalgia's sake. Even if its just one person that wants to spend a few hours sulking while they stare at the empty server listening to lo-fi hip hop thinking of better days - the only reason they're not able to do that for a growing list of games is this horrendous design choice where once a company ends support, the customer has to lose access to all of this completely. Personally I think this should be the mindset for all games, but since we're just focusing on where money is changing hands, this initiative at the very least helps reduce the scope of the utter graveyard that is being filled with modern games.
The remainder of your arguments seem to focus on protecting developers from these bad actors, which again even if that does happen, I doubt the law would let it fly for very long before the multibillion dollar industry figures out a solution. You're so hyperfixated on the what-ifs that you're completely ignoring the actual reality happening today, it is actually astonishing the number of games that are no longer accessible due to this practice. I'll try to find the official list but if someone could post it in the replies I'd appreciate it.
In summary, I understand your concern but think the industry can sort it out fairly easily with their lobbying power. And I'm appalled that you're unable to understand why people might want to preserve online games even when no one plays them anymore.
This is a very well worded and thought out response. I really do hope that Thor reads this.
For point 1 - you dont seem to understand what a 'server binary' is. its not an option for someone to connect to a host. its a way for you to stand up our own server, identical to the official one. It would look just like the game, but hosted privately or by a third party. Its a duplicate of all the code used to run the official server. All you have to do is stand up your own server and copy the data and point folks to your machine and your the original game. (it is more complicated then this, but its a simplified version)
You also dont seem to think that people would abuse the process if devs were forces to give up their game (which is what server binaries are) if they are forced to fail. I an guarantee that all of the bad actors who currently exist in the realm of content farms on steam would salivate at being able to just bot attack other games and steal them for profit with no work needed on their part.
Is that a bleak view? prolly. but we've already seen the lengths these crappy content farms go too, including suing anyone who criticizes them. So being able to take and monetize someone else's game with little to no work is something they would jump at.
How is abuse going to be prevented? Especially for indy devs? Your big 'AAA' companies like EA and Activision wont be effected by Bad actors like this, but the Indy scene absolutely will. Since they will lack the money and corporate power to defend themselves.
@@JohnDoe-bf7hb I get that a server binary (like a WoW or other service game private server) is a very separate thing from just hosting a listen server (like people do for TF2 or Counter-Strike). I was making the distinction myself because a lot of games that shut down in this way are intentionally doing the former when they could just as easily have it be done via the latter. To use Apex Legends as an example, instead of connecting to the main server and then selecting the "private match" option, the company could just give you a separate launcher that skips everyone to the private match without having to communicate with the main server. And again this would only occur once official support had ended.
I didn't deny that malicious actors existed, but I do question the assertion that there is no way to prevent this abuse and it spells a death sentence for indie developers for a few reasons:
1. The steps he laid out are to attack the official server until the company goes bankrupt, host your own server via the released binary, and monetize the replacement server. So if we consider a game like palword or retail royale sold on steam (the prime target for this behavior) your content farm would have to perform all of these steps for every game it wanted to target rather than just poorly ripping off the mechanics and assets outright and throwing that up onto the store with a slightly different name. It seems like an obtuse and resource heavy way of stealing from indies.
2. Nothing says that if lawmakers wanted to make rules around this, they wouldn't attempt to limit it to larger entities/publishers. Its a more reasonable request from a major publisher than a small studio and the fact that this initiative does not make that distinction would not prevent that discussion from taking place.
3. This is a weaker point so I saved it for last, but given the larger resource requirements innate to developing and maintaining live service games, its hard to imagine an abuse on a product that require so much investment would not attract serious attention in the media and legal landscape. So if the doomsday scenario occurred, its hard to imagine it would last long before lawsuits started to fly. Even in the small business indie world.
I won't deny there would be unfortunate casualties if such a scenario were to take place, but again if the goal of the initiative is the stop companies from Ubisoft from killing games like The Crew and cutting off all possible access without recourse, as a customer I'd prefer a temporary graveyard of small businesses as opposed to the growing graveyard of games which have so many resources poured into them and people form deep emotional connections to. Which is still a point that never gets addressed by these counter arguments.
@@JohnDoe-bf7hb Perhaps this is a blind spot of mine, or my memory is failing me, but I can't think of a single indie game that would actually be affected by this. Part of why I gravitate towards indie games in the first place is because I actually own the game I purchase and can play it forever, and don't have to deal with the live service business model. As you say, they don't have as much money as the big corpos, but that's also why they don't have more money than sense to be able to make a game that people won't even be able to appreciate at all after an arbitrary period of time has elapsed. Unless they aim to make an artistic piece about transience perhaps, though even games like that already exist where you play them once and the experience is over until you reset them somehow.
@@Neostriusthe industry become more on more diverse even within the indie industry. Now most of the indie only make single player or clienct server based game but when they have some capital to actually expend and make a live service game, this movement might make them to think twice before making them. For me this movement is more on stagnanting the live service game than making the overall situation better. Anyway, the problem still stand and bot attack can be done to any indie who want to make live service game such as mmo and by having them without having enough resource to counter, they might even lost their game even during their infant years. Because the game need to stay alive or else their code need to be given, that just make it worst than just claiming bankrupcy. Im not saying all indie is good and some developer even indie developer is shitty like those who make "tomorrow" or what not but in general, the situation just sux for an indie who trying to make live game or mmo as their first project.
Thor you only concentrate your argument on very few multiplayer live service games, but the market has a lot more of singleplayer live service games.
Genshin Impact and other gacha games for example, those ARE singleplayer with maybe some multiplayer added in.
Many people invest a lot of money into them and they simply shut down those games, leaving people with neither money or product.
And excluding live service games in the law, just makes a gap for big companies to exploit.
And live service games are not always good. There are many games that have ripped out content that should have been free, just to be sold as live service.
In Destiny 2 more and more stuff is locked behind a paywall, despite selling the new content as an expensive Add-On.
And some live service games are abandoned shortly after they have released, like Anthem...
The fact genshin can do this scares me 😂
@@-Pedry There have been half a dozen gacha games that closed this year alone.
Usually with less then 4 years of runtime.
@@-Pedry its not a new practise, its in literally every single gacha game. the nature of rotating banners means the game has to be live service to maintain the gacha system's integrity, as well as preventing people just hacking in currency. When you get into a gacha game, you should fully expect it won't last forever, that's how many things in life work.
I feel like he addressed this topic in his first video: he said that single player live service games are an issue but this movement doesn’t properly address this because it is to broad and vague
I bet he wouldn't have a problem with an initiative where the goal was simply to stop the unnecessary bricking of single player games.
Fighting games and community efforts like fightcade are a perfect example as to why the "if the game is dead, why bother preserving it" is such a demonstrably ridiculous mindset. Nobody is saying community servers will revive an entire playerbase, we just need the absolute minimum amount to fill a match lobby or to do a raid or whatever.
And in today's day and age it's absolutely trivial to gather a bunch of passionate people in a discord server to have fun together playing "dead" videogames.
Also, using TF2 as an example as to why giving the community access to servers is exploitable is ridiculous. Bots and cheaters started flooding servers after years of utter neglect by Valve and the release of a horrible update that made community servers harder to access. And guess what, most bots/cheaters would flock towards Valve's neglected and automated servers because community servers were just better equipped and monitored to kick them out of matches.
A community that's passionate enough to run their own servers won't sabotage the game they love when it's still alive and will actively filter bad actors, it's insane to claim otherwise.
Some games work with only a few active players, fighting games only require 2 players to get a match to spin up. I think his example of Apex is a good one, as it *requires* at least 100 players to get a single game running probably closer to 1,000 to keep matchmaking times reasonable
@@wyhiobcarlile4879 The example is irrelevant, I pointed towards fighting games because it's a community of people that fundamentally understands the human value of keeping older and obscure multiplayer games alive even if there's only a handful of people in the world willing to play them.
The point is not to revive games back to their heyday, the point is to make abandoned games playable at all through community efforts. It might be more complicated to completely fill the lobby of a battle royale compared to other genres, but that doesn't mean these games should become lost media just because some of you decided online videogames are a perishable product.
@@madnessobserver At least fighting game have a single player and a local multiplayer function in them. Shooters always don't have that.
That point was directed as MMO and other mass multi player games. Fighting game is just a two player games. It's not in the same scale at all. Gathering a bunch of decent players for some fighting game matches is very different from gathering 40 people of similar competency to do a boss raid or find 100 players to do a pubg match.
You're also completely missing the point on exploit. Server exploit as currently is totally illegal, and it's already so hard to fight against. Imagine how it would be when it got practically legalized.
@@CelestialOrionX I’m assuming you meant don’t always have and not “always don’t have” but just in case you actually meant always don’t have most cods have a campaign or zombies which can be done offline and solo
"Game companies have no intention to let customers retain their purchase, yet games and game features are sold as goods, not services."
-Ross Scott
6:50 ???
The petition is garbage. The actual working parts need to be extracted into a new petition and not have Ross attached. Dude is mentally ill.
@@centor111 YEAH! WE DON'T DESERVE OWNERSHIP! WE'RE JUST MONEY SACKS TO BE DRAINED AND RUN ALONG FOR ETERNITY.
Didn't you watch the WEF? YOU WILL own nothing, and YOU WILL be happy.
Centor is right, just embrace it.
@@centor111 how is he mentally ill for not wanting the products you pay for to continue existing
@@Shakenmike117 he is mentally ill for being a sociopathic liar with grandiose fantasies of pushing regulation that isn't feasible nor maintainable. In a short period of time he has proven to be incompetent of placing the betterment of the industry ahead of his ego. You will understand when you grow up.
@@centor111 This is why is called a petition, it can't ve very specific. After the petition is approved, then is when they'll start working on legislation and talking with experts.
Why are you not commenting on the super shitty things you said about Ross like calling him a sleazy used car salesman?
Because that would be saying the truth and acknowledging that he himself is acting in bad faith. He's dug himself in now and won't back down.
Well guess I'll skip Heartbound, no idea when he will push a game breaking update and leave the gaming space, might even donitnout of spite judging by these videos and his comments.
Where did he say those things?
@@christianlewis2008 in the first video as far as I can gather, not going to subject myself to that stupidity to find out, but called him things like "disgusting" and "greasy car salesmen" in the way he put across the campaign.
@@davep5698 Ah, that's why I was confused because I had just come from watching the first video and he never said those things about Ross, he said those things about Ross's arguments. Which I could see why that's easy to conflate.
Specifically Ross's arguments that the initiative would be easy to pass on the basis that politicians don't care about video games, would see it as an easy win, and would welcome the distraction from more important topics. That last one specifically Thor railed into.
Now I'm not saying Thor is right, he does seem to heavily be misunderstanding what people want out of game's preservation, but I also think that last argument is a bit icky.
@@christianlewis2008 Dude, I'm not taking sides yet or anything, but I have to agree that some of those arguments were indeed shady at best.
Hitman 3: World Of Assasination is a mandatory online Live Service game even tho it's a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, you can't complete missions, challenges or unlock anything unless you have an internet connection, even when the game has no multiplayer component and fans have asked since Hitman 2016 to remove the mandatory connection to their servers, and guess what? fans managed to create a patch for the game in order to emulate official servers so now you can play the game, complete missions and unlock equipment even if you don't have an internet connection, you are telling me a small group of fans managed to create a solution to this artificial problem devs have created for arbitrary reasons that only punish people who actually bought the game (same as Denuvo ruining performance) but it's just too hard for a billion dollar company to release a small patch to remove that requirement? if devs working on a billion dollar company are actually unable to figure out how to remove this artificial constraint (what an incredibly disingenuous argument this is man, seriously, "it's too hard"?) then maybe you are just a mediocre developer
According to Thor that is a niche scenario we shouldn't care about because it's niche. Not like that's almost every modern game.
@@lolroflundxd This NICHE problem is in his HEARTBOUND game.
@@lolroflundxd On the contrary, if you watch his previous video he says that THOSE are the exact anti consumer practices that must be addressed. Single player games that are artificially made online-only without adding anything to the game.
I think your selling us meteor insurance here, like I believe games can get shut down by server attacks, but that's going to happen out of malicious intent and not because there's a .0125% chance they could be the first person to ever host a profitable third party server outside minecraft, during the period where multiple free servers will almost certainly pop up repeatedly, more if someone converts the server files into an easy to run executable
Right? Thinking some bad actor would actually profit from making and monetizing their own private server - when the server binaries would be publicly available for ANYONE to put up - is unhinged. Plus it's not as if making the server binaries available is even the only way to keep the game in a playable state. Really grasping at straws and lying, hope their vacation helps them calm down and see what an absolute buffoon they're being here.
It's so disingenuous that he brings up TF2 as an "example" of this when the TF2 bot crisis happened solely because Valve was doing literally nothing to stop them, and the instant they just banned all the bot hosters, the problem went away. That's it. They didn't overhaul their anti-cheat (well they started doing that for CS2, but it wasn't rolled out yet), they just banned a huge list of known conspirators carrying out the attacks and it fucking stopped. Because, as it turns out, even if your opposition has your source code, it's basically impossible for someone to maliciously take down your entire multiplayer system.
And what was their motive?
Nothing, they were just trolling. It had nothing to do with attempting to shut the game down.
Titanfall 2 and Star Wars Battlefront 2 had their servers attacked at the same time by the same people - the issue with Battlefront was resolved in a span of a week or two, where Titanfall 2 was borderline unplayable for close to 2 years (until a rogue dev fixed the issue by himself), both are published by EA - the difference was that Titanfall only had 3 people assigned to "maintain" it. If the devs won't fix it, the community will, with their Northstar client (not monetized, saved the game, noone profited from it)
bro calls himself Pirate, but he's actually the Marines.
😩
wouldnt even give him THAT HONOR. He is Teech the pirate that screwed everyone.
another M word but surely not a Marine lol
@snintendog Seriously? He just has a different perspective and opinion on the issue, but instead of listening to his points, you just resort to what is essentially name-calling.
There are good points on both sides of this argument, and there are also bad points. Neither side is perfect, just like in politics. But I don't understand why you guys are *so incredibly angry and hateful.* He even says that SKG has good intentions. He just disagrees with how they're going about it. It's okay to not 100% agree with an initiative like this. Are you guys seriously incapable of handling opposing perspectives and opinions just because they don't 100% align with your own? Did you even watch the full video, or did you just rush down to the comments to tear his character apart just because he said one thing you didn't like? That's sad, man....
You're really acting like he blew up an orphanage or something. You're allowed to disagree, but goddamn. It's really obvious you have no argument against him, because instead of giving counter arguments, you're just ripping his character apart, saying he's a bad person because you have a different perspective. And my god, we're talking about video games here. It's not as serious as you're pretending it is. And yeah, I know I'm basically Satan to you because I disagree with you. But before you throw total vitriol and hate my way, just think for one second about what you're doing. It's easy to tear people down and feel good about it when you're hiding behind a screen and there are no real consequences. Just cool it. You're not helping anything.
@@LookingGlass1865 He's working for the side of "let's kill games", while pretending that he isn't. His arguments are obviously disingenuous. Just read the rest of the comments under this video, or carefully watch the video. Sadly, his influence has spread.
"You're really acting like he blew up an orphanage or something"
What do you call a game that isn't working because it's daddy DRM server and mummy multiplayer server isn't available anymore? A game orphan.
What did he blow up? The organizing place for those games.
Attacking his character might be too far if done carelessly, but saying that he doesn't seem to do what he preaches, and that he has an incredible double standard is correct. Influencers are public persons just like politicians, and thus must live with some critique. If they didn't want to be in the lime light, they just have to step away from the camera.
@@LookingGlass1865 You copy pasting this on my WHOLE CHANNEL doesn't help your case BOT
As an European: no.
I don't care about any contrary arguments any more. Game companies were absolutely comfortable selling products to us under false pretenses for decades now and then making the products we PAID for and should OWN unavailable to use or morphing it into some ungodly, unplayable concoction of mtx and always online trash.
So I don't care any more. They had literal decades to self-regulate, instead they CHOSE to continue using the most unethical practices they could use as long as they gain them extra cents. So it's done. Devs and publishers had their chance to get their sh*t straight.
Firstly: the customer is always first. The fact that the US has normalized corporation bribery and just renamed it as 'lobbying' doesn't make it not bribery. We *generally* don't do that shit out here. If game dev is not able to follow the law and provide with an expected level of support for the product that's been paid for then they'll be forced to. If a company is not able to do that, then they never deserved to exist in the first place and same goes for their 'games'.
Secondly: If anyone still thinks it wouldn't work, virtually every massive corporation has bent their knees to EU after GDPR was introduced. Millions if not billions in fines and yet corps such as Meta and Amazon continue to work in EU and instantly just learned to follow regulations the moment it turned out it's real and actionable. And I've seen that from the inside myself.
Even damn Apple had to back down on the USB thing despite it completely contradicting their approach and customers are better for it.
It's a customer's market. Adapt or die.
Nice!
These are incredible responses, nice to see some people are still fighting against the BS.
@@axelolord Thank you. I'm all for calm and collected discussion but comments like yours are also completely valid. People love to pretend like there is no room for emotions in matters like those, but that's bullshit. We are allowed to be angry at the state of this and we are allowed to not give a damn about the "poor devs and publishers" after years of them not giving a damn about us.
As a fellow European I agree; he is very biased in both his American and developer ways, and just cannot seem to grasp that while corporations being people that can own the world is normal over there, we at least make an effort to put them in their place. Not to say we're doing a very good job of it mind you, but there's attempts being made to keep them in check.
Solid and true, also based
We do not want to preserve it in its "dying" state. We want it, even if dead, we want it *playable* so that if, for example, we find 99 other people at an event who wanna relive the glory days of Apex after EA bled it dry, we can... *still play it*.
Preservation isn't about keeping a player base and community alive. It's about keeping the game playable.
Also, who is dealing with the upfront cost of buying a buncha game licenses then botting to kill the game just so that long run they can set up to monetize? Why would people even go to the monetized server? They'll stay on the free community servers. Because gamers are cool, that way at least. One would think you'd know.
Yeah that argument is real, “We need to prevent you from recording the radio so you can’t start your own station,” energy.
And in fact, that hyperbolic comparison makes EVEN MORE sense than Thor’s reasoning.
And it's not even like that, games like Apex, LoL or DOTA like people are putting, are the extremes, what happens with games like, let's say, Genshin Impact, that game has hundreds of hours of single-player gameplay, literally, the only online parts of the game, are the login and gacha systems, which could be removed without repercussion to the game once the company doesn't want to run it anymore, they just need to develop a local save system, and change the gacha to either have everything farmable, or give us infinite currency and merge all into 1 banner, but instead, what would most likely happen, is that they will close the servers, and the game will be gone, hundreds of hours of story and exploration, gone, because the company didn't want to take a week, or a month, to change some code.
@@Acuas exactly, lol. when mihoyo reaches EoL for genshin, are they really gonna let that massive 1000 hour experience they built over 10+ years just become unavailable for the rest of time? what a waste.
@@Acuas eventually someone will reverse engineer a game like that guaranteed. It might even happen before the servers close.
@@LuciusC Do you have any idea of the sheer complexity of reverse-engineering a game like Genshin? This is precisely the kind of case that the initiative is trying to solve, or at least help solving. The publisher wouldn't have to keep Genshin's servers running forever, just helping enthusiasts with the reverse-engineering work would be enough.
"We don't need a clear legislation because sometimes a few hard-working people solve the problem for us" is not a great argument.
* Releasing the server is not the same as releasing the IP nor should it allow you to profit from it.
* Even if I trired to attack the servers to get a version of the binary - for a future profit - the binary would be open for everyone, why should I pay a subscription to your modified payToWin server when I could join a community server with only donations to keep the servers alive?
* Legality has noting to do with this, you can setup a private WoW server in Russia or China or any other country and no one would be able to stop you.
Correct, any private server made wouldn't be allowed to make a proffit, because the company still owns the IP, and even if they tried, as you said, the wide availability of servers would make it so only the ones that didn't ask for money except to run the servers would survive, as for people who still tried, we all know how much people hate P2W, imagine what would happen to a private server that does that, and people know it's illegal, they would just need to report the server, and it would be shut down by the government in no time, not even need the company to take actions on it.
Or just bot it down. If you can bot and DDOS the original game despite it having actual developers trying to stop you, you can definitely bot and DDOS a pay2win server that only has access to a private server kit and not the whole game's sourcecode.
dude i made a joke that pirate software was going to make a crude MS paint diagram that doesnt really explain anything when i saw the first video. i didnt expect that it would become a fucking reality
So can you tell me the numbers of the lottery?
@@eriktheos6022 in order for me to answer that i need to draw a diagram on ms paint
Bro is slowly becoming a stupid parody of himself... A shame, really.
@@ChrisMorray It's not his first really stupid take. He's charming when it suits him, which covers up a lot of idiotic opinions - this is just the first time he's said something dumb enough, loudly enough, for the pushback to be visible in the noise.
I'm an indie dev, and im 100% for this iniciative.
First of all i dispise designing games as services when thay dont need to be. Not becouse idea of games as service is bad but becouse of psyhological trics used on players thare, that are manipulative at best.
Secound its not hard to make single player option for the game while you are developing it. I agree that after development is finished it can take additional resources, and with some spaggeti code could require rewringing games. But what we argue here is that developers while developing the game need to think about servers shuting down. The problem with Thor is he is to stuck at thinking like a blizzard developer.
In MMO games it should be the hardest to apply this initiative, and yet MMO-s are famous for private servers that are made without connection to developer server codes. Why developer should need server code for the game that dont exist any more?
>Why developer should need server code for the game that dont exist any more?
The reason is simple. They need it if they decide to run it again, at some point.
If your source files are available for free, you can't just sell your stuff again, because it's already in the internet.
With current laws and agreements it's easy to resell the same stuff.
@@aldecotan But there are already situations where private server communities allow the original developers to re-take hosting completely to run the game completely as they like financially, and - since there have been private server communities - a large chunk of them are often supportive of the re-continuation of official support after years of having to figure out the server hosting themselves. For example, one of WoW's Classic Private servers respectively shut down their server once the official Classic server was announced. Many of that private server's community migrated into the official server and even helped with beta testing. This is one of the loudest examples, sure, yet there are many more like this. Framing these communities maliciously isn't helpful for the argument, and - instead - increases the risk of such malicious pay-to-play private server behaviour due to lack of developer-player trust.
@@SableLeaf I'm really surprised by that. For me, Blizzard is currently the clearest example of a developer that should never be trusted or respected due to their actions towards players. And so I was pretty much convinced that Blizzard had sent cease and desist letters to all the owners of WoW's Classic Private servers and that's why they were shut down. Hat's off to the players for this move though.
Thor well full anti consumer pro corpo mode and destroyed his own reputation in one day.
Deleting Ross comments and refusing to talk to him was an icing on the cake.
> you shouldn't be able to decide what I get to play
*2 minutes later*
> you don't get to play apex with 5 people because that's not my idea of peak apex
you can't make this up lmao
LMAO
This is like the only questionable thing I've heard from him, just a very game dev perspective
to play devils advocate, he gets to decide what's in his game cause he's making it. Your logic is like getting mad at an artist for painting a picture of a sunrise when you want it to be a sunset and being offended cause you interpreted it as "you can only buy my paintings of sunrises". No one is making you buy that piece of art, go and find someone who will paint you a sunset.
@@funnymanatwork Well said
@@funnymanatwork "play" not "make". He's clearly thinking from an exec perspective, game is way past peak so shut it down (almost no dev loves this). If he's not making a game like this then he shouldn't have to worry.
But even if he did mean "You don't get to decide what I make", then that logic is faulty too. There's plenty of rules devs need to follow if they want to market their games and release them on storefronts like steam. You can't put malware for instance. For GoG, they quality assess the game, and games generally need to be out of the box playable or at least easily fixable to be sold on GoG. GoG will not put your game on their store if it won't work without a lot of work from the consumer's side to tamper just to get the game to open.
The "You can't tell me what to do" is a very elon twitter brained mentality. Everything obviously has rules that need to be followed. Besides, the way he's making it out to be (this is still assuming he's talking from a making games instead of playing games perspective which obviously isn't true), it sounds like he's being tortured and stripped of all cash. It doesn't, it's not a huge effort to make an end of life plan. Don't like dealing with that sort of stuff? Then don't make games that would require one (which is something almost no indie devs want to do anyway)
If you don't like seeing dead games in your library (despite the fact that a lot of them can have decently sized communities, I saw someone announce that they got omd unchained working and back from the dead, absolutely insane and can't wait to play that again when I get the opportunity. This whole initiative just makes this process easier, OMD unchained could've had this happen to it soon after its service ended), then just don't play it. Steam also allows you to hide or completely remove games if you want.
Thor is figuratively crying for a pro consumer move which won't affect almost all indie devs and most middle sized studios, and it's not a big deal and can even be preferable for big company devs who poured their hearts and soul into a game so it can be alive for people who truly want to play it. The only people it's harming (It won't impact execs and investors almost at all regardless, so even harm is a strong word. God forbid rich people are just slightly less rich) are ceos and execs.
Thor really out here telling players 'shut up and take the abuse with a smile, peasant'
Long time lurker and listener here, Unfortunately I'm in the camp of disagreement here Thor.
WoW Classic became a thing because of Private Servers, I'm very certain you are familiar with the Nostalrius cease and desist/shut down back in 2015.
The fact that Blizzard was able to shut down Nostalrius in the first place is because Blizzard owns the rights to WoW, SKG in the FAQ clearly states that it's not requesting IP's to be relinquished.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to ask who would enforce it, The company you worked for prior has given you this example.
Using Team Fortress 2 is also a poor example, Valve has no choice but to support the game in an official capacity because they overlapped a market of cosmetics which is shared with both DOTA 2 and Counter Strike 2. That's the fault of Valve if they planned to axe the game, if you're selling cosmetics and loot boxes for a game I as a consumer would expect the game to run and be playable as a product.
If Valve were to shut down the game, then the market they cultivated for years would be disrupted. Players from their other titles would panic sell most likely, driving the price of high valued items down significantly and possibly to a crash. Valve would potentially lose a good chuck of money while also losing a stream of revenue.
The game itself was able to survive, through community servers and private servers. TF2 was still being played by approximately 100,000 concurrent players still. It's nowhere near what would be considered a "dead game". Even during the Bot Crisis. In short it was primarily a Valve issue.
Below were better examples such as Titanfall and honestly Little Big Planet would have served as a better example for your argument.
a lot of those 100000 players are bots, but the point still stands
i feel like people constantly overestimate how many players it takes for a game to be playable
honestly a couple thousand is enough to immediately find a server if the game is unranked
Titanfall 2 currently has a player made client called "Northstar" I believe, which allows people to still play the game multiplayer if they wanted and the single player is also still functional I think.
In the case of Blizzard shutting down private servers, Blizzard is still around and able to enforce their copyright.
As he posits in the video at 2:39 , what if the company is dead and, as such, is unable to enfore their copyright? They can't, because they already don't have the money to keep the company afloat. This means that it's in an unscrupulous group's best interest to target smaller studios that would die from the failure of their live service game. Then said group can monetise the game that once belonged to the company they forced to shut down.
I do agree that TF2 is a strange example to use. Valve is incredibly rich and, like you said, run by community and private servers. No further notes.
@@pravaris ip ownership doesn't just disappear, it goes to the parent company, publisher or the ceo of the company, who then can use the ip and copyright laws to enforce it
and as many others have pointed out, nothing is stopping from someone else from running an alternative donation free server
historically, in games that do have community servers, heavy monetization almost never flies
@@pravaris if there's no one to enforce the copyright then no one is hurt by server monetization either because the copyright holder simply does not exist
"Hundreds of comments from developers thanking me" - that doesn't instill confidence
He's massive shill and he's attacked other devs' strategies in a way to make himself look better. People are just seeing behind his facade. Just look at Heartbound - alpha came out in 2016, was supposed to be fully released before 2018. He shits on Star Citizen(justifiedly) but he's doing the exact same thing - baiting customers with a "SOON" release date that's been delayed who knows how many times.
And he's been deleting Ross' comment on his old video and then deleting any user comments that repost it, when they get popular enough to rise to the top.
in fact it cheers me on not to buy any games with bad devs which are mostly American companies. CD project red is "triple A" yet has legit business practices. Warframe, which is a free to play live service, is very good to their fan base. if players state "this is wrong, its a scam" they fix it. Heck, they even changed a rng plat loot create system for fur colors on pets after someone spent over 1,000 USD they refunded all the Plat he used then change it to be free. its just the pattern i'm noticing is if its USA company they will be scam artist in a suit. tho another nations don't do this type of stuff, another, then 1 bad apple out of 100. I'm ashamed of being American due to this. we used to be legit to providing the best services. Now we're just providing scams :/ like WHAT HAPPENED
@@Sunrise-d819i2 You probably weren't buying games either. neither of you seem to grasp dev =/= pub
he's probably making it up.
There may well be thousands of developers quietly voting FOR the initiative, because most devs don't want their work to disappear as soon as a publisher loses interest. I'm a dev (and an EU citizen) and I voted for the petition, because games shouldn't disappear the moment they cease to be profitable.
Alright I'm done
Narrator: He was in fact *not* done
looking forward to part 3 already
@@camilla_films_stufffr
That's okay. I'm done with him.
We lived for decades without mega-corps pretending to release single-player games under the guise of a "live service". Client/server software combos were the norm, not the anomaly. You got access to the client. You got access to the server. TF2 has been running like this for decades, despite the bot problem. Killing these games is breaking the social contract we have with copyright and public domain.
His arguments are weak and offer no solutions to the current problems SKG was addressing in the first f'ing place.
@@Apparat8 Yup this is really a sad take from him, major L.
@@Apparat8 Expect that he does agree pretending a live service as single-player game is a problem needs to be addressed, according to his last video
Publishers and Devs being upset at a problem they themselves created is so funny brother
“I shot myself in the foot and now I shall cry about it” - Thor
The argument of "You could construct a criminal scheme through which you could illegally obtain benefits from the law" isn't a good one. It is true that this law wouldn't - for obvious reasons - address that issue. That is because it is already criminal under several other laws.
Yeah he just outlined why individuals should not be allowed to sell goods because it incentivizes theft (so I guess we need to shut down ebay, craigslist, and other individual market places). OK, but that theft is still criminal, so maybe we stop it there.
Yeah he outlined why people being allowed to sell things is bad because it incentivizes criminal behavior. This is a known problem: see retail theft and reselling. Maybe we stop it at the point of the crime, not by banning other things because they *might* incentivize crime.
First comment got auto-modded. EDIT: and now both comments are here... sigh...
@@ReturnOfHeresy this misses the fact that in your analogy individual market places are now FORCED to provide basically the blueprints for what they are selling. The point isn't "but people can maliciously attack them!" its "THIS INCENTIVIZES PEOPLE TO ATTACK"
THANK YOU.
@@snage-thesnakemage Rather than providing blueprints, it's more similar to right to repair. As in, they can't forcefully stop me from using or repairing something I purchased some time later after the transaction.
'You should not have control over what I have on my phone or Steam library'
That applies to always-online live service games. They can somehow decide at what point they will disappear from my library outside of my control. Good job arguing against yourself
He contradicts himself a lot in this video.
Video game devs shouldn't (after doing the bad practise of making a live service game in the firstplace) be forced to keep it online forever because that costs too much money and what if they go under then what.
BUT also if you give people the ability to host these games themselves but at anypoint they charge money for it they are stealing profits from the game devs??? So which is it exactly?
How is it both too costly but if you give people the chance to run it themselves at their own expense they can't ask for support to keep it running at their own expense?
@@NotTheWheel Charging money would be stealing the IP of said company for profit. You could fund private servers via donations instead, entirely skipping this moral dilemma.
@@finderOC Well yes of course that's what I mean. The donations themselves is to support the cost it takes to keep these things running. That's more in line with what I meant.
You should be able to keep your games in your library. And the devs should be able to shut off their servers when it costs more than it profits.
He speaks out against the initiative, in part, because of this section 1:29 - 3:14 of the video. Under the initiative, if studios must release server binaries to the public at end of service, a monetary incentive is created for unscrupulous groups to force live service games from smaller studios to shut down, then run and monetise private servers without legal action from the now bankrupt studio.
@@NotTheWheel As he states at 1:29 - 3:14 , legally requiring studios to release server binaries at end of service creates a relatively easy opportunity for someone(s) to force a live service game from smaller studios to shut down, then run and monetise private servers without legal retaliation from the now bankrupt studio.
If Ross comments on this video to correct your misinformation, are you going to delete it too?
He wouldnt do that.
Again.
@@GigglingStoners Enough of this chick with the deep voice.
Ofc he would, he is missinforming his subs for his own interest, let's not forget he is a publisher and a dev, this would make him do something good for the people that buy his games, instead of shitting on them to get the most amount of money, he is just talking about his own interests, things like "developers need to be included in the conversation", then say "I'm one of the few that can talk about this because developers would risk their job if they talk about it", and then add "I don't want to talk about this anymore" says it all, he says they need to be included, but can't be included, but the few that can, won't because it's not in their best interest that this succeeds, it's clear that he just wants this to fail, because living in a non regulated space is more profitable.
this loser already banned him and bragged about how he has a 1k list of banned people, imagine being this old and going into power abuse just cz someone exposed your shitty arguments
He stated that he didn’t delete the comment from Ross last time.
UA-cam shadowbans comments all the time, my comments vanish constantly.
Thor refusing to engage with the points that Ross and the SKG Initiative make because of how grossly they differ from his own beliefs and viewpoint shows a strange and visceral level of rejection of what is largely a reasonable proposition in concept, with the caveat of 'it's not that simple', and I think if Thor emphasized that much he would have good footing here.
What he does instead is make nonsensical arguments as to the possible damage to developers done by such an initiative while disregarding the intentions of those who advocate for such an idea. SKG isn't particularly asking for dev resources to be dedicated to isolating and making functional 'single player' elements of a full game but instead retaining the fuctionality of server-dependent games where applicable and that would be held up through hosting game-compatible servers through published binaries/recompiled source code.
While, yes, publishing server code is exploitable by causing damage to the company and developers constituting that company, that implies the scenario where the server code is freely available _while the game is in service,_ while the initiative targets games that are _exiting_ service and going onto EOL status. The publisher/developer would no longer be dedicating resources to the game at that stage.
Private servers _could_ be selfishly monetized and _could_ end up with the playerbase for multiplayer games in EOL dying off, but on the same coin there is the idea that people would, in fact, find value in freely offering their own computing resources or rented computing resources to use instead. This also only applies to the model of massively-multiplayer or similar live service games where maintained large player counts are required for an intended experience. Arena shooters, MOBAs, strategy games, co-op games would be unaffected, as the communities for such games could reach critically low numbers and still be fully functional.
Of this, Minecraft and many Valve titles offer a living example of the result of being able to host community servers through various methods, and the result is that some of the most popular servers are free to access/monetized through a donation model and not XaaS. There's also the viewpoint that many would locally host servers on their own machines for the sake of playing in private lobbies with friends, which is a legally protected/unrestrictable use case.
He's only seeing it from one angle and misrepresenting what he interprets of the initiative as immutable when they're not and are yet still subject to legislation processes if it's considered. Nothing included in the SKG initiative is directly binding and any adherence to it at this stage is voluntary. Thor has an opportunity to propose amendments to the initiative that clarify uncertain terms using his expertise and append terms for the protection of developers and the live service model as it exists now but instead throws the whole thing in the bin.
This level of disregard should have resulted in a refusal to comment, not a commentary that offers nothing of appreciable benefit for anyone involved. Thor recieves backlash that I find in some degree justifiable and he uses his platform to discredit an initiative that is clearly acting in good faith, if misguided. I'd venture to call it ad hominem with some of the language he's used.
On a side note, I don't think his proposal of 'live service games should clearly state that they are wholly a service' works optimally either. I think the terms that result in the most fair transaction is when live service games are sold as a one-time purchase (including expansions that are acquired as a one-time purchase) and not a subscription (which automatically communicates that the game is, in itself, a service and would include the popular 'battle pass' scheme), that the underlying software is under perpetual license to use under the terms of the software license, but the services for which the publisher is responsible including providing updates and hosting infrastructure required for online features are a separate yet compatible service which is liable to be revoked according to the ToS for such services. Separating the game license and the service license associated with the game would reap the most benefit for all and would also cover hybrid models like with Helldivers 2 which offers access to game servers/online services alongside the game purchase but also includes a subscription model for specific online features/unlockable content. The battle pass is temporary, but the base game is not. Whether service-related content is retained or revoked is at the discretion of the publisher.
The irony of calling yourself pirate software and having this take is not lost on me.
The joke is, is that he isn't for pirating software, he's making software to steal from you. PirateSoftware
I feel like you're kind of ignoring the fact that some of these live service games have a lot more going for them than *just* being a social or competitive experience. They have beautiful worlds and stories, compelling gameplay experiences that can still be fun solo, things that would be lost if allowed to simply perish when a community has moved on. That's the part that bites, and the core of the Games Preservation angle. Yes, these games are at their best with large communities, and some literally do not function without a group of people to fill slots in lobbies, but there *are* games that still have something to them that is being lost when the game dies *besides* the communal play experience. Just, something to maybe consider. I get this isn't really some grand argument that nullifies the risks you've outlined, but I just don’t agree with dismissing the other facets of these experiences as being invalid or not worth consideration when discussing the preservation of pieces of art.
Edit: Just to clarify, because people keep replying to this like I had an entire argument about why I fully support Ross' movement, I'm not trying to say I disagree with Thor's point about changing the language and being careful about how this kind of thing is approached, this comment was only about the percieved dismissal of value one could find in some of these live service games after their community is no longer large enough to provide the old communal experience. I'm not really lookin' to debate folks in a YT comment thread.
both guild wars games would be surprisingly enjoyable even if you were alone because they have enough going on outside the social experience.
those games are a good example of being still functional in a reduced state should still be fought for.
FF14 half its player base plays it exclusively for the story like a normal single player final fantasy game and wouldn't even care if the social aspect were missing.
yeah FF14's story experience absolutely is worth preserving.
And from a gameplay perspective even the big mmo have 90%+ of their content that need 8 or less player to enjoy as well.
I don’t disagree but the problem is where do we draw the line? Who decides what should be preserved and what shouldn’t? If we take a hard line and have to preserve everything then that means preserving live service games in every state they’ve ever been in, which is completely impractical. So how do we decide what gets preserved and what doesn’t? We can’t, because almost everyone will have a different opinion on where that line is.
Diablo 4 as well, even if we ignore the fact that they want another 70$ for smth that should've been in the base game
Sounds like you're thinking with your heart over the game developers heads. Your claim it's art won't matter in a monetary driven environment.
This is still ignoring the way EU legislation works, that is very different from US. I still disagree with Thor here. There is also the matter of the "disgusting" remark made in the previous video.
@@TPattythe devs that support him are probably the same devs that hate "gamers" 😅
Americans as always know everything and everyone else is wrong xD All this "petition" does is giving topic for politicians to discuss about and prepare some ground to start making laws to protect consumer... in a future (probably A LOT OF YEARS)...
@@Chief-Spectre Yea my bad, generalisation is bad sorry for that, what i had in my mind when i was writing that was all those people who won't even check sources themself and rely on someone else to think for them.
@@mikemandalorian9226 Not even politicians only, in the EU, laws like this, also have people from within the industry helping, so there would be people from dev companies, people from publishers, consumers, and consumer rights people in the talk, to find a common ground, sure politicians would have the last say, but it's not like they wouldn't have inside from people in the industry.
@@Acuas Yes you're right. But as an European all these things for me are obvious and i forget that people from around the world might not know it. Thanks for clarification
The fact that i can now go to a shop buy a game disc and there be no game to play is the problem
We are at a point now where even physic copies won’t save us. We need to insure every type of media is save or none will be
The Nigtingale devs did something pretty neat. They essentially made a copy of the online version and turned it into an offline version in a way that both versions can be updated whenever necessary. It took them a few months but they also don't have a publisher that could've told them not to do that.
Just as an example.
Nightingale is awesome.
neat thing to do, but certainly not a reasonable template to force on all devs
Hi, actual Dev here, as opposed to role-playing as one. The game that you're talking about has co-op online. An MMORPG Is coded completely differently than a co-op game. What you're talking about that takes a couple months in a co-op online game, takes years and years with an MMO. So I'm sorry to say this is completely irrelevant.
@@tsawy6 That's true. And not every dev can openly talk about templates like this. At least not the way how Thor does.
If you have a big publisher, they essentially take away any kind of creativity in exchange for money from their sponsors. Which is not always the case, thankfully enough.
@@Manja500 It's still hosted on a server for the most part. They were only able to do that because they didn't have a CEO that would've fired them for writing an offline version that functions 1:1 the same as the online version.
"What about monetization of private servers?"
If there are enough players to willingly pay for a privately hosted server for a game whose support has ended, maybe the company shouldn't have ended support in the first place.
"This isn't actually preserving those games."
If you think that just because the experience might be slightly different to the one people had while the game was still supported, every map, every model and every single gameplay mechanic should be deleted for everyone, that certainly is a take. In my opinion, a quite idiotic one.
This was such a weak point and I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking that.
As someone who plays private servers and mods like it's nobodies business, your 1st point is just straight up dumb.
For an MMO say like BDO, that survives off of pay-for-convenience and costumes. A private server could offer those things for free but make the server extremely pay-to-win instead. Also want to mention that an MMO has long term time investments, and mmo private servers go down all the time without the need for cease and desist letters, killing hundreds if not thousands of hours of progress.
If you played private servers you would know that his points are spot on exactly.
@@Antexous His point also assumes there'd be only one option for a private server when in reality there could be dozens, either competing with each other or existing just for a few friends. either way I don't see how this is a bad thing. one overly monetized private server pops up, people have an issue, so another one pops up with better monetization to compete.
@@Antexous
And yet, those private servers for MMOs have never managed to kill the official game.
Private servers didn't kill WoW, they didn't kill BDO, and they didn't kill Everquest.
Your argument is cherry picking a hypothetical scenario that has never even happened.
Besides, this is only about releasing server binaries WHEN THE OFFICIAL SERVERS SHUT DOWN. Most people are not demanding that the devs provide binaries while the game is actively in development (although that would be extra based).
It’s the same argument you see used against nuclear energy. “Oh ok, well nuclear/clean energy, isn’t 100% perfect so we should just keep relying on fossil fuels until the 100% clean and perfect energy source drops in our laps.”
Put simply, consumer protection is more important than business convenience. Thor disagrees with that sentiment, seemingly on the premise that a developer should be able to not only make whatever they want, but also be protected from any risk associated with certain business models at the expense of consumer protection. This is not how most industries' relationship with consumer protection works. There are rules you can play by if your goal is to make as much money as possible. You can ignore those rules and live with the threats and risks associated and hopefully make some, although less, money. And if none of that works out, you can make something purely out of passion as so many authors, painters, and sculptors throughout history have. Impacting developers negatively is a cost of consumer protection. Developers will adapt to the new legal ecosystem and yes, it will result in a different industry from what we have now. But what we have now is not the only way it can be. There will still be live service, there will still be mmos, but they will be different.
"...be protected from any risk associated with certain business models..." - if the risk is not currently inherent, and a movement for change would make that risk suddenly become inherent, then it's not about being protected from any risks, but rather about not wanting to inject new risks that very likely would discourage many developers from pursuing the now more risky game style. The type of game people are hoping to preserve would instead just stop being made in the first place, going forward.
"There are rules you can play by if your goal is to make as much money as possible" - and in the existing paradigm, they do play by those rules; the issue is that this movement seeks to add a new rule, and players don't realize that it won't force developers in the direction that the players are hoping for. As previously mentioned, it will instead discourage developers from making these kinds of games in the first place, and that's why it's a bad idea.
and online gaming will die for good, dont EVER trust in good faith, if server binaries must be released at EoL, this will be used, abused, milked until there is nothing left but ashes, there will be corpo wars for game control, as this throws IP owning out of the window
If its an Online only game. It means that the only way to play it is online via their servers. You get banned for cheating, While you still have the software on your computer, you're unable to play the game. When the game dies. Sure the developers could tinker with the game to make it able to run on private servers, but its a cost that big companies won't wanna deal with, specially since its very risky to make a online game that could flop in a few months after release, and then add additional cost to make it still able to run privately? Small studios would avoid it even more as it could potentially be devastating for them. If they studio shuts down due to not having any money, who is gonna make that change?
The petition should be that Single player games should be designed so that its playable after updates have stopped.
Multiplayer games with campaigns in a single player setting, should allow for that part to be playable after servers shutdown.
Studios should not be able to make a single player game that adds online features just to make it live service.
And Live service games Should have clear instructions that the player buys a license, not a game. (Buy button should then instead be "Buy license").
If developers can and want to make changes to make games compatible with private servers after live service has been shut down, should be optional.
Also theres the matter of licensing of brands in games. It is possible that they're simply not allowed to have it in the game, alive or not, after that license has run out.
And yes there are old games with licensed models that you can still play but perhaps they had another type of license that made it eternal at that time. may not be the case today.
Thor is on the same side, just not on the same page on how to reach the same goal. at least thats how I see things.
@@MrStyles784 can you say a example of thor's thesis actually happening? Like a new pro-consumer legislation killing a non predatory model in the gaming industries? Because if this didn't happened before than you two have just a idealistic view of the problem, you are just predicting consequences without imagining another bunch of variables that will exist when this get applied.
@@strangedogg5068 It's not hard to predict how we, as software developers, would react to legislation that would make specific types of software more trouble than they're worth. If I know that people actually have something to gain from sabotaging my product because of laws that would force me to give them proprietary software when I end support, I'll skip the headache and just focus on a different type of product that isn't hamstrung by that issue from the start.
Legitimately live-service games aren't predatory - you're conflating them with games that don't need to be live-service, where developers injected unnecessary "features" to manufacture an excuse for the purpose of aggressive monetization. This initiative would certainly discourage developers from making the predatory variety, but the legitimate live-service games would by caught in the blast as well. It only seems like a good idea if you don't think about it too much.
Sorry pirate, I pretty firmly disagree with you here. First of all, you seem to be focusing on more mmo styled games, such as league of legends and Apex legends, while the example provided by the group was the crew. My understanding of the crew is that it was a racing game with both online and offline elements that was entirely shut down following the cessation of official support. Those games are the items of primary concern, however I also see no issue with making available the server assets for the more MMO focused games as well. You seem to be concerned about botting the game to death. I will admit I this is a possibility, however its more or less the cost of business of hosting an online game. You say at 3:04, that the proposed requirement would make the use of bots and corporate attack in order to steal assets and host a private server for a profit would be made legal. Thats just not true, the proposition wants game to be left in a playable state, the proposed requirements make no mention of compensated private servers, that is and has been a grey area. Botting is also a very grey area, and the usage you describe could be considered corporate sabotage which is illegal. However, either way the protection of the company's assets should be the concern of the company and/or the government, and should not impact the rights of the game owner.
With regards to developer rights, you mention the difficulty of policing private servers after a game studio has shut down. Someone will almost certainly own the rights to that game, they may not choose to enforce their rights, but when a company closes down, it will almost certainly sell off their IP portfolio to maximize their liquidation value. If they fail to sell their portfolio then it will belong in part to the debt holders, or shareholders of the company, or they will have been disposed of as part of the liquidation agreement. If they choose to exercise their rights after the fact while there is contested ownership, thats a problem the owners need to settle in court, but either way the game ownership rights still exist, and if the ownership rights somehow dont exist, why would it matter if someone else makes a profit from it? The game has effectively entered the public domain. Further, if no one is making the effort to maintain a server, yes it should be able to be monetized. Its better for game developers, shareholders, and players if the game is being played in any form. Its not ideal, but the company that created the game in some way failed to make it profitable, thats not great, but if the game is still allowed to generate brand capital and recognition then thats still a bigger win for the company rather than simply letting this multimillion dollar asset disappear into the ether. The only entity that benefits from the permanent shutdown of a game is the studio when it re-releases it a few years down the line, charging the loyal player base a second time for a game they already bought. Also, if the game turns around and is successful enough on private servers then the game owner could theoretically leverage their ownership rights at a later date. Thats tough luck for the private server owners, and players but its a risk you take when running a server. On the bright side, game ownership for the player is preserved.
Finally, games preservation is not the same thing as games maintenance. No, a private server hosted for you and your buddies might not hold all the glory of the game in its prime, but youre still able to play it, you're still able to experience the game, the game is preserved. You're acting like old games are like a dying animal that needs to be put down. Also do you honestly see no value in being able to explore old offline MMO's? Thats like saying "whats the point of history museums, we dont use that stuff anymore". And you're also assuming that all games supported in that method are going to be dead, but I've played several private servers for things like Maplestory 2 and dungeon fighters online, both of which died in the US, that had thousands of active players. So I just cant agree with your reasoning here. If you disagree so vehemently and truly do side with the players over the corporate machine thats actively killing our franchises, propose an alternative. I think the reason this series caught so much heat is it looks like you're just trying to shut down an attempt at games preservation.
The game preservation point is the most insulting thing to me. Old Roblox games can tell you quite a lot about the culture of both the site and the internet as a whole, and give a nearly perfect look at a lot of people's childhoods even without players present with them *and* old, broken scripts that only worked in older versions of the engine. If they can, older games can - the idea that they can't, and that you should just put them down, is incredibly disrespectful to the art form and to the people who put work into older games, and just shows me that Thor has absolutely no respect for the industry himself.
0:07 Reddit, comments, the public was saying that they disagree, so this "Yeah you were saying I am wrong, but actually I had hundred of messages that support me" sounds like gaslighting from the start to make people side with you a bit easier. I am not attacking you rn, I am pointing out what feels disingenuous to me.
Also interesting to see who these devs are, and how many of them are corporate cogwheels or just people biased towards you because they know you and not Ross;
1:35 That's absurd to expect that a random Joe will be able to do that, and to believe that this will be happening en masse in the first place, it feels like paranoia to me to believe that (no offense, really). And overall, Asmon's take in his last video was right, "your brand damage is less important than my consumer rights";
1:55 Maybe that's because the game is already abandoned and not moderated because of that?
2:17 If the game's profit is already $0, there's no loss in someone else monetizing their private server;
2:50 As I stated above, creator's abuse won't be happening as often as Thor tries to paint it here. Maybe like 1 game out of 10k will be abused like that, but that's a drop in the sea, positives that come out of that law overweight this by a long shot;
3:28 It won't kill live service games. It _may_ make it less incentivizing to make cash grabs for cash grabbing reasons, and there is no cultural loss in that as these game bring no cultural impact (which I personally care about more, but I could agree that's subjective), but games that actually bring something good or new to the table will still be developed 100%.
And even then I strongly believe that cash grabs will still be developed at almost the same rate because they are made only and only to make a quick profit while the game is still alive, developers of these games don't care what will happen next.
Or you say that it will be harder for such devs to develop new mtx-packed empty products because we'll have better games to play instead? Lol, make a better game then, that's not customer's problem and we are not at fault.
It also seems that you think of all live service games being some kind of a "PvP kill all enemies" spiel like LoL or Valorant. There are games like Path of Exile that are pretty much single player experiences (yes there's trading and stuff, but the gameplay itself is complete PvE), that only require online connection because of some features like chat, trading, teams, leagues, etc. Why should it be lost only because of that?
3:47 No, it won't be incredibly difficult to make these games. Surely it will take some time to adapt, idk a year or two, but then it will become a norm and streamlined easily, with better decoupling and better architectural decisions.
Maybe new libraries will rise up, new frameworks, open source even, like many multiplayer indie games made on Unity already depend on things like Mirror. Multi billion dollar companies should be able to do that, indie devs already do;
4:12 FF and LoL won't be affected by this law as it's not retroactive. Also LoL already have private servers, they are used during LAN tournaments;
5:04 First of all, it doesn't matter "why", if I want to keep what I paid for, I should be able to. Second, I personally would gladly play many games with my friends as we already do, and I am sure there are many people like that, not everyone is a hardcore WoW raider. Third, there are many games (even single player ones) that almost no one plays, like ones that are just very rare and lost to time, played on cartridges, etc, and only like 5 people have them. Shouldn't they be preserved? They absolutely should be;
5:53 The side that you presented is unreasonable, it either depends on unfounded fears of abuse, or takes like "preserving games like this makes no sense because I say so", or takes like "devs will have to do more work oh no".
First two are extremely subjective, and the last one is based on either using existing games that won't be affected as the law is not retroactive as an example, or unwillingness to change - of course devs will have to adapt, but it will settle within a couple of years once architectural approach is fully redesigned.
There are things like OSHA that also force you to do stuff in a certain way, should we abandon that?
7:00 Bans for cheating while the game is officially supported - alright, who opposes that? Bans for cheating on private servers when the game is abandoned - that shouldn't be company's concern;
I am not a native English speaker and I think you felt that, just saying that in case some language I used sounds weird or aggressive
Also, I have no idea how he came up with "Dev needs to release server files at end of life" = "Anyone can monetize the private servers". Monetizing copyrighted content is already illegal under current laws, which this initiative is not trying to change. The abuse Thor is describing is illegal to perform now, and it will stay illegal.
I agree with all of your points.
it is the same bullshit companies did when "everyone wanted to work onsite instead of home office", yet you havent met a single person who actually said that
@@ThinBear4 He literally said in the video - yes, monetizing copyrighted IP is illegal, but how are you going to enforce it?
If the company has to do it, it's more money spent by said company on a dead game, and what if the company isn't even around anymore? I personally feel like even then monetizing private servers wouldn't be cool.
If the government has to do it - how exactly?
@@freyawion5337 Well, how are we enforcing it right now then? Because private servers are already a thing. There's loads of dead games which are still going strong thanks to the communities hosting private servers. How is dev releasing the server files instead going to change anything in this context for the worse?
@@ThinBear4 Exactly. I am really disappointed that from Thors side it is not even considered to see a chance of transitioning to a secondary cycle of life service where the dev or original publisher gives another parties a license with support for private servers and earning a little extra after their primary life cycle has expired before giving it for free as abandoned ware (in a tertiary life cycle).
There is no reason to not want a legal basis for that being possible!