589

#StopKillingGames Update: Germany becomes 4th county to hit threshold (feddit.org)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Vittelius@feddit.org to c/yurop@lemm.ee

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

geteilt von: https://feddit.org/post/2071604

This is your somewhat regularly scheduled Stop Killing Games update.

Stop Killing Games is an European Citizens Initiative aiming to keep games playable even after their developers and publishers have stopped supporting it.

Germany has hit the threshold sometime yesterday evening. France has also started to catch up. They are still below 50% but there growth over the last couple of days has been the biggest. Netherlands and Denmark are still in the low 90s.

The milestone comes on the eve of this years Gamescom in Cologne, Germany which is set to kick off today. SKG is not going to have an official presence there. (I've checked with the organisers) But if you are attending and want to help spread the word I'm happy to share official marketing material, either in the form of flyers or the files for flyers, so you can print your own. They come in both German and English. If you want some, send me a DM.

Relevant links:

Sign the initiative here

Initiative homepage

Video FAQ by the initiator on YouTube

The same video on invidious

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] TheFrogThatFlies@lemmy.world 92 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Love the momentum of this initiative, hopefully it reaches success!

FYI, there's also the Tax the rich initiative available, which is ending in October this year.

[-] Kuinox@lemmy.world 49 points 2 months ago

Personally i'm a bit sad that video games get more traction than fixing wealth inequalities.

[-] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 22 points 2 months ago

I guess one seems more achievable.

[-] DarthFrodo@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

We gotta spread the word. It still seems very achievable if enough people become aware of it.

[-] Kuinox@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Which one ? Saving video game ? Sure, tax-the-rich have less than a month, less votes than this petition.

[-] phneutral@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

Anyone who signed the one should be signing the other as well. It’s not that you can sign only one of them.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 months ago

It's honestly infuriating. It's gamers being entitled children and acting like it's saving the world from greedy corporations. Meanwhile the "save the world from greedy corporations" initiative is dead in the water.

[-] Nythos@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 months ago

How is wanting to continue playing a game after developers stop supporting it entitled?

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 months ago

That's most games. The only games that don't work that way are multiplayer games that run off of servers. The request is that developers give you the ability to run your own multiplayer server.

So a dev creates a game and nobody signs up to play it. They decide to shut down their servers. Following the rules, they'd have to give players the ability to run their own server. Now anyone can create a server and play it for free, or worse, a large studio runs a successful server and charges people to play a game they didn't make. This change shouldn't apply to server based multiplayer games.

[-] Robert7301201@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 months ago

The software to run a server for a game is different from the client software. I have to buy Minecraft to be able to download and use the client, but the server is freely available for anyone to host their own server.

Developers almost always release their server software for free if they offer it. The user is providing a service to the developer by offering another server for the community to use without the developer having to pay for it. There's no reason to charge for it.

You can even password protect your server and put it behind a patreon or other exclusive membership, but it's hard to compete with free servers. You have to offer some kind of special experience.

Everything you're complaining about has been common practice in the PC space for decades.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

Everything you're complaining about has been common practice in the PC space for decades.

So why the law change?

[-] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 6 points 2 months ago

Because the old "common" practice is being tossed for a greedy new type of "owning" where you don't own the things you bought. This was not as much of an issue before but has now become an epidemic. This initiative is asking for laws to be put in place that allow people to host a game if the company stops supporting it, something that most would say is very reasonable. If the company does not want anyone else hosting their game, they just need to keep that server running. If they don't think its worth keeping the server running, then why should they have the ability to keep anyone from using the thing they bought? If anything this is basic market economics at play, if they can not make enough money to "keep the lights on" then why not let someone else have a go at it?

You ether stop this sort of greed now or learn to live with never owning anything digital again.

Oh and the reason this is getting more traction is that this initiative has a plan of action where general wealth inequality is not really a thing you can just fix with enough signatures. Would also like to remind people that having a thing happen does not really mean another thing can not happen, this is activism whataboutism (what a time we live in).

load more comments (8 replies)

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

Because some of my favourite games died this way. City of Heroes was closed by its owner but is being kept alive by its community and is a great example of what Stop Killing Games is advocating for, while Firefall is completely dead and never coming back. This problem will only get worse if we don't stop it now.

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

Firefall was shutdown in 2017. Has the problem gotten worse in the 7 years since it has been shutdown?

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago

This is the first time I even see that initiative and I'm in several leftist spaces. Grassroots advocacy is tough man

[-] Coldgoron@lemmy.world 47 points 2 months ago

It’s simple, I see a stop killing games post and I upvote.

[-] Klear@lemmy.world 25 points 2 months ago

You know, I'm something of a "I'm doing my part" guy myself.

[-] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 5 points 2 months ago

I was really sure I deleted my reddit account

[-] bullshitter@lemmy.ml 42 points 2 months ago

I can't sign but still will upvote babyyyy. Can't thank the EU enough for all their strict rules. Even brought type-c to iPhone.

[-] Vittelius@feddit.org 17 points 2 months ago

You might not be able to sign this one, but depending on where in the world you live you might still be able to help. The official website has guides for a lot of countries. And if you live somewhere where you truly can't help (cough USA cough), then thank you never the less

[-] Poots@mander.xyz 13 points 2 months ago

Same, our great American freedom™️ means that ~~we have very reasonable career politicians working on fixing this nonsense already~~ we don’t spend enough money on lobbyists in order to matter enough to then have any iota of actual representation in the formation of our government’s laws and policies.

[-] Een@lemm.ee 23 points 2 months ago

Thanks for the update! I didn’t know this initiative was an actual thing for the EU. I signed both this and the Tax The Rich initiative mentioned by someone else in the comments. Hope it helps!

[-] Painfinity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago

Pushed my lazy ass to do the same. For anyone still hesitating, it truly does only take a minute and it couldn't be easier!

[-] HaleHirsute@infosec.pub 12 points 2 months ago

My dumbass, who doesn’t play games at all, thought it was about doing away with games that involved violence/murder. Aye I’m such a dweeb.

[-] Vittelius@feddit.org 11 points 2 months ago

To be fair to you: "killing games" and "killer games" do look and sound extremely similar. And "killer games" was the term people who wanted to ban violent games in the 90s and 2000s used.

[-] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 months ago

Killer game could also describe a really good game with no killing.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] NostraDavid@programming.dev 11 points 2 months ago

Signed! I recall reading a guide thinking "I'll sign later" - I just clicked Sign the initiative here, accepted their terms, signed in with my country's eID, clicked OK, done.

Less than a minute of work! Surprisingly smooth!

[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 months ago

Wunderbar! Jetzt lasst uns auf ein Millionen gehen!

[-] Grappling7155@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 months ago

Pirate Software, a former Blizzard and Amazon Games dev, did a YouTube video on this recently with some fair criticisms of the initiative. It’s worth a watch.

https://youtu.be/ioqSvLqB46Y?si=HKxOkeovGNeMv0gE

[-] HATEFISH@midwest.social 20 points 2 months ago

Thor is a grifter who just doesn't want his live service investments impacted. (Rivals of Aether) https://medium.com/illumination-gaming/ludwig-thor-team-up-to-launch-offbrand-games-42ee230d7cb1

Thor shows the opposite sentiment when talking with Tim Bender (Manor Lords) https://streamable.com/339l26 .

The development credit to his name is one undertale clone that has been in development for 7~ years, and QA for blizzard. He should NOT be treated as an authority on this.

[-] Soolonkivi@lemm.ee 8 points 2 months ago

It seems to me that his problem with it boils down to the odd case of someone trying to ruin an online game to make the developer abandon it and then host it themselves to make money from it. This would only be a problem with free or very cheap online games because to have bots to disrupt the game you would have to buy an account for each of these bots. That would become very expensive very quickly.

[-] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

It sucks that my country will never cath up to this standard.

[-] Scrollone@feddit.it 4 points 2 months ago

Which country, if I may ask?

I'm Italian and I'm also disappointed in my country, but on the other hand we have an old population and our threshold is so high.

[-] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

The US so it's basically impossible for any kind of change

[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 4 points 2 months ago

BRD! BRD! BRD!

[-] anarchist@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

1 million

Super hard for a country like Ireland, a population of 6 million

[-] Vittelius@feddit.org 31 points 2 months ago

I think you missunderstand how this works. Not every country has to reach 1 million. Together all countries need to reach the goal. In addition to that 7 countries also need to pass a threshold. This threshold is scaled to the population of the country in question. So in Ireland fewer people need to sign than in Germany. But this is a separate requirement from the 1 million goal

[-] Wolfwood1@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

According to the page, the threshold for Ireland is 9,165. So far 5,819 have signed.

[-] EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

Big shout-out to Timm with two M

[-] vane@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Because gaming like any other industry needs regulation and politics instead of educating people to think and make conscious decisions. I just can't wait for governments start taking care of gaming. I can't say that the goal isn't noble but it will result with taxes and billion dollars funds that will double the prices of games and regulate market so only corporate will be able to afford to publish and make games. Good Luck. I'm to old for this shit.

[-] SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

Billions? Try more like trillions! And just you wait until you see the Torture Matrix that comes with every government policy get added as DLC to the crew!

load more comments (4 replies)

[-] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

To make an online game, you have to write server software. So just give it to people! Its not that hard.

load more comments