Don’t Think, Just Jam

  • 41 Posts
  • 71 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: November 25th, 2023

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  • I can’t say much about the final version since I didn’t play much of it yet but I do remember some fun ideas being lost during the development. I also remember not vibing much with the new lore & introduction but that could possibly change whenever I take some time to finally experience the game.

    I guess I could ask since you’ve mentioned Frackin’ Universe. I’ve seen some mods trying to bring various parts of the old features back, do you know if any of them managed a decent mix of old and new vision of the project?



  • Not really. This isn’t about completely preventing publishers from adding account systems etc. (even if that would be ideal), it’s about publishers removing your ability to play games after they the shut down the servers. The former would hopefully be a side effect of a potential law change/ruling but the main point is keeping games playable after the official support ends.

    In your example it could be removal of the sign in requirement once the account system is down but not necessarily preventing them from existing in the first place.









  • TL;DW:

    • Patrick Breyer and Niklas Nienaß submitted questions to the European Commission on the topic of killing games (the latter in contact with Ross and two EU based lawyers).
    • EU won’t commit to answering whether games are goods or services.
    • EULA are probably unfair due to imbalance of rights and obligations between the parties.
    • Such terminations should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis (preferably by countries rather than EU).
    • Existing laws don’t seem to cover this issue.
    • Campaign in France seems to be gaining some traction. Case went to “the highest level where most commercial disputes submitted to DGCCRF never go”.
    • UK petition was suppose to get a revised response after the initial one was found lacking. Due to upcoming elections all petitions were closed and it might have to be resubmitted.
    • Also in UK, there’s a plan to report games killed in the last few years to the Competition and Markets Authority starting in August (CMA will get some additional power by then apparently).
    • No real news from Germany, Canada or Brazil.
    • Australian petition is over and waiting for a reply. Ross also hired a law firm to represent the issue.

    This is a simplified version of simplified version, watch the video for more info.
















  • Because that’s what it is. I think some of it might have to do with the limited content of the petition itself (a pretty short description about “customers being robbed” without any broader ideas suggested by the campaign) and some with the fact they get plenty of petitions so the first reaction is to stick with what’s already there. That’s my guess at least.

    I hope that if this petition reached 100k signatures and went to a parliamentary hearing there could be a chance for a more nuanced presentation of the topic but who knows, maybe I’m just being naive.




  • It’s the question of both though - sure, game preservation aspect is important but it would also be nice for the law to catch up to technology and decide whether companies should have the right to remove your ability to use the product you bought.

    If the law would go through in the way envisioned by the campaign, games should be designed and developed in a way that releasing a patch/server software should be possible even for a company at the verge of closing. We’re not talking about creating these releases at the last moment but baking their creation into the development process from the start.

    At the end of the day all the possible solutions proposed by the campaign are just ideas to give lawmakers some kind of starting point. If this goes anywhere it’ll be debated and decided upon by people with far more law and customer protection knowledge than anyone involved in the campaign itself. The important part right now is to bring the issue to someone willing to look into it.