An increasing number of videogames are sold as goods, but designed to be completely unplayable for everyone as soon as support ends. The legality of this practice is untested worldwide, and many governments do not have clear laws regarding these actions. It is our goal to have authorities examine this behavior and hopefully end it, as it is an assault on both consumer rights and preservation of media. We are pursuing this in two ways:

TL;DR this is an EU petition aimed at making sure that companies are obligated to distribute binaries of the server code of their multiplayer and live service games. Currently, video game companies of online/live service games use a form of SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute) model where the “game” someone has purchased is simply a license to run the game in only the way the company sees fit (their servers, their platform, their rules). If a company were to go under or simply not run the servers required for the full game to function, then the user is out of luck as they’ve effectively had the game taken away from them.

This is just another example of why ALL leftists must strive to fight for free software. If we don’t consider software which respects your freedom an important endeavor to uphold, then we make ourselves vulnerable for further and further exploitation. If you’re reading this, this includes you as well.

  • chickentendrils [any, comrade/them]English
    19•4 months ago

    Yeah there have been efforts since game servers without server software for consumers to run themselves were first commercialized, to prevent this outcome where profit motivation and shortsightedness will lock us out of so much. It’s good this effort seems to be getting somewhere in the current system.

    I can’t stop thinking how remarkable it is that Doom spawned the speed running phenomenon, and people use specific version builds of those early entries, yet some of its most recent entries like DOOM (2016) are without playable version archives because of extremely preservation-hostile DRM schemes. Fuckers need to publish at a minimum all previous builds DRM-free for customers once a version is cracked, before DRM implementation in entertainment software can be banned entirely.

    Oh, and I want source code + assets on file with a library of Congress or equivalent in different places for publication once it becomes abandonware.