Handing online servers over to consumers could carry commercial or legal risks, she said, in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.

  • Hond@piefed.social
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    3 months ago

    Most of the responses of the ministers(?) covered in the article seem to be pretty solid.

    But then:

    Responding to the arguments, the government’s representative, minister for sport, tourism, civil society and youth, Stephanie Peacock MP, acknowledged consumer sentiment behind Stop Killing Games, but suggested there were no plans to amend UK law around the issue.

    “The Government recognises the strength of feeling behind the campaign that led to the debate,” she said. “The petition attracted nearly 190,000 signatures. Similar campaigns, including a European Citizens’ Initiative, reached over a million signatures. There has been significant interest across the world.”

    She continued: “At the same time, the Government also recognises the concerns from the video gaming industry about some of the campaign’s asks. Online video games are often dynamic, interactive services—not static products—and maintaining online services requires substantial investment over years or even decades.”

    Peacock claimed that because modern video games were complex to develop and maintain, implementing plans for games after support had ended could be “extremely challenging” for companies and risk creating “harmful unintended consequences” for players.

    Handing online servers over to consumers could carry commercial or legal risks, she said, in addition to safety concerns due to the removal of official company moderation.

    On the subject of ownership, Peacock claimed that video games being licensed to consumers, rather than sold, was not a new phenomenon, and that “in the 1980s, tearing the wrapping on a box to a games cartridge was the way that gamers agreed to licensing terms.”

    “Licensing video games is not, as some have suggested, a new and unfair business practice,” she claimed.

    Yeah, full on corpo spin. Fuck her.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      TBH this is just how petitions in the UK work: enough people sign it, it goes to parliament, they say a bunch of stuff about it that often sounds reasonable enough, then they do nothing about it. It’s just a way to give the public the illusion that they’re being listened to without having to actually do anything. It was the same with the digital ID petition, which I still signed but with 100% expectation that it wouldn’t actually achieve anything.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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      3 months ago

      Some of the quotes are good, yes.

      And I agree the more because entertainment involving social interactions is as important as political spaces. It’s not aristocrats complaining about bad cake when people don’t have bread. Most of my social interactions were, actually, concentrated around

      The bullshit about it being hard to design anything without a kill switch is irritating. A kill switch is the additional expense and complication. Something without a kill switch might not be readily available to run after the company shuts down its servers, but nobody needs that really. Simplifying things, there are plenty of people among players capable of deploying infrastructure.

      In any case, when the only thing you need is documented operation and ability to set the service domain name and\or addresses, where the former the company needs itself and the latter is trivial, it’s all farting steam.

    • bluGill@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      If you don’t want to give the sever away (including the ability to use it) then don’t shut it down or otherwise make the game unplayable.

      • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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        3 months ago

        So if the developers of a game go bankrupt, or a single developer of an indie game dies, what do you suggest happens?

        • bluGill@fedia.io
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          3 months ago

          The code should go into escrow when the first game is sold. This is standard practice in industry - you don’t buy something without assurance that if the company goes under you have options.

          • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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            3 months ago

            This is standard practice in industry - you don’t buy something without assurance that if the company goes under you have options.

            Which industries is this standard in? I can’t think of any. If Samsung went bankrupt who is replacing your S25 Ultra?

            • scintilla@crust.piefed.social
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              3 months ago

              I think they mean in like B2B. Like if you buy of piece of software x thousand times with y years of support it’s standard practice to have a contract that covers what happens if the company goes under while you still have years of support.

              • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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                3 months ago

                But the assurance you spoke about is consumer assurance? So you’re saying that your suggestion wouldn’t even apply to video games while suggesting it for video games?

                • bluGill@fedia.io
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                  3 months ago

                  There is no reason consumers cannot demand this even though they haven’t. There is no reason the law cannot demand it even though it hasn’t.

                  The important part is that the idea exists and is common enough in OTHER situations. When you ask for it there will be people who know what this means and there is a whole industry of “we escrow your code for you” that can handle the details. If you make a new law you have plenty of examples to look at and so are much less likely to accidentally create some unintended consequence that is worse than the current situation.

                  • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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                    3 months ago

                    Which industries take companies source code and hold it hostage in case the company goes bankrupt? Which software?

        • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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          3 months ago

          usually in bankruptcy the game gets sold in order to help pay debts… whoever buys the game assumes the responsibility of contributing to run the online services, or provide options for others to… in the case that nobody buys the game (im not entirely sure what happens to the IP in that case) but it’s relatively minimal effort to release server source code or documentation OR even just remove the online parts that’s usually just for DRM which is now pretty irrelevant because you’re shutting it down anyway so why would anyone care if someone pirates it?!

          • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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            3 months ago

            None of that is “relatively minimal effort” other than releasing the source code, which is not something that should ever be mandated.

            • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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              3 months ago

              mandatory minimum warranties are also not relatively minimal effort and yet we have laws that require those… most consumer protection standards aren’t minimal effort: that doesn’t mean we don’t make laws to ensure consumers get what they are expecting when they hand over money

              why shouldn’t handing over source code to a game that’s being shut down (and apparently that nobody finds any value in since it wasn’t even bought in bankruptcy auction) be mandated as a last resort?

              • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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                3 months ago

                Because then you’d have big companies going around actively trying to bankrupt other smaller companies to get their source code released, so they could then use it for themselves.

                It’s nothing like product warranties either.