It’s amazing what a difference a little bit of time can make: Two years after kicking off what looked to be a long-shot campaign to push back on the practice of shutting down server-dependent videogames once they’re no longer profitable, Stop Killing Games founder Ross Scott and organizer Moritz Katzner appeared in front of the European Parliament to present their case—and it seemed to go very well.
Digital Fairness Act: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act/F33096034_en
I like it. If the publisher no longer sells/supports the full game as purchased, then they no longer to get to complain about people pirating it.
I don’t like instantly throwing it public domain, that’s the wrong license to use. I think Creative Common CC BY-NC-SA would be more appropriate. (Credit the original, no commercial use, and any modified/redistributed version must follow same license).
This will prevent xbox from taking all the old PlayStation games, stealing an emulator, and selling them under game pass to people that don’t know those games are freely available.
I’d also add the game must be available as an individual 1-time purchase. If it’s only available as a bundle or subscription service (like game pass), that doesn’t count.
The Public Domain isn’t a “license.” It’s simply the default state of a work when copyright is no longer being enforced for it. I’m saying that copyright should immediately expire for any published work that is no longer being made available by some entity with the right to do so (phrased carefully so as not to break copyleft licenses, BTW) and that anyone should be able to get it directly from a government archive of all Public Domain works.
As for selling Public Domain works, that’s always been allowed and I don’t see any particular reason to change it, provided that regulatory capture doesn’t result in the public archive being the digital equivalent of hidden away in a disused lavatory in a locked basement with a sign saying “beware of the leopard.” If the free option is prominent and well-known but you want to pay money for some reason anyway (in theory, because the person selling it added value in some way), that’s your business.
I’m going to hard disagree on NC.
If the original publisher decided to dump their IP, and someone else has a good enough idea to make money off of it, they absolutely should.
BY-SA gets you the same vibe and encourages the new IP to keep making new content and allows others to do the same.
I agree, if an IP is abandoned then someone else should be allowed to do something with it.
For this post I was talking about the game that was already made and distributed, not just the idea or characters.
I’ll use Mario Kart 1 for example, if Nintendo doesn’t sell that game anymore, then the game is made publicly available.
If the IP is still in use that A) doesn’t exclude Mario Kart 1 form becoming available, B) doesn’t allow competitors to sell modern Mario Kart games (trademark) and C) prevents someone from taking a 30 year old game and just reselling it on their store.
IPs are much more messy to handle, as it’s less a final product and more of a concept. Creative rights should stay with the creative people not a publisher.
If Nintendo decides to drop Mario, but the actual creator of Mario still wants to work with a different publisher, they should be able to do that before the IP becomes freely available for anyone to take over.