"The momentum is real."

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.

Official Stream: https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/webstreaming/committee-on-internal-market-and-consumer-protection-ordinary-meeting-committee-on-legal-affairs-com_20260416-1100-COMMITTEE-IMCO-JURI-PETI

Digital Fairness Act: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act/F33096034_en

  • iglou@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    I find it weird that you’re making what seems to me to be a strawman argument about “burdening (mostly) small developers,” as I’d say they are mostly not the ones trying to do this bullshit where they try to retroactively destroy art and culture because it stops being profitable enough. Indie studios typically don’t design their games to use publisher-operated servers with ongoing costs attached in the first place, let alone to self-destruct when they shut off!

    Releasing source code isn’t without extra work. My point is, unless you make sure to specifically target the companies abusing gamers, you’re going to mainly hurt the part of the industry that is not the problem.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      48 minutes ago

      It’s not “extra” if it’s a legal requirement.

      More to the point, I’m not saying it has to be licensed as Free Software or that it has to be made immediately public. I’m saying that a copy needs to be sent to a government archive, regardless of how messy it is, so that the government can make it public later when the company doesn’t care anymore.