Insane practices from the software world would INSTANTLY lead to riots and burning headquarters if applied to hardware, yet here we are!

EULAs are even worse. Imagine buying a car and they give you a document to sign that states: "THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED TO YOU, NOT SOLD. Upon termination of the license for any reason, you must immediately destroy the Product in your possession." Oh, this text is copied from The Crew: Motorfest's EULA, I just removed the words related to "uninstall" and "copies", all the rest is actually there.

I can name one, Rental properties

@@brycejohansen7114 rental properties have specific contracts for specific time frames agreed on beforehand any money changes hands.

It's only allowed because in the mind of the average consumer, EULAs establish some rule of law. When in reality, they're meaningless.

I could be mistaken, but I read that hackers shut down the servers and Sony just didn't foot the bill to fix them.

No. It's only your purchase being invalidated. This does not happen in any other industry.

My biggest fear in this life is that happening to Apex Legends and losing all of my stuff and it sucks because it's really an inevitability.

@@TriforceWisdom64 There was a apparently a mod on the LBP servers that caused some serious issue for LBP players. Sony took the servers down in January to try and sort it out but then this weekend announced that the servers would remain 'offline indefinitely' which is seen as code for 'shutdown' permanently'. The games is 10 years old at this point so it is likely that given its age and probably limited remaining playerbase that you are correct that Sony didn't want to foot the bill to fix what they see as redundant software.

As someone who spent a bunch of time in the game, it's nuts that someone who knows how to hack into a server can just take it all away & the publisher can just keep it offline because they don't think it's profitable anymore. This is why legislation about video game preservation needs to be a thing.

Let's say tomorrow, what you said becomes reality. Does that literally change a single thing about the problem itself?

@@LoganChristianson Many people wouldn't give money for many games if they were told up front they would be renting (not purchasing) that game.

@@LoganChristianson Yes - honesty about what is being offered allows customers to make a more informed choice. Some people will choose to pay for the service, even knowing it will shut down and be unusable someday. Others will choose to spend their money elsewhere. But at least they knew.

I think it's a bit too late to go back on this one but I like the sentiment.

The game was always upfront about being online-only though? Using occams razor that means you should know its going shut down eventually when you buy it ... for the simple fact that nothing lasts forever including servers

Do you know if there are servers for City of Heroes or Shadowbane?

​@@jonathanmette8348 dunno about Shadowbane, but yes for CoH. the biiig fan server for that, Homecoming, landed a licensing agreement with NCSoft a few months ago. though it has been operating for years before that, now that it's unlikely to get hit with the C&D hammer, so folks've been flooding back to it since the agreement became public knowledge.

You guys are the real MvPs. Companies argue we CAN'T maintain so much because of costs yet small passionate communities can and do! And without any support at all from the company that has all the tools to make the process easier.

@@jonathanmette8348 for COH there are several servers. Look up rebirth and homecoming servers

@@jonathanmette8348I do know there's a City of Heroes server, it's called Homecoming

He is legit a godsend. A man that could've taken his Mind of Freeman series and run it into the ground, instead choosing to wait and - at the expense of his own career - to prioritize artistic timing for the delivery and not compromising on the quality of the writing and production. Then, when he opens up to funding from the public after his fans had been begging him to for years, the guy asks for less than $2,000/mo *as his moonshot* which would just cover his living costs so he can focus on his content full-time. Then, after his audience turned up to support him, the guy adheres to every promise made as part of the campaign *TO THIS DAY*. The man is the living embodiment of ethics in gaming and games journalism. He is unbelievably humble, profoundly honest, and one of the best content creators on the platform that legitimately cares about games and their preservation for future generations. There are few people on the internet I will say "deserve" your support. Ross is part of that very, very small group of people.

Absolutely. Most people, me included, would just say "well, nothing will be done so why bother", but just look at how much attention he's been able to direct towards this issue.

I'm so glad that people are FINALLY listening to him! He's far and away my favorite content creator online!

ROSS ROSS ROSS ROSS ROSS ROSS ROSS ROSS

Super glad that he had become the face of game preservation! Can't remember which channels (Yongyea or SomeOrdinaryGamers?) but they also used his face as the example of game overship and now this channel!

I commented on one of his videos about looking into Second Wind to get his message further. Dunno if it made any impact in this result but I like to think it did.

The One Free Man!

Yup that line was smooth 👍

Always some bangers in Cold Take

Exactly, going to use it as a line in one my games.

Signal boosting?

@@Chuckus words are hard :

REVOLUTION!

​@@Chuckusa synonym to spreading news

Yep, in music and film most notably. There is nothing preventing itunes or prime video from doing the exact same thing, and Sony (Playstation) already did it a couple months ago.

You say that as though games aren't important. They are an industry larger than books, movies, and music COMBINED.

​@4nto418 It isn't music. It is software period. Louis Rossman talks about it with respect to editing apps. Licensing is a potential issue with vehicles. Your music example is about the underlying software. Licensing software instead of owning it can affect literally everything that involves software, even doorbells.

I hope this makes waves like that.

Not just games. Too many physical goods have online connectivity for no good (for the user) reason. And they will stop working once you won’t be able to connect to company’s servers. From tractors and cars to NAS boxes that affects more products every year.

Meanwhile Nintendo games still sell for 90% of their original price, if not more than the original price. Yo ho ho

Thank god for hshop for archiving the ROMs

Yeah, my 3DS is, for all intents and purposes, bricked, on account of my not having physical copies of most of the games I played on that system.

@@tonysladky8925 mod it to play roms.

Rather a game stop working from the passage of time than from a corporation's greed.

this is what really twists the knife. Not only can games be shut down remotely, but if you take steps to protect your purchase you'll be potentially sued. It's crazy. "We don't want to run the game, and we don't want anyone else running the game" is an insane policy but super common

@@squeemlives well of course, if you could play old good game you might not want to buy new, mediocre exploitative game!

Dude I remembered Lego universe too, I beta tested it and made suggestions on their forums when it was in development. Perfect example.

Huh? Darkflame Universe hasn't been "shut down", you can download their server software right now. My friends and I have been running the game every week for months. They _were_ planning on hosting public servers only for that to be a no-go, but you can still do just about everything in the game, just not on a global scale. That sucks, but the game's out there now, it's been backed-up, it's not going away again.

Oh no, had no idea darkflame got shut down, that's insanely frustrating. Edit: So apparently they stopped working on it, but they released the code so anyone can run the game with friends, so the game is functional again for people who want it. And amusingly, Ross Scott was mentioned in the comments of the article I found.

Ross even touches on this in his video Calls it both shortsighted and missing the point of discussion if my memory serves

As Ross explained in his videos, if the EULA states that you are granted a temporary licenses which may be revoked at any time, you are SOL in the US. Legally, that rug-pull has been upheld in court (ProCD Inc v Zeidenberg), so, good luck!

@@MazeFrame That’s not entirely correct. In Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology, which I would argue is closer to what Ubisoft did with the Crew, the EULA was ruled by the Third Circuit to be unenforceable. The case you’re citing is from the Seventh Circuit and the facts of that case are a bit different from this one. Additionally EULAs have to conform to the UCC, something which is in ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, and I’m not convinced that this does, since revoking a contract like this is not typically considered legal. If terms in an EULA do not conform to the UCC that EULA is unenforceable. But I want to reiterate that a specific instance like this is unprecedented. No one has tested this specific type of EULA application in court. I just seriously doubt that it is legal even in the US.

@@MazeFrame I realized my previous comment was a bit vague. In ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg EULAs were held to be enforceable contracts BUT that case did not say that software licenses could be revoked at any time for any reason, and it did say that EULAs are subject to the UCC. The UCC generally does not permit that kind of activity. Additionally in Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology it was ruled that changes to an EULA after the initial signing of the contract were not legally binding, and suddenly revoking a license seems a lot closer to the second case. No one has tested that yet though.

@@nicholasavasthi9879 You should inform Ross of that though, because he needed to do a big research to even find that ProCD case, and it's why his lawyer said that the USA is a lost cause.

@@nicholasavasthi9879 A bit off topic but from the description, it makes me think we need another case showing that forcing signing of a new license by denying access should also be illegal. Things like the recent examples of Roku or Blizzard locking your out of your account/hardware until you agree should absolutely not be legal.

Yes

Imagine thebunironical galaxy brain takes on that podcast

EULA are not legally binding though?

But if you make the laws that eulas also have tr include thennit will work going forward, just not in any existing games.

EULAs can be thrown out in court, the problem is in order to take it to court you need a lot of money, all these big companies can just sit there and keep stalling away with endless amounts of money, it's the main reason none of these anti-consumer tactics can ever be challenged in the US

@@SherrifOfNottingham They are unless proven otherwise in court, which often can't be done because of forced arbitration clauses, look it up, it's a doozy. Welcome to common law, you'll own nothing and be happy.

That is absolutely not true. An EULA with legal content is binding, and an EULA with illegal content is non-binding. Just like any other country. There is a perceived higher difficulty (in terms of winning a lawsuit and being able to fund that lawsuit) to prove that a particular EULA should be non-binding in the US vs the EU/UK/etc, but part of that is also due to the EU having stronger consumer-protection laws on the books, so companies are less willing to try sketchy stuff in those countries vs the US.

Freemans mind will always be goated

@@ReynardCalcifiusit is sad that his other content isn’t as popular as freeman’s mind though.

"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world"

I never did in the first place, but that never seemed to slow them down. Too many gullible idiots out there for us to matter.

Great! More should think like you!

The unfortunate thing about that is the people who poured their blood sweat and tears into actually making the game definitely deserve your money. They just happen to be working for a shitty company like Ubisoft or EA who won't let them actually make quality products. Boycotting doesn't really accomplish anything unless EVERYONE stops buying enough to actually impact their bottom lines. For the most part, it's the whales that spend thousands on MTX that sustain these types of behaviors.

It's not the first time a game's online functionality was shut off, the difference is this time the entire game required the online functionality so the entire game is now unplayable. Legally speaking that is their right, and this is why people fought against always online DRM systems, the people discussing physical media on this topic are truly tilting because this is not that fight.

@@SherrifOfNottingham they essentially deleted the game

@@SherrifOfNottingham Yep, this is why the crew was the perfect game for it, it's not even his favorite game, he just drives around not doing races, it's a unique situation where the game acted like a MMO but was sold as a product instead of a service like WoW or XIV, also people found offline flags in the files but can't enable it thanks to the DRM.

www.youtube.com/@Accursed_Farms

If you uninstall it and put the disc in while on offline mode it should, theoretically, work.

i'm surprised nintendo haven't done that yet

@Gulyus until game "require a network update to run the program", which I have gotten for some applications and functions outside of games. Just requires a rule in new games to require the equipment is up-to-date to run the game 😓

@@Gulyus Depends on the age of the game - so many games now the physical media they have sold you it seems is nothing but an access key - the game itself must still be downloaded before first run. But the older stuff when the game was actually shipped on the media at whatever state it was in when the media was created should be fine, though it better be really damn old for the game to actually be playable (zero day patches that actually make it work acceptably also have been a normal for a while in many places).

It's because a physical copy is no different from a digital one, you're still just purchasing a license to play the game. The difference is the license you get with physical media is predicated on the physical media not breaking, where the license you get with digital media is that as long as the distribution platform still exists you still have access to the game. I don't buy games from Nintendo because they not only brick their digital storefronts to move people on to their next console, they'll brick the console itself to make it not read cartridges that are too old. So with Nintendo you have both limitations, if the cartridge breaks you have to buy a new one, and if the storefront goes down then you're SOL. People try to champion the Crew going down as a reason for Physical Media to make a comeback, but there's no logic to that, since the game stopped working, physical media or not.

Thanks mate. Didn't realise we had one up yet!

Signed

Fixed!

Here's a good question, are the people who preorder the same as the people who complain? There's another really good Cold Take video on the Escapist about why voting with your wallet can feel like a losing battle

Unfortunately, that's the sad truth.DTheTheThisThis These practices exist because there are enough people who support them. There are enough people who complain every time and then buy anyway and there are people who simply don't care.

THIS!

Good. By the way, there are some games on Steam & GOG that are also sold on itch io. Much like the latter you get direct access to game files without needing a launcher or 3rd party, but in addition devs on itch choose how much they take from their sales. (if I type the period between itch & io it counts as a link)

Steam at least claims that they have an end of life plan, which would disable all of Steam's DRM, and allow you to play all the games in your library in offline mode. That's really what we're asking for. For every individual game to have this kind of end of life plan. And of course for them to actually follow through with it.

KZfaq doesn't like it when I mention Itch (ends in .io) apparently. Stupid filters

It was so weird seeing Ross on here. I feel like he lives in his own reality outside of the KZfaq sphere, so seeing him acknowledged on another big KZfaq channel feels like I'm jumping universes.

Ehh, Disagree. Right now our society has a bunch of powerful warlords that say and do whatever they want and there's not much we can do about it. In an anarchic society, you could at least tell the warlords to fuck off and fight back as a community.

The US often looks at what works in other countries, declares it to be communism or socialism and doubles down on the bullshit they're already doing, especially with consumer and employee protection laws. Sincerely Someone who has worked in the US for two years.

Yeah, that's the goal, basically- getting at least one large market to rule on the side of gamers, so that publishers will either have to do the same for everyone else, or go to the expense of two entirely different versions. (It's highly unlikely they'd just restrict sales for that market, since they love high sales numbers.)

Then comes the hard part: Getting a government to implement that law, when game publishers have way more money (and therefore more influence) than we do.

@@TheRogueWolf I didn't say it would be easy to make happen. The solution is simple, the political will to enact the solution is not.

Functionally unenforceable, unfortunately; creating an implementation for the public to use is actually no small feat (even before you consider the potential use of licensed or proprietary tools in the server operation that you legally can't distribute this way), so if someone violates this law there isn't necessarily a legal remedy that exists, let alone the difficulty of proving that a company was intentionally stalling or pretending it was impossible vs it actually just being very difficult. What you could do, though, is say that for any purchase of this type, you are legally obligated to refund everyone if you close quickly. Suppose that the refund amount shrinks by 1-3% each month, so that it's financially plausible to actually shutter support for things after a few years...with the crucial caveat that the time tracking is per transaction. You shutter something like WoW? People's subscriptions from 10 years ago don't need to be refunded, but their ones from this year sure do...as do all their recent microtransactions. Give an exception to this for anything that has permanence, such as the availability of third party servers, and suddenly it's financially helpful to build a retirement plan for the game into the design from the ground up. You'd have to be very careful about how you define "permanent" (memories and experiences don't count, subscriptions don't get exempted just because they come with lasting rewards, etc), but I think it's a much more plausible direction that's in line with existing legal structures. Probably also need to legislate that "if you've abandoned it, you can't sue other people for refurbishing it" too, though. But we should do that anyway, hoarding unused licenses is a plague.

​@@SparkSovereign The GDPR (EU) mandates data be provided in a form readable to the person it belongs to. No reason not to enforce the same for software. Why do single player games even need server parts to begin with? Not the customers fault the seller made dumb decisions! In the not too distant past (Minecraft, 2011), there was just your computer, and if you wanted to play with someone else, they had their computer, you clicked a button and your computer served the multiplayer to the second guy! "Server" does not mean "Magic complicated sci-fi device", it means "another computer"

@@MazeFrame I have done a lot of CS, I am well aware that servers are not magic. I'm also aware that while you can make simple, portable server hosting programs, you can also end up with labyrinthine stuff that's tightly coupled to the specific hardware it's running on, relies on databases filled with confidential information, etc. Giant AAA games are more likely to fall into the latter category, unless they're very strongly encouraged to avoid such entanglements in the design phase. (That said there's plenty of stuff that would be trivial to release, but don't expect that to be feasible for something like Destiny.)

I always find it hilarious when I find a videogame essay channel and 90% of its content is complaining about wokeness, as if it was the biggest problem the industry is suffering from right now. You know, I think publishers are purposefully stoking the culture war fire to distract impressionable gamers from the anti-consumer and anti-worker practices of the industry.

​@GretgorPooper yeah and they've successfully managed to get a lot of people to defend a lot of anti consumer practices because those companies appeal to identity politics...

Seriously. I don't know how so many fellow gamers are convinced there's some agenda for making modern games woke. It's straight up just capitalism

@@GretgorPooper wow. well said man. I didn't think about it in the games industry, but a lot of this so called "culture war" is just companies, grifters, or politicians trying to keep us divided and complacent. "don't change your mind" "don't even talk to ppl on the other side" "don't think critically and objectively about their ideas" "the opposition is inhuman and need to be ignored" we are all in this together as citizens and netizen, we all need to come together for our rights. who cares about this "culture war" crap? we are losing our rights left and right (no pun intended)

@@GretgorPooper wow. well said man. I didn't think about it in the games industry, but a lot of this so called "culture war" is just companies, grifters, or politicians trying to keep us divided and complacent. "don't change your mind" "don't even talk to ppl on the other side" "don't think critically and objectively about their ideas" "the opposition is inhuman and need to be ignored" we are all in this together as citizens and netizen, we all need to come together for our rights. who cares about this "culture war" crap? we are losing our rights left and right (no pun intended)

The Lisan Al'Gaib!

@@kidkangaroo5213 He who controls the games controls the universe!

Exactly.

Capitalism doesn't make the economy. It doesn't create growth. It doesn't build homes or roads or offices or factories. It doesn't create goods and provide services. It isn't the work and it isn't the business. Capitalism is just the part where a bunch of rich people skim money off the top for no benefit to society. Capitalism is the stock market inventing wealth and then demolishing the entire economy because somebody was silly. Capitalism is gatekeeping business so that 90% of people who _want_ to start one themselves can't afford to or fail. Capitalism is taking medicine the government paid to invent and then privatizing it and killing people to buy yachts. Capitalism is wasting food while people go hungry just to maintain its "market value" as high as possible. Capitalism is taking zero responsibility while claiming all the credit.

@@shingshongshamalama Absolutely right, got nothing to add other than a like.

Capitalism is the free exchange of goods and services. That's why it doesn't live very long. Because the biggest player immediately leverages government to burn the ladder behind them. Capitalism died in the US around 1795. After that it was a governmental crony system.

Things end Maybe because it's because I grew up poor, but I learned growing up that I wasn't going to get everything I wanted

In the context of online only games that's a useless phrase. The Crew has never been pirated.

@@saintlugia Not wrong, but accepting that capitalism will crush us is not something I'm going to roll over and accept. I buy my goods but when they get removed from circulation I have ZERO issues downloading it and keeping my own copy of it, and if it's online I'll download the pirated versions that have been backended by the community. "if you don’t own your games, then piracy isn’t stealing" I would also state that when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty, and making sure you have what you paid for is one of those duties.

​@@saintlugia How is that relevant here?

@@saintlugia Bullshit. Growing up poor taught me to fight like hell for everything I could get, and keep it. Hence why we try own our games and don't like other people being able to take what we paid for, since we can't afford to buy another just because it's new. Hence why, if you actually grew up poor, you're the first I've seen to not pirate. Things end? Fuck that, growing up poor means cobbling shit together and repairing shit to keep them going long PAST thier end.

And then, bizarrely, the company will take down the unofficial servers. I know it could technically be a violation of copyright law, but if they aren't offering the product, then what are they losing? At that point it's just petty