Steam doesn't work on Windows 8 so your argument falls flat on its face.

thank you for this paragraph.

the ONLY thing that the law can and should force on game companies is that the game works at the date you personally have purchased the game. and if they want to have drm int he game it needs to remain in the same working state like when you have purchased the game. nothing more nothing less.

so first important data point is, when you bought the game.

Scenario

you buy the game on 2 March 2015. the company let us say ubisoft, wants to keep control of the game and they require some sort of DRM like uplay. You download the game, it works on your computer that matches the specs on the game page. let us say is windows 7.

done.

so let us think of this scenario, a new computer shows up on market with a new operating system that is not windows 10. let us call it watermelon 11. you buy this computer.

by law you can't get back to ubisoft in 2025 and ask it to make sure that the game works on watermelon 11.

is this clear?

you can't legally force ubisoft to upgrade the game to newer systems just because you bought the game in 2015.

are you following me?

but ubisoft decides that watermelon 11 is very popular and ubisoft can make a lot of money by selling the same game from our scenario to owners of this new system. And ubisoft decides that it will upgrade the game to work on watermellon 11. ubisoft is so good that they give you this new version for free. awesome. then A friend of yours buys the game in 2025 and it works on his watermellon 11. paradise!

But, and here is the twist, ubisoft removes the older version. and the newer version lacks one important aspect that was present in the older game, females with big breasts, because now all females in games need to look like an wooden plank so ubisoft changed that game detail. you and your friend are obviously really angry about this

Question.

Do you have the legal right to force ubisoft to give you back the older version of the game?

Did your friend have the legal right to force ubisoft to give you back the older version of the game?

Answer

You, that bought the game in 2015, you have the legal right to get that older game version, because is the version that you paid for. If ubisoft has chosen to give you the new version for free, good for them, but is a free gift not the game you paid for.

Your friend instead doesn't have the right to ask for the older version, because he bought the new one in 2025 and that what he got for his money. ubisoft has no legal obligation to give him the older version.

The character limit, was to my understanding, in regards to drafting the petition in the UK, where bureaucracy goes to hell.

And alright, this also does divine the question: What is the fully intended statement? I would expect to account for edge cases, weird loopholes, and an authoritative body, that the full proposal would be somewhere in the range of 10-20 pages. Double sided, F4, 12 point font serif.

(I read recently that there are various patents held in Japan that number 47 pages long, so I'm throwing a softball to the estimate, but OOPS, there's another weird spanner; do you think East Asia is going to care?)
Not to mention that there are many Civil Law vs Common Law countries where "Precedent" means jack squat.

You are comparing Jackfruit to Jackhammers. Just because they have a name which sounds similar doesn't mean they are anything alike.

I know there's a soft barrier in terms of linguistics, but allow me to try anyway:

First, there is the distinction between Diritto penale and Diritto civile, which can be further subdivided among things such as Diritto pubblico, Diritto amministrativo, etcetera. This division of law has existed nearly as long as modern law has existed.

One cannot claim "Stole my car" and "Unfair Rental Contract" in the same courts.

While there can be Civil criminal elements to the latter, such as intimidation, extortion, or malice, it could also be a granted mistake such as charging the wrong account or a double filed pay charge; genuine accidents that can be rectified without the need to annul the contract.

In your current argument, do I want a game that can work on my computer now, or do I want a game that will forever be stuck on Windows 98 because it relies on a graphical API that stopped existing the moment NEC stopped making the μPD72120?

Because I can either satisfy the very wide swathe of customers choosing to upgrade their hardware and software buying the game new, or I can cater to the 1000s of enthusiasts who already bought the game and will in no way add value or drive sales to the game if it still runs on their Amiga 2000.

A conversation between the us and EU lawmakers (European Commission). In that case, the EU would do what it does, consult with both sides including people from the industry who would be opposed. It is NOT a conversation between us and the game's industry (we've tried that for decades and you should know how that goes).

So the wording is too bitter for your tastes? The accusation IS that the intent is malicious. The point is that people's purchases are being intentionally destroyed (destroyed in that they're rendered non-functional and intentional in that they were intentionally designed to be renderable non-functional).

The malicious part is that there are a myriad of ways they could preserve these purchases as playable, but its slightly more profitable to just destroy someone's purchase and move on. Malicious also in that its done to establish a norm where customers have no rights to ownership (they want to slowly transition away from owned games into subscription models).

At the same time, seems you think the wording isn't bitter enough (against Valve). EU and UK both have the same refund policy as everywhere else on Steam. In this case it seems every country did benefit, atleast for Valve's customers. Are you saying something else or referring to something specific in Steam's EULA?

Maybe not fast as Dominos, but the assumption is that these new rights spread. In the EU you're allowed to download alternative app stores (even on a US iphone). Now, there's bills being introduced that could force Apple to allow the same in the USA. Thought not about rights, a better example is that because of EU standards, iphones now have USB-C connectors not just in Europe but in every region as well. There's other examples when it comes to consumer rights.


The other thing is scope. I see SO many complaining about that. Some say the scope is too broad, others like yourself think its too narrow. It seems impossible to please everyone. I just think its beneficial to be clear on what the problem is, more than demanding what the solution should be. That seems more of an open conversation, but that's just what I think. And again, there's only so much you're able to put down.

Currently the initiative is not about if games are licenses, but its something it leaves the conversation open on. Just like its not an initiative about banning DRM. They are adjacent issues in many ways, but probably fights for other days, though I think its very possible either of these issues gets drawn into the conversation as the initiative moves onto the next stage.

The scope is trying to be clear and understandable: You bought a product, and a company turned your product off while neglected their due-diligence to supply even the bare minimum you need to retain access to your product. The focus is on the fact that they COULD supply that bare minimum, but choose not to. Like that, the grievance is clear to understand and its kept to objective facts.

One thing the initiative can't do is start making claims like "games are goods, not licenses" without any basis to say that. Starting to inject that, along with a subtext around DRM schemes etc, seems like a good way to confuse the point of the wrongdoing.

Again, you got the wrong idea then. A Citizen's Initiative isn't a law draft. Its for citizens to call an issue to the European Commission's attention to look at and possibly propose new laws. It's not there for us to play armchair lawmakers and draft up the bill for them. Drafting laws can take several years and its the job of the commission. And that's if they even decide to assess it. And THATS assuming the signatures are gained in the next 3 short months.

Maybe go look at the other initiatives on the website. The topics are wildly varied, but none of them are really structured as you describe.

Thanks for the explanation.
Apparently not for the vast majority of people who "buy" those games.

No, you're not drinking the right kool-aid. You'll find it on Steam.

GOG also broke from their promise that "Galaxy is entirely optional".
I still remember that, you know?

Now I find more and more "Galaxy needed for multiplayer".
SHAME!

You can also upgrade most PCs that can run Windows 7 to Windows 10 (and 11). Windows 10 even has a 32-bit version. The biggest issues you’re likely to face aren’t with Windows 10 itself, but with outdated drivers, especially graphics and sound drivers. You might also experience performance issues with newer software, but that’s due to the hardware limitations of the old PC you're using. That said, if you want to, you can upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 on nearly all systems that could run Windows 7. If the computer is very old, it’s not recommended, but it is definitely possible.

I understand what you are saying, it is "reasonable" to expect from publishers like steam that hardware&software are moving forward and that a big chink of the games will still work for at least of a decade because most operating systems have backward compatibility.

But we are talking about laws here and about legal principles. Because it is not ok and we should never give the power to anyone to start making up rules to restrict the access later after we have bought a product. They start with reasonable requested then who know where we end up to.

Because now for example steam forces me to have a newer computer. But what if later they will require a specific brand of computer because lets say steam is bought by microsoft so it became integrated in their store and support for linux will be dropped. You never know. Steam has a big gambling issue that if ever will blow up they may find themselves with really huge problems that may force the owners to sell the company.

Then what if they start asking for crazy convoluted requirements like always online of the computer, or if you don't connect at least once in 24h steam will not work offline anymore? These things already happened on consoles, they wanted to do this I think it was Microsoft that wanted to brick the console if you don't connect every 24 hours at least once. They will sure try to do it again.

I will not discuss this topic here but if you visit Lois Rosmann latest videos he has perfect example of what I'm talking about. A company selling a piece of software then removing access to that piece of software because the software drm didn't liked that the user had some other software installed. Rosmann has gone to full blown war for this and I will watch his battle carefully.

those are not mutually exclusive. you can have your old version just fine while also have a newer version. it doesn't cost that much money to host a game. I pay pennies each month on online storage at terabyte level for these companies hosting a game is nothing.

but they chose to remove the older version because it is part of the plan to make you accept that stuff gets removed. this is why they do this, not for money reasons or for your convenience. it doesn't cost anything to leave the old version online. you don't need to recreate the entire thing again or patch it. it already worked and still works on that hardware. you don't need to do nothing yet they chose to actively do something to remove it.

can't be bothered

Windows 10 is a RAM dependant operating system. If the computer has 4 GB RAM don't even try to upgrade it to Windows 10. Otherwise there will be lots of prioritization conflicts. Like, Explorer will fail to launch upon Windows start, some services will stuck in the process of maintenance etc. I know that Microsoft say that you can use 64-bit Windows 10 on a 2 GB RAM computer, but it will be almost impossible in practice.

Which was a great stopping sign for Apple's wild incompatibility shtick, but not much else. Apple's extremely aggressive outphasing shtick is here to stay. The speed at which they make their technology unusable is still breathtaking and far exceeds that of any mortal game developer.

The EU governs the economy, it isn't taking a sledgehammer to it. At the core of it, the demands of the petition are stopping capitalism in its tracks. Because this isn't just about The Crew eventually, is it? It's about Windows too, for example. On this forum, you can practically smell that hope. If we can get Ubisoft to supply an offline mode for a 10 year old game, surely we can get Microsoft to release the source code of Windows 7. Falling dominos and so forth.

Unless, like Valve, the developer finds a loophole. As I've demonstrated above, we retain neither the ability to resell games, nor to refund them during the first two weeks. I've given these two cases as examples where the law is not up to interpretation. We should have these rights, we don't, and that's that. On the other hand, the law is very much open to interpretation when it comes to timed software licenses.

In the larger scope, physical goods included, the principle is called life cycle management. Every company is doing it. They're putting a virtual expiry date on cars, TVs, ovens, washing machines, toasters. Life cycle management gets the wheels of the economy turning, and the very last thing the EU will ever do is to stop the turning wheels of the economy – particularly now that our main partner overseas has lost his fucking mind.

Hard times are never good for consumer rights. :|