Easy, we want what's in the initiative:
-Requiring publishers that sold a copy of games to customers with no expiration date to leave them in a reasonably working state without requiring a connection to the publisher or affiliated parties at the time support ends.

Most video games would already meet that requirement. For ones that do not, they would either need to stop selling the game by the time the law went into effect, add an end of life plan after the fact, or if the EU preferred, existing ones being grandfathered in would be an acceptable compromise. Games sold after that date would need to have end of life plans or risk getting fined by consumer agencies if they terminate games with no recourse for the customer.

That's the simple version. The more complicated additions that are not clear from the initiative due to political negotiations are the following:

-An acceptable alternative to the game being left in a working state is the equivalent of "repair instructions" where the publisher would not have a working game at the time of shutdown, but would provide enough tools or information so that technically savvy customers could have a reasonable chance of creating a server emulator or whatever was needed to "repair" the game. This was left out since the official organizers didn't trust companies to abuse this plus this gave us something to negotiate down towards in response to industry pushback. Negotiating below this would essentially save no games.

-We would ask subscription-based games have an end of life plan also, but we would probably lose on this because the ONLY argument we would have is for cultural preservation. Since they clearly state when customer access ends at the time of purchase, nothing about these games is a violation of consumer law, so there's really no consumer law basis for these types of games. The good news is there are only about a dozen of these still active compared to hundreds of other online-only titles. Okay, he's quoting me out of context then. That was in reference to the conceptual argument that the game being a "service" is some sort of immutable property. That was part of a philosophical discussion, not a legal argument. I even went out of my way in the official promotion to show what the initiative would NOT do (look at the slide timestamped here):
https://youtu.be/mkMe9MxxZiI?si=95Jk8WtzZGWbAE0h&t=135 Again, we're not directly asking any publisher to give up copyright content. As for your question, you're asking me to predict the future, that's difficult to say. I think absolutely gamers will continue self-destructive habits with or without our initiative. I think the general landscape continues getting worse and worse overall, forever, essentially. Some possibilities:
-GOG goes out of business
-Steam eventually goes public and they start "sunsetting" many titles and retire their Linux development
-Windows 12 becomes online-only and competing consoles start requiring regular internet checks also
-a spiritual successor to Stadia eventually launches and streaming-only takes a hold more and more
-More titles go online-only to combat piracy and enable additional monetization options
-Microsoft uses Games Pass to start releasing exclusives, making many new games rental-only
-there's still a market for indie titles, but becomes more niche

If the initiative passes, I'm hoping it would embolden customers to exercise their rights, since right now they basically have none. In terms of rights, "Voting with your wallet" has been losing the entire time I've been alive. Look at how titles like Half-Life 2 and Diablo 3 set records for sales causing customers to yield more rights. I see what's happening as entirely a one way train with SKG being our ONLY chance for pushback in the opposite direction. For example, every game sold on GOG was never "at risk" of being destroyed. GOG revitalizes many titles, but they were never at risk of true destruction. If SKG fails, I can't see any other path towards preserving games that are designed to be un-preservable. The number of "at risk" are only increasing.

That's... cool for your initiative. I was responding to what he said. There is never going to be a law like "Laws that say people own the games they bought." that will result in owning your games, because even if there was a law like that then games simply wouldn't be "sold" anymore, they'd sell access to a service, which is already what's happening anyway. At best you'd clear the misconception about what people actually are 'buying'. It wouldn't result in people actually owning the games, that's a fantasy at best.

Feel free to come back to this post in 20 years. Depending on how things go I'm skeptical we'll even be able to run games local anymore by then, at least the ones from the big parties.

these laws that "don't exists" are called fraud laws and cna carry heafty fines or even long jail terms. you can check them here for US

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

for the European Union you check this website for information

https://www.eccnet.eu/

but for your specific location in an European country you also you need to access your local law forces.

So there is no need to create specific laws for "videogames" like is not required to have laws specific to buying apples or tomatoes.

No he's right. I remember as clear as it happened yesterday the day Bill Gates was jailed for 10 years when Microsoft shut down Games For Windows Live...

Given reseme has degenerated into full on trolling, I'll just come out and say what needs to be said - There is no specific "Time Limited game" or "Finite Lifepsan game" label on most online-only games because anyone with an ounce of common sense can figure that out as a natural consequence of the "online-only Internet connection" requirement, be it a cloud-game, cloud office suite, cloud OS or music / movie streamed from the cloud that 1. You will never own such content, and 2. They're ALL time limited in the end for one reason or another.

I don't know why some gamers are so irredeemably dense they seem to be the same people who think that if a hair dryer doesn't have one of those "Do not use this electric hair-dryer in the shower" safety labels then its "safe" to do so, does so, then sues for "criminal fraud" when they get shocked, but here we are...

most of the online systems are very much being used for sneaky crap.
and it's not acceptable anymore, sub par security for online games is not acceptable anymore.
and envasive is even worse.

honestly hate people digging thru my history to decide what skin to shove in my face next.
should be illegal.

i hate them digging in my music playlist while i play and i'm sick of people thinking some of us are not picking up the disturbances in the Force "to keep it simple"

i'm not saying gog.. i am speaking of many lil online only games that take advantage of their tools the white listed while we pay the mental price.

my pc is my pc.. it should run what it tell it to.. not what some crypto miner needs..

10 years of people acting like it's not real.. it's real

and if they change the architecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxP6B2HZ_IY
then many many games will suffer.
truly ARM is ahead but well lose so many games till emulation, recompilation ect catches up.

...To a point.

Hypothetical: I've obtained the rights to Escape Velocity, but only to distribute, not to modify.

This means outside of a small and increasingly niche audience, the game is a largely decorative gourd to everyone else. That at least is from a computer and game people have heard of.

How about the Acorn Archimedes?

yeap, that is what happens when people like you insist laws don't exists. you give a blank check to Bill Gates to continue doing his stuff.

If someone like me shows up saying is not right I get an army of people like you saying: "duuh, there is no law". good job bro, calling me a troll because I want that ubisoft gets punished by the law for what they did. what side are you on? Bill Gates side?

this is your assumption because you love these corporations that don't care about you and you want to save them. is a real serious psychological condition called Stockholm Syndrome where the abused fall in love with the abuser.

in reality we have laws to prevent this time limited nonsense for categories of products (video games fr example)

the laws are quite clever in reality if you care too look instead inventing stuff in your head to justify the abuse you get. the laws don't even deny the right to a publisher to sell time limited games, as long the consumer is informed. If a consumer whats to pay for a game that will be destroy after a certain time period they can do that if is clearly stated by the seller and buyer was informed when purchasing the game.

but misleading people in buying a limited time game disguising that game as a normal game is fraud.

No, not an indication of anyone's preference. It usually means its a complicated issue and most don't even know that anything can even be done about it.

Most men sit and wait for conditions to get better, few actually go about making better conditions.

Not really. People always say they'd like to nail Ubisoft but its just lip-service. It's just a safe opinion to express. When it comes to actually doing anything they are generally not interested or make excuses.

There's this strawman again. The Crew 2 was sold for years before Crew 1 shutdown was announced. Most quite frankly don't care that much about The Crew itself, they care about the greater issue, but you keep trying to walk the discussion back to this frail strawman you're pushing:

The Crew - 12,180 players all-time peak
https://steamcharts.com/app/241560
The Crew 2 - 12,707 peak (not counting the period after it was sold for $1)
https://steamcharts.com/app/646910
The Crew Motorfest - 3,705 peak
https://steamcharts.com/app/2698940

Motorfest had an abysmal launch and it was attacked on its Steam forums for the lack of offline and over the fate of Crew 1. Maybe you're clinging too tightly to this cliché when in reality people actually do care.

Except that Windows 10 STILL FUNCTIONS AFTER THAT DATE.

I don't know if you're actually understanding the issue or are just throwing topics to the wall to see what sticks. Inb4 you try to salvage this point with a spiel of "but the heckin' security updoots!" etc. missing the point entirely...

Steam literally says "You own this game" on multiple places on their store. I noticed that example wasn't acknowledged and you and someone else went for the easy stuff. This isn't the backbone of a legal argument though. You were just saying "no store says you own it" and hey, look the biggest one does actually.

Look there's always going to be people like here who want to argue for the status quo. Some of the posters here are just like Apple fans arguing either that right-to-repair isn't needed or that Apple is in its legal right to do what it does. Its the same kind of discourage-posting gas-lighting that was going on about that issue, until the issue won and those people had to be humbled to learn that hey, laws can change or get clarified.

Seen too many reddit-lawyers swear this or that outcome just to be make fools of themselves, which is funny because they do all that armchair lawyering just to feel smart. This isn't even about whether games are owned (I believe they are, and I believe we need a hallmark case to prove that digital ownership has rights too). If SKG gets the opportunity to have their much milder issue examined, and then they're told that they're wrong, then atleast we'll know where the law stands there. Currently, it's yet to be tested.

Lemme put on my weasel mask.

How does one define, "reasonably working"?

Advocatus Diaboli: The game boots up, and after the mandatory unskippable logos, shows you a screen that says, "Thank you for playing." You can play in a predefined small circuit track with one car. Congratulations, you won a consolation prize. One could argue that the "leave game" button constitutes an interactive element, and therefore would only the message be enough, if a spinning car model is included.
See, we'd have to get into koans such as defining "play" and that's a philosophical hell when 0 player/passive/spreadsheet games exist.

You say, a server emulator or whatever, but let's say I'm going to do the legal minimum.
Here's 1 (one) skeleton of my game engine, unassembled. All you have to do is provide the AI, sound, textures, models, scripts, networking, and I forgot to mention: Those were all made/imported using proprietary middleware engines, so good luck getting the assets inside!

Oh, and the game crashes if it isn't an exact byte size, lil' thing we thought would never come up.

Another scenario: I'm tossing you a bone. Here's the source code to a game for the TI-99/A, a computer that was already in short supply when it was on the market. All you have to do is convert it from my obfuscated, undocumented TMS9900 assembly code. The code doesn't map onto any popular modern chip. Good luck!

Last Scenario: I'm a braindead bozo who used the blockchain to make parts of my game function. Now what?

I think you're cool, I respect you, your Game Dungeon is a favorite of mine; but this is attempting to conquer Monolith Burger by passing out pamphlets for salad.

This has been talked about before alot, I hope you didn't think it was original..

Are you familiar with the term Malicious Compliance? Anyway, generally, following a contract or law in bad faith that's seen as a violation could lead to you getting sued. The legal concepts of insubordination, willful negligence, etc are pretty understood.

This is really grasping but honestly that'd be awesome. I assume fine with most who are for the initiative. It's not up to anyone to translate that code for modern silicon. Not 100% sure where you're going with using a microcomputer game having to do with this topic at all, it's kind of nonsensical. There are TI-99 emulators... Do you mean like a BBS forum or chat game? And the initiative doesn't want to be retroactive anyway, it wants to set standards for going forward.

I don't think you meant this, but for example, if a game server required being ran on an old version of Windows NT or an obscure or deprecated server, I think that's totally fine to release it as is. To me, it falls under providing "reasonable means" because that's what it was running on before, and by providing the software to the public who owns the corresponding game, its providing means for you or someone to get the network revived. It doesn't need to be easy. I think in most cases like this, its running on a VM somewhere anyways. I'm speaking for myself though but I think most would be really pleased with that hypothetical outcome.

That last part, blockchains don't normally close unless all the network participants just stop supporting it, nor are they able to be game servers... They'd be more like the database that holds persistent changes everyone's characters, loot tables, things like that, and if it was on-chain it'd be public (so documented). Its the same case as other games, really.

"Like in the initiative, some were asking what is meant by a "reasonably functional" or "playable" state. Well, if it's a racing game, I would think that means you race cars in the game world. If it's an arena shooter, I would think that means you enter game maps and shoot at other players. If it's an RPG, boy, that could mean fight monsters, talk to NPCs, use items, manage your inventory, lots of stuff.

But what if we try to be specific and make the law race cars in the game world? Well, does that work for the arena shooter or the RPG? I mean, I guess a few of them, but not most. It just won't work.

Same goes for technology. What works code-wise for an arena shooter probably doesn't work for an MMO. That's why we leave it to the developer. Some were complaining about that. Well, the alternative would be to mandate exactly how every company writes the code that fixes their game. Not only is that unrealistic, nobody wants that. Specific rules do not work for all games, so you have to be broad.
...
Under your initiative, do all features need to work when the game is shut down? This is another point a few members disagree on. Me, I'd say no, but it's kind of a spectrum.

We have that phrase "reasonably playable state". So let's say you have an online arena shooter, it shuts down, the company releases an end-of-life patch, and everything works except for achievements and matchmaking. Well, I think most people would say, "Yeah, good enough. The game's saved. It works."

But then let's say you had another game, it shuts down, and you can technically start it, but all you can do is get to the main menu and nothing works past that. Well, in that other game, I think most people would not consider that a "reasonably playable state". So that game might face a higher chance of receiving complaints to the Consumer Protection Agency in that country.

So I can't tell you exactly where the dividing line is, but the more the game works, the more it's likely to be an acceptable solution."
https://youtu.be/sEVBiN5SKuA?t=431

Is this about multiplayer ?
If yes , i don't care .

✂️ Is Stop Killing Games only about Singleplayer or Multiplayer games?
"I'll answer that question with a question. What does "Destiny 2", "The Crew", "Need for Speed 2015", and "The Division" all have in common? Are they single-player or multiplayer games? Yes.

So even if we didn't care about multiplayer at all, which isn't the case, the industry has forced our hand. So in order to save single-player in games like these, we have to save the multiplayer also because they merged it all together. Otherwise, they would just get exempt on almost every game. Plus, an arena shooter with eight players? Or 12? You can't have an end-of-life plan for THAT? Give me a break.

Now, MMOs can be a tall order, but we've seen both legitimate and illegitimate emulators emerge to know this is possible. So it's both. The industry's given us no choice."

https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx3GkSzZyaJ2IIZWrzY8-aKmqCPtvMeNXq