From what I've heard, The Crew had the ability to be turned into a single player game at end of service deliberately installed during development by Ubisoft, but Ubisoft ultimately chose to make the game unplayable anyways.

That alone should be all the reason anyone needs to sign the petition, IMHO.

I would if I could, but I'm not in the EU.

Originally posted by NW/RL:

Consumer rights initiative "Stop Killing Games" has reached 749k signatures out of the million required to bring the initiative to EU Parliament. We're 74% the way there boys, and we were at 500k about a week ago, so keep up the pressure

For those who don't know, SKG[www.stopkillinggames.com] is a European Citizen Initiative with the stated goals of changing the law so that game publishers/devs can't kill games by just severing connectivity. Specifically, these are the stated objectives on the initiative's landing page:

This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.

Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.

The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

If this sounds like something you'd want, and you live in the EU, go sign it!

Those are great news! Thanks a lot for the heads up @OP

Originally posted by Punished Narusama v667:

From what I've heard, The Crew had the ability to be turned into a single player game at end of service deliberately installed during development by Ubisoft, but Ubisoft ultimately chose to make the game unplayable anyways.

That alone should be all the reason anyone needs to sign the petition, IMHO.

I would if I could, but I'm not in the EU.

IIRC the single player mode still used some mmo feature / connected to the shared world server so once that was gone they were like "welp it connected to the mmo thing, and the mmo thing is dead, so it's dead and there's no reason to fix it", which is supreme ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Originally posted by NW/RL:

Consumer rights initiative "Stop Killing Games" has reached 749k signatures out of the million required to bring the initiative to EU Parliament.

Nice.

This will benefit the rest of the world. (Most likely.) As mega-corps tend to just give the same rights to everyone.

You shouldn't be able to arbitrarily shut down a server for a game. (that people paid for) Then be like, "well, it is what it is". No.

We paid for the game. Either let us keep playing or release the data to create a private server.

Neat.

Will it cause Street Figher V, Injustice: Gods Among Us and Batman: Arkham Origins a multiplayer with offline human-like bots or is it just that there still will be like 4 people in total who actually play multiplayer once a month?

I will sign i suppose, good initiative

Originally posted by Dadpool:

Will it cause Street Figher V, Injustice: Gods Among Us and Batman: Arkham Origins a multiplayer with offline human-like bots or is it just that there still will be like 4 people in total who actually play multiplayer once a month?

I doubt it. Multiplayer is a different thing and I don't think anyone is saying it is reasonable for a company to invest money keeping alive the multiplayer portion of a game that has zero players. However it would be reasonable for said company to release server tools so that players can keep it alive if they wish. Bot opponents would also be a reasonable and fair shout in those types of games.

But this is mainly about single player games that are reliant on a connection to a company server that then become unplayable when that server is arbitrarily shut down by the company when there is absolutely no reason not to simply make the single player playable offline. It's a ♥♥♥♥ you to the players by that company.

I'd say the same should be true for MMORPG as well, though that might be a little more difficult.

Originally posted by Dadpool:

Will it cause Street Figher V, Injustice: Gods Among Us and Batman: Arkham Origins a multiplayer with offline human-like bots or is it just that there still will be like 4 people in total who actually play multiplayer once a month?

No. It doesn't aim to affect current games. It aims to affect new games developed after any legislation is passed. If the petition is passed, the EU commission is obliged to look into the subject.

From what I understand, this is what the petition want to accomplish:
1. Future developments should have an end of life plan from the onset.
2. Games should be left in a "reasonable playable state" after support ends. This does not mean the devs are in any way responsible to support it forever or run servers forever. Instead, it means things like that drm shouldn't suddenly render all legal copies of the games unplayable because a company didn't bother to renew their license (that has happened) or private servers for multiplayer games should be allowed.

Of course, that is just a high level view and it will probably get complicated when it comes to live service games, but I still think it's a net positive. Single player games are probably the easiest ones. Just make so you don't need an online connection to play the single player. Multiplayer games are included as well.

Also please correct me if I'm wrong.

Some games shut down for perfectly good reasons. There is a danger of creating unnecessary burden on game projects and that it might discourage game companies from taking risks which might end up compromising their vision or perhaps stop making their game available to EU gamers entirely.

Originally posted by Faiyez:

Some games shut down for perfectly good reasons. There is a danger of creating unnecessary burden on game projects and that it might discourage game companies from taking risks which might end up compromising their vision or perhaps stop making their game available to EU gamers entirely.

Pirate Software? Is that you?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=voRUgM-RGeA

Why is Serbia not in the list. Where the hell am I? Am I on earth? Milky Way, what's going on?

Originally posted by Mondas:

But this is mainly about single player games that are reliant on a connection to a company server that then become unplayable when that server is arbitrarily shut down by the company when there is absolutely no reason to simply make the single player playable offline. It's a ♥♥♥♥ you to the players by that company.

Actually it's not mainly about single player games. Single player that still requires an online connection is the simplest case to solve I would argue, but the initiative itself is about games in general.

I recently tried to play 'Two Point Hospital' offline. Long ago it had "community goals". All of which were achieved. However, the game is entirely single-player.

It wouldn't load. Simply because the internet was down.

Originally posted by Faiyez:

Some games shut down for perfectly good reasons. There is a danger of creating unnecessary burden on game projects and that it might discourage game companies from taking risks which might end up compromising their vision or perhaps stop making their game available to EU gamers entirely.

This is like saying you shouldn't build a bridge over a river because it would discourage people from drowning.