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Petition (EU)

This is about a week or two old now, but worth mentioning here. I'll avoid all of the streamer drama that has come out of this movement. Honestly, I don't really know who's who in that world. I just know one of them started this whole thing, another shit on it, and that person is losing subscribers by the boatload.

Anyway, the whole thing is about publishers killing games and how that's bullshit. The "ask" is quite simple. People are not asking for servers to be kept online forever, but if they pay for something, they want to own it, be able to play it offline, and be able to play it however many years after it came out.

The petition easily garnered enough signatures that the EU must address it, and based on their other rulings, I don't see how they do not side with gamers (consumers) here.

"If purchasing isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing."

Ubisoft CEO is either ill informed or a greedy cunt. (You know it's greedy cunt.)

The most important bits:

"But this kind of issue is not specific to Ubisoft," Guillemot continues. "All video game publishers are faced with that issue. You provide a service, but nothing is written in stone and at some point the service may be discontinued. Nothing is eternal. And we are doing our best to make sure that things go well for all players and buyers, because obviously support for all games cannot last forever."

It is, of course, true that no game can be supported forever, but forcing companies into perpetual updates isn't what Stop Killing Games is trying to do. As the campaign's FAQ notes, the goal is to get publishers to "implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems" even after a server shutdown.

Additionally, Guillemot cites "a one-Euro fee proposed to all buyers of the game. For just one Euro they got to buy the next version." As Game File notes, this appears to be in reference to a big sale on The Crew 2 which ran across digital marketplaces in 2024, bringing the price down to €1/$1.

"It’s not a whole lot of money to be able to continue playing a game," Guillemot says, though whether he omitted the detail or this is an issue with Ubisoft's official translation, buying a sequel at a discount is not the same thing as being allowed to continue accessing your own copy of the original.

Props to the writer for actually countering the statements this twat makes.

Why are companies fighting this movement you may ask? What do they care if people want to play old games they no longer support? Because that means they're not buying and playing the new games.

That's the real battle going on here.

Imagine if your car just stopped working every 7 years and the manufacturer not only didn't have to fix it, but you were legally blocked from doing anything to make it run again.