Eu petition for the right to game

[VITAS]

Hi,

i was made aware of this eu petition to but in law the right to continue the ability to play games after they are abandoned by their developer:

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home/allcountries

[BA-Forums]

25 minutes ago, VITAS said:

Hi,

i was made aware of this eu petition to but in law the right to continue the ability to play games after they are abandoned by their developer:

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home/allcountries

I remember hearing about this. I wish it would be implemented here in the USA too if it gets approved by the EU. I’ll sign!

… or try to.

[AlamoVampire]

This is why its beyond important to use PHYSICAL media. Ive said this elsewhere but if you “buy” ebooks, digital copies of music, movies, games you are NOT in a position to claim you OWN that copy of your media. You are a long term renter that is subject to and victim of the whims of the media producer. Its why I absolutely hate the direction we are headed as a society. I prefer to have a physical copy of my entertainment. Books, movies, music, games, and what ever else. You as a publisher cannot revoke my ability to read my copy of Night Angel Nemesis or my copy of Winterlight because I have physical books. But if I had a kindle or a nook? I could lose access with no warning. I know its tangental to the thread, but such petitions are unneeded where you have physical copies. Even KSP1&2 will one day be abandoned and subject to such denials of access.

143408112024

[TheSaint]

I remember like five years ago, I was hanging out with a friend of mine. I happened to mention that when we bought our new SUV, I went out and bought a CD player and installed it, because we burn all of our music and audio books to CD. He laughed at me. He was all, "Dude, everyone just uses Spotify and Audible now. What's the matter with you?"

I remember a couple of years ago, my in-laws (RIP) bought me the unabridged copy of The Federalist Papers that I had on my Amazon wishlist. My MIL looked at me funny when I unwrapped it and got excited on Christmas morning. She was all, "Are you actually going to read that?" I said, "No," (I've actually already read great swaths of it.) "I just want to have it because I believe that someday you aren't going to be allowed to buy it anymore. At least not unedited." She looked at me really funny after that.

I still buy my albums as MP3 on Amazon, download them, and burn them to CD. I buy my video games on GOG, download the offline install files, and store them on my file server, which is on-premise. I buy my movies on DVD/Blu-Ray. Books are either CD audio books, PDFs stored on the file server, or dead trees.

If you can't hold it in your hand, you don't own it. That may not seem obvious right now, but one day it will be.

[magnemoe]

On 8/12/2024 at 5:40 AM, TheSaint said:

I remember like five years ago, I was hanging out with a friend of mine. I happened to mention that when we bought our new SUV, I went out and bought a CD player and installed it, because we burn all of our music and audio books to CD. He laughed at me. He was all, "Dude, everyone just uses Spotify and Audible now. What's the matter with you?"

I remember a couple of years ago, my in-laws (RIP) bought me the unabridged copy of The Federalist Papers that I had on my Amazon wishlist. My MIL looked at me funny when I unwrapped it and got excited on Christmas morning. She was all, "Are you actually going to read that?" I said, "No," (I've actually already read great swaths of it.) "I just want to have it because I believe that someday you aren't going to be allowed to buy it anymore. At least not unedited." She looked at me really funny after that.

I still buy my albums as MP3 on Amazon, download them, and burn them to CD. I buy my video games on GOG, download the offline install files, and store them on my file server, which is on-premise. I buy my movies on DVD/Blu-Ray. Books are either CD audio books, PDFs stored on the file server, or dead trees.

If you can't hold it in your hand, you don't own it. That may not seem obvious right now, but one day it will be.

Now you could just store the mp3's on an memory stick or an phone. You also has other backups. I lost an drive last year, with it I lost some of my old poser works like First contact. 

And its source files. I only have the files who I uploaded and later downloaded from internet, simply as the location was on the backup drive and not included in local or cloud backup. 
Now its not important to me as say as I would rater redo this scene with better graphic from the alien and the rovers point of view. 
Backup is important, have multiple copies. 
 

[magnemoe]

On 8/11/2024 at 9:18 AM, VITAS said:

Hi,

i was made aware of this eu petition to but in law the right to continue the ability to play games after they are abandoned by their developer:

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home/allcountries

I agree here at least for PC games who can not run on modern windows because old drm it tend to be patched out for games who is still kind of relevant, many times stealing pirate hacks as patches hopefully after looking into them. 
I got into hacking games after running Windows-NT as it was much better than 98 but games did not work on it. 
For multiplayer games its much harder, often you need other players who is impossible to find. 
But for larger MMO like WOW, Elder Scroll Online and FF 14 realm reborn I think they keep them up  for many decades, Everquest 1 is still online as it should be as its now historical relevant so is WOW classic. Elder Scroll Online has stuff like more lore about Bosmers, Argonians and Khajiit than you probably want to know. 
Random shooter 3028 who was an obvious bad cash grab is not unless so bad it broke the business model.  Antem, new world. 
Now adding to this I say AI will likely be used both for voice acting and generating quests both is probably good while not as good as the hand crafted ones it would be closer to the bad ones than the random quests.
This might require servers even in single player games even if you could run it on the gpu as you are in dialogue anyway. 

[Nuke]

On 8/11/2024 at 11:33 AM, AlamoVampire said:

This is why its beyond important to use PHYSICAL media. Ive said this elsewhere but if you “buy” ebooks, digital copies of music, movies, games you are NOT in a position to claim you OWN that copy of your media. You are a long term renter that is subject to and victim of the whims of the media producer. Its why I absolutely hate the direction we are headed as a society. I prefer to have a physical copy of my entertainment. Books, movies, music, games, and what ever else. You as a publisher cannot revoke my ability to read my copy of Night Angel Nemesis or my copy of Winterlight because I have physical books. But if I had a kindle or a nook? I could lose access with no warning. I know its tangental to the thread, but such petitions are unneeded where you have physical copies. Even KSP1&2 will one day be abandoned and subject to such denials of access.

143408112024

physical media is fine and all but...

you can still get games on disc though it usually just includes an old version of steam and a redeem key. towards the end of brick and mortar game stores, that was what was going on.

no real modern successor to blue ray/dvd. with the size of games these days, i dont think people want to go back to flipping discs. id like to see something with 256+ gig capacity. either a modern solid state rom chip with a usb interface. or maybe a new optical disc format, preferably in a small format and not manufactured by an entertainment company. im wary about using flash for archival storage otherwise we could just do everything as a thumb drive.

companies dont want to give up the control that putting everything in a cloud gives them. nor do they want to support physical media. requesting replacement media used to be a thing.

with professional software all going subscription based, games aren't far behind. f2p is really a defacto subscription with human npcs being the free players (they pay for their access by giving the paying customers someone to shoot at).

from a security stand point, it is better to get an up to date copy off of steam or whatever than have an old version with known exploits that can be co-opted by malware at install time. this is better for things that do not change after purchase like movies and music (though with the way entertainment companies like to edit their movies based on ephemeral standards of political correctness at the time, this is a good thing).

the above leads to game devs actually having to do their own in house testing and have a solid product at launch rather than having the customers do it. so costs go up.

 

we do need to do something about the liberties copyright hoarders are taking with their customers. if you can hold a copyright for 100 years you should have to provide people who purchased a license/digital copy of that product access for 100 years. this would also require that license/copy to transfer if the rights get transferred. also since the estate of a rights holder can be inherited, so to should license/copy. also the ability to migrate my license/copy to another store would be nice to have (id even be willing to pay a small transfer fee for this convenience and to compensate the target store for their datacenter requirements). duration of a software/game license terms need not be 100 years. that's not really practical with software. but the duration needs to be disclosed up front and not subject to change without reimbursement.

[AlamoVampire]

@Nuke the moment you are required to download your game or movie or book or music instead of having a physical copy you have given up your right to say you OWN that item. You have agreed to a rental in the long term. You no longer have the right in perpetuity to use that media. Take for example the movie Dogma. If you do not have a PHYSICAL copy of the movie you will NEVER be able to watch it. Why? Kevin Smith had the production of discs ended and all streaming access cut off. Its nearly impossible to watch now. I could right now pop my dvd in and watch it. Or how about the show iZombie. It will be leaving Netflix in under 1 month. Will it return? I do not know. Games are getting bigger? Who cares. Develop a physical medium capable of storing it. Why wont they? Because they want to control YOUR access to it. They want you to become complacent and accept the idea that you must pay for access. FSD is a PAID SUBSCRIPTION. One automotive company wanted to make controlling between brights and “dims” a SUBSCRIPTION. No. The line must be drawn. Here! No further!

I am uncomfortable with not having complete control over my purchases. Do I have things that are 100% digital? Yup. Do I ACTUALLY own my copies of MSFS2020 and Elite Dangerous (just naming 2)? Nope. I am in a long term rental agreement subject to the whims of Microsoft/ASOBO for MSFS and Frontier for ED. My access to both will be removed some day. When? No idea but it WILL HAPPEN. You can make any excuse you want, try any justification you want as to why the direction things are headed is good, but you are 100% wrong and for 1 bloody basic reason: you have surrendered control and rights as an owner err renter. I want to retain my rights. Not sacrifice them on an arbitrary altar that the manufacturer tells me i should for some arbitrary reason.

203208152024

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, AlamoVampire said:

@Nuke the moment you are required to download your game or movie or book or music instead of having a physical copy you have given up your right to say you OWN that item. You have agreed to a rental in the long term. You no longer have the right in perpetuity to use that media. Take for example the movie Dogma. If you do not have a PHYSICAL copy of the movie you will NEVER be able to watch it. Why? Kevin Smith had the production of discs ended and all streaming access cut off. Its nearly impossible to watch now. I could right now pop my dvd in and watch it. Or how about the show iZombie. It will be leaving Netflix in under 1 month. Will it return? I do not know. Games are getting bigger? Who cares. Develop a physical medium capable of storing it. Why wont they? Because they want to control YOUR access to it. They want you to become complacent and accept the idea that you must pay for access. FSD is a PAID SUBSCRIPTION. One automotive company wanted to make controlling between brights and “dims” a SUBSCRIPTION. No. The line must be drawn. Here! No further!

I am uncomfortable with not having complete control over my purchases. Do I have things that are 100% digital? Yup. Do I ACTUALLY own my copies of MSFS2020 and Elite Dangerous (just naming 2)? Nope. I am in a long term rental agreement subject to the whims of Microsoft/ASOBO for MSFS and Frontier for ED. My access to both will be removed some day. When? No idea but it WILL HAPPEN. You can make any excuse you want, try any justification you want as to why the direction things are headed is good, but you are 100% wrong and for 1 bloody basic reason: you have surrendered control and rights as an owner err renter. I want to retain my rights. Not sacrifice them on an arbitrary altar that the manufacturer tells me i should for some arbitrary reason.

203208152024

i would rather have drm free digital copy. physical media takes up a lot of space, and would rather it all reside on my nas. i can watch/listen to anything on that server from any screen in the house. i was a very reluctant steam adopter.

point im getting at is that if the rightsholders do not make available physical media, there will be no physical media beyond pirated copies. quake 4 was the last game i bought that could be installed from the disc and didnt depend on an external app store, and that was some time ago.  also many retail stores are opting out of sales of physical media. so access to legal physical media simply will not be a thing. and if we are talking new legislation towards bringing back physical media, i dont see why we just cant apply the same rules to app/media stores.

Edited August 16 by Nuke

[AlamoVampire]

@Nuke then you accept you have no ownership. No control over your entertainment. That the version of your favorite movie can be irrevocably altered and distorted with no chance at seeing the version you prefer simply because the studio altered it. Or lose access altogether because the studio decided that the movie no longer is sociably acceptable. All in the name of wanting to watch on a screen on your fridge or shower or den? One of my all time favorite movies Lady and the Tramp has themes in it that today require warnings and disclaimers. IT IS A CHILDRENS MOVIE from 1955 set half a CENTURY PRIOR TO ITS RELEASE!!! The themes in it, in an ALL DIGITAL WORLD could see it altered beyond recognition. Oh wait they DID THAT in the live action remake. Imagine what can happen. What WILL happen when digital only becomes the ONLY way.  Your choice to go digital only has a cost. A cost I refuse but you have accepted. I refuse to sacrifice ownership. I refuse. I now walk away after saying: Digital only is bad. Digital only revokes your control of what version you have and how long YOU have access. Its a cost that one day you will pay. We all will pay. Im done here. Said all I have to say. I will not return to this thread. 
 

215008152024

[Nuke]

12 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

@Nuke then you accept you have no ownership. No control over your entertainment. That the version of your favorite movie can be irrevocably altered and distorted with no chance at seeing the version you prefer simply because the studio altered it. Or lose access altogether because the studio decided that the movie no longer is sociably acceptable. All in the name of wanting to watch on a screen on your fridge or shower or den? One of my all time favorite movies Lady and the Tramp has themes in it that today require warnings and disclaimers. IT IS A CHILDRENS MOVIE from 1955 set half a CENTURY PRIOR TO ITS RELEASE!!! The themes in it, in an ALL DIGITAL WORLD could see it altered beyond recognition. Oh wait they DID THAT in the live action remake. Imagine what can happen. What WILL happen when digital only becomes the ONLY way.  Your choice to go digital only has a cost. A cost I refuse but you have accepted. I refuse to sacrifice ownership. I refuse. I now walk away after saying: Digital only is bad. Digital only revokes your control of what version you have and how long YOU have access. Its a cost that one day you will pay. We all will pay. Im done here. Said all I have to say. I will not return to this thread. 
 

215008152024

absolutely not. frankly you are preaching to the choir. im not in the eu so i cant sign. i have my own ways of dealing with the issue. usually at the detriment of rights holders. surely there is a win-win solution to this problem, then i can spend my vpn money on games and movies and avoid the inevitable plank walking. i have a lot of respect for companies that offer drm free digital and physical copies, i often reward them with a purchase. there just arent many of them anymore and they are in decline.

 

also the aristocats was better.

Edited August 16 by Nuke