this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE (www.videogameseurope.eu)
submitted 3 weeks ago by Stamau123@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 188 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

Here are the board members of this organisation in case someone is curious about their relevancy/neutrality on the matter:

  • Hester Woodliffe – Chair (Warner Bros. Games)
  • Canon Pence (Epic Games)
  • Kerry Hopkins (Electronic Arts)
  • Ian Mattingly (Activision)
  • Klemens Kundratitz (Embracer)
  • Qumar Jamil (Microsoft)
  • Clemens Mayer-Wegelin (Nintendo of Europe)
  • Cinnamon Rogers (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
  • Matt Spencer (Take 2)
  • Alain Corre (Ubisoft)
  • Alberto Gonzalez-Lorca (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
  • Karine Parker (Square Enix)
  • Mark Maslowicz (Level Infinite)
  • Felix Falk (game)
  • Nicolas Vignolles (SELL)
  • David Verbruggen (VGFB)
  • Nick Poole (UKIE)

You know, the people who "ensured that the voice of a responsible games ecosystem is heard and understood" (direct quote from their website).

[–] Kowowow@lemmy.ca 38 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

if gabe could come out with a statement that if steam had to shut down for some reason he'd try to make sure people get to keep playing their games they have downloaded he'd probly cause these guys to have an aneurysm, but I doubt even gabe would go that far

[–] Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 29 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

He did say something similar years ago if I recall correctly but we never got any details and it was so long ago it's hard to guess whether that's still the plan. Reassurance or update on that wouldn't be unwelcome, that's for sure.

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[–] SlyLycan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You can (could?) reach out to Steam Support, and this is part of the email they reply with:

"In the unlikely event of the discontinuation of the Steam network, measures are in place to ensure that all users will continue to have access to their Steam games."

Not sure if they ever expounded upon those details though.

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[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 21 points 3 weeks ago

Warner Bros games shouldn't have any level of authority on anything

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[–] Whitebrow@lemmy.world 145 points 3 weeks ago (34 children)

“many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only”

So change your design? The corporate mind cannot comprehend this.

[–] Davin@lemmy.world 62 points 3 weeks ago

Or just let someone else host a fucking server and let the game get pointed to that one or any other they want. They could even sell the server software and make money on that. I'd love to host my own servers of some old online only games where I could play with just my friends and family.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 47 points 3 weeks ago

"many titles are designed from the ground-up to be rent seeking"

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[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 121 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Absolute trash statement, I really hope this bites them.

They're just repeating a lot of the same misinformation that Pirate Software had been saying, the exact things that had riled the gaming community and caused this latest wave of action. We're already primed to discount the points they're trying to make and it shows exactly how disingenuous they're being.

Positively, I hope this reflects some true fear on their end.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

As has been stated over and over and over again, private servers used to be an option until the industry decided they weren't any more. If the result of this is that it forces the industry to not make shitty, exploitative games, that's still a win for the consumers. I would rather have no game at all than something that psychologically tries to exploit my FOMO and drains my wallet.

[–] Vittelius@feddit.org 62 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It's also a strawman argument. Because yes, developers have less to no control over the operation of private servers. Yes, that means they can't moderate those servers.

But

This initiative only covers games, not supported anymore by the devs anyway. Meaning legally speaking everything happening to private servers would be literally not their concern anymore. And new legislation, should it come to that, would spell that out.

[–] aksdb@lemmy.world 25 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Same for the "online only design" argument. The moment they decide it's not viable anymore and they want to shut it down: what does it matter to them, what players do with it? As long as they offer the service themselves, no one is bugging them. (Although I would absolutely be in favor of also getting self hosting options right from the start, I am realist enough to accept, that this would indeed lower economical feasibility of some projects.)

[–] Vittelius@feddit.org 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That part of the argument is slightly different. If I understand the press statement correctly, what they are saying is: "Some servers can't, on a technical level, be hosted by the community". And that's not a straw man (arguing against something never asked for), that's just a lie. We have access to all the same stuff as the industry (AWS etc). Hosting these kinds of servers might be very expensive, but the initiative only asks for a way to keep games alive not for a cheap way (though I would prefer a cheap way of course)

[–] aksdb@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I imagine it's rather licensing. If they have to provide the software at some point, they can't use components they are not allowed to distribute. And I agree, that this will impact development costs. But with the law in place, this is not an unexpected cost but one that can be factored in. Might be, that some live services are then no longer viable... but I don't care. There are more games than anyone could play and games are cancelled or not even started to develop all the time for various reasons. One more or less is just noise.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Devs have numerous options for how to address the SKG initiative. The top three that come to my mind are:

  • Release server binaries (along with modifying clients to have a setting to connect to the right server)
  • Modify multiplayer to work over LAN (good when the server's only/main job is matchmaking)
  • Modify the game itself to no longer require online connectivity

In the case of live service games, I would suggest option 3 is the most appropriate. If the main gameplay is singleplayer, but it's online so you can dole out achievements and gatekeep content, the answer is simple: stop doing that. Patch it to all work in-client. And keep in mind that this will be a requirement at end-of-life from the beginning. If it's an unexpected requirement, that's going to be a huge development cost. If it's expected, making that EOL change easy to implement will be part of the code architecture from the start.

[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 10 points 3 weeks ago

Comes to mind as an example that already exists, https://store.steampowered.com/app/2183650/MEGA_MAN_X_DiVE_Offline/

[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 18 points 3 weeks ago

For sure, 💯

  • secure players’ data: there should be no sensitive player data being stored on a private game server like that anyways, you're connecting to a server, not logging into a service
  • remove illegal content: not the developer's responsibility in this case, it's the responsibility of the private server (admittedly this could get messier with net neutrality and safe harbor stuff? unclear, but point remains, it's still not the developer's responsibility here)
  • combat unsafe community content: ditto. Not the the responsibility of the developer but the private servers. It's often been argued that the smaller communities of private servers do a BETTER job of moderating themselves)
  • would leave rights holders liable: HERE IT IS! We can't let you self host something like Marvel Rivals due to all the copyrights and trademarks and brand protections. How dare you!
[–] SoupBrick@pawb.social 73 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

[–] aksdb@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Do you want to know more?

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[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 70 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

"Our Board":

Epic Games, Take Two, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Bandai Namco, etc.

[–] Aielman15@lemmy.world 38 points 3 weeks ago

I trust these people with every cell of my body.

[–] Korkki@lemmy.ml 51 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

<Oh no this would kill live service games

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[–] Ksin@lemmy.world 50 points 3 weeks ago

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable

Straight fucking lie, the ones liable are the uploader and the host, which after official support ends is no longer the rights holders.

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 50 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

... as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist...

There are third party options for this.

... and would leave rights holders liable.

Liable for what? A service everyone knows they're no longer providing? Are car manufacturers still liable for 50 year old rusty cars people still drive? Can Apple today be held liable for a software vulnerability in the Lisa or the Mac II?

In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

Then don't design games that way. Don't make games like these. This is good news, actually.

[–] Toga65@lemmy.world 25 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's crazy how they act like no one else could run a server for a live service game.

We used to fucking buy and rent servers to game on our own private servers.

Its wild how this disappeared and all server structure just got consolidated into shit like AWS and Azure.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Minecraft, the game that sold the most copies in history, has a huge infrastructure of community-hosted servers, some with tens of thousands of players playing at the same time. The community has created different flavors of the server software, optimized it, added mod support and even reprogrammed parts of it.

At this point, it's hard for me to believe how someone could say a community can't run game servers with a straight face.

[–] Toga65@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

The whole "ITS A LIVE SERVICE IT CANT JUST BECOME SINGLE PLAYER" argument fundamentally misses every single easy point about community hosted servers.

It's the most prevalent, and also most stupid argument I keep seeing pop up.

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[–] NONE_dc@lemmy.world 41 points 3 weeks ago

Oh They are scare. That's Good.

[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 39 points 3 weeks ago

No No. NO! All of this is bullshit. Its not how any of this will work. Its all misinterpreted on purpose and then used as propaganda against the inititive because companies ARE afraid of it. They know this has the power to stop their predatory business practices. Moderation is the hosters responsibility so if anything, private servers would make it cheaper for companies to make games. This is also NOT RETROACTIVE as any other such regulation. Companies will only have to comply with future games. Having to remove proprietary network components from the server so they can release it at end of life IS A GOOD THING. It also makes development MORE ACCESSIBLE for small developers as everyone will have to use more open infrastrucuture. And at last this only affects the end of life of games which means it DOES NOT touch live service games DURING their life and only changes their last stage in their life cycle. For fucks sake this is getting annoying but i take this as a good thing because these stupid multi-national corpos are finally feeling the pressure.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 35 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist

Nanny State BS. If someone runs a private server, it's their responsibility to moderate it.

and would leave rights holders liable.

No it wouldn't.

In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only

Unreal Tournament games are online or multiplayer only games. Even though Epic shut down the master servers, you can modify the .ini file to redirect to a community server. "Online-only" translates to predatory monetization models.

[–] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 34 points 3 weeks ago

I 100% guarantee the people who wrote that statement don't know or care how much effort it would take to build the infrastructure to run their server-side components.

I'm fairly confident that any AAA production uses Infrastructure As Code to spin up infrastructure in their dev and qa environments, so it's literally just a matter of handing over the Terraform or BICEP and some binaries for any custom code they need to use. I also highly, HIGHLY doubt that the vast majority of game servers are hosted on-prem. They're most likely either using Azure or AWS.

[–] LorIps@lemmy.world 34 points 3 weeks ago

Dear Video Games Europe!

Bullshit.

Best Wishes,

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Was this written by Thor?

[–] Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 3 weeks ago

Nah, way too polite

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 23 points 3 weeks ago

protections we put in place to secure players’ data

The player data that we are required to agree to share with 1643 trusted data partners in order to connect to your service? That player data?

Go fuck yourself, you ghouls.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

lol. Games like The Crew aren’t super hard to be turned into a single player game. Nobody is asking them to add a 20 hour single player campaign with a fleshed out storyline. Just add bots and open up the game to be driven around in without an online connection.

[–] nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Just release the server code. nothing new has to be created. The industries claim of being liable for user content in this scenario is just bull

[–] Shayeta@feddit.org 13 points 3 weeks ago

Not even code, just the binaries and pre-baked libs. They already have those.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Don’t even need to release the code. Just the server binary of the game.

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[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

People were upset when PirateSoftware was spreading disinformation about SKG, well get ready for incoming weapons-grade corporate Disinformation.

Luckily it's no longer in the hands of the public.

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 3 weeks ago

I don't know who are these people. And they have achieved in record time that I never want to really heard them anymore.

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