What they're not saying is that THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO PLAY OLD GAMES. They make nothing from it and they probably look at those people as leeches not contributing to their bottom line. Unless the government forces them, there is literally zero incentive; in fact a financial disservice for them to support legacy live service games in an offline manner

The best case scenario for them after they kill a game is for you to forget it existed and buy the next one.... Oh and engaging with the microtransaction ecosystem.

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.

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.

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.

Incorrect. Only in a capitalist hellhole like America. In the rest of the world this would never be a problem. Just release the server code under MIT and let the community fix it. Also make sure you can manually setup a masterserver in the game itself, or implement direct connect functionality.

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.

Same answer as before. Release the online part under the MIT license. Not your problem anymore at that point. You can still require an original game license for the game itself. We're only talking about the server software here.

We welcome the opportunity to discuss our position with policy makers and those who have led the European Citizens Initiative in the coming months.

We, the people, have been discussing this for at least a decade now. Get over it and stop trying you capitalist pigs.

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.

just put the fries in the bag. stop making excuses. stop killing games.

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

Dear Video Games Europe!

Bullshit.

Best Wishes,

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).

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

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

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.

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

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

"Our Board":

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

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.