Dead Game News: Response from the European Commission

News going over responses from the EU Commission on the issue of destroying games from members of European Parliament. Also some updates on the campaign towards the end.

0:00 intro
0:27 European Commission
13:06 France
14:09 UK
16:38 Germany
17:27 Canada
17:35 Brazil
17:46 Australia
18:48 What's next

Link to Canadian Petition:

Link to short speech I did for the Pirate Party:

Link to full Pirate Party stream on game destruction (all in German):

[EchoArchivistVT]

Thank God Ross is so maniacally devoted to this that he’s willing to wade through the legal trenches.

[sebastiansteppuhn]

As a German, one of the biggest obstacles in my country is the politicians lack of understanding of gaming. It's a big industry but to most of those retirees they are likely still just insignificant toys and therefor low priority. What they need to be made to understand is that such practices of taking away a product from the consumer after it was bought is unacceptable no matter what. Whether the product is a video game, a car or just a PEZ dispenser or something.

[whitehorsept]

As a citizen of the EU, I am very disappointed by those answers. It was clear made, straight forwards questions and those were indeed non-answers. I expect better EU Consumer protection. I definitely look at the political parties that fail the citizens and make sure they or political parties of similarly values do not get my votes in election days. In this case i look up the political associations of Věra Jourová that provided both those non-answers and see the type of parties they are. I add them to a black list for when election days come.

[srwapo]

@6:56: "I'm not a lawyer, nor do I want to be one."

I predecit a "guess I'm now a lawyer" video in a couple of years...

[kaelgray]

If video games aren't defined as good or services then why can't we just steal them? Would it even be theft?

[alphawolf]

Still a huge success. Nobody was talking about this two years ago and now the EU comission is answering questions on it.

[pik]

If they wanted, they could legally sell time limited licenses. They deliberately and deceptively do not to avoid losing sales. Besides that, the destruction of culture is disgusting. Look at old jank nobody cared about in it's time. A couple of decades later suddenly it becomes a time capsule to technology, art and designs and culture of the past.

[Forkez]

Reading through the lines, it sounds like the typical EU law problem: new developments that can't be covered by existing laws and questions asked about these topics end up basically in a 404 law not found issue. Rather than trying to move an entire continent in one go, it would be easier to get something done in an EU-affiliated country so it creates a ready made answer that can then be made to fit for the EU.

Drafting an EU-wide law from scratch, even if people would be willing to do so, would take years if not a decade to see the light of day. Whereas getting something changed in a member country would take a lot less hassle depending on which country you're going for.

The fact that the EU didn't outright say 'no' is the general equivalent of 'possibly, if you give us a better answer'. As far as I know, a lot of digital consumer EU laws have been drafted first in one or two countries in some kind of shape and then adapted for EU law in the years after that, after it was proven that the problem was a real problem and the laws were a real solution.

So don't be dispirited, even if the EU parliament questions don't seem to be very positive. Answers they give are legally binding after all so they can't be too positive about anything immediately if there's no clear law that states yes or no.

[Wannabe_Baby]

Shout out to Snoups4 for the work he's doing in France.

I'm in the UK. For the UK petition, there's certainly no harm in submitting two petitions and your viewers will be happy to sign both. One of them may be automatically closed because the government figures it's too close in content to the other one but we might get lucky.

[benchaak_vam_demer]

I am an IT Professional. Having asked the EU Commission about Game as a Service (GAAS) might not have been the best choice. Since no government has an incentive to define this kind of service in any law. But a GAAS is by definition a subcategory of SAAS (Software as a Service). This is defined by laws, since governments are buying SAAS from companies like Microsoft, Google, AWS etc. I know for sure, they have made precautions to protect governments from being F-d by these companies.
So if you would ask the EU-Commission if purchasing a SAAS for a single one time payment and the party providing the service has not defined or disclosed the duration of the service being provided, by law how long the service has to be provided, or if it can be ended legally by the service provider at will.
I think to this the EU-Commission is far more inclined to give a proper answer. And since Video Games by definition are Software all regulations that apply to SAAS also legally apply to GAAS.

[Josep_Hernandez_Lujan]

I contacted the guy who got lootboxes banned in Belgium, but that was done by applying existing gambling laws to them. While sympathetic his hands are tied on this.

[amirhossein]

Ross's perseverance is incredible in this. Only matched by the officials' incredible ability to not give an answer somehow when it otherwise seems impossible to so far

[neon-rust]

5:55 Gotta love it when the answers to a clearly numbered list of questions is a wall of text with no reference to the original questions, whatsoever.😠

[WorldEverett]

Ross went to the darkest depths of reality, the world of law, to help us. That's something I respect immensely.

[marcodelaflor]

Ross and volunteers, Thank you for your hard work.

[ArkyonVeil]

Immense respect to those who are fighting for our rights to preserve the arts. Albeit this campaign is mainly constrained to games, it has ramifications to software (of which the majority rely on DRM even if a one time purchase, which will kill the program once the auth servers fail), and films (previously an easily preservable format, with the strengthening of DRM, today it's nearly impossible to legitimately purchase a DRM free movie, the purchase of which is guaranteed to remain under your control forever, rather on the whims of the service its hosted on.), also music, albeit there's more DRM free options there, it can certainly take the path of films too given time.

The reason why it's hard to get a straight answer is because a straight answer would shake up the rules of copyright in our modern world. That's a can of worms few politicians want to even get near.

It's not an easy fight, but a worthy one.

[projectalpha_va]

I will watch it anyways Ross you cannot stop me.

[Tall_Order]

If the corpo wont commit to a hard definition of what they offer, then the gov should force one.

[Ramonatho]

Unrelated to the content of the video but man I love Richard Burns' Rally. The skyboxes looked so good for their time.

[grfrjiglstan]

This whole EU episode sounds like you’re negotiating with a dragon. You may only ask questions three, the answers come in riddles, and they could decide to torch everything you’ve got at any moment because they don’t care about your struggles.