Giant FAQ on The European Initiative to Stop Destroying Games!

Here is a giant Video FAQ on all the biggest questions I've seen on the European Citizens' Initiative, part of the push behind the Stop Killing Games campaign. I tried to go over almost everything. This is long and kind of dry and is just meant for people who want more information on what it's about. For everyone else who can, go sign the initiative!

0:00 Intro
1:53 Concept 1 - Always ask "What's the alternative?"
3:17 Concept 2 - This is mostly about future games
4:03 Concept 3 - It's impossible to save games with disruption
4:56 Concept 4 - The ECI if not final law
5:11 Will this be retroactive?
5:20 Isn't this too vague?
8:18 Doesn't this go too far?
10:21 Do all features need to work?
11:20 Do servers need to run forever?
11:37 What about games that don't require online access on shutdown?
11:51 Are developers involved?
12:26 What options will developers of online games have?
15:27 What do developers need to change for future games?
15:46 What about subscription games?
16:23 Won't this cause games to go subscription-only?
17:49 Isn't it unreasonable to own a service?
23:38 Won't gaming get worse due to government?
24:20 Why not stop buying online games instead?
25:29 Don't EULAs allow games being destroyed?
26:03 What about free games?
26:33 Doesn't this violate developer rights?
27:20 Will everyone get games for free when they shutdown?
27:44 What about people banned from games?
28:11 Won't this make cheating rampant in games?
28:53 What if players try to sabotage a game to get an end-of-life build?
29:44 What about console games?
30:36 What about mobile games?
30:54 How long would companies need to host end-of-life plans?
31:04 Won't companies stop making MMOs / live service games?
32:10 Wouldn't this be a security risk?
32:47 Is this for single player or multiplayer?
33:40 Would devs need to convert multiplayer games to single player?
34:27 Wouldn't better labeling fix the problem?
35:13 How will this be enforced?
35:31 Why not petition companies instead?
35:58 What version of a game would devs need to release?
36:25 Won't games get more expensive?
37:58 What if a company goes bankrupt?
38:27 What if companies create shell companies to go bankrupt?
38:52 What about games too huge to be hosted by customers?
39:56 Don't some games deserve to die?
40:19 How does "The Crew" relate to this?
40:34 What are the chances of this passing?
41:07 Corrections
41:35 end

Link to sign EU initiative:

Guides on how to sign EU initiative:

[rwsstudios]

Thanks for the shout out! We feel obliged to explain our position now, and why we care about what is going on here.

We’re just an indie dev with no ‘live service’ plans, but we are a publisher and developer that have worked to keep our own games playable for literally decades at this point - even if it’s not in our best business interests, hence why we wholeheartedly support this initiative.
In the unlikely event we did end up with a live service game, there would be an end of life plan built into it - if nothing else but so that our own developers, that would have spent years working on it, would not see their work just vanish one day.

For our part, as long as we are around we endeavor to keep our games playable, at the very least on PC. We’re not perfect, but we do try, given our limited means as a truly independent studio. Here is our (obviously written with our own bias) track record:

POSTAL (1997) - We no longer update this game, so we made it open source and made it free. We have in the past rolled community updates into the base game, and will always try to make sure it survives any OS version updates. But if the time comes we’re not around, at least the source is out there for anyone interested to fix it up, should some OS update breaks it.

POSTAL 2 (2003) and its DLC Paradise Lost (2015) - We sell and even update this game to this day. We’ve had to fight to keep it working during Windows and Linux updates. Sadly, Mac support is no longer that easy due to them dropping 32-bit support, although we did make a serious effort to try and get it sorted. We can’t release the source code because Unreal Engine 2 is not open source, which is a shame.
The Mac situation bothers us though, so hopefully we can work that out one day. It was sold to Mac users, so they should still be able to play it, regardless of the paradigm shift Apple introduced with their hardware and software.

Postal III (2011) - Not a game we developed or published, but we fought hard to get the game working again on Steam after the DRM servers went down (that we never agreed should have been a thing in the first place). We didn’t profit from that, it was just the right thing to try and do for those that paid for the game, and thankfully it worked out.

POSTAL Redux (2016) - It’s come to our attention that there is a generation of CPU’s the game now crashes on due to it’s very old Unreal 4 version, so we’re currently looking into fixing that by updating the engine version, but it’s turned out to be more complex than we thought so it’ll be a while. This game is not a massive seller for us to be honest, but we can’t ignore the inconvenience for those it affects.

POSTAL 4 (2022) - Still very much working on this game, about to add co-op, and soon workshop/modding support. Thankfully Epic does allow the source code sharing of Unreal 4 and 5 games, unlike Unreal 2, so once the workshop is out, it’ll be safe in the community's hands should we ever fold. And we’re looking to make sure that the servers for co-op can be maintained as long as anyone wants them to be.

Anyway, to anyone that made it this far, thanks for reading. We just figured it was worth explaining why we’re supporting this cause - it’s because our own game preservation is important to us, and therefore understand why overall game preservation is vital.

We obviously do care about money and paying the bills so we can keep supporting our devs, but we also care about the community - so we take the L in some situations financially, in order to look after those that help get us here.

Best of luck in your endeavors Ross! And those supporting him!

[KingLich]

POV: Ross brought you in his house and now you will listen to him talk about video game preservation. There is no other option.

[BlackViperMWG]

"We prefer to vote with out votes, we think it's more democratic"

Damn, what a burn

[Geark]

Kinda depressing how often I've seen people hear about this campaign, immediately assume it's about forcing publishers to run the servers forever, and then mocking it for being obviously stupid. I tried to correct as much as I could, but it's so weird how this is the default assumption every single time.

[puriewhite]

The "alternative" I usually hear is some fantasy dream world where everyone sings kumbaya together and collectively stop supporting greedy practices of video game developers. The whole "vote with your wallet" stuff which doesn't work whatsoever, because the gaming community, or in fact any community in general will never come together to achieve something like this. It's just not feasible at all. That's why government intervention is the only realistic way to save games.

[Mickelraven]

Shout-out to my home country Finland for being the first country to reach the threshold! Fellow neighbors Sweden and Denmark will definitely be next!

[jordanmaris]

As someone who works for the EU, Ross has done an incredible job of explaining this, and he is 100% right about all the EU related stuff.

This is also typically the kind of issue the EU likes to solve! Fingers crossed!

[daredl]

It absolutely isn't your fault, Ross, there's a lot of bad actors on stage that do nothing but spin up false narratives and creating strawmen to discredit this. People in favor of this initiative are simply tired of being defrauded. The videogame industry had been selling customers services but acting like they're goods for 30 years now and they have made billions off of it, taking your money and walking away every time it was an online only game that didn't include dedicated servers.

[beeshings]

PirateSoftware is going to watch this whole video and still not understand what the petition is about.

[The_Nametag]

For those questioning about "live service" games, may I remind you that Sim City 2013 was claimed to require online, and was quickly modded to prove that was false. Yet that is the style of game being claimed as a "live service". Publishers are lying to you, hold their feet to the fire.

[Chromeberd]

Ross has come a long way from "lets send mail to their CEO's to make a difference" to actually just getting the government involved to stomp out this practice. Proud of you Ross, this has been a long time coming.

[Rexitron]

I’m going to bet PirateSoftware is going to go, “Oh now he’s going to be specific about his demands for this” even though Ross has been at this for almost a decade now.

[themostbestwizard]

That "Pirate Software" guy actually doesn't want to solve the problem at all. If you look at his pinned post on that awful video where he called Ross "disgusting", he literally says that he just thinks that publishers should clarify that gamers have no rights and are not really buying the game.
That's his "solution". Just accept that you have no rights to games you paid for and let publishers do whatever they want.

[castform]

"won't game developers/publishers just leave the EU market"
Just like how apple and every electronics manufacturer left the EU market when the USB-C standardization went into effect, which also didn't force anyone to retroactively change into a USB-C port.

I already signed the initiative when it launched. It's so nice to see my country of finland currently having 112% of the required signatures.

[StriKe_jk]

Update: Finland already reached 111% supporters and is the first European country to go above 100% to complete the necessary amount of signatures. Congratulations!

[CaptainVVV]

"running with scissors" supporting you is one of the coolest things I've heard in a long time

Hats off to you Ross, I'm not in the EU but I am wishing both you and the initiative all the best

[xnwikkb]

Honestly, PirateSoftware's critique of the petition for being too vague, now sounds even dumber, since everybody now knows that it has a limit for the amount of words it uses.

[pencil]

Something about Ross that I've noticed over the what 14-15 years I've been watching his content, is that he has an incredible talent for breaking down complex concepts into easily understood clips. That applies doubly so to this movement. I cannot fathom how obtuse someone has to be to watch or read along and grab the wrong end of the stick this hard. The patience this man has demonstrated towards those people is utterly humbling.

[j-swag]

About the "Won't this make cheating rampant in games?" Team Fortress 2 is a good example to use. During the whole bot crisis, most official servers were completely unplayable because of the cheater bots, and community servers were the only way you could properly play the game because they were self-moderated by actual humans

[vangoghsseveredear]

"Man who worked at blizzard deliberately misunderstands argument, favors bad business practices"

Isn't exactly hard to believe lol.