Damn, end of an era… Good luck A-Chan! (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)7

This has be kindasortagenerally known already, it just doesn’t really matter if nothing is done about it.

TL;DW:

• Patrick Breyer and Niklas Nienaß submitted questions to the European Commission on the topic of killing games (the latter in contact with Ross and two EU based lawyers).
• EU won’t commit to answering whether games are goods or services.
• EULA are probably unfair due to imbalance of rights and obligations between the parties.
• Such terminations should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis (preferably by countries rather than EU).
• Existing laws don’t seem to cover this issue.
• Campaign in France seems to be gaining some traction. Case went to “the highest level where most commercial disputes submitted to DGCCRF never go”.
• UK petition was suppose to get a revised response after the initial one was found lacking. Due to upcoming elections all petitions were closed and it might have to be resubmitted.
• Also in UK, there’s a plan to report games killed in the last few years to the Competition and Markets Authority starting in August (CMA will get some additional power by then apparently).
• No real news from Germany, Canada or Brazil.
• Australian petition is over and waiting for a reply. Ross also hired a law firm to represent the issue.

This is a simplified version of simplified version, watch the video for more info.

It kind of makes sense considering their lore is connected to Advent. It’s an interesting choice by Cover, I wonder if it’ll be a one-off or something they’ll play into more in the future.

They’re just aiming for the older MLG headshot compilation folk.

I’m not going to trudge through days of content to confirm because it’s not that important but I’m pretty sure she did talk about planning to graduate even before the CN fiasco happened (as in, plans came before, I think she talked about it after leaving Holo).

As for Kobo… I’m in two minds about this. On one hand, it’s fair to be worried considering what happened. On the other, Kobo feels a bit more “detached” from the core Holo fan base and had some Chinese content already if I recall correctly (stuff like song lyrics etc), so this might work out for her. Maybe?

I’m sure Cover wouldn’t go for it without some serious risk/reward balancing and I hope they prepared contingency plans in case things go south. All we can do for now is wait and hope for the best.

Yeah, I just watched the Ubisoft Forward stream with some additional details on the new update. Can’t say I’m a fan but whatever - guess they still can’t let go of their obsession with him.

I might be missing something since I’m not completely dialed in with TD lore but didn’t we kill Keener? Are they bringing him back or will this just be more of his usual gloating through audio logs? I’m not sure how I feel about either of those options.

Guess I’ll wait for a full detail breakdown before thinking about coming back.

That doesn’t seem to do much for me unfortunately. In my case the potential time I need to reserve for a gaming session tends to take precedence over hype whenever I’m in a lazy, scroll-focused rut. Still trying to get back to a recent(ish) release I was super hyped playing during its beta period… At least I have a semi decent explanation for this one, I guess.

While I can’t provide you with a proper scientific answer I can offer a basic explanation - it’s effort.

Browsing through the never ending amount of content online requires no effort but provides you with a dopamine rush as if you actually managed to accomplish or do something with your time. Other stuff, like watching movies, playing games, reading books, etc. requires attention and active participation, the payoff on the other hand is largely delayed (especially compared to the lazy option).

As for hacks… I don’t know any. The only ways I know how to deal with it is limiting your time scrolling through this stuff and forcing yourself to do other things - it can be rough early on but you’ll eventually get used to the “normal” way of functioning.

They’re going to replace them with an AI powered tool, aren’t they? If they’re going to replace them at all that is.

It’s the question of both though - sure, game preservation aspect is important but it would also be nice for the law to catch up to technology and decide whether companies should have the right to remove your ability to use the product you bought.

If the law would go through in the way envisioned by the campaign, games should be designed and developed in a way that releasing a patch/server software should be possible even for a company at the verge of closing. We’re not talking about creating these releases at the last moment but baking their creation into the development process from the start.

At the end of the day all the possible solutions proposed by the campaign are just ideas to give lawmakers some kind of starting point. If this goes anywhere it’ll be debated and decided upon by people with far more law and customer protection knowledge than anyone involved in the campaign itself. The important part right now is to bring the issue to someone willing to look into it.

That’s why the campaign is aimed at multiple jurisdictions - there’s a chance at least one of them works out.

Fair enough. My experience is mostly tied to companies where even shutting down would be run through a process of sunsetting all projects and tying up as many loose ends as possible before that so my perspective might be a bit skewed.

I can see this being an issue for a small or indie developer but something like Embracer Group shouldn’t have any leeway in that regard - they could absolutely afford keeping a studio (at least a skeleton crew) long enough to release a single server package/patch.

Maybe, maybe not. Australia has a decent track record ruling for the customers so there is a chance (that’s also the reason why France is one of the main targets of this campaign).

At the very least the odds are better than in the US.

Just so we’re clear, this is not my petition. It’s related to the Stop Killing Games campaign mentioned in the post description, though it was slightly modified by the author (one of the volunteers helping with the campaign).

I’m not sure I follow your example.

First things first - companies don’t poof out of existence suddenly. Secondly, the whole reason behind the end-of-life proposal is for devs/publishers to have a ready and easy to execute plan in case of ending the official support (whether it’s closing the developer run servers or closure of the company). The whole idea is that something like that would be planned and prepared for during the development.

It’s still being processed apparently. I’ll be sure to post it when that changes.

You’re right, people shouldn’t try anything and just buy the fresh new release instead.

It may or may not work out but the only way for things to change is by bringing the issue to the lawmakers - they can’t fix something they aren’t aware of.

This specific petition was broadened to involve all software rather than just games which is why it mentions pinging home instead of focusing on multiplayer servers.

The general idea of the campaign as a whole is to force publishers to create software with a specific end-of-life plan that would include one of the few possible options:

• relase the server software to allow players host them themselves
• patch the game to not require company’s server (even if not all features would be functional)
• allow people to create their own servers after official ones are dead (think private MMO servers)

Any of those options would come into effect only when the official support for the game were to end.

How exactly would that increase the risk of creating multiplayer games? Private server hosting was a thing for years and the only reason we’re here now is because publishers decided they should be the only ones allowed to do it.

On the other hand they do have a history of protecting customers (weren’t they the main reason behind Steams refund policy?) and that’s what this is about.