Asmongold TV - The Perfect Internet Villain | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

The Perfect Internet Villain Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ------------ Keywords: world of warcraft, gaming hot takes, video game analysis, streamer content Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So we had a pretty interesting thing happened. This entire event has massively, massively popped off. So Stop Killing Games has reached one million signatures. Okay, this one's going to be fun. So the Stop Killing Games initiative is almost over. And the last time we covered it, the European Citizens Initiative, which is the part of it that matters the most, had just opened. As of right now, you've got just days to join it,

meaning that this is your last chance to make your voice heard and hopefully prevent the games that you buy from being destroyed. That's right. But here's the thing. Until last week, it really did seem to be rather doomed. They needed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, over half a million more signatures. But, well, right now, it's gaining thousands an hour.

The reason why is quite funny. It crossed one million. They have reached the goal, and they are even going beyond that even farther. What is it at right now? happened. They needed a hit 1 million signatures, but after months of stalling, they only had 450K. But then, over the horizon, a savior came. Their past 1.1.3.

A savior is a pirate software. And that's because his opposition, plus a few pinches of World of Warcraft, sparked a drama that is now surging signatures to the tune of over 240,000 in just seven days. So, that's right. Time to get you up to speed. It all began last year when the Darling's at Ubisoft shut down the crew. Now, they didn't just shut down the online features. They shot down everything. Yeah, you can even play it. Turns out, even the single player required the online component. That basically meant that your copy of the crew was, yeah, no longer a thing that you could really do anything with.

Yep. So, Ross got from Accursed Farms was not a fan of this, so he started a movement. Now, you may know Ross from things like Freeman's mind or dead game news. And his plan, right, was to use the law. Ross has been an advocate for gamer rights and other types of consumer protections for electronic media for a long period of time. This isn't, it's not like this is his first rodeo and it's his

first time talking about this. He's been an advocate for this for quite a while. Not change.org to actually change things here. And it certainly seems that now a year on he actually may succeed in a way. So basically, right? Ross believes that consumers bought a

product with games like the crew and that that product was then taken away. But from Microsoft's perspective, it's rather different. They argue that they sold a license to a live service, a service that they could simply end whenever they wanted. So put simply, what this movement aims to do is to address this gray area so that at the very least people would get... I don't think that companies should be allowed to re-package sales as licenses rather than products

in order to just take consumer rights away from the user. I think that's bullshit. How does that help? anybody. How is that in any way in the benefit of the actual customer or the population? Yeah, it's not right. Yeah, it's bullshit. That formal clarity on what they were actually buying. Best case scenario would involve something basically with more teeth. Now, this was all multi-promp. There was a UK campaign that hit problems early on with the government. To be staying from the start.

True. Very true. As for the US, well, basically, it was never an option because of already settled law. Now, because of this, stuff looked grim. But last summer, another path opened. And that path was the EU Citizens Initiative. So, this lets EU citizens propose legislative agendas. And this proposal was very simple. Stop destroying video games.

And what a little bit of a certain does sound simple. It's that any game sold in the future would have to prepare for the eventuality or the possibility of server shutdowns, that they would need to remain in a functional playable state. Now, this could be through, say, single player access, maybe through pure- they got to give people their money back. Like, I think that if you revoke service from somebody and you take somebody's service away, you have to give them their money back. Like, you can take them off of your official servers, maybe,

but like to just take their entire account back. Because, like, it, again, it's just not fair. There's not really a balance of power between, like, the user or a, you know, what do you call it? The user and the seller. peer connections opening up by the server stuff you get the point right but actually what's key right now is that at this point the implementation details are actually not required the way this works is that if it is successful the EU would then have six months to respond and if they say yes then they will adopt

a resolution and that would guide EU activity there's always moves things in that direction a whole bunch of new super hasty loss but make no mistake it would actually matter and that's because It would get the ball rolling. It would not just like immediately, oh, we get the petition to a million signatures and then everything solves itself. No, it will take time for this to happen. But it at least begins that timeline. It starts the timeline. It has got global impact.

I mean, it's pretty obvious now. Just look at Apple. Is the dev I disagree with this? It's all falls flat on an intellectual property. I understand that. And I know that a lot of developers feel that way. but the way that you imagine intellectual property, I don't think is in the best interest of the customer.

And I think that if you have a business transaction that's fundamentally not in the best interest of the customer and it's predatory, problematic, or unfair in nature, then I think the government needs to come in and regulate it to make sure that the customer is being represented and treated in a fair way. So I understand that like, like basically I don't agree with the current, I think intellectual property law and the amount of ways that a person can exercise intellectual property law right now, I think that it's too overreaching.

It's way too overreaching and it's not fair for an average person. For one example. Now, for this, all it's needed is... Or just don't buy it? No, I don't agree with that at all. I think that whenever... And the problem is that just don't buy it doesn't work when every other company in the... side of a market does the same thing and adopts the same principle. So that's called a cartel,

right? Like, you have price fixing and all these other things that are against the law. Like, just stop buying something is nice to say, sure, but you're not existing. Like, there's a lot of people that have an illusion of a free market, but most markets are actually not very free at all. Just don't buy it. And also, by the way, just don't sell it. Like, if you can say, just don't buy it as like a throwaway line, then I feel like I could say just don't sell it as a throwaway line too, right? Well, if you don't like

the law, then don't make a game like that. So, you know, you're at an impasse. A minimum threshold being passed in at least seven EU countries, which basically just exists, so I don't know, if the French all get together and wants something that nobody else

wants and only one country passes then, hey, they're the EU safe. Anyway, you get the point. That is challenge. Those are the stakes. So here's what happened next. Going through the requirements, the regional thresholds do seem to be quite manageable, right? Now, the million signatures is quite a lot. I mean, a hell of a lot. And it happened. And it fucking happened. That's what's crazy. One that's actually centered on EU citizens. Who was leading it? Well, an English-speaking YouTuber with a cult following, which is- Asman loves authoritarianism, as you were saying earlier.

You see, you view it as authoritarianism. I view it as freedom from authoritarianism. Because in my opinion, authoritarianism, what makes authoritarianism so scary is whenever it's tyrannical without the ability for the public to be able to have a recourse against it. So, for example, if you don't like the president or you don't like a representative in your country, or at least in the United States, you can vote to have that person. removed. But the problem is that whenever you're having this with a company, you can't necessarily vote to have a company be removed. And when a company establishes a monopoly in a certain market,

like, for example, Visa and MasterCard due in terms of payment processors, and then they apply their laws and their rules arbitrarily, or like the recent case with Epic and Fortnite and selling on the Apple Play Store, I think that you run into a big issue of authoritarianism with no accountability. Because authoritarianism is being exercised right now, but the people that have the authority are not accountable to the public. And that's what the real problem is. So the actual argument that I'm making here is not in favor of authoritarianism. It's actually against it. Because I want authoritarianism that is accountable to the public rather than authoritarianism that's accountable to shareholders. I mean, in a positive way, just so.

I'm being clear. But basically, it's not a huge number of people. Now, this story obviously did cut through. Loads of people covered it, thus included, and the early momentum was really strong. Yeah. Until it wasn't. Now, this is because some things fell through. One being a... This is the end goal of capitalism. Why are discovering this now? Capitalism is one of the greatest things and it's the best social and economic system in the entire world. And every country that doesn't adopt capitalism is a awful third world shithole that you, that you you would never want to live in. And even countries like China are adopting capitalism in multiple other ways, and you are naive to think otherwise.

Capitalism has brought an untold and unfathomable amount of wealth to the entire world, and it is the premise of the entire identity of Western civilization. So if you don't like capitalism, go move to a shithole without it. But you won't. because you know capitalism is a good thing. As with anything, if you drink too much water, you'll drown. Is water bad? No, it's not. Anything can be overdone. Newsletter that was tanked by that company having layoffs.

Even Heineken. Yes, Heineken, the beer people, wanted to include the campaign in their marketing, but only after the petition ended. But there is another one. And I think I know it's the one you want me to talk about. Yes, the pirate. Oh, okay. TLDR.

Pirate software opposed the initiative. This is back when it all kicked off. So what I'll do here is boil down what I essentially think is the best case or like the best faith version of his argument. Which is essentially that in very many cases, overregulation often actually helps the incumbents. In this case, would help the AAA companies. This is true. That wasn't the argument I think pirate software is making. But it's true that oftentimes a lot of companies that are very big argue and advocate for higher degree.

of regulation that have additional costs in order to pull the ladder up to make it difficult to have emerging companies make it into the market. This is very common. It's like, for example, like, think of it in like in World of Warcraft whenever you get to item level like 600 and then you make it to where after that, the only people that can join your raid are also item level 600. Well, that's what happens, basically. The only companies with the resources to actually overcome the regulations.

That is actually a fair enough, reasonable argument. But I think in practice, it's fair to say the pirate software in his two videos was not really steelmanning his opposition. There were some errors. It wasn't really a great situation. But really in this story, there's a key thing to remember. The initial, I'll say drama, let's just say hot public disagreement. That would happen when, let's just say, his internet stocks were in a slightly different and altogether more healthy place. It did.

Since then, he was involved in a major World Warcraft drama, which I will cover shortly. I don't like doing drama. It's crazy how bad that drama affected him. It is actually insane. I don't think that I can, like, I don't know the last time that somebody had video game drama negatively affect them that much. But in this case, it does actually inform how the news would play out. As for the initiative, well, by the following April, signatures were just sitting at 4.4. 425K. That's not even halfway. And only 25,000 signatures had been added between April and last week.

So it basically was dead in the water. Momentum from the previous summer had completely fizzled out. But then, with only weeks to go, Scott posted his video. Everything changed. The end of Stop Killing Games. It's a fairly dramatic, somber title for a video, and one that is fair. It absolutely did appear to be dead. It was a final plea and an explainer made by a very, very tired-looking man. It was clear to me that the campaign had taken its toll. Scott admitted as much, one choice quote. It's like asking someone with severe dyslexia to write a book report on war in peace. I am the wrong person for that job.

I think that does speak to the absolutely mammoth amount of work that doing anything like this would actually require. But it's not all that Scott said. He took aim at pirate and he explained point by point. Right? How Pirate's coverage was, in his view, not at all a fair representation of the overall initiative, its goals, its specific language. And I would say from my read of it, I think Pirate almost immediately jumped straight to some worst-case outcomes of a maximalist version of the campaign. Sure. Of course, we can add to that an interpersonal level to all of this, you know,

the usual emotional reactions, hot words. But if it was just that, if it was only that, Well, what happened would not really be what has happened. So let's talk about World of Warcraft. It's actually crazy that this was all because of a Wow Guild. This was nuts. Oh my fucking God. I said, I hate covering drama, but today it is actually relevant because basically... It all comes back to wow.

I think what we're seeing with this initiative would not really have played out if these World of Warcraft-related events didn't play out the way that they're. did. Because basically this is why people... That is what happened is that as soon as the wow event happened and people got really mad at him, then it got really popular to make negative content about him. Then people went back and they brought up like

that Maldavius fig tree stuff and then they brought up him doing those playthroughs and people thinking that it was inauthentic. And then they brought up what else besides that? Oh, the voice changer thing. And I think there was

like a couple of other things. Yeah, ashes of creation where he pulled that mob and ashes of creation, like a lot of stuff, right? So it kind of, um, it was like a domino, basically. It was topic after topic. Yeah, exactly. People went crazy, crazy about it. As soon as people realize that you can get positive feedback on social media by being negative about a person or a topic, it creates a feedback loop that multiplies that amount of negative feedback or negative sentiment by like 50X. Because people want social media attention, and so they go after it by adopting these causes and saying these things.

Whereas in a lot of cases, if this was happening in a private situation, you know, any of these dramas, like, you know, even like the big ones, would probably not be taken very seriously on an interpersonal level. But on the internet, they're taken extremely seriously because there is clout to be gained. And this is not something that's unique. to pirate software, it's you, it's just, it's a phenomenon that happens on the internet. And it's happened to me multiple times too. So I've seen it, I've seen it happen. I've been on the, I have farmed other people for this and I have been farmed for this. Sometimes you're the farmer,

other times you're the crop. That's the way it goes. It's a rough and tumble world out there. And if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. That's the way I see it. Ready, willing, and even excited to hop back into the fray and to pump all of their up. So here's the TLDR. Only Fankt is a wow classic hardcore streamer content guild. That's a lot of words, but basically think of it as a reality TV show where dozens to hundreds of hours of gameplay are at stake because when a character dies... It's like Love Island where instead of everybody having sex, nobody does. It is dead, just that that character has got lots of fans in Twitch chat and some sort of big name behind them in the form of the streamer. Pirate, along with other streamers,

were doing a dungeon in this game. And that dungeon went pearly. People died. And of course, whenever they died, that means they lose their characters, characters that they progressed. Now, you might be thinking, so what, a World of Warcraft dungeon run went bad

and people lost their characters in a hardcore server. Why is that a news story? Well, there absolutely is a reason why. So it was broadly seen that he went very much every man for himself mode, trying to save his own character. And really to the detriment of his teammates, a few of whom died.

Now at the time, tensions were high, and those tensions were pointed at pirate software, both from viewers and from his fellow party members. Yeah, Chance, chance kicked Pirate out of the guild, large majority of the guild, thaw uncomfortable doing it. It put Chance in a pretty weird position. I mean, I, as I said, after seeing this happen, and in my opinion, I think that, like, I could tell that only Fangs 2 was going sour. Not when the pirate stuff happened, but when the Sphinx. S-Fan stuff happened. There was like an entire hate community about S-Fan dying in classic

Wow. Like you can just search this up on Reddit, but there was a huge community that was dedicated around shitting on him and hating on S-Fand. Yeah, it was really, really cringe, right? And like, oh, S-Fans bad, he doesn't know what he's doing, right?

And it's like, I mean, it's a video game. Like, I can't really give a fuck about this, but it was funny. Well, it was funny, but the problem is that when you allow that type of hostility into a community, that hostility manifests in different ways. It's not like it's only going to apply in one circumstance. It will then apply on other people. They hated it on everyone, bro. They did, but S-Fand was one of the prime targets for it. Let's be fair. And so, but no, you're definitely right. And so, like, after it happened to S-Fand, what happened to Pirate

Software made a lot more sense. It'll grow and spread? Yeah. And what followed was, I think to put a very messy thing in simple terms, in an emotional sense, the opposite of saying, shit, my bad, I'm sorry, I absolutely could have done more there, my bad. Basically, owning the L, doing so in public, and doing so in a way that feels authentic. Of course, you know, feels authentic because it actually is authentic. So if you ask me what actually happened is a common downfall of very smart, very rational people. That's because very smart, very rational people can rationalize how they are very, very right. Some others are very, very wrong.

I think that I think Belior is very accurate about this. And this is something that I've learned before myself is that, like, I have a, like, I don't really understand why people get emotional. I'm not an emotional person. And because I'm not an emotional person, when people react emotionally, I don't really know how to approach it or how to react to it. it because it's like putting water on a computer. It's just like short circuits my brain. I'm like, what are you, what's wrong with you? Like, why are you thinking like this? Why can't you

just think about this normally? How many people have been accused of being Zionists because they think that Ethan Klein has a reasonable claim to fair use against fair use for Denims, Frogan, and Casey Tron? And they're being called Zionists that they like Ethan Klein, they're Nazis, and all of this other stuff. It's just, it's totally illogical. And what I've learned is that people are just simply not logical. The strongest argument isn't an argument. And because of that, people like pirate software fall into the trap of trying to logically reason with people that do not want to be reasoned with.

You're wrong, you can, but they have to be open for the conversation to change. I'm talking about in a general sense, not in an individual sense. In a lot of cases, on an individual personal level, you can change people's minds, but once people get together in groups, it's like the, you know, the men and black quote, a person's smart, but people are stupid. I think that the more people and the more momentum a mindset has, the more one-dimensional it becomes because it has to cater to that increasingly lower common denominator. So yeah, no, I could talk about this a lot because this is, it's group psychology,

basically. And I think that Bellewer, the reason why is I really think Belliour had a great insight with this. And it's something I've never heard discussed before. It's that when you try to apply logic to some situations, many people are just simply unwilling to hear it, even if you, and this is what happens to me, even if you can prove, like, I had this happen with my mom, for example. Like I would tell my mom whenever I was like eight to nine years old, I said, why are you smoking cigarettes? Cigarettes are going to kill you. It says cigarettes kill you. You know cigarettes are going to kill you. They're expensive and they're killing you. Why would you want to kill yourself? And she just kept smoking cigarettes. And I could just never understand that. Something, it just,

it never made sense. Why would you do this? And it transcended all rationality in my mind. I still even to this day I can't understand it and so it's hard to stop well there's it's hard to do a lot of things it doesn't mean you just shouldn't do it right and so that's that's that's right it's not a choice well there's plenty of people that choose to stop smoking many people choose to stop smoking they do it every day but she just wasn't one of them and so anyway I just couldn't understand it and that was probably the first time that I came into conflict with this. Other people think and to not have a holistic view of a situation. I mean to put it in very simple terms, people thought he came off really defensive. And what all of this meant was fuel for the fire, an abundance of fuel. And I've got to imagine that from Pirates point of view, it really must have looked like the entire world was against it. Well, they were. Per the dynamics of Twitch, it was an incredible content event. And the reality is that once people are against you, it's very hard to change minds.

Especially when, as I think pirate was, you're feeling. Somebody says, remember you saying anything? Best way I could explain to you as a non-smoker, cigarettes or a smoker of what soda is to you. Yeah, but my mom was a Catholic, and I remember I said to her, I was like eight or nine years old at this time. I said,

if killing yourself makes you go to hell, then wouldn't you go to hell for doing something that's killing yourself? And she's like, oh, yeah, I don't know. And like, I had thought this up. And I was like, okay, this is going to convince her to stop doing it. Didn't work.

That's a bad analogy. Well, I'm just saying. It's just using logic. But yeah, and addiction doesn't care. Yeah, you, it just, it doesn't. People do not follow logic. And quite defensive and you're very much feeling the toll of thousands of angry people being very angry at you in just about every way they can.

Meaning that, yeah, some people were, let's just say going beyond having just a civil disagreement. Now, after that point, it was also eight or nine years old, right? There was a clip of an Ashes of Creation Raidpool that sparked a bit of a drama. There were then accusations of pre-watching games in order to look better on stream. There was critique of his Blizzard credentials and a whole lot of different things. Basically, he turned into somewhat of a punching bag. Now, to, I suppose, try and work through some of this, he did a session with Dr. Kay. I think was a pretty enlightening one.

It certainly is, I'd say, a good listen. It essentially did get into why he reacted, way he did. the way that he actually felt. I'm not going to paraphrase here too much beyond just what I've already said. That's my takeaway. So I'd recommend, if you want more texture, more understanding of this story and the social dynamics that made it play out,

give talk. Let's see here. I agree that the raid made the half game, I think behind his stance on stuff killing games, is truly biased. I think that people were unhappy about his stance because he came at it from the perspective of a developer and most players don't care about a development. developers perspective because they're not developers.

For Kay's video of watch. But as a pretty simple, stop killing games movement, I think you can see how, well, whenever there was the initial disagreement of Ross, pirate stocks were looking pretty good. But then he was involved in several major dramas. These dramas led to hundreds and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, maybe finding out about him or having a changed opinion of him. There were a lot of videos talking about, you know, mistakes. examining everything.

And that's why, right now, before this video and I just searched for Pirate Software and YouTube, here's what I got. We've got the Pirate Software unraveling featuring a game developer, 211K views. Jesus. A Joss Drive Hayes reaction, 204K views. An Actman video, 586K views. An Apparachlan video, 266K views. One from Moist Critical, 3.1 million views.

And that is just the top few search results. Yep. We're talking about millions of views here. A lot of people. While so many of these were rooted in the dramatic aspect, obviously they were related to Stop Killing Games, and they all painted Stop Killing Games in a positive light. And what that essentially meant is that now you didn't need to be a game preservation enthusiast to know that Stop Killing Games exists.

All you needed was a path. This is actually a very good insight from Bellywer again. This is a great video that he made. He's saying that the hate on Pirate Software that made him oppositional to stop killing games made the initiative more accessible to more people. This is a very, very good insight. I think he's right. Even if you didn't have that, social media algorithms,

do know how to find you if you could be interested in it. All of that means a humongous megaphone. And so far, it absolutely seems it's done the trick. We've offered almost certain failure at 454K signatures too. At the time of writing this. video of 714k. And at the time and now it's at 1.1 million. There's only a few hours later, 737K signatures. Now that basically means that they need 263k in about 30 days. And obviously, if this rate holds just a little bit longer, they'll absolutely make it. Or will they? Because

here's the thing. They do actually need consistent, legitimate signatures. Yep. Reason why it's fairly simple. Fake ones could be stripped out. Over excited Americans having fun with a VPN, I don't know, could probably try to sign up for this. Wouldn't help the initiative. It would probably get scrubbed. And, well, in America, you can't sign an EU petition. So it's not a guaranteed thing just yet, but it certainly is looking like it's going to pass a million. Now, what happens if it succeeds is basically this.

The EU Commission will consider further action. That could be legislative action, or it could just be guidance on existing consumer laws. Now, no matter what, the industry would have significant input, but regardless, we would get a formal statement on the matter and its legality. And that's actually a powerful starting point for future conversations and new laws. Yeah. But here's the thing. It gets even better because those conversations have already begun and we've already started to make progress. Through all the the noise and all the comments, the core problem is fairly simple. This is a great thing. The audiences often think they're buying a product when they buy a game, but in reality, they're actually buying

licenses. Yep. Since October, Steam explicitly states that all purchases are licenses, that it's not ownership. I don't think that's enough. Just because you say something should be a certain way, doesn't mean it's just, it is that way. I think that a customer should be entitled to certain things when they spend their money. And you shouldn't be able to just take it away from them because they signed some TOS. That's bullshit. It's just that now it's no longer hidden in their Yula. And that's timing was, let's just say curious here. That's because California signed AB 2426, stating that any media that you can't permanently access offline must be labeled as a license. Oh, product. Oh, there it is. This is

company CIPR opportunities, and there's a beautiful irony. Ubisoft. Yeah. The very company that started this whole mess is actually taking action. That's because they're testing offline modes for the crew two and Motorfest. And I think it's fairly clear that the Stop Killing Games movement inspired this. So, you know what? In certain ways. And I think there's also like a certain level of consumer advocacy that certain games and publishers will feel pressure to do this even outside of the legal expectations. Like now that companies are more afraid to do a great example of this is like Web 3 and NFT stuff. Like nowadays saying that you're going to make an NFT game or a Web 3 game, this is like an immediate pass for, I would say, 98% of the internet.

And so because there's such a negative sentiment around it, I think that it's created a feedback loop where companies are not making content that way. Already winning. Now, another thing that could inspire this was an actual lawsuit, specifically a Californian one about the closure of the crew. But that lawsuit is actually facing some problems right now. And that's because of a Final Fantasy 11 related precedent that lets companies remove users from games. Because, well, as a user, all you've bought is a license.

And that can be revoked. That's a ruling that obviously plays to Ubisoft's advantage in that lawsuit. But looking at the big picture, we actually do see the developers are choosing to address these issues. I agree with companies being able to remove users from their own servers. Like, for example, like, if you're on a multiplayer server and you're cheating, I think they should 100% be able to ban you. You think that's good to think like that? I do. I'm very much a big fan of that.

I think it's a great thing. I think that every company should exist at least not for the detriment of the population. I'm a big advocate for consumer rights and consumer protection. And not because they're being forced to by the law, seemingly because they want to. But there are many reasons for that. It could be PR or it could simply be because they see what way the wind is blowing. Here's something cool. Take a look at Super Moves at World of Parkour.

This is an indie game that failed. Legal obligations prevent keeping the online functions active, but existing owners can still play it in single player. There's another example. Whenever Blizzard Entertainment purchase Spell Breaks developer, they obviously stopped the game. But months later, they released a peer-to-peer version of the game on itch.io. That's awesome.

And before all of this, Valen Studios ended Knockout City. Yeah, there's no reason why they can't do this. Really? There's no reason why they can't do it. And also, by the way, we can just tell them to do it. You realize that, right? We can just say, you have to do this now. And if enough of us get together and we say, you have to do this now, then they have to do it.

Because that's the way the government works. They made sure that private server still would work. It's that simple. Three indie teams finding a way to preserve their games retroactively. It is good shit. It matters. Now, yes, it is the case that player counts may be in the single digits, but it preserves gaming history.

If a bunch of people want to play one of these games together, they actually can. And if stop killing games passes, developers would have to consider things like this, not retroactively, but from day one. And that doesn't mean you can no longer make. an MMO. You can still make hellliders, but you'll need to sell your games correctly. Like a peer-to-peer or something like that, yeah. As what they actually are. Are they products or are they licenses? And you'd need to provide some sort of exit plan whenever server shut down. And nobody is saying that retrovading games

for offline play is an easy thing. But I don't actually think that's a... Just because something is complicated to do doesn't mean that you should just forego the consumer experience and then the consumer shouldn't be represented or treated in a way that's ethical or fair. I think that there's a lot of things about this that make it complex and difficult, but that doesn't really matter to me because what really matters is whether something like this is in the best interest of the player. There's a lot of things that are complex and difficult, and if you can't do it and you can't deliver that product to the market, then that's your weakness as a business. Like, not every business has the right to exist.

The reason not to try this. Because in many ways the direction of travel has not been great in gaming. It's often not been great in consumer a lot, at least until recently. I think making progress in this realm is absolutely a good thing. And I think the idea, why not try? Well, I think that is the attitude that we need. Of course, as for some of the reasons, why not? You likely heard those from pirate software.

I think most people are thinking that on balance, no, it's actually worth giving this a shot. I think the benefits to consumer awareness, consumer protections, and, well, game preservation are pretty damn good reason why we should actually try. So it's up to you. My question is simple. Why not give it a try? You can find the thing. Link down below. It's a great initiative.

It is. And if you're from the EU, you should sign it even though it's past a million in case of fake signatures. I actually think this is one of Belliwer's best videos. I think that's probably the reason why so many people watched it. He brought in a number of elements of insight into this that I think nobody else is really discussed. And I think that he talked about the psychology of how and why the resurgence happened in an extremely informed and intelligent way. This is one of his best videos.

I'm going to link it to you guys. If you want to see an example of consumers not being treated fantastically. Give it a like. Capcom. You're being not. and it's time to call you out and find out all about it for this next video. There's a video right there. I genuinely reason why signing a position is actually a bad idea,

and it may lead to Pirate Software saying, I told you so. In case it doesn't go well, well, no. I mean, like, then people are just going to push for it in general, right? A weird conspiracy I just thought of what Pirates said all that to bring attention to the movement and have it succeed? I don't think that's why he did it. I don't think so at all. But, you know, either way, it created that effect. And I think that having a face for people to go against definitely helped a lot of people advocate for it and go after it.

That's 100% true. And what is this here? What do you think is really going to happen though? Will these companies truly cave? I think that you guys have a very, very pessimistic view on how easy it is to make companies do what you want whenever the government just tells them to do what you to do something. The fact is that the government has the army. the government has the guns, the government has all the power.

If they tell a company to jump, the company says how high. That's it. And if they don't say how high, then they do what they do to that guy from Telegram. They just put the motherfucker in jail. And then the next person does it. That's it. It's that simple.

It's so fucking easy. They have to follow the law. And if you don't, they shut you down. That's the way it is. Apple cable is the best example. Apple wanted to make their own charger cable, and then they said, no, you have to just use a basic USBC cable. And do you know what they did? They did a USBC cable.

It's literally that simple. You can make them do whatever you want. You can. All you need to do is get enough people together and then you apply the law to them. That's it. And it's that simple. Or the company moves to a different country? It doesn't matter because even if the company moves to a different country, if it's doing business in your country,

then the company can get blocked. They can extradite people. There are a million ways that governments can find opportunities to negatively affect one of these companies. And so don't ever think that this is beyond any level of accountability. None of these companies are. And they could easily do it as much as they want. Someone tell that to Nintendo?

We could easily do that. and also by the way Nintendo is facing an issue with that right now so they're facing a lawsuit right now over the ability to disable switch two consoles in Brazil like I don't think even in Brazil they can still hold Nintendo accountable

yeah and also the more companies do that then the more like let's say like one country has this law okay well let's say Brazil Brazil is a huge market but it's not the size of the United States or the European Union, right? Or China. So let's say this happens and it's against the law in Brazil, but the company continues doing this stuff. That's totally fine.

But the difference is that when more and more countries make it against the law, then that business model becomes increasingly less viable because you're looking at your target audience and it's becoming more and more and more narrow. You see kind of how that happens? chances are the others will follow yeah and once enough countries make something against the law it becomes the default for international trade that's what happens and i think it primarily is decided by two different groups of people right and it's primarily decided by uh the united

states china and the european union and the uk those are the prime main big money groups in society and if you're not making money inside of that, you've got some problems. I'm happy Nintendo's getting sued, especially for this. They are. And also keep in mind that we could do this to them

in the United States too. The European Union could do this to Nintendo too. There is no limit of what you can do. If you get enough people together, you can do anything you want.