Tech Over Tea - It's Time To STOP KILLING GAMES | Ross Scott

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Today we have Ross Scott the founder of the Stop Killing Games initiative on the podcast to talk about as you may expect, the Stop Killing Games initiative, how it's progressing, some criticism of the movement and more. ==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Guest Links==========Website: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Accursed_Farms==========Support The Show==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson=========Video Platforms==========🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg=========Audio Release=========🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea==========Social Media==========🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345==========Credits==========🎨 Channel Art:All my art has was created by Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm as always your host, Rudy Robertson, and today we have a very fun episode which if I didn't stop him we wouldn't have started the episode because we were talking about a bunch of stuff before the recording started. Welcome to the show, Ross Scott, who you may know online as the Stop Killing Games guy. Welcome to the show. How's it going? Thank you. Thanks for having me.

It is a pleasure to have you here. I've not been following the initiative as closely as I should be, but I did see that like initial push for it. I was aware of the Australian petition as well. And yeah, this is something that kind of needed to happen, even though I've seen some of the results that have been coming from the petitions that have already finished and they're not being as positive as you may have wanted.

Yeah. Well, I guess should I explain your audience? What? Yeah, I think that good place to start is right there. Yeah. Well, I guess should I explain your audience what yeah, I think yeah good place to start is right there. Yeah This stop killing games is a concern movement I found that where we're trying to challenge the legality of publishers selling you a video game for Shutting it down after an undisclosed length of time and then making it so that you can,

no sane person has a chance of ever running it again. Occasionally there's these super geniuses who reverse engineer these things over years and then get it. So not, and the thing is the legality of that has not been tested in many countries. And it's sort of like the analogy I always make is it's kind of like when Uber first came on the scene where governments weren't sure, well wait a minute, are these taxi

services? Are these employees or contracts? The law just wasn't written for something like that and they had to figure it out. And even though this practice has been going on, that specific practice, I think about 20 years, video games tend to get ignored by a lot of government and regulators, unless there's something really controversial happening. So there's actually possible openings in this

in multiple countries. Unfortunately, not the United States. That seems very locked down from what I've seen, but Australia is one of them where you are. I've been focused, I've been trying to push this in every angle I was able to find, which was like 11. And you mentioned, and some of those were direct petitions to government. Some of those have concluded like Australia, Canada, UK part one concluded that one was a weird situation. However, we also have had a lot of success in escalating this issue at consumer protection

agencies because there was a game that shut down last year that was kind of a perfect candidate to have this tested called The Crew which is a big open world racing game by Ubisoft that they shut down and that one was a great candidate because it sold a fair number of copies at least 12 million or at least 12 million owners. It got a little complicated. It also, so that meant we were still able to find people who had receipts of all this stuff because, you know, a lot of people just get rid of it and never look at it again. Also, they were located in France, which is one of the most pro-cons, has some of the

most pro-consumer law in the world, which is excellence odds for us. And the other thing is it's what I would call a clean kill where they shut down that game. No one can run it in any form. It wasn't like, Oh, they killed the multiplayer, but the single player still works or, or they kill the DLC, but the base game still works or or they killed the DLC But the base game still works or they or they change the game from 1.0 And 5.0 is totally different that people are upset about so it's like any regulator who doesn't understand anything about video games is probably gonna understand this where

You bought the game. They didn't tell you how long it lasted. They shut it down. Now nobody can ever run it again. So it's like the planets aligned for. To push that through. So that was one avenue and the other. Again, the other were the petitions and the biggest of those is actually considered more than a petition. It's called the European Citizens Initiative, where if we can get enough signatures on that then we propose new law to the European Union that says publishers will be required to

leave the games in a reasonably working state at the time of shutdown without having to connect to them or other third parties or something like that. So that's the... if we can get the signatures on that, I think we end this, you know, in a good way. But getting the signatures is hard. We're about 40% of where we need to be, and the deadlines at the end of July or early August're around there. So, and unfortunately, only European Union citizens are eligible. So. Well, I don't know if this might surprise you, but a lot of people in my audience and just in the Linux audience in general, there is like a very high proportion of people in

the EU. I think my second biggest group is, I think it's Germany. Yeah. I think it's us and then Germany. So if you're interested in, you know, not just games like the crew, but whether it's something like an MMO, whether it's a live service game, whether you're like any game like this, or just generally interested, even if you're at play them generally interested in consumer protection, this is something that you definitely should be looking into. Yeah, I'll just give my quick pitch right now. Go right ahead.

In the European Union or you know someone is or you can get like a friend or family member to sign this go to stopkillinggames.com There's a button to click on there that will take you to the European Union petition, European Citizens, and European Citizens Initiative. Just try to get more signatures if you can, because this is our best shot. Now if that fails, we still have other shots with the Consumer Protection Agencies, but I give all those coin toss odds based on whereas I think we win if we do this because that's another thing worth mentioning even though we're only talking about like the EU or Australia if we have a win in one of those

countries I think globally most gamers get the benefits downstream because then the video game industry is gonna have have to think, okay, well, if we have to have an end of life plan to sell in Australia or especially the EU, which is population of like 450 million, it's going to be a hell of a lot cheaper to just, you know, add an end of life plan, especially for games we haven't made yet for ones that are, you know, in the design phase onward, then it will be to miss out on millions of sales and those. So they're just going to take the path of least resistance. And actually in Australia, there's an analogy to this where when the ACCC sued Valve over not allowing refunds and Valve lost the case. And after after that they just rolled out Refunds globally because they probably figured hey, it's not worth it in court fees or whatever to just keep versus the money We're gonna lose from allowing refunds and now it's pretty common practice to just be able to refund a game that you buy digitally I think this will be the same thing because if they make one end-of-life plan They may as well release the others

You know and just be done with it What should you say that and I do agree in the valve case? there are going to be cases like Apple is a great example here with the way the Apple's handling their requirement to allow alternative app stores in is no jailbreaking, jailbreaking, it's jailbreaking. In the EU,

they're like, okay, we're fine with this, but then specifically put in software locks for the rest of the world. Whilst most companies wouldn't go about that, and I would hope most would be like Valve, and they just say, okay, it's just easier like this, there are

gonna be companies that will try to sort of like implement it in the most minimal way possible. Yeah, there's a risk of that. Like you said, I think most wouldn't because that's gonna get bad PR for not much money. Right. But no, there is a risk some would do that. But even then, I mean, it might, it's kind of like a was Jurassic Park, you know, life finds a way

kind of thing. Like, cause if it's a popular game and let's say only the French company gets preserved, there's going to be people who are, if it's a game people like, they're really going to try and get a hold of that French copy and get like a translation patch or something, you know, it's I Yeah, it's worth stating that this whole movement. It's not it does not solve all the problems of games preservation Well, what we're really doing is targeting the worst of the worst Where what these games shut down literally no one on the planet can run them again. So if we were to try to do more than that, we would, you'd basically have to rewrite

copyright law and that would just invite, that'd be a hundred times harder than what we're doing. That would invite the likes of Disney, you know, any recording industry, you know, so we don't want to go to, we're trying to keep this as contained as possible as like a consumer issue so that, you know, if you really want to play a game, you know, it should be possible. Right, right. Yeah. You don't, no one wants to get on the bad side of Disney or the, or the, what is it,

the RCCC? No, R, or the, what is it, the RCCC? No, R, what, the US recording. R-I-A-A? That one, R-I-A-A. Both are very litigious. Nintendo's bad enough. You can bother Nintendo, but at least like Nintendo doesn't seem

to really engage in this. So they're like kind of off to the side. That's another point I remembered is, another reason we might be able to get this through is this isn't like loot boxes, which I'm also not a fan of, but I'm not trying to tackle that. Where if some companies can't sell loot boxes, that's an existential threat to them because they're making so much money hand over fist on some games.

I'm sure you remember when there was that proposed Chinese law to, I think it was, I, it was like to either limit it or completely remove it. And there was much limitations for how kids could play games and when they could play games. And all of a sudden 10 cents stock just went like this. Yeah, yeah, I think it was I think part of it was like how many hours. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know loot boxes were part of it, but it was a bunch of stuff in it as well. Yeah, it's so the cost of doing this again, if it's for a future game that you're still designing, it's very minimal. I mean, it's going to vary a lot depending on what kind of game, like an MMO

is going to have very, probably very different requirements than something like an arena shooter with 10 people or something, you know. But for existing games, yeah, that's the thing with the European Citizens Initiative, this would not be retroactive. So if it passed, it would be from that point onward. And for existing games, again, it's going to vary all over the place. Some companies, it'll be as easy as just adding a couple lines to allow private servers once they end support. So you can just connect to an IP address and then they're done. Others, it might literally be impossible just because they have license agreements

for like existing middleware or server software that there's like, well, okay, we do not have permission to give away this software. Games like that, I mean, it would be up to the European Union in that case, but it would, they would either have to be retired by a certain date or else they might get grandfathered in. So, you know, okay, if you were already operating a game this way by let's say a year or two

from now, and the law goes into effect, okay, you get an exemption, but any new game moving forward, you need an end of life build when once you end support. I think with games that are running now, at the bare minimum, at least giving players notice in advance would be better than what we have. Because you know, we've seen cases like the most extreme examples recently like Concord, where it lasted a couple of days and just dies. Yeah, in the case of Concord, I'm actually not sure if what we're doing will protect that or not. Okay.

Because they refunded everybody. Okay, yeah, that's a good point there. You're refunding every single person who bought your game. Okay, well, that's a hell of an incentive for companies not to kill the game sure yeah no i completely forgot about the refunds yeah if you're gonna give every to be fair they just sold me that many copies anyway but if you're gonna give all the money back sure yeah nothing lost i i would like to i mean there's a little bit lost but then yeah everybody loses there's no incentive to do that you, it's not like in fact companies will be far more motivated not to than I think

Will be much more motivated to not do that then players might be upset about that. Sure So it's annoying to still lose the game there, but if you're if you're getting your money back It's like returning a physical product. You wouldn't expect to still have the product then like that's understandable there Yeah, that's another thing. This wouldn't affect also completely free games Mm-hmm like I think was it realm of the mad god might be like that where it's online only but it's all free Oh my god, it's like then there's no real commerce going on, right? You know, so we're not Trying to step in on that No for free to play games

Surprisingly, I know I'm gonna sound like a radical some people listening this but I think they might qualify also Okay, you're not entitled to the game Because it is free. However, if it has microtransactions and you buy like a virtual sword or skin or something, what you pay for that and if they didn't give you an expiration date or anything, then under the law, it might be seen as extremely similar, if not exactly the same as selling a video game with a one-time purchase and no expiration date. Actually, Australia specifically has a legal term

for this sort of thing called, was undisturbed possession. Okay. Where the idea is like, yeah, if you were, when the law was probably formed, the idea might be, it's like, say you had a rancher and he sold you a horse. And it's like, okay, so you come to pick up the horse,

but then he has all this barbed wire on his property saying no trespassing. So he's saying, well, yeah, the horse is yours, but you can't come on my property. So it's like, it's kind of a, it's kind of a cheap trick to swindle people, where the idea is, you sold this, but you're putting up this other barrier that makes it impossible for you to keep it or collect it. trick to like swindle people, you know, where the idea is, you know, you sold this, but

you're putting up this other barrier that makes it impossible for you to keep it or collect it. And that's the angle for free to play games with microtransactions. Now, you mentioned the timeframe. One thing I think it's, we have extremely poor odds of saving our games that are true subscriptions where in other words you pay like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14 where you pay money after 30 days or six months or whatever you pay for you know that's it your access is up well that tends to meet the definition of a service in right I was to bring up like software as a service and the relation with that.

Like if you say, for example, you are paying for Adobe Creative Cloud and then let's say Adobe goes out of business tomorrow, right? Or you stop paying for your Creative Cloud. Like there's definitely some similarities there with the MMO model. Yeah, and I'm not a fan of that either, but I mean, I have to be realistic. I'm just seeing no provisions in consumer law to protect against that. I think our literally our only shot on that in particular is with the European Citizens Initiative. If that passed, we might be able to make the argument that there should be some requirement on the basis of cultural preservation.

Because normally that has almost no legal teeth at all, but if it's piggybacking on this other initiative, which has a much stronger consumer basis, maybe we can get something. But even if we don't, that's not the worst scenario because how many games still do that? I want to say it's like 10 or less. You know, it's mostly these, this old guard MMOs that managed to survive that are still doing the subscription model again, like, you know, for the warcraft and final fantasy names go way back. Rune scape and there's not many, yeah there's not many other like sub and though and even RuneScape that has a free to play mode as well. Even online has, and even that it gets a little weird but the because they have free versions also

but that's almost like a gray area inside a gray area that's not worth getting into but the um I guess so it's so few games where I mean what out of all out of games now That have an online only connection. So that's the only way you can play it I want to say the subscription ones where that's the you have to that subscription That's got to be like what one to two percent of them even I doubt it's even that much. It's probably like Yes, we can, those are acceptable losses. And for people worrying that, oh, if this pass and everything is going to go subscription only, well, we've already been there with MMOs in the early 2000s and mid 2000s. Lots of companies were jumping on that bandwagon of like,

Hey, sign up for our game because they all saw the World of Warcraft money. But almost all of them ended up either dying or going free to play on a different business model because that just worked out better. So believe me, if companies thought they could get away with charging subscription fees for all their big games, they would. They wouldn't need to have a law would. They wouldn't need to have a law to incentivize them on that. Yeah, they've realized because of, you know, other very lax laws around child gambling, it's a lot more profitable to have a free to play game. You make a lot more money not charging people money for it. Yeah, and that's the other thing is, like, again, while I'm not a fan of that. It's outside. We're doing. Yeah. Well, nothing that we're doing would interfere with existing

business models except once they're done, you know, once the support ends. So if, you know, if they want to run the game exactly as they are now for another 10 years, fine. You know, that's that's we're trying to keep the scope as narrow as possible to maximize our odds on this. Okay, so when we talk about the kinds of affected games, I think it's, it's important to talk about like, what the differences between those are, because you have your live service games, and then you have your single player games that have an online connection. And then you have your like sub MMOs, which are still live service, but you're paying specifically for access.

And just, just so we're like, everyone's clear on what we're talking about here. Again, people are, they're going to think I'm a radical here, but the thing to remember is you're thinking more as a gamer, you think more as a lawmaker. And the law does not really distinguish between single-player, multiplayer, MMOs. I mean, I'd stop to think about the only thing I can think of is like, you know, when they put the content ratings from online-only games, they say, well, you know, your online interactions may are underrated. You know, there's that. There are a lot of laws on privacy and data collection, but that

can happen in a single player game too that connects online. So it's, there's not really a legal distinction here. So I'm thinking, well, why make one? And I mean, it's so we're kind of, that's why we kind of kept the language a little broad deliberately to give developers and publishers maximum flexibility with how to address this. Like again, in the Citizens Initiative, we say leave them in a reasonably playable state. Well, by saying it, by wording it that way, we're not insisting 100% of all features work on the end of life build. Like, let's say the game, it was like an arena shooter, they give you an end of life build, but now matchmaking and achievements don't work.

Well, close enough. You know, I think, whereas if they give you an end of life build and all you can do is just get a login screen, which you can't get past. That's not good enough. And then people would report that to agencies and then they would probably get fined for that. So because for like for the developer, you know, for some, they their source code is going to be sacred and they don't want to release that to anybody.

So they're going to say, OK, we'll just patch the client to be able to accept like private servers and connections. And then we'll call it a day and that they can't see what was behind there. Others are thinking, well, we don't want to mess with this anymore. Fine. Here's, here's our code and server tools. Have fun trying to run it, you know, and then just shut it down. So it's a minimum amount of work. So yeah, the analogy I make is, you know, if you have a stop sign, your car needs to stop by the stop sign. We're not saying, most people are gonna use their brakes.

Some people, you could use the handbrake, you could do a rolling stop or you coast. We're not dictating that part, just saying stop at that stop sign. Now for single player MMOs, so under that, by asking for a reasonable working state, most games are already compliant. You know, if you buy a game and when the studio shuts down and support ends, but you can still run it without having to connect to them, great. You're already compliant, you know, for ones that require a connection, like for

a single player game that requires a connection, let's say for DRM, well, then they would have to disable the DRM at that point once they shut it down. For, I guess, like smaller scale multiplayer games, you know, like, getting arena shooters kind of thing. Um, those, I think, you know, to have like a reasonable, it, like, let's say if they're multiplayer focused, you know, I think you'd have to allow us private server support, not not support, but functionality on some level. Right. Once they shut down. So you don't have to provide it, but you have to allow people to

connect to a external IP address. Yeah, exactly. External IP address and people can host it kind of like the old school, like lots of death match shooters, things like that. Go play Quake or something like that. Yeah. And it's like the top end of the spectrum will be like an MMO. Let's say it's very ambitious one too, where there's no way this server

can run on just consumer hardware. Well, in that case, they would have to release a build of it, where or just, well, I'll get to another topic later, but example would be they release a build of it. Let's say it is for some custom server shard that specialized hardware. Fine, good enough. If the players are dedicated enough, server shard that you know, specialized hardware fine. Good enough if the.

If the players are dedicated enough, they'll find a way to host that, or maybe they'll find some hacks for it to get it working on a x86 machine or something and give it that way as long as they're giving customers a reasonable chance. So if it's not again, plenty of games it may not be even possible to run it on what the client was running on

But in those scenarios fine give us Some repair tools and the topic I was gonna mention part of the reason this was actually a debate with the The initiative the official initiative members. I'm actually not a part of that officially I help organize it but once it launched then it's out of my hands. But I'm in touch with them, obviously. But they were considering putting a reasonably playable state, or the part we were considering adding was, or the ability to, a reasonable chance of repairing it. So

in other words, okay, we're not giving you the code, but we are giving you all this documentation on how the network protocols work and we're decrypting like the packets and stuff like that so that you'd have a finding so that knowledgeable people could have a fighting chance of making an emulator maybe within a couple of weeks, just if they have all the documentation there, as opposed to years trying to reverse engineer this crap. But the reason we didn't include that is that's actually a bit of a bargaining chip.

It's kind of an open secret where if this, if the initiative passes the signature threshold then it goes to the European Union Commission and then they'll decide like okay how best to implement this right I mean and they might want to like have some compromises and that's a perfectly acceptable compromise as long as we have a fighting chance of running the game versus just everything locked down, no documentation, no server software where it's just... I don't even know how the people who get emulators do it.

I don't know. There's been Runescape private servers for years, there's been WoW private servers. There is a very early project, it's been early for many years, called Project Sapphire for FFXIV private servers. I could project Sapphire for FF 14 private servers. Um, I don't know how they do it. It's yeah. Yeah. And the thing is it's usually the, it's usually only the biggest games. Yeah. So I have the biggest games are the ones that do a lot of stuff client side. Yeah, so. So we're really trying to tackle all of it.

The weakest are the weakest being subscription fee because there's no consumer law that would say like, oh, this is unreasonable. They're telling you how long it lasts. Now, of course, personally, again, I want, I want any game that people really care about to be possible to be saved personally. But again, we're just going with what can happen. I turned that I've heard you use in some videos is video game kill switch. And just for you listening, I think it's a good idea to explain what you mean by that.

Yeah, that that's an attempt for me to explain this to just the average person who doesn't know much about hardware or video games, because they too tend to understand kill switches. You know, where, and here's the thing, it depends on the company culture, but setting up a game that you're selling like a copy of, you know, the way you would as a good effect. I think in Australia, that might be considered goods, depending on how they're sold. You know, if someone can remotely disable that, that's what a kill switch is. Now, I think the intent of many developers and publishers isn't necessarily as a kill switch.

I think it's more negligence. That they just, okay, well, we don't have, we're just, our goal is to get the game working and sell it. Okay, now we've sold most of it. There was no thought put towards what happens once we're done. So we shut it down, it goes down, and since we're not required to do anything, we don't. I think that's the motivation behind companies for like 90% of cases There's an argument for a few That they sometimes want them shutting down purposefully so they can sell you like the sequel in a franchise or something

But I think that's a minority For what I've heard it does happen, but I don't think that's the main driving force For what I've heard it does happen, but I don't think that's the main driving force So you're saying similar that is cases where the second game directly replaces the first one like you you know, it um wasn't with Warcraft 3 reforged they stopped selling the original version on battle net Yeah, I don't know can you know I haven't checked. If you have the original Warcraft 3, can you play that online with people now? Because it supported private servers, but I think you had to go through Battle.net to do it.

If Battle.net doesn't allow it. I don't know. I haven't played the game myself. Sorry, I just wanted to bring that up as an example. No, that's what... It can be hell parsing all this stuff because sometimes people say, oh, it allows private servers. Well, okay, but if you have to authenticate at the central server in order to run the private server, then it's... Technically, yes, it is a private server,

but it's not what people think of for a private server. Or, yeah, like I's not what people think of for a private server or yet. Like I think, um, what is it? Uh, vermin tide, you know, war. You can run custom servers on that, but you still have to authenticate that. So you can't just set one up. Connect to, to your friend, you know, down the road or something. And without going through their central server.

Yeah, that's the game I would put in the at-risk category where it's running now, but if they just stop the servers then that games unplayable Right. We'll talk about our video game kill switches. So what what are you like spit what what? Okay, sorry Words are working right now The kill switch is again by having the power to of the publishers

To run for you to run your game of this nature Sorry Run a game of this nature where you have to connect online to them or to their affiliated parties or something. That means that your ability to run the game is 100% in their control. And when they end the support, it's cut off immediately. Well, that is effectively a kill switch where, you know, they are in control over whether you can run your game.

And some people might be saying, well, okay, well, yeah, but that's normal for a service, you know, you don't like, you know, Netflix cuts off your, you know, subscription after you pay that. But the thing is almost every other service, they tell you how long it's going to last. You know, you know that exactly. And the thing is, companies selling games like this, they do not want to put that because if there was an expiration date, like let's say they're planning to support it for four

years, that would be a, that would be bad news for the companies on every level. And I think they would rather have an end of life plan than have to put that label. Like, let's say you buy a game and it says like on the box or on the store page, this game expires December 31st, 2029 or something. See that creates two problems. One that's kind of depressed sales because most people don't think about when the game's gonna end.

Right. Like some of them don't even know. I think that, so they're kind of riding on the psychology because the historical expectation for how long a game lasts is indefinitely. You know, you can still play like an Atari game if you get the hardware still working, you know. Even online multiplayer for a lot of them,

like if you bought a game from like the 90s, yeah, something like Descent, okay? You can, if you still have the legacy hardware or, you know, more realistically, you get some fan-made patches or something that may work on modern internet infrastructure, you can connect online to other people, even though Interplay doesn't even exist anymore. So this practice, well, I can get to that, but I lost my train of thought. I was trying to answer something. You're asking about the kill switch.

Oh yeah, okay, so yeah, these are not services under the legal definition. They're like in this weird gray area that just isn't defined well under the law so where you're getting you're not getting the expectation of a Of a service, you know where okay, I'm gonna have this for two years or Four years or something, but you're also having your product taken away from you If you're if it's more like a good.

So that's when, so by Kill Switch, they're able to remotely render your purchase inoperable. Yeah, companies like to thrive on obscurity, where if they can make it so you're not really sure when things are going to happen, where you don't really know how long the game's going to last for, it's really good for them. A good example of this that Valve cracked down on a couple of months ago was the way that the companies were handling season passes, where they would sell a season pass when the game launches and there'd be no indication of how much DLC you're gonna get with it, when that DLC is gonna come out, what's gonna be in in that DLC and Valve was like, no, no, if you're going to sell a season pass, you need to say like what that's going to contain. Yeah. E- early access and disguise.

Yeah. That's actually, well, early access, they actually did a really good thing recently where they now have an update there, or a note they're saying when this game was last updated. Yeah. there. Oh, I note they're saying when this game was last updated. I've heard there might be some work around so that where you could just change like one bite and then read the myth. But I guess at least people doing that, I guess those are either going to be the motivated scammers or else the people who know they're still working on it. They're just trying to buy time for themselves.

Well, Valve has player reports of if someone reported the game actually hadn't changed even though it said it had and like the developers had gone like completely silent like you could still resolve that by having people reporting there being an issue there but I can see how you would at least try to work around that. Yeah I remember with the expiration date the other reason companies don't want to do this is let's say the game's date, the other reason companies don't want to do this is let's say the game's a flop, you know, well, they don't want to be on the hook for supporting it for four years. But on the conversely, if it's a big hit, well then they don't want all the pages saying this is going to end in four years because that it was like, no,

we'll support this a long time because everybody loves it. You know, so it's, everybody kind of loses with that on their end. So I think that it would be, I think it would be cheaper just from the pressure of sales to just have an end of life plan. If that was a requirement. You mentioned before about, um, games with DRM needing connect online to, online to, you know, certify the DRM. This is a problem a lot of people ran into the other day with the PSN outage. People had a bunch of physical games and people have thought, oh, I have a physical game.

It works, it's physical. Nope. Not if the service is down. That's kind of a... I'm trying to think of the word I'm looking for. It's kind of like an outdated, it's becoming an outdated concept where, once upon a time it used to thought that,

oh, if you have a physical copy, you're good. But if you're on the PC, so you know how that hasn't been true there for a long time. Yeah, I remember when you would buy box games and you get a Steam code in the box. Yeah, yeah. Or there was another one or I think that, yeah, I think there was like a Halo game where they released the game, but it just like all it had, it did have a disc, but all those on the disc was like an installer.

Yeah, yeah, that's a bunch of games. Yeah. Ridiculous. Yeah, like so, Yeah, like so. The physical versus digital is meaningless now because again, one of the games we pushed that was the candidate for this was the crew. They have physical copies on Xbox, PlayStation, but on the flip side, like a GOG game, you can buy that, put it on a USB or something That's it. It's yours for life. You know, so it's All the the main metric is if the company were to just shut down their servers today

Would you still be able to play the game if the answer is no then you know, it's at risk I don't think I've ever mentioned it with the crew What is the specific issue that the crew has? Cause you meant to have multiplayer, but for anyone who hasn't played the game, not really aware of it. Like why, why is the single-player not work? Oh, well it's yeah. Yeah. The crew was, um, it's interesting scenario cause there've been multiple games like this before that I would have acted on if I thought we had a chance. Like the first one that kind of hit me was Battle Forge. Then later there's one called

Darkspor. But there's been lots of them like dust five one three Hawken. Like it's there's a lot of games, but the crew is like just right. Yeah. This is another reason why the single player versus multiplayer versus MMO isn't that helpful with the law because Okay, the crew is open world driving game It contains a full single-player campaign where you know, you have cutscenes of story races as your levels in between the races you can you can drive across the country and If you're online, which you had to be,

people can, you might see other players just driving along there. So it's kind of like they mixed the two in between. And you could race with up to seven other players at the same time. So eight player game total. But Ubisoft marketed this as an MMO. So it's like, we're just checking off every, it's like we're taking all the

multiplayer, single player MMO, just putting them in a blender and saying it's so if we created an exception for MMOs or an exception for multiplayer, well now we've just killed all the single player campaign. And like there are other games like this, like Destiny or Destiny 2 or is that a single-player multiplayer? Well it's kind of both you know they really blend together or Need for Speed 2015 is like that, The Division that's another one where it's like we're really blurring the lines between what single-player multiplayer multiplayer means. It's more like how you want to play it. Right.

I think an example of a company that has handled that model well is the way that FromSoftware does the Souls games, where you... It's obviously a very different kind of game, but you think about it in the abstract. It's a fully single-player game, cutscenes, all that stuff, but you can... if you're online, players can invade your world and you can but you can, if you're online, players can invade your world and

you can fight them. But if you're offline, game works perfectly fine. A good example of this is the early versions of Dark Souls 1 which had really, really bad remote code execution bugs, so they took the servers offline because they could not keep that going. They had no idea how to fix it and just weren't going to touch it. So they shut the servers down, but the only thing that broke in that game was the online connectivity and any of the quests that were connected to that because you couldn't invade people, you couldn't do like the any of the the the factions you could join that were related to that. But besides that, like those games are exactly the way you would want this to work. Yeah or like I think another thing was like players could leave each other messages. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, see that's the sort of thing where if that was the standard, like you are losing some features when the support goes down, but if that was the standard for games that are primarily a single player thing, I probably never would have started this campaign. But now that I've had to go through all this crap and time and energy to get underway, it's like, well, let's just end this. Let's take our best shot at ending this once and for all since I've had to go through all this trouble.

And again, it varies so much on the game, how practical it is and how feature the features. Well, actually, I think the practicality, again, I think it's, as long as you're giving the players a chance, good enough. That's how I feel about it. Because if it's a game players really wanna play and there's all these hoops they have to jump through

with getting it working, post support, that's fine. Whereas if it's, let's say the game wasn't very good. Nobody really wants to play it again They and they just released like this kind of half-ass build. Well fine And if nobody wants to play it then fine nobody needs to play it It's just that don't take away the possibility for those who do want to and paid money for it. Mm-hmm Yeah, I think that sort of leads into... Oh, go on. You want to say them? No, I'm going to be going the same place I am.

I was going to say that sort of leads into a lot of like criticism of what you're trying to do here. And I know you've probably dealt with it a million times. If you search Stop Killing Games, the first the first audio fill is Stop K killing games pirate software, and I don't know how much you want to talk about that But We can talk about whatever you want. I guess before I get to that what I was gonna met Well, this ties in the criticisms. Mm-hmm another Criticism you see well our first and foremost criticism that we ever get is you can't expect companies to support games forever It was never about that. It's not about that never was but they can end it any time

They want that we're all in favor of that Like another but another common criticism is That well, you know, you're not actually but well it might be different in Australia has to been tested So you're not actually bought, well, it might be different in Australia. It has to been tested specifically, but you're not buying a good or a service. You're buying a license and the license says that you can, they can end this game at any time so you should have known better and blah, blah, blah. Well in the United States, that's pretty much how it's going to go. Like there's a lot of legal precedent that backs it up. In the European Union,

it's a more like kind of kid gloves approach to taking that, where again, some of the specifics, okay, they're giving you this license, but that license contains terms like, we can change the terms of our license at any time. It also contains terms like, okay, we can terminate this at any time for any time. It also contains terms like, okay, we can terminate this at any time for any reason. And like in the case of the crew, not all of them have this one. It also said that

you are required to destroy all copies of your game once we terminate it. Wait, wait, wait. What? Yeah, Ubisoft. Look, you can go look up the crew, Steam, EULA or something. You can probably find it. So, it's... So, when you take all those together, there's a... In the European Union, there's... I have it memorized now, Directive 9313 EEC, which protects consumers against unfair terms.

And if the courts really look into this, they're probably going to rule these are unfair. It's interesting because all these kind of draconian policies have protected them in places like the United States. It's probably going to work against them in the European Union because it's so oppressive in terms of consumer rights that the regulators probably going to say,, yeah, okay This doesn't meet the standards of you know The direct of 93 in which case that makes the cut that makes the license agreement null and void which means What that means? It's a no man's land for how the law regards this because okay

So it said this can end at any time but that that license agreement isn't valid because that is all this press of things. Well, if the European, the EU Commission says, I forget which, I should have looked it up for this, I think it's like Directive 2019 something, says that governs these for like digital content is what, except when you look at that directive, it says all the place. Okay. Well, it's all about The agreed amount for the duration of the content for the duration of the content. Well, there is no duration It says they can end any time for any reason so we're back to just no man's land again. So that's why By raising all these complaints on the game. I'm hoping we have a shot at this and it's also why I think the citizens initiative would pass shot at this. And it's also why I think the citizens initiative would pass, because we have this situation where the law wasn't ready for this, but if we're

showing up with a million signatures and a reasonable proposal, then the politicians might say, well yeah, this should be easy then. My constituencies don't really care about this either way, so I can take this as a political victory lap. So I think that's the most likely outcome if we can get those signatures though. You mentioned not really having much hope in the US. I think your best hope is you need a president that has like a 16 year old gamer son who like bugs him about games dying. That's your best hope. know, I hadn't thought of that. That honestly might be the, either a president or a billionaire, you know, because of a billionaire can lobby

con yeah, it's not technically impossible in the United States, but my entire understanding suggests nothing less than an act of Congress would fix it. Right. And I do not have that kind of influence. Yeah, we can get into influence. You mentioned pirate software. The takeaway from pirate software's coverage of this is he misrepresented what the movement is about. How attentional that was, I do not know. It could, since that's the thing, his biggest video on it, that's his third

video, he deleted the previous coverage he did on it he actually responded to a reply I gave to him where he was saying stuff like what I was saying I was talking about us trying to solve the problem he's saying there is no problem or games do not need saving I'm pretty sure that's a direct quote from him and he said he sees it as all as well. Now, I think he deleted this videos because he thought, well, maybe that's not going to win over people as much as trying to dress it up as something it's not. But it's unfortunate.

I offered to talk with him about it. So, I mean, if you hate the initiative, you hate it, but at least hate it for what it is. You know, like, you know, let's be honest about what we're asking for, you know. Well, I didn't understand. I remember in one of the videos or in a clip, he said he just didn't want to talk, which like that doesn't really make any sense. Like if you're so confident in the stance you have, why would you not want to discuss the topic? Like that? I don't really get that. Well, the reason you gave felt kind of cheap to me were in it I made like in my promotional video I made kind of a half joke talking about how you know again politicians generally don't care about

video games we'd be paving a path for them on this uh look this happens in politics this is a distraction this is a diversion from more serious issues that they may not wanna deal with. Like let's say immigration policy or ending a war or stuff that's like, this is muddy and it makes us look bad. Whereas, oh, video game. Oh, this is easy. Like, yeah, let's-

Right, right, right. I think in US Congress, there's been cases where there's like some really serious issues going on. So Congress focuses on like maybe ending daylight savings time instead That's like real softball stuff. So He was conflating with us saying What if I say like this could pass where this should pass because of that where

What if I was saying like this could pass where this should pass because of that where No, those are not the reasons we're pushing this forward. We're pushing this forward because we care about preservation this is also a huge consumer rights issue and From my perspective. This is the same solution to it Now once you get into the world of politics good things do do not always happen for good reasons. They happen because of all sorts of factors, many of them very petty or Machiavellian or whatever. So what I was trying to do there was kind of appeal to the do-mers in the audience saying, well, this is never going to pass because I'm passed because nothing ever happens. I'm saying no there actually is an opening here. That's what I was because

What I didn't want people the people I was really trying to draw on that are the people who kind of rightfully think that anything good happening for gamers on a Legal level just is never gonna happen because companies have too much power a lot of that's well-founded just is never going to happen because companies have too much power. A lot of that's well founded. So, and so I didn't want them to think I'm just some Pollyanna thinking, no guys, we can do that. Like, no, no, no, I'm going to be as cynical as you come on this. And I'm seeing openings that that's what I was trying to convey.

So, and he, I don't know what went on in his head, but it wasn't, it was frustrating. I mean, it's like, yeah, okay, great. Our, the loudest megaphone out there on this is just misrepresenting what it is. But I guess the, the only upside to this is, um, one of the initiative members said, well, he read straight from the initiative on the video. So that's, that's, he considered that a win. So that is a positive to this. Yeah. Well, that is going, I was going to say it did. I don't know if it was coincidental or not, but the momentum did kind of get killed after that. So we're still picking up the pieces. Yeah. No, because I know there's a lot of like, really big initial push.

You had videos from, I know Asmine talked about it. A bunch of other people talked about it as well. It seemed like there was a lot of big positivity that came from that. But I guess, I don't know. I have seen a lot of the comments under that video, and there's a lot of sort of mixed opinions. And then people like, I don't know, Did you comment under the Lewis Rossman video? I'm not sure I don't think I did. I know people like that is like talked about in response like Josh Stryfe Hayes has talked about it as well and

Hey, if you think I'm too biased watch the Lewis Rossman video where it says What was it say, his response to Pirate Software's harsh criticism or something like that. He will give, in my opinion, he was too generous, but he gives, I think he understood it like 99% and gives a very even take. So if you're coming at this from a developer standpoint and you think this is going too far, I think he represents all the concerns of that. And I agree with what he was saying,

but he also represents what we're trying to do. So he was surprisingly just like on the money on that one. I wish all the analysis was that good. Yeah, I really like Lewis. He does a really good job. Not just in that, just pretty much most of the stuff he does. He's always made great videos. But yeah, if you're looking for, if you want a very good both sides impression, I think he has the best one.

So a term they keep using is reasonably playable state. And the criticism I often see is, well, how could an MMO be using is reasonably playable state and the criticism I often see is Well, how could an MMO be in a reasonably playable state if the if it's being hosted as a private server and it has three players and Well, okay, I was hoping more common sense would prevail there we're talking about the The the we're talking about the software itself being a reasonably playable state. Obviously, if a game isn't as popular and doesn't have thousands of people playing and it really is just three people, that's not something the law should control. That's just the passage of time and organic popularity. So yes, we're talking about the software being in a reasonably playable state, you know, so yeah, I You know anytime you talk anytime you talk about anything like this. There's gonna be people that I've intentionally misunderstand it or just I

Don't know. I actually wish I knew maybe Look I'm sure you can come up with some choice words to say about some people I've been trying to like raise the alarm on this issue for about 10 years. It's only the last it's only last year that I finally saw an opening and just charged for the door on and we're seeing how it goes. I think it could so I've heard don't don't I was going to say I've heard practically every argument you could think of Easily, it'll be ones. I've never heard of before but they're gonna be very kind of esoteric ones

Right, it'll be like well, what about this specific game that came out 15 years ago with this specific weird model That's not exactly like anything else One that got me flat-footed in another interview was, well, what if we got rid of EULA's? So, you know, usualizing, I was thinking, wow, well, okay. My brain had not gone there, I admit. So, I had to explain, well, there actually are reasons to have them, you know, like, you know, because they can also say, like,

okay, maybe technical support does end after two years or something, have them you know like you know because they can also say like okay maybe technical support does end after two years or something or you know if you're it just gives like the basic behavior policy if it is an online game or something like that there are legitimate reasons to have them it's just not to have onerous terms right you shouldn't have a Yule of trying to circumvent the law of the country the game's being sold in. Or in some cases they're just not being a lore there to deal with the problem, which is the kind of state we're in. I'm honestly, in my mind, it's almost all working backwards

from the conclusion, which is let's not destroy games forever. And so I work back, okay well what's the most practical way of getting there? Okay, it's more as a consumer issue rather than a preservation issue because of that, how the law is. So that's where I'm coming from. My mind, it's just working backwards from that conclusion. Like, how do we not stop destroying games? One thing I do want to ask you is, you know, you said you've been interested in this for like 10 plus years, but you know, there's a lot of people that are obviously been interested in this topic.

Why did you decide to start this? Like, why, why are you the person who is doing this? Why did you bother doing it? Wonderful question. I never wanted to be, and I be multiple videos prior to starting this saying You know, I'm best is just a mascot for this, you know Or like better to get people really know what they're doing or you know have a larger presence I guess just nobody stepped up. I mean it's

Or nobody who is in a position like I have like a medium-sized audience So I'm able to reach some people on this I mean there are people who care about as much as I do I know that but they might not have been in a position to influence much though I had a video I think these might be like five years back now where I talked much more about this called games as a services fraud and I unfortunately got some things wrong in that one on the United States. When it comes to US law, just throw out anything I said in that video, but the rest of it holds up. But in that one, I was basically kind of a call

for help, you know, saying like, Hey, I'm willing to help push this, but I need help on this. like, hey, I'm willing to help push this, but I need help on this. And it just, there were a lot of people who were on board in spirit, but not, there was no real plan. So I just, I don't know why it's me. I think, in fact, in my promotional video for this, I said, it's a joke that like, we have to go through this much effort just to not get robbed essentially. I don't know I mean I I guess the this is a constant uphill battle because

You have the perception of gamers that from a lot of them that they don't realize you can have this is all a conscious decision by companies and they don't have to have this I mean See in my mind just the fact that you have World of Warcraft emulators or you know was I think you mentioned Final Fantasy 14. RuneScape's a lot further along. RuneScape had private servers before WoW had private servers like they work perfectly. Those are big complicated MMO games and people are running on my home system. So this is certainly possible What we're asking for and like I understand people getting tripped up over

The license arguments where I have to explain this is more in the future where it's kind of like, you know You're breaking the cycle where all these Licenses that they can't you that just don't allow it now, well, that can be renegotiated in the future if it's a known requirement. I get people getting tripped up with that, but so some people, especially young gamers, don't understand this as even possible.

First, I think I'm just crazy. Another, and again, they'll be that think, well, okay, this is reasonable for single player games, a multiplayer, you're going way too far. It's like, well, it's not that different under the law. Yeah Let's see what's the other cheese ahead on the tip of my tongue there's another misconception But oh, yeah, that's the hell of this. That's the reason this is taking ten years is that This is always a minority of people whenever it happens.

Because you have the people who really care are the diehards that really like that game. Most people have moved on to another game, so they don't really care about the game once it shuts down. So you're working with this permanent small minority of people are affected, where it's like a long tail effect, where, you know, you get enough people, there's eventually going to be some old game that they want to replay, you know. I think a lot more people care about this than they realize. It's just they're not going to know it until 10 or 15 years from now. So that's the other thing. So it's just kind of scrambling to get any attention on this. I feel like every time there's been like talk of reform on like right to repair or more rights in video games. It's like

It's like you can't hit the target. It can never hit the target. It always misses. And so just getting this escalated at consumer protection agencies, nothing like this has ever been done before. Like it's, we had a lot of, the crew really was a great candidate for this because like the best candidate prior to this would probably been Overwatch since that was much bigger and that had 50 million in sales, but the thing is Overwatch they shut down they shut down overwatch 1 and then they made overwatch 2 free and then they gave like some Bonuses to people who own the original Well, if you're a regulator and don't know anything about video games, you're gonna look at that and think well

This is compensation for the people that bought the original and just say like, no, this is so it's like to go to all that effort and just get dismissed on like a small thing like that and have to wait, you know, you'll lose all the momentum. So that's what I said, that clean kill aspect of it was really important. But like with Destiny 2, they've removed like tons of levels and content from DLCs, but that's such a muddy issue to explain to regulators who may know nothing about video games. So just the, you bought it, they shut it down and then you lost it and they kept your money. That's as simple as it needs to be for regulators. Right.

If you start getting to things like oh well between this WoW expansion and that WoW expansion this zone was changed and NPCs are no longer there so certain quests are not accessible. Yeah. That's for a later date if we have a success then you could talk about stuff like that. Yeah that's that good luck with that one Now you will need to wait for people who actually play video games to be regulators to deal with that one. That's actually another point. That's one area I'm willing to wait.

Surrender on is what version of the game that they have for the end of life build. If it's because right now we have nothing most of the time. Right. But if they're giving a one point.0 build or if they're giving the last, you know 5.2 build fine mission accomplished it and you know that might upset people if they added a lot of good things or Occasionally sometimes they like the older version, but we're not trying to dictate which version because that's just another can of worms Yeah, we're just trying to get a beachhead here. Yeah, again, that can get start getting you into weird like licensing issues with middleware. Like a really good example of this actually, it's sort of it's not exactly the same thing,

but it's kind of the same idea. The PC releases of the older Grand Theft Auto games over the years, the radios have progressively lost more and more songs because they lost licenses to the songs that were supposed to be playing so like that's like a little bit of content that's been removed but it's the same thing with any middleware software or if you have some library that you have a license for and then you lose the license for that and that's the reason you go to a new version so you can like move that library out you can't just release that old version if you no longer have the license to use that.

Like that's understandable. Like that gets into other people's copyright and it's a giant... Again, that goes back to rewriting copyright, Lauren. It's a giant mess. Well, you bring up another good point that people will bring up is sometimes they'll say like, well, they can't do this because they have copyrighted music or in the crew, they have car brands, you know, the license companies expired. I have never known a game to be to expire for the player. If they already bought it, what that almost always means is they can't sell new copies of it because, you know, if they had the license to let's say

Porsche for a car game okay that license expired we can't sell copies anymore they don't I've never heard of squads coming to your house destroying your old like we or this copy because a Porsche still exists in that game you know you bought it you can still play the old version. I can play my PS2 copy of like Underground 2, for example. Exactly. So it's, uh, that's, I've never known that to not be about just selling new copies of it. Yeah. Um, there was somewhere I was going to go from that. I don't remember what it was.

Um, oh, right. Young gamers. So how old are you? I'm 42 now. Okay. Okay. So I was sort of, I, I, I'm 27. So I'm obviously quite a bit younger, but I'm, I'm still old enough where I thought you're

wrong. Well, I'm still old enough where... I thought you were older actually. Well, I'm still old enough where, like, when I was younger... Weird, you know? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had this for a while, it definitely helps. I've never been, like, ID'd if I want to, like, go buy alcohol or something. Even when I was 18, no one ever bothered me about it. Anyway, the point I was going to get to there is when I was younger,

I remember playing games like COD 4, where you could just connect directly to each other. Or I played a lot of, like, Quake 3 and Quake 3 modded games, where, like, you could- Anyone can just go and run a server, and you can just connect to each other, no problem whatsoever. And a lot of people now, like, if you're, you know, like, 15 now, and you play a lot of you now, like if you're, you know, like 15 now and you play a lot of Fortnite, you might not really know the way the games used to be in the past. That there was a time where if the official servers went down, if the official server browser went down, people could keep these older games around, even though,

maybe initially, there wasn't server software available. It's something that may have, like, come further down the line. Well, a couple things on that. Oh, why, for the European Citizens Initiative, I don't have to worry about convincing 15-year-olds, because they're not eligible at science. Sure, yeah. You have to be at least 15-year-old. Yeah, don't worry, the adults can hopefully not eligible at science. Sure. You have to be at least voting age. Yeah, don't worry.

The adults can hopefully take care of this. Hopefully. Yeah, you have to be voting age for that. Another thing, well, actually now I'm not even sure, but I think they have less of an excuse with Minecraft. Because you can- Actually, yeah, it didn't get that one. Since Microsoft bought it, I don't even know

how many layers there are in between. If you just want to run my host Minecraft and somebody connect to it, at least the job you can just, there's like the jar from the bedroom. I don't know anything about bedrock version, but at least the Java version, you can just run a server if you want to. Yeah. So that they can know about it from that. Another thing I think I forgot to mention, but the European Citizens Initiative is the big one that could change things. This is more along the lines of us exhausting all options because I don't want to do this ever again, is we also have a UK petition going on right now that's been relaunched because the first one started but then Parliament got dissolved and it just got shut down

prematurely so now we have a new one it's been relaunched if that gets to a hundred thousand signatures then it'll be brought to Parliament and they can decide whether to debate it or not they've given an answer so far but it's it's the laziest answer possible. They literally copied the old answer that got rejected by the committee and they were going to demand a newer answer from the Department of Media Culture and Sport or Culture Media and Sport But then they got shut down so that never happened so they just recopied the rejected answer which doesn't address the issue

It kind of they do say no, but then all the reasons are unrelated Yeah, just sound kind of related isn't it? If you're a UK citizen or resident you can sign that right? Um, and I think that one is not age-bound So if you're a fifth if you're in the UK and 15 year old, years old, double check. But I think you can sign that one. Oh, yeah. Wasn't the TLDR the answer they gave basically? It's not UK law. So they're not breaking the law. I guess pretty much what they said.

No, it was more along the lines of they said three times some version of it can be expensive for companies to run servers Or it can be expensive for companies to maintain support for old software or games. It's like yeah, but we're not asking them to keep supporting it, you know, and we even reworded it to be more specific You know to say when they shut down with no possibility to retain or repair the game, you know, mm-hmm so They're just they're phoning it in so if we get to a hundred thousand we can leapfrog over them entirely and just take it straight to Parliament and

It could be this is a dead end I just don't know it for the UK side But the thing is I'm pretty sure, we have better odds of Parliament because they'll at least read what we wrote on the request. If they can do that, that automatically puts them ahead of the Department of Culture, Media and Sports. We were talking about dumb criticism before, and I just remembered a really dumb one that I've heard.

I'm sure you've seen a bunch of times. It's about them being petitions and people not understanding the difference between a government petition and making a petition on change.org and how those are completely different things. Oh yeah, yeah guys like I said I'm as cynical as they come on this. I never even tried to have a change.org petition. I always step in the get go, yeah, that's pointless. Yeah. Like what we're going to appeal to their goodwill. Yeah, maybe that might work for like 1% of company. I mean, first of all, the companies that have that goodwill, they're just

going to have the end of life plan in the first place. Like, but yeah, that's just a dead end in my eyes. The government petition, if it passes a certain threshold, they have to respond to it. And it varies on the country how forceful that might be or if that is the next step towards making law on it. Like in Canada, they gave us a direct response and they said they they gave us a clear answer unfortunately it was them passing the buck where they said that like well this isn't a federal matter it has to be done by the provinces and the thing is that then it gets split up too much that you can't get that kind of critical mass to affect the industry in Australia their answer was kind of dodgy they kind of talked to both sides of their mouths, but they more or less said you need to take this up with the a triple C

Which we did we? Yeah, in fact the a triple C at first was kind of blowing us off, but what? pretty much the only like real money we've put towards the This on the campaign was we found a law firm in Australia. That was yeah, they're not doing a lawsuit or anything like that We can't afford that but they were willing to file an official complaint to them You know, so it's coming from a law firm has all these reasons on it and they did that and they said it They've got at the agency. It's been escalated. So we're not gonna get ignored by the a triple C

they've got at the agency has been escalated. So we're not gonna get ignored by the ACCC. Now who knows what they'll answer, but they'll at least have to take this at least a little bit seriously. So yeah, a government petition, there's all sorts of rules that vary with each country. Like some of them can only be a certain length or they have to have like certain provisions in them.

Like in the case of the European Citizens Initiative, we actually had to quote which directives allowed the EU to act on this and they had to approve. Yeah, and all of them they have to approve what you're writing. Like if you're asking for something nonsensical, like you want flying cars, they're just gonna dismiss it outright. So just the fact that this gets raised means they think there's enough of an or enough of a legal argument that this isn't going to be dismissed outright. I know that with the, there seems to be a lot less restrictions with at least raising them with the UK petitions because I've, I've seen the list of them and some of the petitions that are open on for the UK are just, just there's like real dumb ones on there

I don't know what there's like what they actually let even be on there It's just like hey pay for my rent or something like that. I don't know if anyone filters them They got one like that on the UK. Yeah, yeah Was that recently you looked at? No, it was like a couple of years back. I remember Well, the petition committees will cycle out. So yeah, okay, maybe at the time that no one was working No, I was gonna say that actually is one that should have been rejected by the committee pay for my rent like no no I mean Like it maybe it goes after the fact. I don't know but it was definitely there when I checked

but like it can't be just Nonsensical and it can't be, it has to be within the purview of what they can govern. You know, it's like, you know, my, my neighbor painted his house a color I don't like. It's like, well, that's not under our jurisdiction. You know, like you take that up with the local counselor. So what has been the reception that you've had from like, we'll go for, go for players and developers. I'm sure there's, I know there's developers, there's, you have a list of

people who've definitely been in the sport of it, but let's go over those two different, um, different ones. Um, it's the play. Well, it's kind of before and after pirate software. Sure, okay, okay. It's like ADBC kind of a transition where it was overall positive prior to that. I'd say that there were still some objections.

The biggest people who would object to it tended to be One it's kind of a few categories one or people who are just super anti-government thinking no the free market We saw all this It's like, you know, I didn't wake up wanting to I wish the free market would have solved this I'm only doing this because the free market is promising to make it worse like I think there is that article came out recently saying that like a third of all AAA developers are working on live service games or something like that. With the free market thing, like I know Asmine said this a couple of times before, but like if you actually believe in a true free market, go play an MMO. Because you will see what happens with a true free market in an MMO.

Well, I mean, the thing is, isn't the free market about choice? What, where's the... Okay, see, that's the thing. I agree with vote with your wallet for some things. Like, if I don't like a game how it looks, I'm not going to buy it. Fine, like, let the free market decide that. Right. But if it's like, okay, so here's a game

I want to keep I like it if I don't buy the game then it gets destroyed if I buy the game then it gets destroyed Okay How am I supposed to solve it doing that, you know? now of course some people say Boycotting wouldn't if I thought that had a chance in hell of working, I would promote that. But again, we've been there before. The infamous one is for, was it Modern Warfare 2? Where there was like a boycott group on Steam.

And when that came out, somebody screenshot it. Just like the first page of the members. And like half of them are more... It showed them as playing modern warfare 2. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's like just from that small sampling of people who have gone out of their way to say they're boycotting this or playing it right now. So like, I think if you look at the buying habits of gamers, like I think there is some parallel to drug users.

gamers. Like I think there is some parallel to drug users. You know, it's like, you know, it's like, Oh, that guy's smoking crack. Oh, you think he doesn't know it's not good for him? It's like, see, I have a theory that you can get away with any consumer hostile practice if the game is really good. So it's like. So if the game is really enjoyable, then you can get away with anything. I remember when loot boxes were bad and then Genshin came out, loot boxes weren't as bad anymore. And it's going to happen with crypto games as well. There's going to be some massive game that people want to play. The online only requirement with no guarantee of how long it's gonna last.

Look, one of the biggest ones I remember, it set records at the time, was Diablo 3. So Diablo 1, Diablo 2, you can play those offline or online. Diablo 3, it's all online. It had record sales. People made a lot of noise about it at the time, but Didn't matter. Yeah That's the thing. There's a lot of people like to make a lot of noise about stuff But it can be it can be easy to confuse a lot of noise with a lot of people because maybe In the bubble like, you know a thousand people all yelling about something is gonna sound like a lot of people

But if there's a million people that bought the game on day one like that thousand is very tiny yeah yeah it's i guess okay so players even after pirate software i'd say among the general populace i want to say the positive the negative ratio is just going by comments, it feels about 15 to 20 to one for this versus against it. And the ratio is worse in America, which we have no chance anyway. Like if you look at, like I've seen some videos on this or like in German or French, I've looked the translation of the comments, the ratio is a lot better. Like I think they have a better grasp of the consumer rights angle of this. But the, or it'll be ones where they kind of, like, they're generally in favor of

this, but they might want more details. Right. For developers, there have been, there have been, like, several positive ones. Yeah, I think our biggest one was running with scissors has been very vocal in support of this But what the I think the creator of cookie clicker is for this totally accurate battle simulator lot of several indies actually the The creators of the dolphin emulator for, you know, we and GameCube, they're for it. The smaller indie ones are in favor of it. The ones that have been against this,

I'd say there's kind of two, I've seen a few, not a lot. The kind of two categories, one, a lot. They're kind of two categories. One, they're either working on a game that it sounds like they're going for a cash grab, like with what they're doing. And they don't like those ones that got really hostile. Like I tried to respond to a couple people via email, then, you know, at first it's starting off reasonably and then like second or third email is just like insult bombs all over the place. I'm thinking, okay, yeah. Um, and the other category is I think the developers can kind of fall into the trap of looking at everything right now. My discord, my God. Um, if you can hear me, I can't hear you discord does this has been doing this thing for me where it just

Half breaks. I don't actually disconnect from the call But for some reason I can't hear you. It will probably reconnect in just a moment. There we go. Now it's saying I'm at 5000 milliseconds ping. I don't know what's happening. I wish I knew. I probably need to talk to my ISP about this. Jesus Christ. Why is the internet like this? Australian internet. Yeah, I can't hear you. I'm at fight- I don't know why this happens. Um... I'll disconnect. Usually it's reconnected by now. Um... Hello. One two?

Yeah, I don't know what the- I don't know why that happens. Um... Yeah, I can hear you just fine now. Yeah, so like, you just fine now. Yeah, so like for some reason what happens is it It keeps me connected to the call, but I dropped like 5,000 milliseconds ping. I can no longer hear the person I'm talking to but it doesn't like properly disconnect Sound different now like they were like a little more

Echoey before now. They're like more pinpointed. Well, you can hear me. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you just fine. Yeah, you never dropped on my end. Yeah, no, I've had this happen with a couple of people now. I'm still trying to work out what the issue is. Anyway, sorry, what we we I thought we were saying Developer response. Yes. Yes saying Yeah, okay. So a few people It was a small minority

I were it sounded like they were trying to make something kind of scammy anyway, and we're really guys but the others that the the others that weren't doing something like that, I think they're kind of hyper focused on the right now. Like, okay, let's say we took a game that was never designed for this and has all these licensing issues and there's nothing remotely close to like an end of life build. And they're saying, well, no, that's insane. you know how much work that would be. And that's why I try to emphasize this is more about breaking the cycle rather than saving every last game, you know, because some we may or may not be able to save, even if we get everything we're asking for.

So that's the other issue. I think there's also, I think especially, I think it might also, I think especially, I think it might work especially like the more knowledgeable you are for some people. Like, this isn't just in program, but this can be in academia. If you've learned your entire career that this is the way things work

and you're hearing something like, no, let's change it all. I've seen resistance to that kind of thinking sometimes. I think it depends on your personality, where some people will get really good at what they do. So if you're just rearranging all the pieces with how the workflow is, there might be just some knee-jerk resistance to that. Or I think the more serious developers, in my opinion,

understand this is doable, and this is already a thing in many other industries. Like, I think, yeah, I saw one comment where somebody was saying something like, he worked in the healthcare software industry, and this is pretty much a requirement. The only reason, like, the only reason this isn't done in video games is because people don't die

when you don't have it in the life thing. And they're saying for lots of corporate vendors that this is, you would have to have this or else you would go out of business. And actually sometimes that's a model they use for extra monetization where they end, yeah, they end the support of the package, they include the software, but it's sometimes really cryptic. So they sometimes make extra money continuing to support it past the date.

Windows is a good example of this. Microsoft themselves sell additional support for it. Yeah. So I'd say the ratio of people supporting it is lower among developers, but you know, it's... I guess the only... Not to be too callous, but developers aren't the most important part of this puzzle because we need 1 million signatures you know unless they could reach out to a lot that's the

That's the threshold 1 million total. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's the threshold because Now we're I think developers have a point in every point is if anything we were asking for is just not possible And of course, I will hear out any criticism of that, but I haven't heard that because, again, it's in order for this to be impossible, you would have to say that you cannot make a game in the future with an end of life build. You know, and I think it's more than about,

well, yeah, you can, but how much effort is that? And also the games that are probably most affected by this are probably going to be big players that have a lot of fairly large coffers on this. That's really good. But even for smaller developers, like let's say they're using middleware packages for this stuff to handle their multiplayer. Well, if it's a known requirement in the EU, I think there's going to be a gold rush to come up with the solutions for smaller developers saying, hey, yeah, you just have to hit a few buttons and bam, there's your end of life build if you use our package. And that will, I think the market will just rush in to fill the requirement.

I think the market will just rush in to fill the requirement. Mm-hmm. Okay, so I have a couple of questions from my viewers, and I'll probably go check to see if there's any more since we started. I think this is a good one to start with, actually. Regarding the EU petition, it has only reached 40%—it's 41% now—of the required votes. Any specific strategy in terms of focusing on getting votes from a specific Nation with a large population IT maturity and fairly high English literacy such as Germany or I guess Possibly

countries which maybe aren't English like maybe have a small population, but maybe aren't as Big on English speaking because I know I've seen like dubs of your videos as well. Yeah, we're trying, but I'm kind of as someone who's only fluent in English, Operate with one hand tied behind my back here and I really have to rely on help from others to who are bilingual to spread the word on it. have to rely on help from others who are bilingual to spread the word on it. So that's been difficult. Yeah. Like our target audience isn't even speaking English, right? You know, so if you were Polish, Italian, Spanish, French, that's much better.

But I only have so much reach. That's again why I'm not the ideal person to do this, but I'm just scrambling here. We're, we have a few more, we have one or two more tricks up our sleeve that we're going to try before I'd say it looks grim, but the, again, I'm not ready to call it yet. It's still some more things we can do, but we've tried our best, but when it's dominantly English, then you're kind of relying on the countries that have a higher bilingual population

that speaks English as well. So everything's upside down on this, we're trying to run it. If this was an American petition, like where there were provisions for that, I think we would have passed it no problem so if anybody wants a side project um and you happen to be happen to be bilingual um video dubbing and translating of stuff might be helpful or yeah actually what if you really want to help one of the best things that you do is let other gaming streamers or YouTubers know about this,

who are French, Italian, whatever countries in the EU, and just bring it up in a chat if you can. If like, oh, if you heard of the Stop Killing Games, we have several members of the initiative who do speak multiple languages. I forget all of them. We have like German, Latvian,

Spanish. If we don't have the language, you might be able to find somebody who can kind of stand in if you want an interview or something like that. Okay, another one I got uh, I'm sure you already have an answer to this straightaway. I'm sure you've probably had people ask you this before, but if the EU petition does not pass, is everything over? Is this the end? No. Well, yes and no. Okay.

It sure as hell is the end on my end. the thing is we have what things are in motion now We got this escalated at the consumer protection agencies in France, Germany and Australia so that I couldn't stop that now even if I wanted to and Because government moves at a glacial speed who knows when that's gonna get resolved. It's possible we've already won this and we just don't know it yet. But so that's that'll really be the determinant factor. And we even then we might have one extra play in France, but that's something where we already have the participants we need on it. So it's not, it's hard to say when it'll be over, but I'm not going to be campaigning after this. Is it? I'm done on that end. So I'm still fine with talking to other people, but there's no need

for me to just kind of thrust myself on the other places. All right. Oh yeah. As far as bringing this up, they don't have to talk to me. They just need to mention, stop killing games. You know, As far as bringing this up, they don't have to talk to me. They just need to mention stop killing games. You know, if you want to if you want to cut me out of that, that's fine. I'm not. You're very good. You're a good spokesperson. You like to talk a lot. These are the good episodes where I don't have to like nudge the person to keep talking and saying things.

I could just leave you and I reckon you just talk for 30 minutes without me interrupting you. I actually have had interviews where the person just left or they cut out or something, but I was still talking to their audience, so I just sort of freestyled what to talk about next. That's great. So you've talked about how the crew is obviously like a perfect case to deal with this, but this is more of a personal question of is there a game that you've personally been affected by?

Like anything where it's shut down, anything where you've really wanted to play it and now it is just completely gone, even if it wasn't good to base the entirety of this around, but something that you personally were bothered by. Yeah, well, again, against the odds, some of them have come back. Battle, they've been kind of like middling games for me so far, but I can see the writing on. So that's just it. I'm not trying to save the bad ones. I'm trying. It's just, you got to get the bad ones with the good ones, you know? Because yeah, when people say all these, all these live service games are crap. Well, not literally all of them. That's the problem.

That's, that is the problem. Yeah. If they're real bad, like, yeah, it's sad that they're going away. Cultural preservation of that, but like no one would really be bothered if it was like a three out of 10. Yeah. If it was just the bad games, I never would have done this. But yeah, again, for me, Battle Forge was one that I thought was all right.

It's just a thing. A lot of these games, I don't know how good they are until I play them. Sure, yeah. But I'm interested in them at the time. And so yeah, so Battle Forge is like that. Dark Spore was like that for me. One, I think it's still going, but it's certainly one worthy of preservation. The Secret World. That's a unique game. That one, I've never played

anything else like it. I have mixed feelings on it, but I really like the parts that I like. Even the crew, a lot of people have argued it's kind of a so-so game, but it's also one of the best representations I've seen of driving across the U.S. It's literally the second biggest driving game ever made. Like, yeah, in all honesty, I think the story is just kind of so-so. Gameplay is kind of typical, but it's like, but you can just keep driving and driving and driving like it gives me that kind of a mood I like you know but that's a coincidence that I also like the game I would have done this for overwatch if everything was lined up because I've never even played overwatch I'm not even that interested in it but the whole point was to have a game to act as kind of a missile for the issue at large

So this isn't really about the crew. It's about all games of this nature that we did this on. Mm-hmm Okay, here's an interesting one. I feel like I might already know what your thought is here But I still wanted to hear what you think. What are your thoughts on games that were designed to be killed? EG? Super Mario 35. So this was an anniversary Mario game where it was launched and then at the end of the anniversary year, the game died. So it was just an anniversary event. In your opinion, is it important to preserve them or respect the developers intentions? Okay, well, was that one where they stopped selling it or it just they shut it down. No one can play.

I believe it was. Let me, let me see the exact details. Um, yeah, it's no longer playable, even if you have a copy. Okay. Well, I think that, no, I don't think that I don't like that. I mean, again, I would grudgingly accept it if they did they give you the exact date at the time they sold I believe so. Yes. Hmm. I don't like it, but I might have to grudgingly accept stuff like that. That would be my answer. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's exactly

six months. Yeah. Yeah. it was it was just the anniversary One they told you this is gonna be unplayable after six months. I believe so Okay, if that's the case then I again, I don't like it, but I grudgingly accept it Yeah, there was another one like that that I think was called the flock Where it was a multiplayer game? where Every time somebody died there was like this Large collective counter and it's counted down to zero and once it got to the end the game is gonna be unplayable And what ended up happening was it lost interest and they couldn't afford to keep the servers running

So it just got shut down prematurely from their own experiment see something like that I see more is like performance art, but even that didn't live up to its own thing. The game has mostly negative on Steam. What? It's on Steam? The game has mostly negative. Yeah, I bet. But see, that's one you can make an argument performance right right

I'm more sensitive to this issue where I just don't like seeing games destroyed period I mean in one of my videos I said for me Personally, it's the same as if you were to go into a museum and set fire to one of the paintings. I mean, it's Like even for bad games. I can appreciate Like, even for bad games, I can appreciate aspects of them sometimes. Like, sometimes the, hey, one game I'm interested in that everybody says is bad is Anthem. Just because I want to see that world. It's like, okay, it's this alien planet with canyons and waterfalls and sure, I'm not, I'm not going to go in there expecting a great game, but I want to just check out, see what

they worked on. Yeah, there's the saying one man's trash is another man's treasure. So it can be, but yeah, what you described, it's such a rare scenario. I'm not really that worried about that. Because how many companies, Nintendo's an oddity where they tend to operate more... I've heard it's operating more like a toy manufacturer,

where you do have limited editions and that raises the value of stuff. And like for collectors and stuff, and that's kind of an image that they want. Almost every company, if you wanna keep buying their game, they wanna keep selling it to you if they can. Yeah. Well, even in cases like, there are games on Steam which don't even run on modern systems at this point.

Like, their requirement is an XP system. You try to boot on a modern system, it just will not work. Like, if you are willing... Obviously, they probably shouldn't do that if the game doesn't work anymore on modern systems. Or at least have a note there. But like, if people are willing to buy it, they're gonna sell it to you Yeah, if they give the warning, I mean I get as long as they're not requiring you Yeah, the only area- Well Valve has good refunds now, so it doesn't work anymore. It doesn't boot like you could just refund it Yeah, I know but

the area that gets ugly on is if you're required to use like Windows 10 or Linux build to run it But then you you can't run it on XP without steam and it seems no longer support like if they catch 22 Don't catch 22 people mm-hmm Do we disconnect again? Oh, that's a hard disconnect oh uh hello what I hate this but I hate this platform so much right my ISP I don't know what it is it's something okay yeah so just don't catch 22 people where you have it. If you can have

the same if you have to run the game on a different OS than the one you downloaded on that's fine. But if it's if they artificially make it impossible without a crack or something. No, that's not... Yeah. Um, there was something I was gonna say before I disconnected and lost my train of thought. Um... Ahhhh... I don't remember what it was actually. Uhhhh... Shit. Um...

Okay, whatever. We're just gonna... Maybe I'll remember it afterwards. Actually... UGH! Shit. Okay, whatever. We're just going to... maybe I'll remember it afterwards. So there's one person here asking... We kind of talked about this a bit before, but sort of the connections between this and the way that software works.

So what they say is, what are your thoughts on if the initiative covered video games and software in general? would there be more signatures? Would in addition of general software help the initiative? Um, I think the, that's a good question. There might be more signatures, but there would also just be like 10 times the opposition. Right. Because then you're messing with-

Adobe. Jeez, like for software in general, that invites Microsoft into the party in a big way. Like I think Amazon, Google, we're talking Titans at that point. I mean, yeah, Microsoft still does a lot with gaming, but they don't care about that the way they care about, you know, Windows or their, or OneDrive,

cloud services. Yeah, Office, yeah, Office software that that would be. So, you know, you raise it, oh man, you raise an interesting point that if I had to relaunch, that seems like the only way to do it to try to get to me, but it leaves so much more industry me but it leaves so much more industry up it invites so much more industry opposition to the point where it could get watered down to something that just does that misses games again is what I think could happen this is unrelated and it's sort of like it it kind of related something you said before but unrelated to the whole Stopping Game things. What is your thought on Valve dropping support for old versions of Windows

and like actually just not letting the client work? It doesn't... Like XP is dropped, Windows 7 was dropped at the start of this year. What are your general thoughts on that? Just as an idea. Personally, it kind of... I find it a little alarming, and I kind of wish there was a better standard for

end of life of game of Games, I guess what I'm thinking is I'm generally pretty open-minded With whatever the hell the seller or the publisher wants to do as long as I get to keep my game by the end of it So it's like okay if you want me to jump through some hoops with a login, or I need to have this stuff, it's like, okay, I can roll with the punches. But if you're going to remove the game from me at the end of all this, that just bothers me on such a level that I started a whole campaign on this sort of thing. You know, it's, I really don't like that. But that's, yeah yeah that's a fuzzier area especially because I'm kind of scared where Microsoft is going with Windows because there's a I'm all

Windows and my line in the sand is if if there's ever a future Windows where you have to connect online to use it, like to install, and I think for regular users, Windows is already there. It's getting really hard to set up Windows without having a Microsoft account. Yeah, there are hoops. You have to jump through a lot of hoops to do that,

to get it to not forcibly update your system or to not have a local account. It's still possible for power users, but it's a pain in the ass. So I'm still kind of holding on with that. If they get to the point where it is just impossible, then like at that point, like I can't, I wouldn't use that for anything I don't have to,

where it would just be just a bare minimum of maybe online games that require that and everything else. I would have to use something else. Mm-hmm and With steam going along lockstep with that That allows you however steam is doing More for Linux and gaming than practically anything. So I'm glad they are kind of building their own fire escape there. Yeah. Whilst I might have issues with some of the stuff Valve does, it's just like it, you make one bad, bad choice for every 10 good choices.

Like, yes, I'm going to criticize the bad things you do as well. But at the same time, right, like overall, you're making a positive change. Yeah, Valve is a mixed bag is the way I look at it. But at the same time, right, like overall, you're making a positive change. Yeah, Valve is a mixed bag is the way I look at it. Oh, yeah, I really like how they, what they've done with Linux support. I like what they've done with VR with, I mean, Steam VR is kind of like, I would almost compare it to like the equivalent of what DirectX was to Windows gaming when that came out when before then you had to have everybody had their own specialized

drivers included with the game for this hardware and that one and unfortunately I think we're kind of drifting more back towards that head but it's they don't, I really wish they would kind of do more to ensure, even if it's just a public statement from the company or public policy, to ensure that you will get to keep more of your gains. And I also think for the amount of resources they have they could do a lot more But when you compare them to other companies then they look like you know angels It's kind of doesn't mean I think they are that way but just it's more like how bad other companies can get. Mm-hmm I've been looking

Views on valve I guess. Mm-hmm. I've been looking through my comments here and I guess. I've been looking through my comments here and Half the I was like hey guys Do you have any questions for Ross and then half the comments are either pirate software or mana gem? Like can you guys my I hate my audience sometimes Well, I Might be talking in the future with somebody who's gonna be whose drama is this whole thing. Okay here's one actual real comment. Okay it's regarding the way the games are sold nowadays where you're buying a license to a game not like you're not actually buying a product in the same sense.

And I guess it's the idea where if you're buying a license to it, should they be able to rescind that license? Why, like, why, why would they have to keep that going for you? Well, again, that's, that kind of depends depends on the country how you're looking at. I think I'm fuzzy on that. I think in Australia, games matching a certain description are considered goods. So it's like, yeah, you have a license to clarify the term. So that's the other thing in the UK and the EU is, yeah, you have licenses that say what you can and can't do, but those aren't legal documents and they can't override statutory consumer rights. Now in the US,

I mean, it gets complicated, but the simple version is they can almost do whatever they want, and keeping your game is not one of those things that's on the list, that's in question. I mean, I think, again, it's kind of what I said, like, I'm pretty flexible on almost anything the companies want to do, except actually destroying the game permanently that you paid for, you know? And it's like, I mean, that goes against just like the basic. Yeah, I was thinking, I think you have to go back almost to feudalism before that's like a standard that's acceptable because, you know, you go to a market, you go to some old market in history,

you know, you buy something, you keep it. If you go to something where you bought it, but the lord of the manor can come into your home and take it back, I think you have to go to funeral times before you get to that. I mean, this goes, I mean, you're not really talking about market dynamics. Here's one.

How do you feel about the Linux user mentality towards open source software and free tech in general? And do you feel like that sort of helps the preservation of games and media? Oh, of course. I mean, I love it when that happens because like I mentioned, I like VR when it's open source, they can monkey in there and make it render in stereoscopic or the lad things like widescreen and you know, better controls bug fix. I mean, it's, it's only a positive really. I mean, yeah, from the player. Yeah, that's fair. Um, okay. Here we go. Now we're, now we're back to the fun ones.

Um, this is one of the probably criticisms you've probably heard before. Would he be fine if his initiative stopped many games from releasing in the EU? If so, how? You've probably heard this a million times before. I even have a video where I address this. I think it's complete bluff by like any, from any company of a major size. There could be a little bit disruption,

like let's say that it passed and then it goes into effect in like early 2027 or something. If somebody was like, had just really unlucky timing with that, then and they were too far down that pipeline to be able to have an end-of-life build, then they might cut it for a smaller developer, but then it would get worked out over time. For large ones, there's too much money on the table for them to do that. So, okay, what's going to be, what would you rather do? Let's say, then you're a AAA gaming company,

you're making a live service game, and that's going to have like loot boxes and microtransactions, you're trying to be the next Fortnite or something. What would you rather do? Have compliance that you will have a build of the game if in the event that you need to end support, and I'm not sure what the cost on that would be, but I would guess less than 1%. or cut yourself out from the EU market, which again has 450 million people in it. I mean, you're going to make, I mean, I'm not sure what the projected revenue for like a game like Fortnite, let's say a theoretical Fortnite killer, which they want to aim for. I mean, we're probably talking like hundreds of millions of dollars So whereas even if it's done a little sloppily an end-of-life bill for a game of that scale might be I don't I'm just taking numbers out of the air, but let's say a hundred thousand

so would you rather have like 200 million dollars or Save a hundred thousand like that Companies like to make money, okay, so they're going to take the path of least resistance on that and that maximizes their profit. So if one analogy I made a lot is to seatbelts. They've, when, see before it became law that manufacturers had to include seatbelts, companies were fighting that tooth and nail on In the 60s trying to say like no this we won't be able to sell cars if this is a requirement

And it's like and you know what they did that it does take some cost like if you have a factory already set up and Seat belts aren't part of the assembly line Then yeah, you're gonna have to retool your factory order new parts for the seat. But a modern car now, what is the seatbelt cost? I would guess probably less than again, less than 1% of the total cost of manufacturing. I think it's very similar. If you want to have a lot of fun, I highly recommend after this go on YouTube and look at some interviews of people Of consumers talking about how they don't want the seatbelt laws to come in because they're the funniest things you will ever see Same thing go look at interviews of people when DUI laws were coming in because people talked about how they could drive So well when they were drunk they they were they don't they they're gonna keep driving drunk. It is the funniest thing you will ever see

It's probably too close to home now for me to be that funny to me, but that is the lens I'm looking at the show sure like I think some of the people who hate this idea the most if it were to pass Five ten years from now. They probably say okay. Well, it wasn't that big a deal with refunds for games on Steam I remember seeing a backlash against the small indie developers and like people are gonna exploit and abuse this and yeah there was a little bit of that I mean but it didn't tank the industry indie games are still getting made you know so it so it's, I think that's a very apt analogy to that.

And okay, one last thing I want to ask, and this is sort of about games where there is a sequel. So say it's let's say Apex Legends 2 comes out, and they either, as you've talked about releasing network documentation or releasing server binaries. There's the idea where the Seek was very likely going to use a very similar network architecture to the first game. And I'm sure you've heard arguments like if, if you do that, it's going to increase cheating or bots and things like that. Yes, that is a risk.

I admit, but companies will get to see it coming down the line. That's another reason why they might want to say, okay, hey, let's just come up with different code for our end of life build and, you know, patch the clients so that it's we're not using the same protocols for the final version so that there's not as much of a trail for people to follow for cheats. Because again, like any game, pretty much any big multiplayer game, it's going to get assaulted by trying to find hacks for cheats or exploits.

So that's something that already happens. Yes, this would increase the risk a little bit, but that's a solvable problem. Like, I'm not claiming this wouldn't cause some industry disruption. And that is a valid concern, but you have to weigh that against destroying games, every or what 97, 98% of online games that people buy so that they can never play them again. Again, these are games people have paid money for, you know, so you kind of have to balance consumer rights with developer rights on that Is the way I look at it

Sweet. Well, um on that note, I guess we can start signing off there Where can people find a stop killing games find your stuff and get anything else you want to mention? Yeah, okay. Well to help with the initiative again, the big ones are the UK petition and the European Citizens Initiative. Everything else is kind of underway. That's all at StopKillingGames.com. It's a pretty Spartan website. It was originally meant to just direct people to the agencies and give them instructions. We're going to rework it a little bit. But from my videos, I don't even want to be doing any of this. I mean, it's fun talking to you, but the campaign- Well, hey, if you want to, like, I don't know, talk about video games and not talk about stop killing games

or whatever else you want to do on the channel. Yeah, I honestly was hoping there'd be some of that, but we went on. Uh... I'm not really a fan of, you know, comedy about video games or mm-hmm related to stuff like that. That's a curse farms calm or Probably most famous thing I've done is Freeman's mind where I just kind of voice through that I kind of give the thoughts of Gordon Freeman and half-life to Just wait wait wait a second. you did that video wait what I didn't realize that was your video just now oh yeah I'm one of the voices of

Freeman here someone sent me that video ages ago I didn't even realize that I can recite the quantum chromodynamic gauge invariant Lagrangian in my sleep. That was one of my lines. Is there anything else you want to mention or is that pretty much it? Oh, that's it for the initiative stuff. I'm kind of sick of talking about it. Yeah, totally fair. I'm not sick of talking about fun stuff if you wanted to.

Well, hey, if you ever want to come back and do another one of these, I would be more than happy to never talk about the Stop Playing Games stuff, just talk about video games. But more about Linux and gaming and stuff in general. Yeah, awesome. Nothing else you want to shout out? That pretty much everything that people should know about? I think that's it. Stop killing games. Yeah, just try to tell other people about this.

That's the message. If we can get a big person or else several medium-sized people, like again, YouTubers and streamers, we can win this. That's the thing to focus on. We need signal amplification. Okay, my stuff, my main channel is Brody Robertson who Linux video is there six-ish days a week. I've got a gaming channel, Brody on Games. Right now I am probably still streaming Ender Magnolia and Final Fantasy Origins Strangers of Paradise. Very fun games. I've got the React channel. I've put clips there. Check that out.

That's Brodie Robertson reacts. If you're listening to the audio version of this, you can find the video version on YouTube at Tech over T. If you'd like to find the audio version, it is on Spotify. There is an RSS feed. I upload the video to Spotify as well. So if you like that, yeah, do that as well. I give you the final word.

How do you want to sign us off? I like your desk, Matt. Thank you.