I love how people who are NOT in the game development industry are coming after PirateSoftware for not supporting the Stop Killing Games Initiative. Thor's entire point is that this broad stroke "solution" is not helpful in any meaningful way. If the petition is given any credence whatsoever and such laws are passed based solely on the demands of the initiative, it would destroy live-service games. So WoW, FFXI, FFXIV, Runescape, EVE online, Siege, League, Dota, Counterstrike, TF2, Overwatch, Destiny 2, literally anything made by King, Sea of Thieves, and so many others that have done nothing but provide good health to the industry, disregarding toxic practices in isolation which only minorly effects the industry health, will all be affected. At best, this will cause live-service games to be regionally removed, in which case the people who signed this petition without using their heads will realize they made a massive fucking mistake and entire countries' worth of gamers will pay for it. At worst, live-service games are done, they are removed from the industry due as a whole because no one reads the fucking ToS and understands the difference between a service and a product, so all MMOs are done, MOBAs gone, online FPSes gone, Battle Royale games gone, Survival games gone. All because of The Crew... Are you fucking kidding me?
The Crew has had 2 sequels since 2014, the initiative points to The Crew's player base, AT PEAK, not during the time of closure, it has since dwindled to less than 1000 players per region. And if the game simply isn't bringing in any revenue it's too expensive to maintain. Now everyone who claims Ubisoft could just release the server kit for The Crew, but that has sensitive proprietary code. They would have to make The Crew's code and the server code open source. Ubisoft doesn't share shit, and I'll tell you why. Developers who make their own shit or modify existing shit to bespoke it to their game do not want their code leaking. This would provide hackers and bots the opening they need to infect games and create a worse player experience. No one wants that.
The projects that are going behind Ubisoft's back to revive the game by going passed the DRM and into the code and trying to create private servers without legal permission are breaking the law. They are breaking international copyright law. It is illegal. If it was a game that you owned in some capacity and not a licensed purchased game that's a different story, but this is a game you paid to play through a license. Violating that license can see you be fined in the hundreds of millions, and potentially a prison sentence.
Thor is 1000% correct in this, that the issue is games being advertised as single-player experiences with multiplayer capability, The Crew, was not, but they are actually fully online, and you own nothing, because it's a continuous service, not a product. Every source says in an asterisk that an online connection is required to run The Crew, and the "sources" that say it was advertised as single-player with multiplayer capability are just crybabies who faked the source via "Trust bro I was there for it." The issue is in ToS. if you didn't read ToS that's on you, not Ubisoft or any other publisher. What's within the ToS is what Thor is saying is the issue. Live-service games inherently are not a product you can own like offline single-player games. They are a service, a continuous service that you purchase a license for. You never owned The Crew, but the ToS didn't make that obvious, THAT is the issue that Stop Killing Games should focus on, not forcing publishers to keep a game up despite doing so is flushing money down the toilet.
What you need to understand is that the video games industry is a business. A business that has been VERY consumer friendly. Consider this, in the 1990s and probably even before then a new release video game cost 60 USD. It has been 60 USD until 2020. Where the MSRP for a new release game went up by 10 USD. Understand that this doesn't cover the cost of production like it did back then. Games are incredibly resource expensive between asset management and manpower, and with the industry continuing to ramp things up with graphical fidelity, performance, multiple console optimization and if you add in online functionality especially if you have dedicated servers, that cost adds up fast. This is an industry that costs as much if not more than the films industry and globally, it makes a fraction of how much films make. Yet, new releases have always been 60 USD until recent times. This means that the industry median has always, ALWAYS put the consumer first regardless of how expensive it is to make the product, not only that but most games don't even break even anymore, 1 million units sold isn't going to cover the cost of a video game with online capabilities.
Further, if the intention of the initiative is to completely eradicate live-service games, to that I have to say, who the fuck are you to dictate what I have on my machine? Or how I spend my money? I pay a sub for FFXIV I put in money into this game to help keep it active, will it eventually close down? Maybe, more likely than not, it's the fate of all live-service games, but you won't see me pissing and moaning when it does.
And to the people attacking Thor, fuck you. He's been in this industry and worked with the worst and some of the best for over 20 years, he has an intimate knowledge you could never have. I'm gonna take his word over some pissant who's throwing a fit over a 10 year old game who's playerbase basically died off in 2016. Especially when there's TWO OTHER FUCKING GAMES STILL LIVE. From a business standpoint the resources used to maintain The Crew was too much for the publisher to keep up when they could divert those resources into one of The Crew's sequels and create a more stable and optimized experience. Ubisoft is a piece of shit company, I'll never debate you on that, they are scum, but asking a publisher to continue to maintain a game that brings in no money and it's over a decade old is complete selfishness. Thor is right, and IF this initiative DOES make it to court and bills ARE passed, then prepare for more region locks, more layoffs, and more studio closures. As a developer myself that sort of future is horrifying, and the people who signed this petition and the petitioner themselves will be to blame. Where will you be when the industry loses roughly 1/3 of it's manpower due to this blatant ignorance.
