“Stop Killing Games” is a new campaign to stop developers making games unplayable
“Stop Killing Games” is a new campaign to stop developers making games unplayable
3 Comments
That’s kind of just the reality of online games, and I doubt there’s a good one size fits all solution. We can’t force companies to spend money to keep up servers or reprogram the game to work without it’s online component.
I was actually browsing this subreddit to post my views on this campaign, but this is good enough to do it here. I arrived from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxe_muenRV8) video, by the way.
1. I do consider this to be in the top 1% of first world problems. I understand this is important to some, but let’s be honest and say its importance to the world is minimal.
2. Let’s compare this to a restaurant. You buy an “unlimited” pass for the food the restaurant is functioning. Common sense dictates that this has some hard limitation: that pass expires when the restaurant shuts down. You didn’t buy the restaurant, and the owner never said they sold you the restaurant. If the restaurant owner decides paying taxes is not worth keeping it open, then it’s the restaurant owners’ right to demolish the restaurant. You may consider the restaurant “art”, but there are other considerations, like the restaurant being someone’s property and someone who has the right to do as they wish with the property.
2.1. Now that might inspire the restaurant owner to get greedy, to sell as many “unlimited” passes as they can, then immediately shut down the restaurant. In that case, the state should probably intervene, making a law that the restaurant must be open for an amount of time for the costumers to get their “unlimited” passes’ worth. I’d say 5 years would be ok. If not, refund, go bankrupt, go to jail etc.
3. Comparing online games with “destroying your property” is disingenuous. The costumer knows they’re buying a service that is dependent on the life of the company they buy it from and that that service can close at the whim of the seller. This might even be in the EULA, but a lot of people like to plead ignorance, then refuse to read the fine print.
4. This whole “a game creator’s personal property is art and should be protected regardless of the creator’s intentions” seem to trample the right of the property owner i.e. the online game.
My conclusion? Either make a law where an online game MUST continue good faith services for a number of years since it goes in a public sale (5 years? 10 years?) or reimburse EVERYONE who bought the game if it shuts down before that date. Or just don’t buy online games or services in them (cashshop etc.) if you can’t accept that the service has a finite end date.
Bit dramatic, innit?