Thanks for proving my past points.
You lack logical thinking, basis understanding of the issues and you're only interested in your own benefit.
'nuff said!

Exactly. The same 2-3 people saying "Gosh, don't derail this with 'completely separate issues'" and yet more bad political analogies (when its exactly the same identical issue) seem to almost be making excuses to themselves so they can personally continue to buy every problem game, and just want to be seen to "support" something with the least minimum personal effort. There never was any reason why Ross couldn't also encourage rewarding good publishers and not rewarding bad ones *in addition to* signing his petition, instead of unhelpfully ending up discouraging it. Whenever this gets pointed out (5-6 different people here now) it gets dumbed down to bad analogies or "I shouldn't need to do that personally, and in fact won't, because I've been told this a 'magic wand' fix".

I think legal challenges are needed as one of several prongs in a trident. I definitely don't think "This one pronged trident is gamers only chance ever" is true at all. (And if it is, but it fails, then what, DRM-Free gamers here remain the only ones actually pushing back against disposable games, whilst 90% of the signatories rush out and buy The Crew 4, 5 & 6 as if nothing happened?...) It's like attending an Animal Rights rally dressed in a new fur coat, then claiming someone else standing under the same protest umbrella who's chosen to not wear ever a leather belt is "derailing my 'Anti Animal Abuse' legislation cause" because they 'dared' to suggest also not continuing to buy fur coats least until after the "Anti Animal Abuse" legislation you're both protesting for has passed would send a more meaningful message, but I just can't stop myself (because "they're fun"). It's no wonder people are getting "mixed messages" from all this...

Or it could simply mean the way you talk to people here has completely alienated half the forum but you're too hung up on anger to see it. Step back a bit and look at your own posts from others perspectives completely unaware of the initiative - You started this thread not even asking GOG about lack of support or giving them any chance to explain, but instead launched into a direct rage-filled assumption based tirade of "ugly, sneaky hostiles" accusations against GOG staff, then swiftly moved onto disparaging DRM-Free gamers with a sneering "oh your precious DRM-Free games" belittling tone in post 35 (pretty much insulting everyone who uses the store for DRM-Free gaming), before launching another tirade of almost back to back "despicable, liars, stockholm syndrome, disgusting, obnoxious, tainted with poison", relentless daily personal attacks all persistently aimed at GOG & GOG users.

Many potential supporters on this forum (including those not even posting, just lurking), even when they agree with many of Ross's points are now quietly going "Oh, hell no, it looks like one of 'those' communities" and slowly backing away because of the soured way you've presented it to this forum. If you wanted a more positive thread with a more positive outcome, there were certainly alternative choices you could have made that would have set a better tone right from post 1, page 1. And with that I'm done with this thread as well, as there's no sane debate to be had with "u r all poison minded" or "these people r disgusting" as a default daily response by the thread originator to everything...

I actually like your trident analogy. On its own, encouraging people to vote with your wallet is meek and hasn't worked out well, but in concert with the initiative it's a lot stronger. And there could be even more avenues too.

I also feel that relying solely on Ross to succeed with his initiative just means that if he takes the fall, those seen to be supporting him but not actually practicing what they preach could just disown his movement and continue those bad purchases. No, this is like a ship, the captain needs their sailors for the ship to sail.

I'll post it for you too:
The Crew - 12,180 players all-time peak
https://steamcharts.com/app/241560
The Crew 2 - 12,707 peak (not counting the period after it was sold for $1)
https://steamcharts.com/app/646910
The Crew Motorfest - 3,705 peak
https://steamcharts.com/app/2698940

Context: The Crew 2 has been available for years before Crew 1's shutdown was announced. After seeing what happened to Crew 1, Motorfest had an abysmal launch, illustrated by the peak player charts. Motorfest was flooded by attacks on its Steam forums telling people to not buy it because of The Crew 1's shutdown. Then this whole initiative launched, which has managed to get 441,219 EU signatures and is directly responsible for The Crew 2 and Motorfest now having Offline modes promised.

So this whole stereotype that you and others here keep regressing to about people not caring doesn't hold true. They do care, just not in the way you want them to. They just want them to just be GOG shoppers instead of going out and actually doing meaningful things.

I don't think you understand that this isn't meant to be marketing for your favorite game stores. Its store-agnostic.

The one company I see benefiting from SKG the most is GOG by far. But somehow that's not enough, that the movement has to rebrand into a nanny and start telling people what games they can and can't like. Worse yet, to start telling them where they are allowed to shop for games too.

Your suggestion is the kiss of death to any people's initiative: A focus on blaming a certain people ("Its their fault for buying those games"), to demand a narrow "solution" (encourage people to shop on GOG) and demand a self-serving identity rebrand that alienates peoples.

Why exactly?
Are people who buy a game (which they shouldn't have bought in the first place!) for $1,- somehow less affected, when their game gets shut down?

Well you only want to keep digging the hole, don't you? I absolutely believe the initiative should tell people what games to buy and not buy, and which stores to support, if it were to work more effectively. If you want some change to happen, it starts with you since you're making the demands, not the publishers and stores who benefit from the status quo. A sacrifice of that sort is absolutely necessary and I'm not gonna come up with a demonstrative example for it.

But sure, if you want to paint these suggestions as "nanny", and make absolutely no changes to the way you conduct yourself with the industry at large in order to HELP the initiative gain a better footing, that's your call I guess. Doesn't stop me from thinking it's BS.

the petition is intended for the EU politicians to read not to promote videogames and what store to support.

it is a request for the EU politicians to either agree and start enforcing the consumer laws in Europe or recognize that our entire private property economic system is now the same as N Korea system where even a bike your ride on is not your property but it given to you by the rulers.

either way would be a win for us. either they recognize the entire society is collapsing or they start enforcing the laws we have.

the only way we lose if they keep ignoring and pretend nothing is going on.

additionally the amound of words you can place in this petition is really limited, because it is a known fact that politicians have the attention span of a worm and they can't read complex dissertation on the dangers of DRM and what store PookaMustards like.

hope this clarifies your misunderstanding about this petition.

Just go buy Steam games at this point, cause clearly, it appears me encouraging stores that by nature don't kill your games is an issue for you. /s

The connection between the letter of the EU law(s) and the demands of the petition is unclear.

So, to give you an idea about the petition's chance of success, let's look at two consumer rights that without doubt do apply to software products, and how your definite EU rights are treated by Steam and Cie.


(1) You have the right of resale

We've been belaboring that point since at least 2005. It's a fact, you have the right to sell your digitally supplied games in the EU and in UK. You can't though. Clients make it impossible, accounts make it impossible, social media implementation makes it impossible, DRM makes it impossible. And never once did any game developer have to worry that EU courts would ever make them open up the possibility of resale or even supply the technical means.


(2) You can refund your purchase within 14 days

I mean ... that's the most basic of rights we have as customers in the EU, right? And still Valve weaseled out of it. In fact, they consider the warranty void once you download the game. No seriously, I'm not joking. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/369C-3E9F-76FD-DEDA


These are two cases with a very clear and very applicable letter of the law concerning consumer rights. You explicitly should have these rights. And still you can't excercise them.

In comparison, EU law never says that a game company has to keep updating their software ten years after they published it. The connection is diffuse, it would have to be established somehow, the existing law would have to be interpreted, heated legal debates galore.

But if somehow the EU came to the conclusion that software companies would have to support their products nearly indefinitely - and few things in this world are as unlikely - software companies would still give a total shit.

Though I'd still love to see how Valve weasels out of this one.

That because the people that created the petition made a mistake, maybe they were misdirected maybe they really had no idea maybe they did it on purpose. By framing the petition as "leave the software in functional state" this creates too much of wiggle room for sellers to start arguing that it would be too much of a hassle to ensure continuous support of the software fro many years and because hardware, operating systems, online software are changing/evolving they can't guarantee that the software will work forever.

We have already seen this trick with steam launcher not working anymore on older operating systems which practically killed entire library of someone that doesn't have the means to buy newer computers. The games he always played and could still work on his computer can't be played anymore because steam itself doesn't work.

by law you can only ask for that the game you bought at the moment of purchase work on the systems it was advertised on. (game minimum recommended specs)

in case of steam for example they are entirely outside the law because, while the game is not dead, they prevent you playing on the system the game was advertised on.

look, this is really important, because steam is claiming both that they can't provide support (not working on original specification) but also that they provide support for the games (they work on newer systems)

so the mind blowing fact is that steam is abiding by the petition definition because yes, you have access to the account and the games inside IF you buy a NEW computer that has the specs required by steam itself. But also steam is obviously outside the petition definition because they prevent you accessing the games you bought on the computer they were advertised to work on.

Off course the games can still work on windows 7 for example, there is no reason why steam itself can't work on windows 7 anymore for example.

So if I've managed to make myself clear with the above example the way the petition is framed is not quite the best.

They should had framed the petition directly as "I've paid for product and I can't access it anymore" which is a clear consumer law both in US and in EU

As I said, The Crew 1 was still playable at that time it reached peak. It did so years before Crew 1 announced it would ever get a shutdown. I mention the $1 bit because the player peak is actually 55,125, which is when they did a $1 sale and announced that The Crew 2 would get an offline mode.

The petition isn't a draft for any law. Not at all. It's the stating of desired goals and the start of a conversation. Also, there is a character limit to how much you can put on the petition too, so you couldn't delve into intricates or plugging loopholes even if it wanted to.

A conversation between whom, I have to ask.

The EU petition isn't called "Stop KILLING games" of course, so the hyperbole was tuned down a bit for the official part. But the FAQ still clearly states: That's an accusation of malicious intent.
It doesn't open a conversation. It is a conversation stopper.

After reading the entire FAQ, I have to say that I'm less convinced than ever that this initiative will lead anywhere sensible. The way they're misrepresenting the ACCC ./. Valve Corp. case is wild. According to them, Gabe Newell saw the light and then offered refunds to the whole wide world. The Stop Killing Games folks think that in the very same way, if legal precedent could be established in one country, the others would follow like dominos. As you can see from my last post, their presupposition is false as fuck. Valve eventually weaseled out of any kind of responsibility in the EU and UK – warranty is void if you download the game and that's that.

The FAQ also has a rather unsatisfying answer to the core "license" problem, i.e. none at all. It's your basic yes no maybe I don't know can you repeat the question.

Yes, games are sold as licenses. Yes, in most countries that means that the laws pertaining to purchased goods don't fully apply. Yes, on GOG games are also sold as licenses, and whoever says otherwise has never read their FAQs.

You didn’t need to upgrade your computer or buy a new one to go from Windows 7 to Windows 8. It was a software upgrade that worked on most of the same machines as Windows 7. While Windows 8 introduced support for newer hardware such as ARM processors, it still ran on older 32-bit systems. So your statement is misleading. Not upgrading from Windows 7 was a personal choice for most users, it wasn’t generally forced due to hardware limitations. If your system could run Windows 7, in most cases it could run Windows 8 as well. Especially if you were using it as a system to play the games on Steam.

I don’t see any reason to force a company to continue using legacy operating systems that have been discontinued, are unsupported, and have been officially retired by their providers.

OK, let me follow along. The opinion of you and a few others here goes like this:

"Buying 'The Crew' itself was the original wrongdoing, so the point of saving it or similar games is moot. It shouldn't have been bought in the first place because its a bad type of game."
"And what of other games? For example, should an MMOs be allowed to exist? The answer is "No", because since you need to be online to play an MMO, that is a form of DRM. However online games are made and people play them. That is a problem. The solution to this is to encourage people to shop on GOG, a place where you can't buy such games."
"If we all continue to only shop on GOG, online-centric games will not exist. By that end, the desire for a consumer to have access and custody of their games is not a necessary right, because you can make backups of your GOG games."
"However, you can still salvage the "StopKillingGames" movement by pivoting it into a movement that encourages people shop on GOG."

Apparently an EU Citizens Initiative should curate a list of ROSS APPROVED GAMES. Lets communicate that we don't actually want the type of games we're saying we want to save, because what we really need is another Captain-Positivity influencer that tells us which games to buy for a few decades. (Why hasn't anyone thought of this yet?)

Did you buy a game and were defrauded by a billion-dollar industry? You are the problem, not the multinational company with vast advertising networks and lobbying firms. You could have checked with Monika's social media team of GOG influencers, but you didn't!

OK. This is the way, right? Can someone please check the color of my lips and see if I'm drinking the right kool-aid?