It's an impressive battle plan. I'm always a little pessimistic when it comes to these things, but at least this effort is casting a wide net. If even one of them succeeds that could impact the entire industry. Hopefully some government body, somewhere chooses to take this seriously.
The problem is IMO much bigger. Every connected and/or IoT device becomes physical waste if the vendor shuts down the backing infrastructure.
Every product (physical or digital) should be considered as a unit with the required technical infrastructure. Companies/producers should only have two choices: keep maintaining the infrastructure or publish everything necessary for individuals and/or a community to take over. This must be ready from the moment such a product enters the market and it must be part of the “will” of the company so if it goes bankrupt, the whole process can be triggered more or less automatically.
I take issue with the requirement being “when it’s no longer supported” for similar reasons. I can foresee an argument where a company advocates for some scenario where they’re going out of business and can’t do it, and some 75-year-old judge who hasn’t played a video game since Tetris lets it slide. Still, this is the shot we have, and we need to take it.
Would be nice if every game publisher was required to contribute a version of their game, that can be played without an external network or license, to the country’s main library. For cultural safe-keeping. I know at least one country does that for books.
It’s the “complaining when they end” thing that I’m interested in, for sure. Especially if a government listens, which he’s aiming to make happen here.
If people are paying for it, there should at least be a significant communicated EOL plan. It’s also highly arguable that at ‘least’ executables should be released for self-hosting. I haven’t even seen the video or campaign, it’s just common sense. I am a software engineer that gets paid to maintain this kind of stuff, and I’d be PISSED if a big chunk of my body of work became useless for any other reason than the task it solved became superfluous.
With video games, very little of the end-user experience is superfluous ever (I mean, plenty of dud unoriginal games, but…), so the whole industry deserves some preservation laws. At least don’t punish people for doing for free what the companies refuse to do…
If by “still paying” you mean trying to change something about the industry using closure of a decade old game then sure, you could say that.
If you don’t care about this campaign, he still does videos about older titles - they release every 2-3 months, with the latest one being this video about “State of Mind”.
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