No “running the servers forever” is a bad faith argument against the initiative making it seem “unreasonable”

No, that’s not what stop killing games is about. What’s demanded is that the games remains in a playable state even if servers are shut down.

They should open source the server if they are going to shut it down.

Your idea is exactly what the movement is trying to achieve. But people keep repeating these bullshit arguments instead of listening for five seconds.

No. It’s a made up burden by publishers to avoid releasing control of games.

Everyone I have ever seen comment on this has basically suggested to just release the server code so that the community can run their own servers and continue gaming.

My ideas about the topic are a bit different, and might go a bit further:

1. If a company sells a license to an end customer (i.e. any private individual not posing as a business themselves) for any piece of software, games or otherwise, in exchange for something of value (like money, usually money), and they do not make abundantly clear both in the official advertising materials and during all steps of the sales process that the license is time-limited, the law should view that license as being in perpetuity and non-revocable, even if the fine print says otherwise.

2. Any company that sells software licenses should be required to make sure that none of the copy protection mechanisms it employs to protect it from software piracy will ever effectively keep any legitimate license holders from using the software, for as long as the license is valid. If the license is perpetual, that means forever. If the company decides to implement its copy protection by requiring the software to log on to some server on the internet before it will do its work, the company should have the choice between running that server and keeping it internet-reachable forever or providing all legitimate license holders a means to disable the licensing server requirement.

3. If a computer game requires a login into a server that cannot be provided by the license holder themselves or a third party of their choice before the core functionality of the game can be used, and this login requirement is not an unavoidable technical requirement from a software developer's side (i.e. if the game is not a pure multiplayer or MMO game at its core), then this login requirement should be seen as a copy protection mechanism for the purposes of the previous paragraph. Just like in the previous paragraph, software companies should have the choice between running those servers forever or disabling the requirement, with the additional option of allowing the license holder to run a suitable replacement server themselves. I'm thinking of games like Simcity (2013) or Flight Simulator 2024 here.

I do not believe these demands are radical. I believe the current situation, where publishers can sell a game to a large numbers of customers and then later just take away the right to use it on a whim is radical.

I also believe that computer games are an essential part of cultural life for large parts of the last three generations, and I believe that preserving these cultural artifacts is no less important than preserving books, movies, music, etc. from previous generations.

As an aside, the notion that running a simple licensing server for software you sold is too much to ask for is absolutely asinine. Unless you are being intentionally stupid about it, running a license server for a ten+ years old software, that presumably gets used as broadly and frequently as 10+ years old software gets used, is ridiculously cheap. Unless your software company is literally just a one-man operation, it shouldn't even amount to a rounding error on the balance sheet. Even if it is a one-man operation, this is definitely still doable without breaking the bank.

No, nobody is actually saying they'd have to run servers forever, it's a bad faith argument. All that is being said is if/when they do stop running servers they make the game playable without the servers and/or make available the code or tools needed for people to run their own servers.

"IrateAnteater"? More like "IlliterateAnteater" or "AnteaterThatCantReadTheFirstParagraphOfTheFuckingPetition".

Are people actually advocating for game publishers to have to keep the servers running forever?

if you have about 2iq, and just woke up, haven't drank coffee, and refuse to do any research at all.

Then yes that is what they want to do.

If you actually read into it, that's not even close to what they want.

also it's not "a bit unreasonable" it's entirely unreasonable.

I think a reasonable compromise would be that if they plan to shut down the servers, the publisher should have to release the server side software.

you just reiterated 95% of the entire campaign, great job.