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Stop Killing Games delivers 'absolutely incredible' hearing in European Parliament: 'There was no [parliament member] that wasn't responding positively' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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It's amazing what a difference a little bit of time can make: Two years after kicking off what looked to be a long-shot campaign to push back on the practice of shutting down server-dependent videogames once they're no longer profitable, Stop Killing Games founder Ross Scott and organizer Moritz Katzner appeared in front of the European Parliament to present their case—and it seemed to go very well.

Official Stream: https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/webstreaming/committee-on-internal-market-and-consumer-protection-ordinary-meeting-committee-on-legal-affairs-com_20260416-1100-COMMITTEE-IMCO-JURI-PETI

Digital Fairness Act: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act/F33096034_en

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[+] -30 points 3 months ago (8 children)

If only people were willing to fight this hard for important things...

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  • [–] 26 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Sure, it's not vital to our survival or freedom, but ownership over digital media is a pretty damn big deal in the current age.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    It's more about maintaining infrastructure than ownership. If you buy a game on Steam and Valve can later delete it from your library it's about ownership. If a company shuts down the central server and the product stops working it's more about planned obsolescence. The same issue affects many IoT devices, not just video games, and I think protecting those is more important as it affect more consumers and generates e-waste.

    But I know stop killing games just gets a lot of coverage on lemmy because there are a lot of gamers here. I'm sure people also write petitions and talk in EP about more important topics like climate change and human rights.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    So you enjoy anti-consumer practices?

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  • [–] -2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, since I consider 100 other consumer related issues more important than old video games it obviously means I love anti-consumer practices.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    Think about the bigger picture here. Its not about video games, thats the example. The issue is companies pulling the rug out from consumers, thats what the case is about.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    Clearly all this got attention because it was promoted among gamers. Stop Killing Games is not using games as an example, that's the only thing they are fighting for. Yes, we're lucky that this may be expanded to other practices but it's not why it got the support it has. Tell same people to boycott Amazon because of their anti-consumer practices and there will be no reaction. Because most people don't care about general issues like consumer rights, only about the things that affect them personally.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    If there's anything to learn here it's that you absolutely can follow in Ross's footsteps and organize a movement that will fight for what you deem important. He said multiple times "I'm doing this only because nobody else does, not because I'm a good fit for this".

    "let's not do this because it's not as important as X" is a bad argument, because the alternative is not that Ross suddenly picks some other topic and starts to drive it, the alternative is that nothing happens at all.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Where's the line?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    I would say things that actually affect people's lives like worker rights, wealth inequality, pollution or energy transformation. Not things that just slightly limit their vast entertainment options.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I would say preserving any kind of human creation is a valid cause. Like that lady that taped all TV program in the 90s. Like 90% of early celluloid films were melted for glue.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    valid != important

    And this is also human creation

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    So we need you to tell us what is valuable and what isn't? Have you ever been to a museum, passing by some rocks and broken plates?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    The plates you've seen in museum, were you able to eat out of them? Were they preserved for their utility of as artistic/informative pieces?

    The video games, do people want to preserver them for display or do they want to still play them?

    I'm not saying video games are not valuable and you can't try to preserve them. I'm saying there are not that important. Right to repair, personal computing, data protection and open standards are for example more important. I haven't seen influencers and the influenced fight for those things as hard as they fight for couple of old games.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I think there is a decent case to be made that the systematic and irreversible destruction of contemporary art for no good reason whatsoever is a pretty cut-and-dry act of barbaric destruction of culture. And preventing that is generally considered a worthwhile thing.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    I didn't say it's not worthwhile or that games have no value or that it's not a valid case. I'm just saying there are many more important things than couple of games and it would be nice if people were able to organize and fight for them the same way as they fight for some entertainment.

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