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The Crew’s servers, scheduled for Sunday March 31, represents a “gray area” in videogame consumer law that he would like to challenge.
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I think the argument to make is that The Crew was sold under a perpetual license, not a subscription, so we were being sold a good, not a service
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the seller rendered the game unusable and deprived it of all value after the point of sale.Goddam right, that’s not a grey area IMO, that shit ought to be illegal. Maybe there should be a term, like let’s say 90 years maybe?
My personal favorite is the “companies are obligated to support it forever, or open source the server software hosted by a third party, hosting paid for up front for at least a year.”
They get to keep my money forever don’t they?
While I love the spirit of this idea, it gets complicated fast. Worlds adrift is a great example. The game’s server was created using some closed source libraries with a paid license. So when the owning company (Bossa Studios?) went under, they were unable to open source it.
A law like this would effectively kill all licensed software that isn’t a full product. I do agree though; we need a solution
IIRC Bossa tried to open source it but they used a license for Spatial OS, which provided the backbone of their game. They were unable to make a stable game without it and opted to not open source it. But they were also in an early access that would probably provide an exception for a game closing down.
Bossa did leave the island creator active and has spun up Lost Skies on the same engine, which wouldn’t be possible if they open sourced WA.
Ultimately the issue should be GaaS and MMOs are offerings service while other games are goods which have an artificial expiry date. This is a good test of software judication.
A law like this would effectively kill all licensed software that isn’t a full product
What I’m hearing is: this law needs to be a constitutional amendment.
Hmm I may be confused. Do you believe that software companies shouldn’t be allowed to build and sell libraries? I.e. They should only be allowed to sell full products, ready for an end user?
Yes.
I am aware that this would kill SaaS overnight, that’s an intended feature.
Fair enough regarding sass, though I disagree with the opinion.
But I’m asking about builders of partial software. For example, consider a single developer that builds a really great library for handling tables. It displays a grid, displays text in cells, maybe performs some operations between cells, etc. On its own, this software is useless but is very useful for other people to build other products. Should it be illegal to sell this software?
I’m fine with that, wanna keep it out of public hands, nut up and sell your stuff
Still difficult in that example. Bossa can’t force the other company to do anything.
Imagine buying a T-shirt, and the manufacturer, without your prior knowledge or consent, could somehow render your shirt unwearable – that’s effectively what’s happening here. The only “gray area” might be that ultimately you don’t own a copy of the game anyway (since digital copies are effectively leased – a whole other issue unto itself), but regardless: more power to this lawsuit. Seriously shady shit getting tacitly accepted lately.
“Imagine everyone moves to electric vehicles, gas stations close down, and people start sueing Ford for releasing a gas car 30 years ago” is the better analogy.
What a weird case of simping
I’m all for improving consumer rights in the videogame industry, but I’m more than a little amazed anyone’s willing to put up a fight for The Crew of all things.
He’s rather critical of the game. He just really hates when games are lost forever.
This is all well and good, but what of all those MMORPGs that got shut down?
The Crew is a bizarre game to do this kinda treatment for, since the sequel is very similar to the first, less terrible crime syndicate story, more planes and other nonsense. It’s also pretty middling, car handling is really weird, and the lack of rear view mirrors looks pretty weird nowadays.
I’m guessing it’s car licensing that’s causing the shutdown. It’s what happened to Forza Horizon 1 and 2. If that is the case, this game isn’t going to get open sourced ever. Also: why didn’t this guy go after Microsoft to make them playable again?
Horizon can be played offline. When Microsoft bites the dust, I can still pop in a Forza horizon 2 DVD into my 360 and play it.
Realistically, when Microsoft bites the dust, both your FH2 DVD and your 360 will have stopped working decades ago.
It’s because MMOs were sold as subscriptions (most of the time) so they’re legally covered in being allowed to end their service. The crew however was sold as a full game with no subscription. They didn’t make it clear that the game could cease to exist even though you paid for it outright.
Sadly, I feel like a lawsuit line this won’t have the benefit we’re all hoping for (open sourcing on closure of services) but will instead just make all subsequent games free-to-play, which would make them more exempt to the same scrutiny. And we’re already seemingly heading that way too, warts and all.
For the last few years, most MMOs have been, or become, Free to Play, with (a lot of) microtransactions. The only subscription MMOs I can think of off the top of my head are FFXIV, WoW and Eve. Then you have the buy to play, with no sub (or optional sub, but not required to play), games like New World and Elder Scrolls Online. Making the vast majority F2P.
All of those games can become EOL and be removed from sale for any number of reasons, and they’ll have the same terms in the EULA that the crew would have. There is literally nothing different legally between The Crew and something like Elyon. Both were paid for up front, no subscription with some optional microtransactions.
Since legallly there is nothing different between all these live service games, it makes this youtubers campaign all the more odd. Car Licensing is notoriously well enforced, so why is this guy, a Half Life youtuber of all things, thinking he can go after Ubisoft on this when it’s pretty obvious that it’s the license agreements that are the likely cause of the shutdown.
Since it’s free they were never sold to you as product, their asses are covered on this one, you can make an arguement for Elder Scrolls Online, Black Desert Online (I bought this one, I have the receipt to prove it) and Guild Wars 2 since they use the b2p model with an optional subscription. Car licensing can only prevent ubisoft to sell the game, it’s not required for them to shut it down and render your copy unusable.
Now also make it illegal to sell physical copies of games that need day 0 patches/downloads to make them work.
I still kick on my original nes every now and then. 20 years from now when you dig out your old copy of borderlands 3 and there’s no longer a download available, you think you’ll get to play through the game?
. 20 years from now when you dig out your old copy of borderlands 3 and there’s no longer a download available, you think you’ll get to play through the game?
Yes, games often come with bugs, but a game that comes out unplayable or unbeatable on disk is extremely rare.
This is, of course, discounting the fact that as part of community preservation efforts, updates are preserved along with the games.
They aren’t extremely rare at all, bro.
There are extremely few games that are not playable or beatable without being patched. You can list the ones you know if you like
