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The recent stopkillinggames campaign has been my first exposure to UK petitions.
Link to petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071
Link to campaign: stopkillinggames.com
Link to the campaigner’s video
the response just shows they have no idea what they’re talking about. demanding that games are “playable” in perpetuity is completely unreasonable and probably not even what anyone is asking for.
Why is that unreasonable?
If I buy a chair or a dvd, I can expect to last as long as I don’t break it or let it degrade too much.
The only things that seem to make this apply to software are planed hardware obsolescence, and needing to connect to the company’s server with no option to host your own.
Because a game is not a chair, nor is it a DVD.
Any piece of software requires periodic maintenance to keep it functional as operating systems, drivers etc. run away from it in compatibility. Demanding that any game developer spends money in perpetuity to keep a game “playable” is completely absurd which anyone understands if they just think about it for a second.
This becomes even worse when you take examples like you mentioned, where the entire software is built around the premise of connecting to centrally controlled servers.
What do you suggest should be done for example if World of Warcraft is permanently shut down, should Blizzard be forced to release the entire source code? Should they be forced to spend man hours to release something publicly that was never meant to be released? Should they be forced to document it?
When you buy a game that requires a connection to play, you’re not even buying a game, you’re buying a service. If you don’t want to agree to the terms that probably already outline this pretty clearly, don’t buy the game.
As nice as it would be to force companies to open source their code when they stop selling it, it will never happen because there are too many implications that are completely untenable, one of which is trademarks.
I can go to Google and log in to free email. I can create word documents and spreadsheet in google docs. I can learn AI with Google projects. I can create unlimited private repos on GitHub, play lots of games on steam for free. I can download Winamp from old versions .com for free. I can get a Linux distro for nothing off servers. I can use a freevpn, watch YouTube for free.
Literally handing over game servers to an authorised community to run or supporting games forever actually is possible in the modern day.