Ok, we’ve had this topic on the live twice now, and I’ve decided to pick it up as an article, simply because we can’t get every single detail of this issue out in a few segments.
Before I dive into the main point of this recap, I’ll have to apologize in advance, as we did miss a particular topic we had intended to include this last week, and that is the controversy surrounding Krafton, Unknown Worlds, and Subnautica 2. Fortunately for us, the situation is continuing to change and shift, and there’s even more to cover in it this week, should the team deem it a worthy topic to cover.
Now on to the main event: Stop Killing Games, PirateSoftware, Thor being a basket case, and Ross Scott being a class act. Featuring cameos from PewDiePie, JackSepticEye, Notch, Asmongold, and quite a few more major names.
This saga began with the Ubisoft game The Crew, a racing game that had gained a ridiculous amount of attention and traction during it’s lifetime. Ubisoft then prepared to launch the game The Crew 2. In preparation for it, they decided to sunset, and shutdown, The Crew. What they hadn’t accounted for was the fans of the game to absolutely and completely rebel against this decision, which was compounded by the actions that Ubisoft took.
I know what you’re thinking: “Wait, you mean that you’re placing the blame for this movement on Ubisoft? How can you be so sure?” I’ll tell you, dear reader, although it’s more than just Ubisoft, they lit the fuse. The fault lies at the feet of Corporate Software Developers.
Ubisoft decided to shutdown all of the servers for The Crew. They intentionally designed the game to always be online, to require check-ins with the game servers, and to not have any offline assets. Once the servers were offline, the game ceased functionality. “What about physical copies?” Oh, about that… The physical copies only contained the game demo. Pretty scummy, right? But wait… there’s more…
Ubisoft went into every user’s game catalog and removed The Crew from everybody’s game library, no matter the platform they purchased it on. Complete erasure of the game from modern gaming, complete game-kill.
Now, this was the catalyst, but not the entire situation. Over the last decade, actually the last two, one could say, online gaming has become more and more prevalent, and entertainment as a whole has shifted in delivery dynamics. Physical media has slowly been pushed to the wayside, and gradually entertainment companies have pushed for media to be hosted on the cloud as a digital download, or streaming to be utilized as a delivery method.
The reality, dear reader, is that Entertainment as an industry wants to become a subscription service, and Corporate Gaming wants you to pay them monthly instead of one time product purchases.
At any rate, this sparked Ross Scott’s call to action. The man sat down and articulated an entire proposal for legislation and petitioned to stop killing games. In this initiative, that you can read here, he details his proposal that should a company or corporation wish to sunset their product for any reason, that they need to have an action plan that they will lay out publicly to leave the game in some form of playable state. The product can then continue to be used after the company has stopped supporting it. He further outlines that this does not mean that the company must continue hosting said product at their expense, or that they must continue to update the product, only that they game can continue to function without their involvement once they sunset it.
One of the major draws of this initiative is the rather large movement out there that supports game archival and preservation, and the retro-gaming crowd. This is a growing market in recent years, and many have voiced their support of this initiative from the archival and retro perspectives.
Ross Scott has also pointed to several MMOs that have shut down over the last two decades, that still are out there and running, such as Ultima Online, Phantasy Star, City of Heroes, and even World of Warcraft private servers. This is an agreeable outcome, I would imagine, but we’ll get to the detractors next.
Even games from the 80s and 90s are still playable, but in the last 5 years, several have been taken completely offline, and rendered unplayable across the board. Not even 20 years ago, games like Halo 2 had multiplayer that did not rely on dedicated servers to function, but rather, relied on the player’s consoles to host the multiplayer sessions online. It would be reasonable for game devs to push a patch that would point the server functionality to the connection peers of multiplayer sessions like they did back in the early days of XBox Live. Multiplayer for each franchise does not need to die, just because the game devs decide they’re not making enough money.
The other noteworthy point of this, and one that had been previously voiced on the show, is that this is a European Union initiative, and not one that includes the US… yet… After all, what laws affect international businesses, will 99% of the time, also affect the business practices in the US. Shortly after a passage of a law in the EU, the US will follow up with something addressing it on their side. This matter is going to make big waves in gaming, no matter which way the chips fall.
Shortly after this initiative launched, there seemed to be little to no interest in the petition. It did, however, gain the attention of one somewhat notorious indie game developer, PirateSoftware AKA Thor. Pirate Software was founded by Jason Thor Hall, who also created a YouTube and Twitch Channel by the name of Pirate Software. He was once a Blizzard developer–though, his storied carrier was much less illustrious than he would have you think. From the words of other Blizz employees, he was rarely much more than an entry level Blizzard grunt. Thor often claims that he left the AAA gaming scene because he did not like the direction that AAA gaming was going. His resume implies that he didn’t have the skills to make it, and what got him his placements in the industry was tied more to his parental connections than to his own personal achievements.
Thor would muddy the waters around #StopKillingGames, claiming that their Magnum Opus was to stop devs from producing live service games, and forcing them, through lawmaking, to never pull the plug on MMOs, and so on. He made a couple of hour long videos addressing the movement’s publications, reading them live. It is clear that Thor either 1) has poor reading comprehension, or 2) was intentionally presenting the information incorrectly to misdirect his fanbase into a different point of view.
Ross responded, breaking down each of Thor’s points and citing, with clear evidence and text citations from his own published petition, disproving each and every single point that Thor came up with to reject the initiative.
This prompted a very swift backlash against Pirate Software and Thor, causing both of his streaming channels to tank in subscribers and followers, averaging an overnight loss of 10k viewers, causing a total loss of over 100k in short order.
The back and forth between the two caught the attention of PewDiePie and JackSepticEye pretty early on. Both YouTube legends supported Stop Killing Games and Ross, which began the bull run to over a million signatures on the petition, less than a month and a half before the deadline.
Around this same time, Thor made claims that he was being harassed, doxed, and sent death threats. Every content creator involved in this back and forth, including Ross, has openly disavowed this behavior. Thor never provided receipts that I have seen. That said, he left his studio, Pirate Software, and I quote “I hope you get everything you asked for, but none of what you wanted” as a closing statement to the Stop Killing Games movement.
Additionally, several AAA game developers have made opposition statements (color me shocked) citing an undue increase in cost of development and strain should this initiative see success. But what this really means is that studios wouldn’t be able to turn the gaming industry into a subscription service, should the initiative see their desires met.
Most recently, YongYea covered this topic, supporting Ross’ initiative, as has Asmongold. Most everybody at this point knows that when Asmond speaks, the internet shakes in response. It doesn’t matter if it is a good take or a bad take, he’s just that big of a creator these days. Both of these men’s words drove the petition over the million signature mark, and it’s been sitting there for more than a week at over 1.3 million, enough padding to ensure that even if fake signatures are found and dismissed, the petition will be fine when presented to the EU lawmakers.
Now you may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Notch yet… That’s because he only recently commented. He replied to the response of the AAA game devs:
“If buying a game isn’t owning the game, then pirating the game is not stealing.” He voiced this common phrase that has been out there since the CEO of Ubisoft made the boneheaded comment stating that gamers need to get used to not owning their games.
Notch didn’t stop there, though, and continued: “Gamers need to start hosting their own private game servers again, like we used to back in the day.”
I can’t say that I disagree. Notch has been pretty controversial since he sold off Minecraft, but you can’t deny the validity of these comments in this case.
Let us know what you think, Laggin’ Out Legion! Comment below, and voice your opinion.
Other Topics Discussed This Live…
- HIRO: IT TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH, KOTAKU, NOBODY WILL MISS YOU
- CONGRATULATIONS, KEITH DAVID!
- HIRO REVIEWS JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH
- CHEIFTAIN V INDIANA JONES
- UNKNOWN WORLDS STUDIO MAKES A BONEHEAD MOVE (OR FIVE)
- LAGGINOUT MINUTE: DREW STRUZAN RETIRES AND YOUTUBER CHALLENGES 69 YO DAD TO DARKSOULS!
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