I remember the "old days". That was when dialup internet was still popular and running a server usually meant it was on your 10Mb LAN. When we got DSL it was better and you could serve outside your LAN. This was also the time when games had dark red code booklets, required having a physical CD inserted or weirdly formatted floppies (sometimes a combination of these). You could get around these things and many groups of people worked hard at providing these workarounds. Today, many of these games are only playable and only still exist because of the thankless work these groups did. As it was and as it is has not changed. Many groups of people are still keeping games playable despite the "war" that corporations wage on them (and by proxy on us). Ironically, now that there is such a thing as "classic games" and people are nostalgic for what brought them joy in the past, business has leapt at this as a marketing opportunity. What makes that ironic? These business are re-selling the versions of games with the circumvention patches that the community made to make their games playable so long ago. The patches that publishers had such a big problem with and sought to eradicate. This is because the original code no longer exists and the un-patched games will not run at all on modern hardware and the copy-protections will not tolerate a virtual machine. Nothing has changed.

We can even go back as far as when people first started making books or maps that had deliberate errors so that they could track when their work was redistributed. Do the people referencing these books or maps benefit from these errors?

Why do some of us feel compelled to limit knowledge even at the cost of corrupting that knowledge for those we intend it for (and for those long after who wish to learn from historical knowledge)?

Yes!
When I read that, I immediately thought "curtailing developer choice is exactly the point."

A good book on this is: Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig

I wouldn't be surprised if the game industry isn't also using bots to inflate the numbers to make people procrastinating not feel the need to contribute and make the petition look less valid.

Eh, doubtful. The initiative got a shitton of extra coverage as it was nearing/reached the goal. They would have preferred if it went a lot slower.

Major game publishers aren't known for their good ideas.

Well when the choice is anti consumer, too fucking bad.

And I and the other guy just said that you misunderstood the original comment. You're the one who doubled down after the first guy.

Me making a sarcastic comment because you doubled down on the first guy by just posting a quote of the original comment isn't white knighting. It's just a conversation. If that's white knighting, then 95% of all internet communication is some form of white knighting. And I can think of much better words to describe the YouTube comments section (and I bet you can, too).

Anyways, hope your Monday wasn't as hot, humid, and disappointing as mine and I think everybody in this thread can agree that Larian isn't Ubisoft or Activision, the world is a better place because of that, and the "live service industry" can go suck a big one and keep shaking in their boots.

I think people are overestimating what this petition is going to do. It will likely just end up in a response from the EU listing pros and cons but effectively saying "can't really do anything about it, sorry!". It's still good, even MMOs have server software gaming companies could release if legislation forced them instead of causing fandoms to die. Games are culture. They may also be entertainment, but that's culture as well. But I wouldn't hold out hope.

"but black dynamite!....... i sell drugs to the community!"

Pretty sure it was so publishers (printing press owners) could have a guaranteed profit. Those two things (publisher and artist profits) were correlated at the time. Not so much anymore. Streaming/subscription mentality is like planned obsolescence for IP.

The same thing should apply to private property, especially in cities.

Yup, that's correct. What about it?

I think forcing MMOs to release software is a bit much.

Opted for large scaled systems. It's more than just simple software. There is a ton of infrastructure and proprietary solutioning that goes into it. That's likely used for other games as well.

It may not even be possible to release the software because it is not just software and the resources to prepare it for releasing may not be available.

However, if a game company shut down their servers, they should not be allowed to prevent other people from try to reverse engineer and make their own servers.

Single player and local games 100% though should not be allowed to be killed.