"You think you do, but you don't!"

People are already talking about to right to repair, so why not take advantage of that, why make life more difficult for yourself than it needs to be?

because to most people software is not a thing that can be repaired.

One of my favorite youtubers for over a decade now.

I've always thought that the only solution to this problem is being able to reverse engineering central servers and thus being effectively being able to pirate online only games.

It's an unreliable solution, because there's no guarantee that even dedicated and talented individuals will be able to reverse engineer every online server, if that game has those individuals in its customer base in the first place. The solution seems to be either legislation, which this campaign is seeking, or for the market to outright reject online-only games, which it isn't doing. I don't even really have an alternative to online-only games in some genres, like FPS for instance, to send my dollars toward instead; sports games are in a similar position, since the sports organizations all signed exclusivity contracts.

Calling one of the most polite, succinct and eager to explain themselves YouTubers a greasy used car salesman is just an automatic red flag, just unbelievably skeevy behavior from him.

Ross mentions reverse engineering towards the end of the vid so it's definitely top of mind now for the future of the initiative, bar rebooting it with someone else. Agreed that it's really the only alternative when the industry is as steeped in back alley deals and skeevy dishonest commentary as it is.

Reverse engineering the server is reverse engineering the whole game. It's going to require skilled engineers and a significant time investment. It may be possible, but not practical.

Also, the client will likely verify it is talking to a legitimate server by checking a certificate, so you may also have to hack the client too.

At some point you're better off making your own game with hookers and blackjack.

The solution is legislation, as without that, we can't expect companies to decide to release either the executables or source code for running the servers, other than a handful looking to get some attention and goodwill.

PirateSoftware is an enormous cunt.

And he makes no effort to hide it.

I genuinely don't understand why he has such a rabid fanbase.

He wasnt even a dev. He was a quality tester.

Youtube shorts.

Imagine you're a gamer, one who is interested in game Design. Your view history has games, gaming, game design, but it's also full of algotrash talking heads, scam baiters, shit slingers. You open the YouTube app on your phone, and it immediately opens to shorts, you don't remember settings that as the default but it's fine, you recognize the creator and the 45 second clip was neat. Swipe up. Next video, it Nile Blue dropping a beaker of chloroauric acid. Next video, its Chris Boden yelling about some kind of electrical infrastructure you don't understand (and that's pretty cool). Next video, Thor, speaking softly, explaining an aspect of game design that you never thought of. This one catches your attention, its in your wheelhouse, its something you're genuinely interested in. You click the profile, swipe through a few more shorts. Your algorithm is permanently damaged. Your a pirate software fan now, whether you like it or not.

Or you can use freetube and never see algotrash talking heads in your feed and never enter into this cycle.

I mean I'm tired of signing online petitions that get summarily ignored

So how is that different?

I don't understand, the arguement is whether or not they should have equated this to the right to repair movement, and then you say you think that's a bad idea but I don't understand your justification. Your justification seems to be that people don't care about software, but my if they do not care about software, then they also do not care about hardware, and therefore your comment is irrelevant.

I literally don't understand your justification for not equating game preservation to right to repair.

This is a PR issue. For some bizarre reason they decided that game preservation should be independent of the right to repair movement a movement that had fairly significant momentum by the time they started talking about games preservation. So for some insane reason they separated the two concepts in people's minds and that resulted in nobody caring.

Then they decided to whine about the fact that it was unsuccessful despite the fact that they'd essentially done everything they could to kneecap the movement.

i was on mobile so i was keeping it terse. let's see if i can expand a bit now that i'm at a keyboard.

the right to repair movement is fighting companies that deliberately make it harder to fix things, so that customers will have to use company services to repair their stuff, or buy new stuff. john deere and apple are two big players here, with cryptographical signatures built into parts that void the warranty if they don't match. this is actively adversarial behavior and should plainly be illegal. skg, on the other hand, is fighting companies that just leave their stuff to rot. they're just neglecting their product once there is no profit in it, which you can't really say about e.g. john deere; they are obligated by law to provide parts for the things they sell for x amount of years after they no longer sell the product itself.

so, the two are in different legal frameworks: right to repair is trying to stop capture of the spare parts market, while skg is fighting for there to even be a spare parts market. and that's where my previous point comes in: while machines are inherently understood to be repairable (because they used to be) and the fact that companies are trying to clamp down on that is plainly obvious, software has never been generally understood to be changeable by the end user. it has always been an enthusiast/professional-only thing.

so, equating the two may harm either
a) rtr, because of the assumption that only people with the correct credentials should have access to repair parts,
b) skg, because of the assumption that they want companies to provide support for things for up to several years like in the parts market, or
c) both, because of the assumption that they want the same thing, which, if implemented, would make neither side happy.

i'm not 100% sure i'm making sense here, because on some level i do think they share similarities. of course they do. but how do you present that to a group of amateurs (legislators) in a coherent way? i don't think you can without harming either cause.

Gaming is the biggest entertainment industry on the planet. Globally it generates more money than music and movies combined. Germany alone had an estimated 49 million players in 2022 (wikipedia), with France 45 million and Italy 36 million. Even if they were wrong by one decimal that would still make more than 12 million in those 3 countries alone.

The vast majority of European gamers are just too lazy to do anything in their own self-interest. It's embarrassing.

Judging from the "quality" output from the company, he was just a yesman telling his bosses what they wanted to hear.

This isn't "just a petition". It's a formal path to get a response from the EU commission. If it reaches the thresholds, the EU commission is forced by law to consider it. It isn't some random petition that can be filed away and never heard of again.