The initiative is at more than 20% of the 1 million signatures necessary.
As of 4 pm CEST the numbers are:
| Country | Number of Signatures | Percentage of the theshold |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | 4,187 | 31.26% |
| Belgium | 7,116 | 48.06% |
| Bulgaria | 2,764 | 23.06% |
| Croatia | 2,527 | 29.87% |
| Cyprus | 288 | 6.81% |
| Czechia | 4,690 | 31.68% |
| Denmark | 7,684 | 77.85% |
| Estonia | 1,827 | 37.02% |
| Finland | 10,266 | 104.01% |
| France | 16,732 | 30.04% |
| Germany | 45,688 | 67.51% |
| Greece | 2,469 | 16.68% |
| Hungary | 4,509 | 30.46% |
| Ireland | 4,680 | 51.06% |
| Italy | 7,949 | 14.84% |
| Latvia | 1,569 | 27.82% |
| Lithuania | 3,109 | 40.09% |
| Luxembourg | 430 | 10.17% |
| Malta | 279 | 6.6% |
| Netherlands | 15,999 | 78.25% |
| Poland | 20,517 | 55.97% |
| Portugal | 5,019 | 33.9% |
| Romania | 7,917 | 34.03% |
| Slovakia | 2,773 | 28.1% |
| Slovenia | 1,478 | 26.21% |
| Spain | 16,261 | 39.09% |
| Sweden | 13,698 | 92.52% |
| Total | 212.425 | 21,24% |
To be successful the initiative needs to reach 1 million signatures and pass the threshold in at least seven countries.
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home/allcountries
I usually agree with Thor but on this one I probably couldn’t disagree more. Based on what he says I’d say his mindset is completely opposite to what his initiative wants to do. He essentially said he doesn’t see any value in (live service) games after they’ve reached their end of service and from that perspective I can understand how this movement is pointless or even potentially damaging. But that assumes that the (live service) game loses value after the company stops supporting it and I just don’t think that’s the case.
A lot of games continue live despite the company ending official support for them. If anyone remembers there’s a gem called Wildstar that was shut down in 2018. Despite the game being shut down and even trademark has expiring people are still running the game on private servers. People are putting in sweat and tears to make sure a game is preserved. Imagine how much easier it would be if Carbine or NcSoft had released proper tools for it. Even Vanilla WoW exists because private server did it first and Blizzard wanted to get some of that money.
And another point that Thor made how it’s not about preservation because you can’t preserve a moment in time. I think that’s a completely disingenuous argument because it feeds into FOMO. If you join WoW today you will never experience “the golden age of WoW”. Maybe another game you might be interested in is having a golden age right now, better buy into the hype. You can’t argue against preservation like this because it’s literally impossible to preserve a moment in time except in your memory so you have be at that exact place at that exact time to really experience that thing, that is FOMO at it’s purest form. That argument against preservation is an argument in favor of FOMO.
Thors points come for a belief that live service games don’t need to be preserved after official support has ended, and he views this initiative through that lens. Of course he will have issues with the initiative because he’s opposing the idea at a fundamental level. It’s like asking a racist how to be more tolerant with other races, the answer obviously is that you shouldn’t want to tolerate other races. And just like you would ignore a racist I think you should ignore what Thor has to say on this matter because anything he says is against the idea of preservation.
Well yeah. Obviously the game losses value BECAUSE it’s not being supported anymore. There’s no value in a paperweight.
Which is what this would serve to counteract, by allowing players to continue operating the servers when devs abandon them.
Nothing happens to the game code itself to devalue it when a game shuts down. The developer not running the server doesn’t actually speak to the quality of the server itself.
You’re stating it like it’s somehow objective, but it’s not. Battlefield 3 and 4 have been delisted and it’s a matter of time until EA turns off services and those games are left for dead. Battlefield 4 still averages above 1k players a month. It’s clear that EA won’t see value in keeping the light on and will turn off the services in the near future, but do you think the players will go overnight from “I want to play this game” to “This game is worthless”. Don’t you think the people playing BF4 wouldn’t want to continue playing after EA shuts down the services keeping the game running?
I think it’s pretty obvious that there are two groups who decide if a game has value or not, the company and the customers. Right now after purchasing the game the customers no longer have a say whether a game has value or not. Only the company has a say and if the company says it’s not worth it then the people who bought it just have to suck it up. And that’s the idea behind the initiative, to make it so that the company isn’t the only one who gets to decide how long you get to use the product you’ve purchased.
I think if we expanded the idea of bricking software beyond gaming, if companies could destroy any piece of software they made, you’d also be in favor of this initiative. Imagine if Microsoft could brick Windows 10 when they’ve officially stopped supporting it. Or Nvidia effectively bricking their older cards by stopping official driver support. Would you then also argue that the software has lost value and it’s acceptable behavior?
I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just stating that a broken unplayable game objectively has no value. The publisher has forced that value to 0 if they turn off their servers without support, regardless of if there was any value there before or not.
Edit: I realize we might be talking about different things when saying “stop supporting”. I meant that to mean when the servers are turned off, not when they stop releasing updates or delist it from stores.
But it’s broken and unplayable because the developer/publisher renders it unplayable and that’s where the initiative comes in. The initiative wants to make it so that if the developer/publisher wants to turn off their official services they don’t render the game unplayable.