But what does Pirate Software think of the situation? That's what I really need to know.
His dad worked at Blizzard, y'know.
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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Who will win?
One million angry gamers, or one little bribey boy?
We shall see.
To think all of this happened because one person really liked The Crew of all things.
Entire Linux gaming happened because one guy wanted to play Nier Automata on it. Don't underestimate some one guys.
Source?*
*In a "I'm interested in the story" sense rather than a "PROVE IT" sense.
According to this source the guy is called Philip Rebohle and he wrote a translation layer called DXVK that lets you run DirectX stuff on Vulkan.
DXVK was the last (IMO) major key in enabling proper Linux gaming.
Here's a short interview with the creator of DXVK.
Prior to this Wine was able to run some simple Windows applications, but games (which heavily rely on GPU acceleration) lagged quite a bit behind since DirectX is a Windows exclusive graphics API. Instead, on Linux we have Vulkan which is similarly feature rich, but an open standard. DXVK translates DirectX API calls to Vulkan, which GPUs on Linux can understand, similar to how Wine translates Windows syscalls to the Linux alternatives. Even though Wine existed for a long time, DXVK's development started quite a bit later.
I'm about to cry
Games should be required to have reproducible source for all components (client and server) sent to whatever the European equivalent of the Library of Congress is, to be made available in the Public Domain whenever the publisher stops publishing them.
This is one of the points that a French MEP brought up during the meeting. If this is pursued it could as a side effect open up space for digital "orphaned works" which would be fantastic.
It's not even an issue of "orphaned works." Every work becomes Public Domain eventually; that's the point of it.
In fact (according to originalist American sensibilities, at least) the entire point of copyright law is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts" (i.e., to enrich the Public Domain) to begin with! Allowing works to be copyrighted (essentially, borrowed back from the Public Domain temporarily so the creator can profit, thus incentivizing the creation of works) is merely a means to that end, not some sort of moral entitlement.
Not only games. Goes for all electronics as well.
Sick of supporting your 'old phones'? You're required by law to disclose all binary blobs as source code to let somebody else pick it up the slack.
Feeling like bricking old Kindles? Fine, but users must be able to install alternative OS on your old device.
Not providing software updates for your TV anymore after you removed features? That's your right, but so is the right of the effing device owner to install something else on it.
And it's not just consumer electronics. (caugh John Deere caugh).
I like it. If the publisher no longer sells/supports the full game as purchased, then they no longer to get to complain about people pirating it.
I don't like instantly throwing it public domain, that's the wrong license to use. I think Creative Common CC BY-NC-SA would be more appropriate. (Credit the original, no commercial use, and any modified/redistributed version must follow same license).
This will prevent xbox from taking all the old PlayStation games, stealing an emulator, and selling them under game pass to people that don't know those games are freely available.
I'd also add the game must be available as an individual 1-time purchase. If it's only available as a bundle or subscription service (like game pass), that doesn't count.
The Public Domain isn't a "license." It's simply the default state of a work when copyright is no longer being enforced for it. I'm saying that copyright should immediately expire for any published work that is no longer being made available by some entity with the right to do so (phrased carefully so as not to break copyleft licenses, BTW) and that anyone should be able to get it directly from a government archive of all Public Domain works.
As for selling Public Domain works, that's always been allowed and I don't see any particular reason to change it, provided that regulatory capture doesn't result in the public archive being the digital equivalent of hidden away in a disused lavatory in a locked basement with a sign saying "beware of the leopard." If the free option is prominent and well-known but you want to pay money for some reason anyway (in theory, because the person selling it added value in some way), that's your business.
I'm going to hard disagree on NC.
If the original publisher decided to dump their IP, and someone else has a good enough idea to make money off of it, they absolutely should.
BY-SA gets you the same vibe and encourages the new IP to keep making new content and allows others to do the same.
I agree, if an IP is abandoned then someone else should be allowed to do something with it.
For this post I was talking about the game that was already made and distributed, not just the idea or characters.
I'll use Mario Kart 1 for example, if Nintendo doesn't sell that game anymore, then the game is made publicly available.
If the IP is still in use that A) doesn't exclude Mario Kart 1 form becoming available, B) doesn't allow competitors to sell modern Mario Kart games (trademark) and C) prevents someone from taking a 30 year old game and just reselling it on their store.
IPs are much more messy to handle, as it's less a final product and more of a concept. Creative rights should stay with the creative people not a publisher.
If Nintendo decides to drop Mario, but the actual creator of Mario still wants to work with a different publisher, they should be able to do that before the IP becomes freely available for anyone to take over.
Nah, if the publisher stop selling a game, just make him to release a docker image for the server and the game patched to use such docker image. No source code needed (even if it would be nice).
Pardon my French but would you please kindly fuck off with "container solutions"? Cheers.
Not sure about public domain. Perhaps a non-commercial license would be best - this way fans can carry on the work, but others wouldn't be tempted to profit off of the IP.
The original duration of copyright was 14 years. Why should we legally stop anyone else from making a knockoff?
If a studio is using the same base architecture for online services as a game that is currently active, you want developers to share their current live architecture and code?
Yes.
If they don't like it, they can keep supporting their older stuff. Or better yet, rethink their decision to impose a "live service" business model now that they'd actually be held accountable for it, and consider going back to giving users the means to run their own servers.
(Also, by the way, "security by obscurity" is bullshit. If disclosing their server-side code leads to exploits, that just means they're fucking incompetent. I have no sympathy at all.)
Yes.
If they don’t like it, they can keep supporting their older stuff. Or better yet, rethink their decision to impose a “live service” business model now that they’d actually be held accountable for it, and consider going back to giving users the means to run their own servers.
Nobody can be forced to keep supporting their older stuff forever, assuming it is even possible.
There are solutions to keep a server online or to give ways to run a local server (a docker image comes to mind), but you cannot think a company will keep a server active after years to just make few dozens happy with all the implications.
I agree on the spirit of the initiative, but I cannot really see how it can carried out: my fear is that some types of game will not be sold anymore in EU: no legally sold copies, no legal obligation to keep the server online forever. And in this case we all lose something.
(Also, by the way, “security by obscurity” is bullshit. If disclosing their server-side code leads to exploits, that just means they’re fucking incompetent. I have no sympathy at all.)
Disclosing server-side code can leads to exploits, true, but I would not call them incompetent: they are not foolproof or omniscent.
Nobody can be forced to keep supporting their older stuff forever, assuming it is even possible.
There are solutions to keep a server online or to give ways to run a local server (a docker image comes to mind), but you cannot think a company will keep a server active after years to just make few dozens happy with all the implications.
No shit, Sherlock. That's why the tenable and preferred option is for them to give it up once they're done profiting so that the public can do it themselves instead.
I agree on the spirit of the initiative, but I cannot really see how it can carried out: my fear is that some types of game will not be sold anymore in EU: no legally sold copies, no legal obligation to keep the server online forever. And in this case we all lose something.
LOL, nothing but FUD. Game publishers made plenty of profit before they came up with this "live service" bullshit, and they'll continue to make plenty of profit even after we stop allowing them to screw over everyone too.
In case you weren't aware of it, the only reason we grant copyright to creative works in the first place is to encourage more works to be created and eventually enrich the Public Domain. If the works never reach it (because the publisher is using technological means to destroy it before copyright expires) then they have broken that social contract and don't deserve to be protected by it in the first place.
These live service game publishers are trying to eat their cake and have it too, and they simply aren't entitled to that. The fact that they've been getting away with this theft from the Public Domain is unjust and must stop.
Wup, there's management. Let me guess what they're talking about.
"You, sir, are mad! Dinosaurs are reptiles! They must be cold-blooded!"
"Now, you listen and you listen good: Birds are one of the closest living relatives to dinosaurs we have. And I don't need to tell you they're all warm-blooded."
"Do you know how difficult it is to maintain thermostasis for an animal so large? They're cold-blooded, I tell you!"
"Let me tell you something. There's evidence to suggest that Velociraptors had feathers. Feathers! What does that tell you?"
It's amazing that Ross Scott has gone from delivering the funnies to absolute morale boosting for the gaming media.
This is what a honest lobby looks like
Hopefully we wont see bad actors just pivot to f2p and have a few microtransactions to actually unlock the games.
Helpful tip. Don't buy trash games that do that.
Some mobile games already work that way where they claim to be f2p but it‘s just a demo of the actual game with ingame purchases for the other levels. However annoying, it‘s not flat out scamming customers like shutting down servers months after release is. Perhaps devs should still be required to label it as a demo just in case though.
I played and enjoyed a game based on this principle (Dreadnought). I ran out of bullshit I wanted to buy to keep the game going. Also the whole community was probably a few hundred people at the end. It eventually shut down. Not that there would be much to do solo but fan-run servers would've been cool.
Dreadnought was awesome, unfortunate that it wasn't populare ...
I absolutely loved that game. I was really bummed when they shut it down but like you said there was maybe a handful of people that played it. Reminded me of EVE Online without all the bullshit.
As long as it’s still a one time purchase, with no clear mention of an end of life timeline, that is just buying a game with extra steps. They mention microtransactions and things like paid DLC in their plans too.
I don't think that would work. They could lock their games behind a monthly subscription. At that point you're paying for temporary access with clearly defined end date and thus the game getting shut down later is no longer fraudulend. At that point you just have to not be a dumbass and rent a game instead of buying one.
Netflix has already experimented with putting original games behind a monthly subscription and then killing the games.
I can see other companies trying this too.
To elaborate a bit on the "unlocking" of the game: It could be that you get "1000% more exp gain permanently" or "gain a crucial resource from every mission permanently, which is usually locked behind a daily mission", a one off microtransaction that makes the game playable in a sense – but it's not "purchasing" the game, its just an account feature. I hope these arguments won't hold, but I always feel that bad actors find ways to bypass rules ...
Wouldn't work. If SKG succeeds, it would be illegal shut down the game and thus invalidate all these permanent transactions (no matter how "micro" they are) people paid for.
🤞