It’s amazing what a difference a little bit of time can make: Two years after kicking off what looked to be a long-shot campaign to push back on the practice of shutting down server-dependent videogames once they’re no longer profitable, Stop Killing Games founder Ross Scott and organizer Moritz Katzner appeared in front of the European Parliament to present their case—and it seemed to go very well.
Digital Fairness Act: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act/F33096034_en
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.
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).
And the private encryption keys they use for DRM and bootloader locking too. I doubt that would go over well, but it needs to fucking happen. It is the only way to truly have right to repair and digital device ownership.
Not to be pro-corporate/anti-repair…but I feel I have to play devils-advocate here…
That sounds like a legal and security nightmare.
If you just give binary blobs and no sources, there’s no way to maintain the code/device long term. As exploits continue to be found in upstream dependencies, the hardware continues to become increasingly insecure.
But if the source needs to be released…I imagine that there are heaps of proprietary code that is still in use on “active” devices even after another model goes EoL…so if that code is released, there’s instantly thousands of nefarious eyes on it.
On top of the regular zero-days that are found out when a popular product reaches EoL.
I think that’s potentially a lot to ask of users. Will your technically-challenged great-Aunt switch to post-support build when her phone hits EoL, or will hackers be able to remote control her banking app and take away your inheritance before the community can even patch it (assuming there’s enough community support out there for an 8-year-old Galaxy A-series…)
Then there could also be licensed code that would need to be released as well…hence the legal nightmare.
Not saying it’s impossible…in fact, I greatly agree with your stance and stated position. Just saying that there are some blockers on this epic.
I think the worst risk with this would be data leaks from that government database.
Security is constantly used as a guise for removing consumer rights and as someone who has been in the security industry for about 9 years I’m so sick of it.
First and foremost, everyone please understand: the user should be allowed to opt into your concept of insecurity: you do not know their threat model and you do not know their risk tolerance.
Using exploits in low level drivers in the wild is approaching APT level, and even if there were a simple one to use it’d likely be useless without some sort or local access to the device (bar some horror show bug in a Bluetooth or WiFi firmware). The risk is incredibly low for the average person. I’d put it pretty close to 0.
Wire transfers aren’t instant and for large sums (your inheritance) the banks will likely require more than just a request from your app. If the bank cares about that then they can also use the attestation APIs which would be more than sufficient, as much as I hate them.
This boogey man of the APT going after my technologically illiterate <family member> with nation state level exploits needs to die. Long ago we entered a new era of security where it just isn’t worth it to waste exploits. Especially when you can just text people and ask for their money and that works plenty well.
Security is not a valid reason to soft brick consumer devices at some arbitrary end of life date.
Agreed, but I think a framing or two is missing here, and it only applies to a subset, is that the people of the world shouldn’t have to deal with more/larger bot nets because these things haven’t been considered.
Another is just that the average great aunt isn’t opting into a concept of insecurity they’re simply ignorant to what threats there are. If it’s possible to distinguish between the two sets of people, or to maybe even bucket devices by potential threat, it might go a long away. I probably a lot wrong here, I just woke up.
But yeah, agreed security is an argument that’s hidden behind
Yes I’m not going to take some “survival of the fittest” nonsense approach to security: consumers need securely built devices and software. This is the first line of defense always: we need to make things secure and then have secure defaults according to whatever we decide “secure” means in the context of our widget or software. Then we need to provide “advanced” (or even just “ignorant but risk tolerant”) users with the ability to change the device or software to match their definition of “secure”.
The easiest example is secure boot. Your laptop likely has a key provided by your OEM and likely Microsoft’s key preinstalled. This is a valid “secure boot” path for the average user, provided your OEM and Microsoft don’t get compromised, which is APT territory. However you are provided with the ability to use a different key if you know how to do that. You have thus opted in to protecting your own private key but now you have more control over your device. This design is notably absent in phones, which is absolutely bananas and actually less secure in some threat models
You could extend examples like this if you wanted. One could easily imagine a device that does soft brick itself after the EOL date to simply protect people that are ignorant of the potential risks, but also provides an advanced user with the ability to revive it in a “less secure” state. The less advanced user will then have to either learn something new or buy a new device.
Security by obscurity is a myth
No. It’s a valid tactic but needs to be part of a much broader strategy.
Absolute security is unachievable, but it is much harder to probe a black box to understand how it works than reading its entire manual.
This is not true.
And what part, exactly, is not true?
People like to think in black and white, but you’re definitely right. Having your SSH server on port 36271 will likely stop a ton of drive by attacks because they simply won’t check it. Having it only listen on IP6 would stop almost all of them because you can’t trawl the IP6 space efficiently. These are “obscurity”, but they have real benefits. The idea that “obscurity” doesn’t help is just a meme that people love to quote because it’s a great single sentence with some nice rhyming “security by obscurity”. I assume the reason it became a meme is because tons of products fully relied on obscurity; I still see it all the time. As you said, it’s all layers.
I mean really the whole thing. Security by obscurity is no security at all. Device search engines like shodan exist and seeking out specifically insecure devices becomes easier by the day.
Absolute security is achievable, but comes with costs. If I’m willing to airgap everything and never go online, only using my own code, my device will be safe.
Black box testing is MUCH harder than white box testing, especially as, and I hate to say it, AI based security scanners become better and better at identifying flaws in source code. Having more information about your target is always the first step in penetration testing, and more information is ALWAYS better.
The difficulty of black box over white box is the reason obscurity has benefits…
You’re going to write your kernel and bootloader as well? Drivers for the hardware? And a compiler for those? And an assembler to build that bootstrap compiler? Build the CPU? The second any of these are “out of your control” you lose “absolute security”. The reason people say there is no “absolute security” is that it is not a useful concept to even consider. Since you have to approach it theoretically, you can easily end up stuck at the fact that every computation changes the state of the world and thus every computation can in some way be measured. It’s a useless endeavor even if it were theoretically possible because it leads you to absurd solutions against absurdly powerful attackers. You want security in a well defined threat model not some “absolute”.
Air gapping isn’t sufficient to prevent communication either. For example there are functional TCP stacks working over audio. Silence on the Wire is quite old at this point, but also explores esoteric exfiltration methods.
Technically, I’d say its a stalling tactic, but yeah, by no means is it a sound, comprehensive strategy.
That is not a corporations problem who’s given away the rights to his product. That is my problem as an informed user, deciding that I know well enough about what I’m doing.
Security can’t be the constant reason for EoLs. Especially when there’s no real reason beyond the company needing the next cash cow.
This isn’t for the average user. My grandma isn’t gonna learn how to flash a custom firmware on her old phone. But an informed user can.
Right now, if your device has no more support, you can use it until something else changes and it becomes incompatible. Then you have a dead box that doesn’t do anything anymore, and simply because the company decided to no longer support it.
It’s about having the OPTION to use it in the future so the community can at least try to fix it.
That implies any and all FOSS project should be getting exploited constantly, especially those being run by a community of hobbiests, and that is simply not the case.
There’s been a notable uptick in supply chain attacks coming from the odd FOSS dependency.
Fortunately the FOSS environment as a whole, ironically, reflects the best aspects of a “free market” in the capitalist sense. If a package is no longer maintained, or poorly maintained, or the maintainer is a douche/Russian asset, it forks and many users jump ship to the newer package.
Users have full transparency into how the sausage is made. Everybody does.
So if exploitable code is discovered, it can just as well be discovered first by a defensive researcher (non-inclusive term: white-hat) or offensive researcher (black-hat).
And if an offensive researcher discovers it first, they have a choice:
Submitting bad code to a project in itself though. Some new user with no reputation is going to be heavily scrutinized putting a PR on a large/popular project. And even with a good reputation, you’re still putting the exploit code out there in the open and hoping none of the reviewers or maintainers catch it.
Uh, sorry to comment besides the subject, but could someone explain why white-hat is non-inclusive? I’m not trying to argue it is not, but I had not heard that and I can’t find any answers by searching about it
There’s been a push in IT (and I assume other industries as well) towards inclusive-language.
Part of that is moving away from phrasing that has non-technical historical connotations…like using “leader/follower” or “primary/secondary” instead of “master/slave”.
But another part is also getting away from catagorizing things as good/bad on a white/black spectrum. We no longer blacklist things, we denylist or blocklist them. Likewise we no longer whitelist things…they get allowlisted or permitlisted. We don’t have white-hat/black-hat hackers…we have defensive/offensive, or blue-team/red-team.
Afaik it’s still okay to refer to plugs and prongs as female and male, as that is referring to biological sex moreso than gender. But yet, people gasp when I refer to plugs that have a sheath over them as “uncircumcised”.
Aahhh, yes of course, the classic white-good evil-black problem. Thanks for the answer!
They are exploited constantly. And fixed constantly.
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.
Copyright and patent are a compromise.
Society is iterative. Every work of art or technology is significantly based on prior work. So if you go to the extremes, where “I intented it, it is mine forever and passed to my children” society stalls as technoligarchs never license their patents. If you go full blyatski and outlaw personal ownership, you get Soviet Russia, a nation whose contribution to global culture has been a few ballets, some long depressing books and precisely one video game, because nobody is given incentive or even opportunity to create anything, so they don’t.
Give us a full copy of your work, enough information to make a full copy of it. This will be held in trust by the government. We will give you full, exclusive right to monetize your invention for a couple decades, and the copy stored with the government is the stake in your claim, the proof you need to win your lawsuit. After those couple decades are over, the idea becomes public property. Our inventors get to make a living, society gets to progress.
Copyright has gone cancerous, with terms lengthened far beyond a human lifetime to benefit major corporations and not individual creators. We need to fix that.
To be fair, Soviet Russia probably has a bunch more stuff than that; we just don’t know about it because it didn’t get translated and distributed to the West. The “Dr. Livesey Walk” meme is from a Soviet cartoon, for example.
I can only assume artists got funded by government grants or something, IDK. It probably did result in a lot less of it being created than in the West, though.
(Also, I think the ballets and books you’re alluding to might’ve been pre-Soviet?)
Anyway, I completely agree that copyright and patents are a compromise, and that the pendulum has swung way too far to the side of rights-holders at the moment.
(I was thinking of the likes of Shostakovich, born 1906 died 1975, but he did symphonies, not ballets? I think of Soviet performance art and I smell orchestra pit.)
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.
This would be the only type creative work that would be burdened like this.
I find it paradoxical that we’re trying to save the gaming industry by burdening (mostly) small developers. Larger studio will no longer be able to abuse the system, but complying will be easy for them.
For indies and small to medium studios though? They struggle enough as it is. Adding the burden of compliance on top is not a great idea.
If we could legally categorize studios in a meaningful way, and therefore target the big ones and leave indies alone, I would support such an idea.
It’s the only type of creative work that needs to be burdened like this, as all other types of works have always been “self-contained” (for lack of a better term) with no continued reliance on the publisher after the purchase.
Ditto with older games, BTW: you’ll notice that this “Stop Killing Games” movement didn’t start until the game industry started using tactics like DRM and “live service” architectures to forcibly wrest control away from the gamers. Before that, people could just keep playing their cartridges and CDs and even digital downloads, and hosting multiplayer themselves using the dedicated server program included with the game, in perpetuity and everything was just fine.
The industry got fucking greedy and control-freakish, and this is the inevitable and just attempt for society to hold it accountable.
I find it weird that you’re making what seems to me to be a strawman argument about “burdening (mostly) small developers,” as I’d say they are mostly not the ones trying to do this bullshit where they try to retroactively destroy art and culture because it stops being profitable enough. Indie studios typically don’t design their games to use publisher-operated servers with ongoing costs attached in the first place, let alone to self-destruct when they shut off!
Releasing source code isn’t without extra work. My point is, unless you make sure to specifically target the companies abusing gamers, you’re going to mainly hurt the part of the industry that is not the problem.
There’s no need to release any source code if your game doesn’t require an internet connection to your server to run in the first place.
Do you think only big studios make games that need an internet connection? Or why is this comment relevant?
The important part is “to your server”.
Mostly big studios/publishers put “always online” requirements in single player games for a start. And even if it’s not only big studios, those requirements can be omitted without effort (if anything it reduces effort to not put them in).
Multiplayer games are a different beast, but I’d argue that yes, small studios rarely make games that exclusively rely on the developer’s own servers for multiplayer. That is because they are smaller studios and server architecture for a multiplayer game is a big investment for them. Even if I’m wrong there, future games can be designed with the legislation in mind (this would not affect existing games retroactively) and don’t have to keep using centralized server architecture for everything.
Again, I never disagreed with the issue: (90%) solo games requiring an internet connection disappearing suddenly is a major issue in the gaming industry
I disagree with the solutions people want for it, which I find shortsighted.
And yes, such a legislation would force to rethink some designs, and force using one over the other not because it fits the final product better, but because it does not have the additional pressure of compliance. And that, I think, makes it a poor solution.
What I’d like to see is something similar to minimal warranty in the EU. So, a game has to provide X years of playability, clearly shown on the product page/box. They can guarantee longer if they wish. They then have a legal obligation to keep it online. Add to it a mandatory warning X years before shutdown.
Then the consumer is no longer deceived, and the studio has less pressure to comply with EoL requirements.
And why not make releasing the source code a viable way to comply with these requirements, and have a special label for “forever playable” games, either fully singleplayer or through code release.
Just don’t force every studio to release their codebase.
It’s not “extra” if it’s a legal requirement.
More to the point, I’m not saying it has to be licensed as Free Software or that it has to be made immediately public. I’m saying that a copy needs to be sent to a government archive, regardless of how messy it is, so that the government can make it public later when the company doesn’t care anymore.
This shows me you don’t work anywhere near software. It is not as easy as you think it is.
Don’t try being reasonable, the SKG people don’t understand reason.
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.
Look, I don’t really like container, I would not suggest they are the solution for everything, but in some cases they have their use.
I see this as one of the cases where a container can have a use. You can also use a virtual machine if you want, the point is to have something that can be run even if the original OS or libraries needed are not available anymore because they are too old or have some incompatible changes, which in the case of old game server can happen, especially if you want to keep it running for many years after the release.
I firmly disagree that this would be a good use case. Allowing this kind of container shenanigans would introduce more incompatibilities than it solves.
Why ? Any technical reason beside your dislike for containers, in this specific scenario ?
Remember that we are talking about software that probably is built with older version of the OS as target, using older version of tools and libraries. The source code could not be compilable anymore without a porting, which can be not that easy.
It depends on your objective.
If the goal is to be able to continue to play a game which require a server, having the publisher to release a container solve your problem, you just run it and you can continue to play the game, which if I am not wrong is the ultimate goal of all the Stop Killing Games initiative.
If the publisher only give you the server binary (and all the dependencies) there is way to be sure that the next OS update does not break something, assuming you are able to run it in the first place.
The source code you say ? Fine, when the copyright end, after 70 years, they will release it in the public domain, until then… good luck, laws are on their side.
Because jailing a container is even harder than jailing an application. “But a container is already jailed” you’ll say - I don’t trust any jail that I can’t choose & configure myself.
How about: document the requirements for the execution environment (in industry this is called an interface definition document), based on which the gaming community can then generate their own container configs if they like, but no one has to run stuff in a container.
Yes! I hate Docker and containers. Just let me install the fucking app on my machine!
Oh yes, You can.
Then your game server will stop to work at the next os update and you will not have any chance to fix it thanks to some incompatible change in some part of the OS or libraries.
Yeah! Um… what is that again?
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
If no such thing exists, they should create it.
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.)
Set the launch arguments of any Unreal game to “-log” and get back to me on how many lines of log types LogEOS* it spits out before the main menu loads. That usually interfaces SteamOSS, so if there are a low amount of EOS logs they will show up as LogSteamOSS. That is the best hint I can give.
It sounds like you’re trying to “hint” at the idea that a bunch of games are using Epic Online Services and/or the Online Subsystem Steam API associated with it, but beyond that I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
If you’re trying to obliquely cite that as some kind of counterexample where it’s reasonable for a game’s source code to remain secret just because part of it is that library, then no, it fucking isn’t. I can’t tell whether EOS has the source code available along with the rest of the Unreal engine or not, but if not, it ought to be and IDGAF about any excuses Epic might have for not making it so.
If you are so hell bent on being right or knowing the answer. You could sign all of the Steam, Epic, and SDK NDAs to get access to all of the documentation.
LOL, what? You’re the one trying to make a point here, not me. Spit it out. I’m not gonna do your fucking work for you!
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.
Disclosing server-side code can leads to exploits, true, but I would not call them incompetent: they are not foolproof or omniscent.
If you aren’t supporting it anymore, then you aren’t allowed to maintain exclusive access to it anymore. When you stop supporting it, then you now need to free the code and let other people run their own servers. That does not cost you money.
If you don’t want to do that, then you have to keep supporting it. It’s that simple. Your right to maintain exclusive access to the source code of the software you are providing to people for money, is contingent upon you keeping the software in an operable state. If you are no longer capable of or no longer want to keep the software in an operable state, then you no longer get to keep the software private. This is not rocket science.
If there are third-party libraries you are not allowed to release by contract, that’s fine don’t release them. Nobody is saying the source code you release has to be fully functional and have an easy-to-use build system, people will figure out ways to disable those functions or replace them with alternatives. Cleaning up that kind of legal mess before hand or not getting into it in the first place would be kind of you to do, and polite, but I don’t expect it from a greedy miserable corporation. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be that bothered if they didn’t have to release source code at all. What I particularly care about is them losing the right to send copyright-takedowns when people try to share ways to make their own fucking game work. That’s the bare minimum acceptable standard required here. If you are not selling the game or supporting the game, then you do not have the right to shut down the people voluntarily doing it for you.
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.
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.
As I said, it is my fear, I don’t speak for anyone else than me, if we are discussing about something it is not that every doubt or fear I can have is automatically FUD.
I know game publishers made a lot of money back at the time, but I am afraid that this “live services” bullshit was added to solve a problem: back at the time to play with your friends means setting up a lan party, which means to move PC, monitors and everything else (aside to have the space to do it). It was funny but had its limits.
Initially live services solved this.
And in the end we gamers are partially responsible for this situation: if we buy games that only work with a live service game publishers will continue to make them because they will make money from them. Stop playing these games and they will not make them anymore.
Nobody think that a car manufacturer need to continue to have spare parts for cars it don’t sell anymore, even if they are still on the roads (Actually, here there are laws here that require manufacturers to ensure the availability of replacement parts for ten years after a car model is discontinued), why game publisher should do this ?
Which is an interesting point. Copyright lasts how many years ? 70 after the death of the author ? So as long as the copyright do not expires, they are within their rights.
Did this means that they are force to maintain it when no one pay for it anymore ? No.
No, they simply don’t want to maintain something that do not even pay for itself, and I undestand it.
Removed by mod
Why are you lying about what I wrote? I never claimed the publisher should be forced to maintain it forever.
What part of sending the source to the government archive did you not understand?
And then what? Why are we storing these old games. Move on with your lives. Art doesnt last forever, its not supposed to. But you want publishers to put in extra effort to preserve them, and then have governments put in effort to preserve them, apparently forever.
Its funny how its the people playing the games who want them preserved forever rather than the people making the games, isn’t it. The people making them have pointed out multiple problems with this idea, but who cards about them right?
Have you ever listened to a song older than 10 years? Ever watched a movie older than 15? Why should we try to preserve art? Just destroy everything and move on with your lives, great take you have there.
I didnt say to destroy it, let it have its natural life cycle. Live service games very clearly have a life cycle that ends. You can debate whether companies are deceptive or not, and we should fix that issue if it exists, but preserving art for arts sake is quickly a fools errand and driven by ego. If you don’t see the obvious pitfalls of curating such a collection then you simply feel bad about things dieing.
Things in life don’t last forever, accept that. Some live service games last upwards of 10 years, like the original The Crew did. Some last decades and have multiple snapshots of the games development, like WoW or Runescape. Most offline games are sold with perpetual ownership, so that’s already solved there. Save a copy of it yourself if its so important.
Sure companies should communicate this reality better but that doesnt change the fact that games will die.
The people who make the games dont give a fuck about you. Why the fuck do you think we would care about what they want?
Presumably because you want what they can provide you. Its not rocket science my guy.
Oh I see, you’re just a troll who keeps lying and spreading FUD. Reported.