The guy who started it and other people helping push it have also responded and talked about how Thor doesn’t entirely get it/missed the point.

The biggest thing being:

It doesn’t accidentally include live service games because the wording is vague…

It purposely includes them because they are also games that you spent money on and therefore you deserve a product out of it. If you spent money on a thing… It’s your thing… Don’t let companies tell you otherwise.

Edit: I found the comment and I’m going to paste it here

“I’m afraid you’re misunderstanding several parts of our initiative. We want as many games as possible to be left in some playable state upon shutdown, not just specifically targeted ones. The Crew was justa convenient example to take action on, it represents hundreds of games that have already been destroyed in a similar manner and hundreds more"at risk” of being destroyed. We’re not looking at the advertising being the primary bad practice, but the preventable destruction of videogames themselves.

This isn’t about killing live service games (quite the opposite!), it’s primarily about mandating future live service games have an end of life plan from the design phase onward. For existing games, that gets much more complicated, I plan to have a video on that later. So live service games could continue operating in the future same as now, except when they shutdown, they would be handled similarly to Knockout City, Gran Turismo Sport, Scrolls, Ryzom, Astonia, etc. as opposed to leaving the customer with absolutely nothing.

A key component is how the game is sold and conveyed to the player. Goods are generally sold as one time purchases and you can keep them indefinitely. Services are generally sold with a clearly stated expiration date. Most “Live service” games do neither of these. They are often sold as a one-time purchase with no statement whatsoever about the duration, so customers can’t make an informed decision, it’s gambling how long the game lasts. Other industries would face legal charges for operating this way. This could likely be running afoul of EU law even without the ECI, that’s being tested.

The EU has laws on EULAS that ban unfair or one-sided terms. MANY existing game EULAS likely violate those. Plus, you can put anything in a EULA. The idea here is to take removal of individual ownership of a game off the table entirely.

We’re not making a distinction between preservation of multiplayer and single player and neither does the law. We fail to find reasons why a 4v4 arena game like Nosgoth should be destroyed permanently when it shuts down other than it being deliberately designed that way with no recourse for the customer.

As for the reasons why think this initiative could pass, that’s my cynicism bleeding though. think what we’re doing is pushing a good cause that would benefit millions of people through an imperfect system where petty factors of politicians could be a large part of what determines its success or not. Democracy can be a messy process and was acknowledging that. I’m not championing these flawed factors, but rather saying think our odds are decent.

Finally, while your earlier comments towards me were far from civil, don’t wish you any ill will, nor do encourage anyone to harass you. I and others still absolutely disagree with you on the necessity of saving games, but I wanted to be clear causing you trouble is not something I nor the campaign seeks at all. Personally, I think you made your stance clear, you’re not going to change your mind, so people should stop bothering you about it."

and here is a different indie game dev giving his perspective on why Thor is wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_XhfY5qSbg

Yeah I voted kind of blindly, and then read how vague the proposal was.

I agree that live service games should have an end of life plan, being it providing backend binaries and/or protocols and documentation.

This all started because of The crew, a game which, as far as I am aware, advertised itself as mainly a single player and was closed because of Ubisoft shenanigans.

Maybe starting small and make sure this so advertised as single player experiences, work even after the publisher marks the game as dead, and build upon that instead of trying to go all in but idk.

I agree.

Although I have to say:

1. Everyone agrees live service and Singleplayer games are distinct and marketing should be very specific about those

2. I disagree with Thor about archiving. The game files and server files should be given to a national archive after servers are shutdown and the game in it’s core function becomes unplayable.

3. I think there is value in protecting private servers from getting sued if the official servers are shut down. That way, no one has to just eat the cost if there’s no interest in the game and fans will not get sued into oblivion.

4. I know this is only a petition, but: giving this to politicians who have no clue about games will be akin to rolling a d20 and hoping for a 19 or 20. We need to be specific about what we want and only then should we introduce it to ppl who have the power to change it. And if it stays outlined as is, I can not support it.