Petition: Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold
petition.parliament.uk
The government should update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling video games (and related game assets / features) they have already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them. We seek this as a statutory consumer right.

The original petition failed due to two issues:

  • UK government misinterpreted what the petition is about and didn’t really answered to what was being asked
  • early general elections canceled all ongoing petitions at the time

This attempt has a new, reworded petition to, hopefully, make it simple and clear enough to avoid any additional problems.

There are two thresholds for UK petitions:

  • 10 000 signatures: official government response
  • 100 000 signatures: petition will be considered for debate in Parliament

Here is a video from Ross Scott (the main organizer of the Stop Killing Games initiative) about this update.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
    4·
    13 hours ago

    One of the big problems about the original petition was that it had a focus on gaming. But this is a problem in the entire software industry, and as much as gaming is probably the more serious concern for the majority of people, it is considered by the government to be somewhat unimportant. Corporate software though has a more mature image, and so is more likely to be considered.

    Any software that is sold by a company should be open sourced if the company chooses to end support. Either because the company goes out of business or because they just decide it’s no longer profitable to continue updating the software, and yes, this does include older versions of iOS.

    A rising tide and all that.

    • Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      4·
      8 hours ago

      These petitions are limited in scope for a reason - this is a small initiative and the goal is to focus on one part of the market which started the whole thing (the initiative, not the software killing issue), as well as to limit the number of big companies that could be affected (the potential opposition).

      Sure, ideally this would expand on all software but you have to start somewhere, especially when you’re just a bunch of randos with little knowledge about law and no funds to turn it into a serious lobbying movement - one that could both get the political attention and was able to defend its stance from corporations.