Stop Killing Games Legislation Rejected By EU

from the setback dept

Well, this is very disappointing. Over the first half of this year, we’ve talked about the resurgence of the Stop Killing Games movement, which aims to push various governments to legislate out the practice of video game publishers sunsetting their games and making them unplayable afterwards. The aims of the movement are simple: publishers can certainly sunset their games that require backend servers to work, but they should make them hostable and playable through fan-run servers if they do, should notify customers well in advance of the sunset date, or should make or alter the games so they can be played independent of the company keeping services running.

To that end, the movement managed to get enough signatures in the EU to get a parliamentary hearing, which was reported to have gone quite well. That’s why it’s a surprising to learn that the EU just ruled out issuing that kind of mandate to publishers. Instead, the EU wants this to be a voluntary process, and what it’s citing as the reason it can’t be done by mandate is breaking my brain.

The European Commission said on Tuesday it cannot require video games to remain playable ​after they are withdrawn from sale, but ‌will work with industry and consumer groups on a voluntary code of conduct for managing games’ “end of life”. The Commission said copyright and other intellectual property rules prevent it from imposing an obligation to keep games playable. It added it would ​work with ​consumer organisations ⁠and authorities to raise awareness of existing rights.

“Active enforcement of these existing consumer ​rights can also incentivise the providers ​to ⁠offer video games with longer lifespans and explore solutions for meeting consumer expectations,” the Commission said in ⁠a ​statement.

Copyright law is my reason why mandates like this should exist. Like, American law, EU copyright law offers protection for a work for the author’s life plus 70 years. After that, the work enters the public domain. Unless, that is, we’re talking about video games that require backend support, in which case it never enters the public domain and instead just vanishes into vapor. And that, I have repeatedly argued, breaks the copyright bargain entirely. In fact, it seems to me that it breaks it so completely that works like that shouldn’t even get copyright protections without rules such as exactly what Stop Killing Games is advocating for.

And this plan for publishers to do all of this voluntarily? Don’t make me laugh. The very gaming companies that the EU wants to take this sort of preservation effort on voluntarily lobbied against codifying preservation efforts. Why would they do that if they were willing to do this all voluntarily?

Finally, the point of all of this is not merely to make games playable for longer. It’s to preserve them as close to infinitely as possible. That should be the aim of any cultural output.

Stop Killing Games hasn’t commented publicly on the decision yet. I doubt the movement will take this defeat lying down, however.

Filed Under: copyright, eu, eu commission, stop killing games, video games