It's good that Ross is doing this.

Oh how I wish that I owned The Crew, so I could contribute. Thankfully I live in one of the countries with those government petitions. I'll wait for that to go live to sign it.

You wish you funded an online only game so you can then contribute to fighting against the creation of online only games?

Not a good strat.

And I believe that no author should be granted any copyright protection over their published works unless they agree that those works should eventually become public domain in exchange of the governments providing them with that protection.

I'm flabbergasted at this sentiment.

You and the others would rather spend 10+ minutes reading through and typing long responses telling people it's futile rather than donate a couple minutes to fill it out on each respective country's government website addressed to a gov't representative when it opens up.

Most of the heavy lifting has already been done. It's not as if you have to draft a whole letter, spend money on an envelope and maybe stamp, snail mail it to your representative, make signs, and protest outside in the cold. You don't even have to own the game beforehand to sign it. It's literally just leaving your contact info and clicking a button. This is one of the few times you can make your voice heard outside of your wallet in one of the easiest ways possible.

Symbolically, this is ultimately about more regulations over video game companies. If a movement like this can't get off the ground, the video games industry is going to keep up with its anti-consumer behaviour because they know they can get away with it over a bunch of lazy and cynic pushovers.

The Crew was an online only game. It's not nearly the same as the single-player games that reached the end of their life cycle only because of an online DRM validation server was taken down or it was released as a physical copy with SafeDisc DRM. This isn't even an added DRM issue because the way the game is designed in the first place requires you to go online to play with other people online. Even if the game has no added DRM, there would be nobody to keep those servers online and running so that the game could function if Ubisoft went out of business.

Rather than fighting to preserve games that are inherently DRMed by being online only games, we should be fighting against unnecessary added DRM, like Denuvo, mandatory use of a store-based launchers, and store-based launcher rewards.

Why do you think people do that? Surely there's a reason.

Before the Iraq War in 2003, millions of people in multiple countries protested against the imminent invasion of Iraq, governments ignored them and fabricated evidence to justify their own politics.

People have been protesting against the Israeli genocide in Palestine for months, governments ignored them.

Maybe some people believe that lobbying governments isn't the best way to change things.

Not a good strat if there was no fight. That's why I don't have it.

If I had known someone would seriously start a fight for this, I would have "funded" it.

They must stop killing games. They must be forced, by law, to:
- Keep the server online forever (not gonna happen).
- Patch in an offline mode.
- Provide server software.

do you realise how many of these petitions are made every single day?

On the radio just today, somone as talking about a petition they made because the fottball in the road signs for football stadiums here in UK needs to be changed, as they only shows hexagons on the icon, while footballs in real life consits of heagons and pentagons... nothing came out of it, even though they made a petition *shock*

I am not saying that the game-as-a-service model is not a horrible model, nor am I saying that nothing should be done about it. However, what I am saying is that this approch is pointless and just as good as doing nothing - the result will be the same. Find a better way.

I'm not American and I'm not gonna get into other IRL politics that don't concern games.

But suggest better ways for consumers to do this besides voting with our wallets, which we're already doing anyway, and I'm all ears.

And do you realize that unlike those change.org petitions that are as effective as beating your head against the wall, these petitions will have to be read and processed by those gov't reps and civil servants? There's been some actual thought into this. They're being processed by the European Commission, the Canadian House of Commons, the UK Petitions Committee, Australia's House of Representatives, etc.

Look at the UK's track record between 2017-2019. 33,181 total petitions submitted, 8154 successfully published (24.6% of submitted), 456 with responses (5.6% of published), and 74 debated by gov't (16.2% from those with a gov't response). A 1.37% chance of getting the gov't to notice and respond is better than 0% spent telling people it's futile and expressing how jaded you are with how your democracy works.

If anyone has any interest in making a difference, they should be signing to make their voices heard. If enough people sign, it goes from niche hobby interest to tangible public interest. It's not the end if this gets ignored either, the fight for offline games / DRM-free is a war that will last years. More support will be coming from the masses as all these online DRM games start shutting down.

Like the above post, if you've got other ideas besides voting with your wallet, I'm all ears.

This is copy and pasted directly from the Steam page for The Crew, which I'm not going to link to even though it's no longer available for sale. Any time a game is voluntarily described as MMO on the storefront where it is being sold, it should be a warning that the game in question is neither single-player nor offline. It doesn't matter if someone that plays the game finds some corner to the game's server to hide from other players so that they can solo play all day long, they're still playing an online game that is meant to be played with other people.

The best case scenario will probably be that publishers will be forced to put a very visible disclaimer on the box/store page, that the game's lifespan will be limited. Like a "GaaS" logo/denomination next to the age rating (game as a service) If even that...

It's like 15 years too late for any sweeping changes in this regard.

I hate to agree with this but I do. I feel like we will always be relying on DRM free games, piracy and private servers for these kind of games. The people buying this shit are getting what they put up with. If more people stopped putting up with the bullshit they'd/we'd get better treatment. But I think the mass adoption of completely DRM'd movies and tv is a sign that this is where the majority is going, and at least in the USA, the government ain't gonna do shit lol