In the video game world, dying does not always mean death thanks to extra lives.
Now players across the country are coming together to ask the same for the games they’ve bought, paid for and play, which are being killed off before their time by a greedy industry.
Role playing gamers have come back into the real world, joining sim, strategy, survival, sports, and fighting fans, not to mention first person shooters, to turn their sights on the Government with a new petition demanding “video game publishers keep games they have sold in a working state”.
At 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in Parliament.
Here keen gamer Euan Brook explains why the Government needs to step in:
“More than 25,000 people have signed a petition to Parliament demanding video game publishers keep the games they have sold in a working state.
This may sound obvious, since when you buy something you expect it to work, and keep on working as long as possible. But gamers have had to watch in horror as games they enjoy have been deleted by their respective companies without recourse. When games are deleted, there is no legal means of playing them.
In the early days of gaming, games were sold and shared through external sources like floppy discs, cartridges and CDs. When you purchased a physical copy, you got the entire game on it, and barring the dog eating it, you had that game for life.
You can see that market right now, where functioning copies of old Gamecube or Playstation games are being sold as collectors’ items.
With the advent of a more accessible internet, there has been a push by the games industry to circulate games via digital download.
This saves on manufacture and distribution costs, with games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox all predominantly purchased through the internet and played via an internet connection so players can play with each other online.
This ease of access, which has made the gaming industry one of the most lucrative and successful in the world – worth almost double the film and music industry combined – has come with sinister consequences, familiar beyond the gaming industry.
In May last year, TV fans were shocked at news that Willow, the TV show sequel to the 1988 fantasy film starring Warwick Davies, was to be removed from the Disney+ streaming service. As a Disney+ exclusive, and without a physical media release, the show became unavailable to view in any legal capacity. The show has since been removed from the service and looks like it’s deleted forever.
In April 2024, the games developer Ubisoft shut down the video game The Crew, a massive racing game that boasted a scaled-down recreation of the entire United States. Part of the fun of this game was being able to drive around the country as one big interconnected space.
However, Ubisoft has since released The Crew 2, and it is very apparent that if you wish to continue playing The Crew, you have to purchase the sequel. The Crew itself is no longer available to play, even for gamers who purchased it.
This is why the new petition requests Parliament consider and debate a law that requires “publishers to leave video games (and related game assets / features) they have sold to customers in a reasonably working state when support ends, so that no further intervention whatsoever is necessary for the game to function.”
One argument is that, as these are typically online-only games, it’s inevitable that the company running them will have to shut down their central servers. Except Local Area Networks (LAN), where players can set up their own local servers for games, existed long before international online gaming and continue on to this day with popular games like Quake, Starcraft and Unreal Tournament all being playable decades after their original releases. More recently, Minecraft has made use of LAN access.
The problem is when games companies do not make this LAN system an option, which forces gamers to play on only the central servers and essentially holds a death sentence over the games in future.
In a world where we bemoan the loss of countless films and TV shows, for example the many lost episodes of Doctor Who, or the many lost films of the silent era, it is remarkable that games companies have been so wilfully anti-art.
Observant gamers have had to watch as works of art have been thrown onto the bonfire again and again, with mostly world-weary sighs of acceptance from the gaming media.
The government has initially responded to the petition following the attainment of 10,000 signatures, stating that much of the gamers’ concerns are covered by the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
It said: “The Government recognises recent concerns raised by video games users regarding the long-term operability of purchased products. Consumers should be aware that there is no requirement in UK law compelling software companies and providers to support older versions of their operating systems, software or connected products. There may be occasions where companies make commercial decisions based on the high running costs of maintaining older servers for video games that have declining user bases.
“However, video games sellers must comply with existing consumer law, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA) and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs).”
But the Petitions Committee – the group of MPs who oversee the petitions system, felt the Government’s comments did not respond directly to the request of the petition and have asked them to try again.
The petition, set up by YouTube video game reviewer Ross Scott, is an attempt by UK gamers to halt this anti-consumer practice.
In 2019, Scott put out a video titled Games As A Service Is Fraud, which broke down the practice of “killing games” post-purchase and how it may be fraudulent behaviour by the companies.
In response to the announced The Crew shutdown, Scott began a campaign to take legal action against Ubisoft, and political action against the practice itself.
The legal action is primarily taking place in France, but also in other countries where there are stronger consumer rights laws.
Scott has clarified that this campaign is not demanding that companies run their servers permanently, just that they provide the means to continue running the games post-server shutdown. The idea is also that this will not effect free-to-play games.
The campaign is specifically against companies taking their customers’ money and then destroying their product post-purchase.
The goal for the UK petition is to make our politicians aware of this issue, and to have it debated in Parliament if 100,000 signatures are reached.
If just one country with a large gaming consumership changes their laws to combat the shutdown issue, it could have wider ramifications for games preservation, and for online-only practices worldwide.
As we become a more and more Cloud-based world, it is essential that our laws understand and preserve our culture.
This is not like AI where the technology keeps changing and lawmakers have to play catch-up, this is an ongoing issue that has plagued the gaming industry for years and promises to devastate it even more in future.
