Stop Killing Games 

Let's do a little round up for everyone in the comments saying the same stuff. 1. "Why shouldn't we have the right to the server binaries so we can keep playing these games?" - Are you going to allow monetization of these servers or not? If we don't allow monetization - Who would be the party that enforces non-monetization of that server? If it's the government I feel like we're making an insane amount of red tape. If it's the original company then this doesn't work if they shut down. If we don't allow monetization - Who is going to pay for the hosting if the servers cannot be monetized? If they cannot be monetized then these servers will also eventually shut down due to cost. We don't up preserving games like this we just shift their death down the road. If we do allow monetization - This leads to a really weird attack potential if people can monetize the servers. - You make an awesome game that has a small community. - I want to monetize that game and run my own servers. - I create a shitload of bots and constant exploits to erode the game and your business. - Your business closes and you now have to give out server binaries to keep the game in a playable state. - I can now profit off your work via private servers. This isn't unlikely as we've seen mass attacks such as with TF2. We actually see echoes of this in the mobile market already as well. The only defense right now is DMCA or other takedown measures. Devs legitimately have very little protections as-is and this would erode that further. This creates an incentive for abuse where the abuser is protected as they are within their legal right to operate said "abandoned" games servers. 2. "He's just a rich ego now" I've been an indie dev for 8 years now and most that time I made less than Federal minimum wage. I have just gained financial success in the last year due to the community supporting me in what I do. Now that I make more I have poured it all back into that community, charity, and animal rescue. If I become a millionaire then I have failed. Your attacks here make no sense. 3. "He's not even offering solutions he's just yapping" Except I have offered a solution. Inform the customer at point of purchase that they will be getting a license to the game. It should never be posed as a purchase or buying the game at all. Because you aren't. You're buying a license and a big part of the problem is that players don't know what this means. Licenses like this allow developers to ban bad actors from the service and are insanely important. Inform the customer correctly and the grand majority of issues here fall away. 4. "He banned Ross and hates players." No I did not. Ross is not banned on this channel. We've been blocking and banning people who are posting hate speech, doxxing attempts, and insane false information about me. As of now that list is over 1,000 people just from the last three days alone. Has some splash damage happened here? Probably. Shit happens and a deleted comment is not the end of the world. It's not that deep. 5. "It's easy to do because the FAQ said so." It's very clearly that nobody involved in writing that FAQ actually makes games. I've had a 20 year career in the industry spanning from QA, Engineering, IT, and Red Team. These demands are not "simple" problems to solve and cannot be done easily even for new games. It's not feasible to produce the requested content in this initiatives current form. Demanding this and stating that all developers are wrong and greedy is actually absurd. 6. "This won't even effect Live Service games read the FAQ!" I did and the FAQ does not change the potential damage done to live service games. Under the current initiative all games would need to be made into a playable state at end of life. This puts a massive extra financial burden on specifically live service games while incentivizing single player ones. Why would I spend extra money building a live service distributable server for end of life? I wouldn't. I would just make single player or local play games as they cost less to produce under this scenario. For those that say "Good" and dislike live service games, that's not a good position. Your personal dislike of live service games should not control developers on what they could or should make. Nor should it limit players in their options of what kinds of games they have access to. 7. "He won't even talk to Ross" Correct. I think his position is disingenuous due to his comments about how this could be pushed through government. It's a bad direction, removes validity for what the initiative is trying to do, portrays the process in an incorrect manner, and just builds sensationalism. Thinking that kind of language is ok puts him squarely on my "not worth it to talk to" list as there are others that could have a more productive conversation. Louis Rossman and Asmongold have much better takes on this and actually try to engage about the issue in a measured way. At the end of the day I am now and always have been a game developer. The majority of my platform has and will continue to be advocating for teaching how this industry actually works. This flashpoint moment is the greatest example of why players need to actually know how games are made. Why do you think I run game jams or a discord to help you make games? It's so you can see that requests like this don't make sense and gain perspective on the industry. It stops the internet hate machine from band-wagoning against developers which always happens due to lack of perspective. Stay frosty.

5:53 the problem was that the Crew was sold at full price even in 2023 and nobody warned buyers that the game will be unplayable in a year. That's why even German law dictates that a service needs to announce its cancellation at least 2 years prior.

I personally like how Capcom shut down megaman xdive and then released a version of the game that %100 runs offline.

The only thing you missed about The Crew Thor is that it HAD a single player campaign. They killed the whole game, not only the online part.

These sort of arguments are why Johnny Silverhand blew up Arasaka Tower.

Valve solved this problem 20 years ago. All of their multiplayer games are playable offline.

"single player games that are online only are rare" Not so rare anymore, not at all.

"What's the most important aspect about any game? Well, being able to fuckin play it!" -AVGN

"Game companies have no intention to let customers retain their purchase, yet games and game features are sold as goods, not services." -Ross Scott

the crew was "online only" because ubisoft wants to use online DRM. there was a single player mode.

The best thing about 90's games is you can still play them.

Isn't the idea to get the companies to give the players tools to run their own servers, when the company wants to kill their own servers?

League can be kept in a playable state by releasing server software. The creator doesn't need to run that server, other people can do that. So that is absoltely not an argument. And on a local level, you can run a private server for friends. So again, online games, can be run locally, by making a local server.

9:35 - I love ross scott, but he typed that without having dealt with the ESA or any of their ilk. _there is no such thing as an "easy win" with regards to anything in the gaming industry._ I have been defeated repeatedly after throwing tons of time, effort, and money into making an exemption to section 1201 of the DMCA that allows you to repair your own property. Section 1201 is the part of the DMCA that says you cannot break a digital lock in hardware you have purchased. So, for instance, a disk drive that is paired to a processor dying on an old console. If a smart person reverse engineers this & comes out with a tool that figures out how to pair a different drive to that console so they may repair their broken console... they can be put in prison. The ESA is a large reason that is still there. Politicians like easy wins, which 99% of the time are laws that screw over everyone equally. This would not be an _"easy win."_ I would chalk ross saying that up to inexperience in getting laws passed & lobbying 13:10 - I agree with this. 13:20 - Here is the part that I'd love to hear further discussion on from people with more experience/expertise(aka, anybody) when it comes to these types of games. Revoking a license to the game when someone cheats to protect players is one strategy. Keeping the game functional to the individual accused of cheating, while removing someone's access to utilize official servers if they cheat: is this possible? Is it possible to hardcode one's identity into the game at the time of sale(i.e. a one time registration w/ their email/userid), that can be revoked from being utilized on any server if they take part in unacceptable behavior? If I am accused of cheating while playing the crew, I may be banned from their server, but does one have to be banned from playing the game in any form? 7:25 - the car licensing point. I was guessing & pulling that out of my ass in my video. I guessed based on 15 years of experience in a completely unrelated business. I didn't read that wiki before saying that the car licenses being temporary & the renewal of it would be a decision made based on the number of active players. I just figured it to be a high likelihood based on _similar_ business experience. Wow! My problem is the licensing agreement for the cars is done without taking into consideration the person who bought the game. Even if it is the shittiest game in the world that I no longer want to play, if I bought it, whatever licensing issue Ubisoft has should be _their_ problem; *not mine!* I forget what this costs & I am commenting on my phone while feeding my fish, so excuse me if this is wrong, but... wasn't this game $40-$60? I am used to old games. The Italdesign Nazca C2 can't be taken away from Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, because back then when they licensed the ability to use the car, they realized you couldn't take away the ability to use a game. Therefore, licenses like this didn't exist. I am opposed to this on the principle of the matter; if there is anything that may cause a game like this to stop working at a later date, I want it disclosed, with details on the earliest possible end date, like a "best by" date on an egg carton, on the box of the game. That is separate from the pricing. When I was a kid buying need for speed or gran turismo as a greatest hit cost twenty dollars and whatever cars were in it were licensed for life. Now cars in games are temporarily licensed to the point that the entire game can be disabled at this price? That's really lame. We had the ability to buy games at these prices that wouldn't just disappear because license agreements like this weren't a thing before it became technically possible to take back a game. It is understandable that they would not want to renew the license for a game that wasn't bringing in new money. at the same time, it's aggravating that Ubisoft wants the ability to make decisions at a later date based on information(price of license renegotiation + number of players), without giving customers the ability to make an informed purchase decision upfront. They could do this by saying the following: *"On XYZ date, the license for ABC expires. If this game is not making us enough money at that time to justify renewing the license for ABC, the game will cease to work on XYZ."* It is such a kick in the ass that Ubisoft wants to be able to make business decisions that make sense for themselves based on licensing agreements, without letting consumers make decisions about their _purchase_ based on these licensing decisions. As a pessimist, I like being proven wrong, since it means the world is a better place than I thought. In this case, the worst case scenario that I pulled out of my ass wound up being right.

"If we don't allow monetization - Who is going to pay for the hosting if the servers cannot be monetized?" Me? On my local server running on my machine? For just me and my buddies? We had this technology 30 years ago...

Remember this. When retail WoW dies, private servers will still run.

you dont have to convince me thor, i've alredy signed.

5:12 Dude, Dataminers literally found a disabled offline-mode in the code.

as a casual follower ever since the beta release of Heartbound, this is extremely disappointing to watch. while Ross's movement has its issues (understandable, the man has never claimed to have inside knowledge of the industry), completely dismissing and throwing away a pro-consumer initiative like this by explaining how live services *currently* work and how players never had ownership of their games, setting this down as an immoveable fact, misses the goal of the movement entirely. The way live service games are currently developed should NOT be the standard, that's the point. you talk about how dangerous this movement is, how much work developers would have to do to provide post-service functionality, about how live service games may not even continue to be made because of this... but who are we kidding here? Live service games are THE most profitable form of entertainment in the history of ANY medium. Do you truly genuinely believe legislation that forces companies to create end-of-life plans for their games will keep them away from the potential constant unending billions of dollars in revenue every year that a successful lives service game provides? you talk about providing players with the tools to create their own servers as if it's a tremendous undertaking too costly to perform, and yes, that may be true for some existing large multiplayer games that never planned for this kind of transition, but this once again shows your careless disregard for this movement as Ross has stated multiple times this is for FUTURE multiplayer titles, not existing ones. a game designed from the ground up with an existing end of life plan is not an outrageous ask, if anything, it should be the standard. A standard which will obviously be very costly to implement at first (but will still be a miniscule cost by comparison to how profitable these projects are), but will naturally be optimized as these games will CONTINUE to be developed in the future, because let's be honest, every publisher and studio wants a cut of that GAAS pie. it *should* be the standard to develop games with online functionality that will still be in *some* playable state as long as you've purchased it. it should not be outrageous or gross to ask companies "what will happen to the game i bought in a few years, will i still be able to play it?" and have them respond with either yes or no. and in the end that's what this is all about, it's about supporting and strengthening consumer rights, forcing companies to be responsible and accountable for the pieces of art they task their developers to create, ensuring works can be preserved instead of allowing them to be thrown into the garbage and lighting the thing on fire once it stops being profitable, because "that's just how it works right now" doesn't make it right. why are you against this as a developer? do you simply not care what happens to the work you poured so much effort on while working under these companies? where is the passion? where is the interest in preserving art? it does not make sense to me to be against this initiative simply because "this is not how it works" as if the way it currently works is fine. your reaction to this initiative makes you look entirely dismissive of consumers and unconcerned with games as an artform, which I can't imagine will be liked by new indie developers who look up to you and your channel for advice. I'd urge you to reconsider your stance but based on further comments after the reception of this video I don't believe you will. I still hope you are able to weather the storm of negative comments that these types of videos usually attract and that you have a good day, thank you for at least being honest and open in your beliefs and priorities even if I thoroughly disagree with them.

That's so weird. Valve dropped support for 3 Counter Strike games, but I can still boot up CS 1.6 right now and play online without any issues. Guess Gaben IS the gaming god after all.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I signed the initiative immediately.

The idea that people won't host game servers if they aren't allowed to monetize them is extremely silly, there are DECADES of old games all of which are still playable and active thanks to fan hosting their own servers. The official matchmaking servers for Counter-Strike Global Offensive shut down recently after Counter-Strike 2 came out, but the game isn't rendered unplayable, you can still go and play it on community servers. This used to be the NORM!

Essentially 'You will own nothing and be happy' I reject that.

Thor: the language is too vague Ross: That's why it is an initiative not a legislation

I did my part and signed the initiative You pay for a game, you should be able to play it 20 years later, period.

The fact that I need internet connection to play a freaking Gran turismo 7 is a bad joke. And when they end "support" they better give offline functionality.

"In Terms of Service you are not buying the game" will not work in Europe, because Europe does not allow contracts to redefine the law.

Just because it is normalized for service games to be like that, not mean it should be.

Pirate Software: The problem isn't the cage that is slowly being built around you. The problem is your expectations of freedom. Just stay still for a bit, you'll love it.

As a player turned dev myself I'm... disappointed. It's like people don't remember that what SKG is asking for used to be the norm. To this day I can fire up a Modern Warfare 3 server (the original) and host a game with friends. It's not something I do often, but the option is there and it costs the company that made the game nothing. The new Modern Warfare 3 will become unplayable when ATVI decides its time is done.

Wasn't one of the issues with The Crew was that there was a single player mode thats locked out without modding the game?

Before you serve food, you need a food handler's permit. Before you dig for construction, you need to call to ensure you don't hit a pipeline. Before you make a live service game, you need to have a plan for what happens when you decide to shut it down. Wins for consumer rights are wins for everyone in this age of not owning anything.

“This would destroy live service games” Aaaand, signed

i love how whenever presented with a bad consequence of the live service model like it being rendered uplayable, including the singleplayer campaign, the response we get is "but thats normal". Did it ever occur that it being normal is a bad thing? Maybe games being unarchivable and made to be wiped from the earth when theyre no longer profitable through predatory microtransactions or subscription services might be a bad direction for the industry to go in.

"This isn't law, this is just something to get the conversation happening" One minute later "This has no specifics and would kill all gaming" Like yeah, it has no specifics because it is meant to start the conversation, not be the words written on the bill.

The Crew had a single player campaign, Thor. And was selling for full price I think in some regions on the last year of its run. I think its important to point that out.

Easy there guys, Thor is from US and A, he's not used to have good consumer protection.

I'm a software engineer and I understand client-server software. We make software for enterprise clients and the clients host their own servers for security reasons inside their corporate networks behind firewalls. Which means yes, we distribute server binaries. Here's a proposal: 1. The game studio or publisher should be able to shut down their first party servers for live service games once providing said service is no longer profitable. 2. If the owner of the IP no longer wishes to host servers they should provide server binaries. 3. The cost of running third party servers is irrelevant. If no-one is willing to host a server then there is no server, and that's on the gaming community. If there is someone willing to eat the cost of hosting servers then the owner of the IP should not be able to shut them down, as long as they are not providing said service themselves. If owner wishes to reactivate first party servers, they can start taking down third party servers. If the servers shut down due to cost, fine. But there should be a possibility for someone willing to host a server to do so. 4. We should not allow monetising third party servers. Donations are fine. 5. Enforcing monetisation is on the owner of the IP. If the studio shuts down and the IP gets acquired by another company then the enforcement duty transfers to the new owner. If no-one acquires the IP and it becomes abandoned, then said IP should become public domain. At this point no-one appears to care about this IP, so yeah - monetise all you like. 6. We don't need to apply this retroactively. Some servers may have been architected in a way that makes it hard to provide server binaries. We can say that any live service games released after 2028 or some other future date will have to provide server binaries upon server shut down. This gives studios time to make the necessary changes to server architecture to enable compliance with the new legislation. 7. The game studio should not make existing user data available to the public. That means that players will lose in-game progress and will have to start from scratch if they play on a third party server. There's no way around that. User data should remain private. 8. Since we don't allow monetisation, any items that players used to be able to purchase via micro-transactions should become free on third party servers. Some micro-transaction options could be removed entirely to help with resulting balancing problems, such as XP boosts on in-game currency. However, things like weapons or skins should not be removed. All of the above should be considerations made by company leadership when making the decision to develop a live service or to shut one down. If this means that a few live service games will not get made, fine. However, I do not believe that this will shut down the entire industry. Successful live service games will still be massively profitable for the developer and they can enjoy the profits for a decade+, even if at some point they will have to release the server binaries. The possibility of striking gold with a successful live service will continue to motivate people to develop these games. It will not become too expensive to develop live service games. Single player games are cheaper to make today - you don't have to worry about servers at all. And yet live service games keep getting made.

“This isn’t possible” Meanwhile whole servers are going up for consoles with shutdown digital storefronts

Just to clarify, it was never said that the publisher NEEDS to keep the live service online, even Scott Ross says that wont happen. Instead he says that they should be a way that the consumer can play the game when the publisher no longer WANTS to keep the service online. Also, where do we 'buy' games anymore? is it not all licensing now? Do we even have a choice anymore?

Comment from Running with Scissors Software on Ross's most recent video: Thanks for the shout out! We feel obliged to explain our position now, and why we care about what is going on here. We’re just an indie dev with no ‘live service’ plans, but we are a publisher and developer that have worked to keep our own games playable for literally decades at this point - even if it’s not in our best business interests, hence why we wholeheartedly support this initiative. In the unlikely event we did end up with a live service game, there would be an end of life plan built into it - if nothing else but so that our own developers, that would have spent years working on it, would not see their work just vanish one day. For our part, as long as we are around we endeavor to keep our games playable, at the very least on PC. We’re not perfect, but we do try ,given our limited means as a truly independent studio. Here is our (obviously written with our own bias) track record: POSTAL (1997) - We no longer update this game, so we made it open source and made it free. We have in the past rolled community updates into the base game, and will always try to make sure it survives any OS version updates. But if the time comes we’re not around, at least the source is out there for anyone interested to fix it up, should some OS update breaks it. POSTAL 2 (2003) and its DLC Paradise Lost (2015) - We sell and even update this game to this day. We’ve had to fight to keep it working during Windows and Linux updates. Sadly, Mac support is no longer that easy due to them dropping 32-bit support, although we did make a serious effort to try and get it sorted. We can’t release the source code because Unreal Engine 2 is not open source, which is a shame. The Mac situation bothers us though, so hopefully we can work that out one day. It was sold to Mac users, so they should still be able to play it, regardless of the paradigm shift Apple introduced with their hardware and software. Postal III (2011) - Not a game we developed or published, but we fought hard to get the game working again on Steam after the DRM servers went down (that we never agreed should have been a thing in the first place). We didn’t profit from that, it was just the right thing to try and do for those that paid for the game, and thankfully it worked out. POSTAL Redux (2016) - It’s come to our attention that there is a generation of CPU’s the game now crashes on due to it’s very old Unreal 4 version, so we’re currently looking into fixing that by updating the engine version, but it’s turned out to be more complex than we thought so it’ll be a while. This game is not a massive seller for us to be honest, but we can’t ignore the inconvenience for those it affects. POSTAL 4 (2022) - Still very much working on this game, about to add co-op, and soon workshop/modding support. Thankfully Epic does allow the source code sharing of Unreal 4 and 5 games, unlike Unreal 2, so once the workshop is out, it’ll be safe in the community's hands should we ever fold. And we’re looking to make sure that the servers for co-op can be maintained as long as anyone wants them to be. Anyway, to anyone that made it this far, thanks for reading. We just figured it was worth explaining why we’re supporting this cause - it’s because our own game preservation is important to us, and therefore understand why overall game preservation is vital. We obviously do care about money and paying the bills so we can keep supporting our devs, but we also care about the community - so we take the L in some situations financially, in order to look after those that help get us here. Best of luck in your endeavors Ross! And those supporting him!

I disagree. If some people can recreate Nintendo network server to still have Wii U and 3DS online in 2024 and onward, and that without the help of Nintendo, I don’t see how it wouldn’t be in the hand of Ubisoft to let us create custom « the crew » server before disabling their own. We aren’t asking for publisher to leave their online server for ever, but to allowed us to play the game even if the server are off. Just let us host custom server.

Ross deleted comment: "I'll just leave some points on this: -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 just a 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 I think this initiative could pass, that's my cynicism bleeding though. I 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 I was acknowledging that. I'm not championing these flawed factors, but rather saying I think our odds are decent. Finally, while your earlier comments towards me were far from civil, I don't wish you any ill will, nor do I 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."

The Crew (2014): "In the single-player campaign the player controls Alex Taylor. He is a witness to the murder on his brother Datton, the leader of a crew called the 5-10's, but is arrested himself. Five years later he is given the opportunity by the FBI to hunt down his brother's killer Dennis 'Shiv' Jefferson, the gang's leader, as he is deployed to unmask the corrupt FBI agent Coburn who is also involved. He has to join the crew himself and make a name for himself to rise up the ranks." - MobyGames "The Single-player campaign was up to 20 hours long" - Wikipedia (after Polygon)

Thor casually applying US specific legal logic and legislature process to a European initiative as an argument for why we shouldn't get onboard with it.

Mojang (developers of Minecraft) used to have a digital TCG called Scrolls. It was supported for a while until it eventually shut down many years ago. That game was a client-server game. That game is still playable today, because what the devs did was essentially release the code for both the client and server, so the game is still up because the community themselves are hosting the servers that the client connects to. Theoretically speaking, if let's say League of Legends would shut down, Riot could do the same thing. I do of course that there might be a lot of other problems with this that might make it difficult to actually do for some games for other reasons, but it should at least be possible without needing to massively rebuild the whole architecture of the game. Also when Mojang did this, they actually changed the name of the version of the game they released like this in order for it not to infringe on the copyright they had on Scrolls

I really liked Thor's shorts because he came across as someone humble but also clearly knowledgeable about his area of expertise and willing to help others achieve things they might not even try because they seem impossible. Using your online influence to try and kill legislation someone is working on tirelessly is completely antithetical to all of that, especially with his refusal to just talk directly to Ross. Judging Ross entirely on one segment of one video out of the hours upon hours of content he's produced on the issue is simply an insufficient amount of due diligence for the damage this does. Consumer-led movements like this are difficult and require immense effort to get off the ground - if you're going to be naysaying them (causing significant damage with significantly less effort) I believe you need to be taking basic steps like talking to the figurehead of the movement before detracting from them. Thor states how unreasonable it is that people are ignoring his 20 year career and 8 years as a penniless indie dev when criticising him, I would say the same is true for his criticisms of Ross and his movement. I do think, as Louis Rossman says in his response video, that Thor has relevant expertise and a sizeable following that he could be using to help shape this legislation. If there are circumstances where it would be reasonable to say this needn't be mandatory, he can help make sure those are known so that they can be accounted for in later steps of the process. I personally don't think that putting "you don't own your game" in an EULA is sufficient justification for not having a meaningful end-of-life plan and I certainly don't think that it is necessary to sell games as licenses so you can revoke access to features from bad actors. But if Thor thinks those things he can be taking steps to prevent them through collaboration rather than purely destruction. I also think it reflects poorly on Thor that Ross's comment responding to this video has clearly been deleted or is otherwise inaccessible. You can find people who have copy and pasted the content of it, and it is clearly not only respectful but kind. Calling someone clearly disingenuous then allowing evidence to the contrary to vanish doesn't sit well with me. Ultimately, I'm pretty disappointed with Thor's response here. I don't believe any of the conspiracy-theory "Thor is an industry shill" nonsense, but this does seem like a classic case of making a strong statement without due diligence and doubling down to protect your ego when challenged. It frightenes me to think Thor could become the next Jordan Peterson if this is how he handles things like this. I'd urge him to reconsider his approach here, but I suppose ultimately he's said his piece and it's up to supporters like Ross and Rossman to convince people Thor's concerns will be handled. To anyone who supports the movement reading this: harassing Thor validates his decision not to support this movement. If you aren't convinced by Thor then express that perpsective respectfully and with love since you're expressing it to someone who clearly also loves games. Smart people disagree, and for a variety of reasons. Don't turn a movement spawned by a love for games into a movement of hate.

6:30 NOBODY IS TELLING THEM TO. It says either let players play offline or let players provide their own ways to run servers. Not continue to support live service even though it's dead. And it's a bad example cus the game is absolutely playable offline for the single player component, they just choose not to.

"This is bad, if this petition passes, it would damage all live service games" Holy shit, where do I sign?

Ross's comment, which Pirate Software deleted: "I'll just leave some points on this: -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 just a 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 I think this initiative could pass, that's my cynicism bleeding though. I 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 I was acknowledging that. I'm not championing these flawed factors, but rather saying I think our odds are decent. Finally, while your earlier comments towards me were far from civil, I don't wish you any ill will, nor do I 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."

I feel strongly that you completely missed the mark here. As someone who has, even in small parts, worked on Northstar, the Titanfall 2 Custom Server and modding framework, why was a solution like this not discussed here? Northstar was possible because respawn did add a peer to peer lobby system, which was not really useable, but nonetheless neccessiatated the core server dll being shipped with the game. Theres also things like WoW custom servers. The Crew just needed to release server binaries, not be "converted to singleplayer"

If the game is killed and the servers shutdown, I, as a consumer, should be able to make my own private server and not have it be taken down. I'm not taking any market share or competing with the developers at that point, because the game doesn't exist anymore.

"Live service game publisher against being held responsible and needlessly lashing out". Once again, Thor showing us that he isn't all about good vibes and cuddles.

Man it really is funny that someone whose entire persona is based on the fact that piracy is not morally wrong due to companies breaking ownership rights, is against enforcing those exact rights

Its like he refuses to understand that "Online only" is an umbrella for Planned obsolescence in many video games.

Telling the consumers how things work aint solving the problem when they wanted the things to be changed. Anyway, piracy rules I guess.

THIS IS THE STATMENT FROM ROSS IN RESPONSE TO THIS VIDEO ⬇ "I'll just leave some points on this: -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 just a 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 I think this initiative could pass, that's my cynicism bleeding though. I 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 I was acknowledging that. I'm not championing these flawed factors, but rather saying I think our odds are decent. Finally, while your earlier comments towards me were far from civil, I don't wish you any ill will, nor do I 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."

3:55 This was already adressed by Ross. He said closely to: It doesn't matter, even if you played a game, forgot about it, it does not matter. What if you remembered that you had this game 15 years later and wanted to play it? You should be able to. And i agree with that. It's not even unrealistic. I myself played many games with gaps that were 5 years apart.

A major example of this being a bad take: Test Drive Unlimited. Essentially one of the games that likely inspired The Crew. It had a similar massive online multiplayer function, open world, licensed cars, licensed music, etc. That game got a sequel. These games are both STILL PLAYABLE in single player and with mods - MULTIPLAYER. Even after sequels and server shutdowns. This is the correct way to do it. The idea of “you’re only buying a license to play the game” is fine and all, that’s practically how all software works except there’s NO EXPLICIT EXPIRATION DATE ON SAID LICENSE. This includes the other previous examples of TDU1 and 2. We only have a license to play it, we don’t own the IP. But that said license doesn’t expire and I paid full price for both games and I should damn well still be able to play those games (which you can).

There is not a more genuine person on RU-vid, maybe the internet, than Ross Scott.

Something else to consider: These things get *heavily* watered down once talks start. You don't start a multi-country negotiation against massive businesses from your "minimum acceptable" proposition, you start with the broadest, most heavy handed solution and then hope it will end up with an reasonable decision that is not entirely filled with loopholes.

I just don’t think you get it. You’re misunderstanding the entire point of the initiative, and for someone who is usually so rational and level-headed, it disappoints me that you’re not at least willing to keep an open mind on this or have a genuine discussion on why this initiative even exists in the first place. The point isn’t to force companies to run dead games at a profit loss. The point is preservation. Why anyone would be okay with the complete and utter deletion of a project simply because it is a video game baffles me.

AAA publishers in the late 90's and early 2000's: "We shipped our game with dedicated server tools bro, they're on the CD you can make backups of. We hope you and your buddies will have fun running a private server 25 years from now" AAA Publishers now: "uh oh sowwy the game you paid $60 for last year isn't so popular anymore so we're going to have to revoke your license to play it :( :(" Imagine defending this shit lmao.

4:03 doesn't matter because those 12 million people who have bought the game, still should be able to play the game whenever they want to.

5:20 "Everything that I found online shows that the game was always marketed as 'online-only'" Dude, the wikipedia page for the game says it has a "Single-player Mode" right there on the sidebar

The Crew has a significant amount of singleplayer content. Framing the game alongside something like FF or League where it is ONLY a multiplayer game is absurd.

The entire point is the current live service model SHOULDN'T be the standard.

This almost feels like a strawman argument. Target the mission statement then twist it into something easier to argue against.

Ross is arguing for video game preservation for all games, including online service games. He's not asking for every game developer to host game servers forever at a company loss, just that there are measures to always access the game. Especially if you purchased it while it was hosted by the developers.

…. All game purchases are licenses now, every EULA I have seen in the last 20 years has said that. It’s been that way for a while. We need to eliminate that language from all TOS.

I think this video does more to try to stop or kill “Stop Killing Games” without presenting a solution or alternative, which will ultimately do more harm than good. As it stands, this video just seems like a defense of the status quo instead of a “this should get some critical corrections before moving forward, and here are the corrections.” I do agree with Thor at the end when he says companies should be required to tell you you aren’t purchasing a game, just licensing it, but that shouldn’t be the be-all end-all.

"This will kill all live service video games" Do you promise? I really hope youre right on this, we have been working so hard on this.

"Gross and disgusting" holy shit you need to chill out, things like the Adobe products fiasco and older games being at risk of becoming lost media just because of infinite greed by companies is what's gross and disgusting, idk if you're just being incredibly short sighted or straight up openly defending anti consumer practices because you're looking at the whole thing like a company dev, look at the gaming industry in the ps3/xbox360 and ps2/xbox original era, a bunch of single player and multiplayer games worked just fine if you were offline and wanted to play with bots, "live service" games needing a permanent internet connection is a completely made up arbitrary requirement by companies in order to control what we own and to take things away from us and force us to buy something again, freaking Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena had bots MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO, this is not some sort of magical advanced technology that is too complicated to implement for poor little baby developers and poor innocent triple A companies, give me a break

I signed “stop killing games”. I understand how games function and I still signed it because we need to go back to when we owned our copies of the games. Not owned the intelectual property but just our copy of the game which we expect to function whenever we fire it up. I recenly started playing Assassin’s Creed Black Flag and I noticed the game does not function without Ubisoft login. I have no intention to play the multiplayer component of this game. I am glad the game offers this because many people like co-op, but I see no reason why is my single player story component locked behind an online gatekeeper. This is just a tiny example of a major problem in the industry. Just take a look at Nintendo Switch and how many games you can play without Internet and without even having a Nintendo account at all. You can take out the console out of the factory packaging, turn it on, insert the game and start playing. It will be the same in 30 years if the device remains functional for that long. You think The Crew is an “old” game which does not deserve to be played anymore? I beg you to reconsider that opinion.

Hellgate London was a live service game with a fully developed singleplayer campaign with server login, that eventually transitioned to multiplayer, then completely shutdown, but the disc version allowed a single player version to be installed (complete with secret areas). This was then bought by Hanbitsoft and retooled to remain worldwide multiplayer until they closed the service to non-Korean users. Hanbit under player pressure, converted the game to a singleplayer fully offline version. but also still maintains a Korea only version that remains multiplayer. So it's possible but it does take a lot of work.

Petition signed. Not gonna sit here and listen to you call an amateurs approach "disgusting", misguided? Sure, but it stinks when you're displaying an equal level of ignorance despite experience in the industry, very childish.

StopKillingGames it isn't about converting multiplayer games into single player games, and it is also not just about single player games that shouldn't have required a connection to a server, it is simply about leaving games in a playable state when developers end support, whether that be by providing a way for people to host their own servers or by providing an offline mode, there would be no need to rearchitect games like League of Legends since it would still be connecting to a server, just not the defunct official server. Ross is essentially arguing that if you buy a game whether it's single player or not, you should own that copy of the game, meaning that neither the publishing company nor the devs can take it from you or render it unusable after the point of sale. for example if you buy a chair and take it home, then after some random amount of time the company that made that chair shows up and throws that chair into a woodchipper leaving it as a pile of woodchips, you technically still have it but it has been rendered unusable by the company that made it, that would be destruction of property. the main difference here is that for physical items someone would have to physically show up to destroy your property, the way that this is done for games is by requiring connection to a server that at some arbitrary time will be shut down rendering the game unusable. personally I would like to be able to use the stuff I buy, whether that is on the day I bought it or decades later, the alternative is that you don't own anything you buy and it can be taken from you at anytime. while this would require additional work on the part of the devs of live service games it would not require nearly as much work as you've implied, and would ultimately be worth it to prevent the destruction of these games. side note about the crew specifically, the crew actually did have an offline mode that appears to be fully or nearly fully functional, it currently isn't accessible but would have required minimal work from the devs to unlock it.

Absolutely wild to me that a man who encourages you to make games is advocating for companies to be able to just take away your art from your audience. If you work for a big company, the art that YOU worked ok can just disappear at the flip of a switch, completely without your input. Having an "end of life" plan is not a radical idea in software engineering. This is stuff we were taught about in undergrad. Also, WoW Ascension. That alone pretty much counters most of his arguments. It's not about providing the servers, it's about providing the means to MAKE servers.

How can you say you don't have a conflict of interest with a straight face?

I feel as if you're grossly missing the point, Thor: -This initiative isn't going to set any kind of precident for laws. That's just not how the EU works. All this will do is get the converstation rolling and nothing else. -Ross has said in previous videos that he doesn't want developers to retroactively go back and patch older live service games, and admits it would be too much work. This is only to stop games in the future from having no end-of-life plan. -He's also said he doesn't want developers/publishers releasing source code. Only to provide enough code to have a chance to get a game running after shutdown, even if it takes the community work to do. -You can't make comparisons like WoW and not acknowledge that private servers have existed for it since forever, and I refuse to believe you didnt use offline internal testing servers while working at Blizzard. -Deleting comments that disagree with you makes you look worse by comparison.

Can we bring back dedicated servers 🥺

I still have my original Battlefield 1942 disks. I can still, to this day, get an older computer, stick it in the corner, configure a BF1942 server, load the Desert Combat mod, and publish the IP. No one can stop me from doing that. This is what Stop Killing Games is about. Going back to that world of the late 90's and early 2000's, where the companies who sold games never hosted their own servers, and instead, the playerbase hosted the servers. This practice was ended, because publishers had to put in more effort than the bare minimum of incremental updates to a sequel, because low effort and inferior sequels were being forced to compete against their previous versions. If they weren't substantially better, people would keep playing the old one. The publishers want to be able to take the old game out behind the shed, so that they don't have to compete against their own product, even if the players like it better. That's morally bankrupt.

CEO: *stands on position that benefits CEOs* The internet: 😮

"I cannot and will not support a vague and potentially dangerous start to this conversation." I cover a lot of government and nothing grinds things to a standstill more than people creating catch-22 situations of "We won't agree to start developing a plan until we have a plan developed."

So what protects us from all games becoming online so they can take support and the game away whenever they want ?

Europe doesn't do precedents in law, the initiative is to get the conversation started, yes it won't be easy to transition, but we can't be okay with companies selling online games that don't do well after a few months and just shutting it down. The consumer paid for the game, the consumer should be entitled to at least play the game for a number of years, and I do know The Crew was online for a large number of years but the game continued to be sold until the moment it was shutdown, that shouldn't happen.

Ross's comment, which Pirate Software "totally did not delete", and I'm reposting because of course I am: "I'll just leave some points on this: -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 just a 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 I think this initiative could pass, that's my cynicism bleeding though. I 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 I was acknowledging that. I'm not championing these flawed factors, but rather saying I think our odds are decent. Finally, while your earlier comments towards me were far from civil, I don't wish you any ill will, nor do I 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."

There's a ton of misunderstanding here. You 100% should've talked to Ross before making this video instead of calling him disgusting on stream. Some lowlights: 10:03 Ross has been working on this for 5 years. He isn't doing this because it's easy, in fact it's actually quite difficult. He is doing it because he thinks it's the fair and correct thing to do (and most gamers would agree). It's one thing to disagree, but another thing to accuse someone of 'doing it just because it's easy'. 1:56 You know what private servers are don't you? You can still keep the game logic server-side and distribute server binaries or packet documentation. 2:00 No, this initiative isn't meant for SOME games, it's intentionally worded to include ALL games. Yes, we want to preserve multiplayer games too. Mistake on your part to assume otherwise. Read the website FAQ. 2:08 League can already run on LAN, your point is moot. 4:42 The Crew has a singleplayer campaign and it absolutely shouldn't need a connection. Also it's crazy to say "oh but they made new ones". So? They're different games, and I bought the first game. I should be able to play it- it's a GOOD, after all. They should patch the game to make it offline-compatible, or distribute server binaries or packet documentation. ALL live service games should be called out for selling you a product and then taking it away. 7:10 Racing games since the dawn of time have been making license deals. I can still play ones that came out 20 years ago. They don't have to keep selling The Crew, just make it playable. 10:43 There's a great thread on Linus's forums that Ross talks about in his fraud video. Basically, no, it doesn't matter what the terms say. If you're selling it as if you're selling a good, software WILL be treated as a good. It might sound crazy, but there is legal precedence. 11:37 This should be restated: it's not VAGUE. The initiative is aiming to save ALL games. It's concise language YOU don't agree with. 13:50 This notion that making live service games adopt end-of-life policies will kill them is unsubstantiated. Plus there have been live service games that patched their games after they ended support.

If a publisher/developper wants to permanently shutdown a game, I don't see why they wouldn't release the server portion of the game for community members to host at their own expense a bit like what DICE does with older Battlefield titles.

7. "He won't even talk to Ross" Correct.(...) ~Man this is pinnacle for me... it's very sad people take the "I'm not going to talk with someone because it'll endup nowhere" this will always just feels like you don't want to talk because you can't argument, because you don't even believe in your own stance. I like Thor but this is not it.

Pulling Ross video just to NOT talk about the initiative but the arguments on how to pass it xD Really shows he's just trying his best to shut it down while going in the most roundabout way about it (because you cant really argue against it from a consumer POV. We had clients hosting their own server already many years ago. Valve makes online games playable offline. Its not a revlutionary technology)

I don’t understand why Ross has to be completely delegitimised over what is really just an early idea, and for not ironing out things which really should be done by actual legality experts. Yes, saying gamers deserve better rights and control is a universally correct and good statement, but it seems pretty poor to assume that’s the entire argument and to degrade it to “disgusting.” It’s not an insult to anyone what is being proposed especially for gamers, I feel like Thor is just either wrongfully or intentionally missing the core point and not allowing debate over it, rather choosing to make it yet another ‘us vs them’ to divide and conquer as opposed to getting shit done that benefits us all.

"It's normal for live service games." Well it shouldn't be, that's the point.

Alternate video title: keep killing games

The first guy to lose an argument with Gordon Freeman

Respectfully, I have to disagree with your point, especially about cases such as League of Legends. In fact, I think it's misconstruing the request - it is not that live service games must stay up forever, but that they must give players the ability to run the games on their own hardware in some form. In the case of an example such as LoL, assuming that they wanted to shut down, it would be as simple as providing a way to host dedicated servers once they close the service. They would not need to pass on matchmaking, ranking, or anything else - simply the ability to host your own games for each other is sufficient. If the community is motivated, they can then take this forward and build their own open-source matchmaking/ranking system - my case for this would be the Forged Alliance Forever (FAF) platform, which has been doing exactly that for the Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance game. This is a clear example of how, if you simply allow players the ability to keep running a game in any way at all, they may build that themselves (if they love it and are motivated to). I agree with being more clear and less vague, as I would in almost any situation. However, I honestly think that the wording here is clear enough that it allows companies to exit out of their live service game with the only requirement being that they provide the tools for players to archive and maintain that service on their own.

Unreal Tournament Team Fortress 2 Quake Live GMod Counter Strike These are a few examples I can think of that allow players to create and host dedicated servers without support needed from developers. This is a practice that was common in gaming 20 years ago. Why would it be a problem now?

- Europe does not have or do "common law"/precedent status like the US. Each case is viewed on its individual merits irrelevant of past judgement . - This is an INITIATIVE, not a Law proposal. First they need the signatures, and that means the issue will be considered. If they decide to acept and consider the issue, THEN, and ONLY THEN, after discussion, usually taking many months/years, after hearing the companies, the users, the devs, etc, will a law be drafted and discussion on that will start. - Again, THOR keeps giving examples of game X or game Y. Or how the text is too broad. This is NOT A LAW Proposal. Its an initiative to start discussions on the issue. And if/when a law is applied, which usually takes years, its not retroactive, so no, League wont be required to comply. - Thor knows better than most, that stuff that he is claiming to be hard to do, or impossible, is not. Heck, we have people creating private servers without any support from the publisher/devs. If they can do it, so can the devs. - Licenses or licensing is a moot point. Those things automatically change as the law changes and companies are forced to comply. - Anything of this sort is NEVER EVER, applied retroactively. So that is a moot point. In fact, these sort of laws in the EU are always enacted with plenty of time for compliance. For example, they gave apple and the likes YEARS AND YEARS to comply with charging port/cable standards. If you are deving a game right now, you wont be affected with 99% of certainty. - it will change the way devs work. Well, yes, hopefully, becuz right now devs, on purpose or not, are f*king consumers left and right. - finally Consumer > everything else. The EU has many flaws but their consumer protection laws and regulation are TOP NOTCH and if they are ever skewed in any direction, its almost always in the consumers favor, so yeah. Hopefully this will succeed, and not just in the EU. EU consumer protection tends to spread worldwide as companies are forced to comply in the EU market, they sometimes just "automatically" grant the same benfits to their other markets. Look at GDPR. As much as you want to complain about it and the pop ups, having a legal framework that allows you to have a company delete any identifiable information they have on you is paramount for privacy.

Thor approach’s these topics with a business and monetary perspective, not a consumer perspective

First time I've disagreed with Thor. He's too tolerant of the bad business practices by the corpos and does not seem to care about game preservation. Also deleting Rossmans comment was not cool.