#StopPayingGames
This is self explanatory; to all who do not support the idea of ownership, there shall be no more funding, regardless of their game's quality.
Advice:
buy from GOG, avoid single player games which require internet connection or 3 party launchers.
Repost from reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StopKillingGames/comments/1ugzirg/stoppayinggames/
262 replies
It is not self-explanatory. You needed to explain it. On its face, it sounds like it's saying to just pirate. I can get behind the message, but these three words aren't it. I know that coming up with effective, catchy slogans is hard, but this one's not going to do well.
Not pay and even if pirate don't promote these games
If you're endorsing piracy as a political stance in any way, I don't see it gaining traction. People need to be paid for their work; especially those who built a product for you that's meant to last and can't be taken away from you. I don't know how you convey that in a three- or four-word slogan, but I don't think this one does it.
The dogged insistence that piracy of a corporate product impacts the pay of it's employees neglects how the wage system works.
The wages only appear if the thing they produce creates profits for the corporation. If they continually produce something that doesn't sell, they won't have a job anymore. And I'll raise you another part of this equation. If you pirated Assassin's Creed: Shadows because you hate Ubisoft or whatever, that game will take somewhere between 35 and 65 hours for most people to finish, according to How Long to Beat. That's 35 to 65 hours that you weren't spending in some other game, perhaps a game that respects your values enough that you'd part with your money to play. Maybe that's Kingdom Come: Deliverance II or The Alters or Knights in Tight Spaces; whatever your preferences are, there's some other game that also didn't get your money because you were playing that pirated game instead, and I picked those three examples because they're recent and run a range of different developer/publisher models while still being DRM-free.
What are you talking about? Game devs are constantly being laid off even after the product they create, creates profits for the corp.
That's a different story entirely. That's poor allocation of resources on large projects, when certain disciplines needed at the end of a project don't necessarily have work to do at the beginning of another. The money that hired those people in the first place still came from selling the company's previous video games.
Eh, there are enough news reports of record profit game sales followed by massive layoffs to say otherwise. The poor allocation of resources you're talking about? Bonuses to upper management :/
I will 100% pay full price for an indie-published game, or for a game published by an honorable corp. If that company is fucking over its development team, layed off the development team after a successful launch, or is doing some unscrupulous shit, the black flag is raised.
If further projects by that big corp aren't funded, oh no! That's the point. Starve the bastards enough that they change their ways or give up the game.
Would you take a job that requires years to complete and forego wages until it retails?
Nobody actually works like that.
No, they typically don't. That's more what startups do. In the corporate world, the schedules are amortized, but the money has to come from somewhere.
You’re right. It often comes from the previous game but if that game doesn’t do well then the chances of there being another are greatly reduced.
And yet there are free indie games out there that are generally better than the corp funded crap. Creators will create, no matter what happens.
You'll find far fewer of them creating when they need to spend more of their time at a job that will allow them to feed their families. And I don't think the games I've found for free (actually free, not given away for free once as a promo) have tended to be better than the paid ones.
I've put more hours into Infiniminer, Minetest/Luanti, Industry, Dopewars, dnd, dopewars, and various Twine/Frotz games than any corporate games. When I do want an FPS (rare), I look at Doom sourceports and maybe Cube/Sauerbraten.
And there's the real time-murderer: Nethack.
That's entirely untrue. Plenty of people get paid to make games that flop.
Not for more than one or two games in a row.
Blizzard has been churning out flops for over a decade
Living in some fantasy land where never paying artists for their work magically results in them being compensated is pointless.
If you want to pirate, go ahead. I have. I don't pretend it's the "moral" thing to do.
In a corporate setting, wages pay the artists prior to the games' release. And the artists don't see additional revenue after it's release.
The dogged ignorance of gamers as to the financial reality of game devs neglects the fact that launch profitability bonuses are the only thing that lifts many of them out of a minimum wage bracket.
Well if single player game needs to connect to publisher sever to play then you don't buy this game and piracy is just preservation. I'm not endorsing piracy, but not condemning it.
I agree with the first sentence, but that's what I feel this slogan does a poor job of reinforcing.
I would argue in some ways piracy is a progressive form of demonstration against a systematic problem, and in this case the bigger studies that milk users and take advantage of those doing the work.
So telling people not to advocate with their form of protest is a bit unfair, it takes all tactics to get change. Its a bit like telling someone not to go out and march because you don't like that approach. People should get paid, but fairly. and consumers shouldn't be fleeced....So my sympathy for the studios involved is little theres been plenty of time to talk...they didnt listen, infact they stuck two fingers up.
It's a convenient form of protest that just happens to get you stuff for free.
I'm not better than pirates, I am one at times. I don't pretend like I'm doing something moral. I, like everyone else, do it so I can enjoy the content while saving the money for other things.
I have no qualms paying for products. I try make the right choices but bit by bit it becomes impossible as the tech around us becomes more authoritative, more greedy, more invasive, more enshitified, less fair.
Streaming is a great example. Nearly all of them don’t treat staff well, they use profits to lobby or abuse their positions. I am happy to pay for content. I am not happy to pay to perpetuate bad behavior. Hence I’d like have an offline collection…but if I simply can’t buy it…then it becomes a service problem.
Then they need to quit fucking over their paying customers
Plenty of them aren't. Pay them.
I seriously don't know how you're this off mark about all of this. No one has said to pirate games from companies that doesn't do what the thread is about. It's literally only about either pirating or not playing the specific games from the companies who shut down games.
You're on the verge of being like that Pirate Software dude who is against the SKG movement because he's so fucking dumb that he doesn't understand the extremely obvious and clearly communicated points.
Piracy of shitty AAA games sends a simple message: “These games aren’t shitty! They’re STUPENDOUS!!! But they just need to work a liiiitle harder on DRM systems to lock thieves out of it.”
Besides, I know very few pirates that draw a firm line between AAA/indie pirating. Many will shift excuses at will to play what they want.
My reaction is simple: Don’t play bad games. Piracy has no entry point to that equation.
it already has traction
Gabe Newell on Video Game Piracy (Full Version, HQ) (2009)
Basically, if they (publishers) want money, they should stop being cunts to their costumers.
I am going to be frank, most people don't care about piracy. You making it the crux of this issue is a red hearing and disingenuous. It is something a corporate shill would bring up.
Being frank, nothing will come of a movement about consumer rights if it looks like you just want to get things for free.
Listen, as long as we allow corporations to ruin culture we will never be happy. There is no magical world where we respect copyright and corporate rule and get what we want.
Your opinion is simply wrong for multiple reasons. That is okay.
Picture a neutral voter reading two different headlines. Importantly, picture the voter’s reaction. How they show support in legislative bodies is important.
1: Purchases of newer video games have gone way down. Consumers are reportedly pirating them instead.
“God, the younger generation is so incredibly entitled. People slave away on these things and they just want to steal them? Makes me think that ballot question they had about ‘Stop Killing Games’ was just about making them easier to steal. What pathetic thieves.”
2: Purchases of newer video games have gone way down. Consumers are reportedly buying many indie games instead.
“Wow, I should look into some of these ‘indie’ games if they’re so good. Sounds like there’s a lot of money in them now! If they spend that much on the hobby, I guess it makes sense they’d push that legislation about consumer rights.”
Picture actual headlines.
Gaming is pricing people out of the hobby
You don't own what you purchase
The major players are using their monopoly powers to drive up prices
All the major studios that make the games you love were bought up and now are being shuttered
AI is replacing programmers and artists
Also, we ain't winning this battle by convincing the poors to care about video games preservation.
What game company has monopoly powers?
I’m going to guess he’ll say all of them. After all, Squirrel with a Gun devs are the only ones allowed to sell copies of Squirrel with a Gun.
Steam currently has a 75% market share and has been engaging in price fixing for years now.
I can't dictate whether or not you pirate; I just think you can help influence the world in a more positive way if you don't. There are games made by people who worked hard and aren't employed by a corporation. I would encourage you to buy from them, because you can show that you value their hard work and want them to keep doing it. Games have the good fortune of being more democratized than other media, so even if they have the lion's share of the market, you can go on enjoying video games, even paying for video games, without giving those corporations the time of day.
You don't have to explain to me, I already know. I said you were wrong and I meant it. There is not going to be a corporation that is not enshitified. Did you miss all of the independent studious being bought up and now closed.
They are destroying our culture and the best you can muster is buy ethically? We are far beyond that rhetoric now. Like I said before it is okay. You have not really thought about what is going on and there is no shame in that.
No, I didn't miss the independent studios being bought up, nor did I miss the countless others formed in their wake and free from corporate control. I'm not ashamed that I have a realistic view of the world, and I find yours to be childish.
More independent studios to be forced to use corporate stores to sell digital merchandise that can be revoked at any time. The only person acting childlike is you playing pretend that this is acceptable.
I totally get it, you want to ride your high horse into the sunset. Do a us all a favor and do this. You don't have answers, you just want the status quo and we are all tired of it already.
You're so fucking wrong and so fucking dumb it's not even funny. Every single comment you've made here shows an immense inability to understand basic things and a major lack of knowledge about anything related to any of this.
It's almost impressive, but in truth just sad and cringe.
Moderator here. Drop that kind of message please. Consider this a warning. You can make your point without resorting to this nonsense
Could not be more obvious you have no counterargument, this is flat out fucking pathetic.
This is such a pathetic, thoughtless dismissal of an argument.
First thing that is brought up is piracy and you think it is something other than what a corporate shill would say? The only thing that is pathetic is another bootlicker showing up to muddy the water with garbage.
At this point I think it's safe to assume all large companies are evil and so piracy of any software/media/etc created by a large company is the moral thing to do.
It really sucks but I think this is the case. I can’t even read an ebook half the time with proper ownership. It’s either Amazon exclusive and then I don’t own it, or it happens to go on kobo/humble bundle DRM free. Every now and again the author sells things direct DRM free and I’ll buy from them.
I’m not giving Amazon a penny for their ebook scam library where they can change anything on a whim. It’s some serious 1984 shit, they can change the contents of the ebook whenever they want.
You can de-DRM your kobo ebooks i think. They havent blocked pc downloads like amazon did.
I dont worry much about kobo, they havent tried to do anything egregiously anti-consumer to me
I don’t worry about kobo, but I can’t find everything on there. Since Dungeon Crawler Carl is only on Amazon it seems like he has a publishing deal with them or something. It just sucks I can’t actually buy to own those books without getting physical copies.
I get that. I just buy the physical book if kobo dont deal.
I think it's weird that people are okay with libraries for books, but when it comes to video games I'm suddenly entitled and have a moral obligation to give artists my money.
This is a bad argument. Many libraries do have movies, and I've seen several with video games.
You have to elaborate on how it's a bad argument. The existence of games at libraries doesn't contradict what I'm saying at all.
People argue it's immoral to pirate games because the artists must be compensated, but no one says that about buying used media or loaning from the library even though the artist still receives nothing.
Both loaning and used sales are shown to increase new book sales, so why wouldn't the same be true for games?
You said that piracy is a moral imperative under these circumstances, and I'm going further to say it was never immoral in the first place.
Also of note is that libraries can't loan out games for which there is no physical copy, which means big publishers are actively killing library availability as well.
Authors do get payed from libraries.
Source: am author, get yearly royalties from libraries.
Still surprised "Jorking with Gorkur" sells as well as it does.
Sells better than "Ferkin' with Gherkin", that's for sure.
To elaborate, how it worked for me is, when I published my book digitally, the store offered me to set a price for a "Library copy". They recommend making this a higher price than the base copy, and then a digital library service will let people rent that copy out infinitely. Many authors take the default arrangement, since they're just happy to have more people reading the work, BUT want to put a basic limiter on it (limited borrow copies) since we're in the age of script kiddies, resellers, opportunistic collectors, etc.
This apparently varies by country. In countries where it's not the case, the library system is not killing book sales or authorship.
People wouldn't make movies or games if they didn't get money for it.
What you seem to be after is called "slavery".
Librarians don’t get dressed up in balaclavas and hit their nearest book store to get more books. No you’re not entitled to artist‘s work for free.
Do you think video game piracy involves knocking off a GameStop?
Buy from GoG
You can buy DRM free games from many places.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
Just chiming in to recommend ZOOM-Platform games!
I just love what they provide. Their library is eclectic and the team truly cares about DRM-free gaming. Every game they have or will ever have is free of any DRM.
https://www.zoom-platform.com/
Good advice
They really need to implement regional pricing, it's just never going to take off in 80% of the world otherwise.
If buying is not ownership, piracy is not stealing.
Fuck em.
Piracy isn't stealing either way, but this slogan is good. We need more people to pirate than ever before.
I'm going to be honest, this sounds like an astroturf campaign trying to reduce SKG into absurdity to harm it's credibility.
This is list of companies who lobbied against stop killing games
Kinda telling that Valve aren't on here. They also only sell a license to play a game, not the game.
Well technically and legally you always buy a license even with a game on physical media.
Any media you buy is a license because you're only buying a copy, not the original.
Watch this by the guy who started Stop Killing Games. Then you can stop parroting the corporate wet dream that we don't own stuff we buy.
Well in this aspect gog is the best
Not a valve fan but they don't shut down their online services since they let people run servers. TF2.and CSGO are good examples. Hell, you can even use all the skins for free on private servers.
that’s because it’s a company that’s mostly liked by people on lemmy (and presumably op), meanwhile those on their post are mostly hated. this post is just a way for people here to feel good about themselves for not buying the games they already didn’t care about by pretending it’s activism, but don’t you dare point out the shitty practices of the companies they like!!!
basically the entire video games industry* is based around the idea that you don’t own your games. this is obviously awful and needs to change, but i’m sorry, "just boycott the bad guys!!" won’t work when the bad guys is everyone, so to boycott them essentially means to stop engaging with gaming entirely. there’s a reason Stop Killing Games didn’t do a boycott, they did a campaign to get laws passed.
* except gog i guess, but they seem to like sending neonazi symbols to people’s inboxes so. pick your poison.
They claim to sell a license, but that's a lie.
Wdym? That's what they do
Most of those are ones i already hate.
My childhood friend and a common acquaintance work at Supercell. I once asked them what they think about the moral issue of putting paid loot boxes in games for children.
They had never heard of such a controversy and didn't understand why a fun and profitable feature would be somehow wrong.
joke on you im playing retro games!!!!
EDIT: but no seriously playing retro games is a great alternative then playing what's new
Retro ps2 era or lower?
Hey, PS2 is not retro!
It is at least to me.
I just want GOG to release NFS Underground 2 and I'll be happy
If you haven't already, be sure to vote for it.
Lower
NES nerver die.
Why ESL is bad ? They don't make any games. They just do esports that promote gaming.
Why Sega is bad ? What did Bandai Namco ?
Only one Chinese company but no explicitly Tencent who owns Supercell and have 1/3 Epic Games, 1/3 Ubisoft it is just it's brand name Level Infinite that means nothing.
No Scopely who owns Monopoly Go that alone makes $200M per month on gambling.
Any mobile gambling companies with micro transactions that are in fact casinos should be there instead of companies that just make AAA flops.
They're members of a group which opposes the Stop Killing Games campaign.
https://www.videogameseurope.eu/our-membership/
https://www.videogameseurope.eu/news/statement-on-stop-killing-games/
Thanks, looks like another fucking group of idiots.
I dont think its an "instead of" scenario, you can boycott all the peopoe that wont provide a decent product on reasonable terms at a fair price
Rockstar should be added to this list.
Rockstar Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in New York City. The company was established in December 1998 as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive.
Take-Two is already on the list, and also covers 2K and Zynga.
So really the list should show all the subsidaries. Because there's probably a decent number of people that don't know.
You don't need to list every company.
You know which ones are the big ones. If you see a "6" next to a game title, don't pay for it. No indie game dev makes 5 sequels to a game.
Shouldn't it be #VoteWithYourWallet?
Why not both? #StopPayingGames is awkward, why not #StopRentingGames or #StartOwningGames
Because "Stop Paying" is easier to twist into "See, they just want free stuff"
I would like a law that says the publisher/owner/digital store has to remove any server pings and anti-cheat through a standalone update that can be shared and downloaded once they abandon support. This would go for games and any other digital media, alternatively they would have to offer a refund.
I believe thatbis part ofnthe Stop Killing Games platform.
Should I feel bad for assuming any company's name that ends in "group" probably do some heinous shit
I love steam, but it needs to be in this image.
Did Steam shut down games people bought?
The closest I can think is turning CS:GO into CS:GO 2 and not making a separate game.
Its a separate game. I have both CS GO and CS2 in my library as separate entries. You have to manually re-add CS GO because it was added as a new entry when CS2 replaced it though.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4465480/CounterStrikeGlobal_Offensive/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/730/CounterStrike_2/
I thought that may have happened with Only Up!, but it may have only been temporally delisted for copyright violations by the developer.
Looks like it happens fairly often for bad G2A codes or other redeem code fraud, which seems fair. People report that you can get the money back as store credit.
I agree with the thrust of this, but I have no faith in the resolve of the average consumer to make a difference.
The average consumer has pirated a videogame. It's not hard to do. We only not do it because steam is slightly easier, and you lose online/achievements, and because it's not morally right. However, that one last barrier has fallen.
If buying is not owning, using without paying is not stealing. There is no moral issue on pirating videogames, just do it.
(All of this only applies to big companies ofc)
Downsides of capitalism
I’m assuming this also applies to Consoles as well: Sony removed purchased movies from people’s Sony Pictures Core app. I wonder if, or when, they’ll decide to do the same to games.
If it does come to that: what are our options as console gamers (other than piracy)? Buying physical discs?
I kinda hate to say it, but consoles are designed with these companies in mind. The whole idea of locking the ecosystem to only companies Sony / Microsoft / Nintendo approves of and making the process to get in expensive, time consuming, and often hostile to creative autonomy, incentivizes exactly these kinds of companies to go all in, since they have plenty of money and know with a captive audience they will get more out of it.
Prices kind of suck right now, so there's no easy solution. But the only real long term solution is to move to an open platform where you have the control, not them. And that's going to require sacrifice, because the deck is stacked against you. Or if you have enough faith, for enough people to stand up when they need to. Because the power for you yourself to resist was intentionally already taken from you.
What would be an open platform for consoles?
I mean it really depends on what your wishes would be. If you're thinking big and long term then someone could really go all in on capturing the console crowd with an entirely new console ecosystem. You could definitely simplify an OS like Linux to be a lot more to be more console oriented, such as what SteamOS is already trying to do for Steamdeck and the Steam machine. Even though that will be a balancing act with the openness of the system, since 'making sure you can't easily break this' also makes it hard or impossible to break out of it in case of a change of heart.
But the whole thing with open systems is that they can do very similar things to other open systems. Which is why Linux and Windows (and sometimes Mac) are packed together under the same umbrella. So it would have to content with those three and provide clear upsides to developers, businesses, or players over those, which is hard. That's part of the reason why the big businesses love consoles, because the freedom they take from players, double as tools for them to earn more money.
Most realistically in that route, would be for either Sony, Xbox, or Nintendo, to change their tune and go down that route instead. But that would require immense force from the players to offset the profit lost from changing the status quo. So it really isn't that realistic sadly. Xbox wouldn't do it anyways because it's essentially already even more locked down Windows. Nintendo relies on their exclusives to sell their consoles. Sony would be least unlikely to do it but they recently stopped selling their exclusives on PC because (almost) nobody jumped ship back to Playstation.
The closest and 'easiest' jump in the short term is probably to small formfactor PC hooked up to your TV using eg. SteamOS. Controller support is pretty widely supported nowadays. And since most console game developers also develop for PC, you won't have any issue missing out on your games unless it's Nintendo or exclusives (but that's probably another reason to jump too). With some technical knowledge you could do it without spending a single cent on Steam / Valve if that's your concern. Since you could just run a Linux based system on a mini-PC or console formfactor with eg. Brazzite or another console OS lookalike.
That makes sense. Regarding your comment re:
I keep seeing videos on YouTube of people installing Ubuntu on their PS5’s - do you think this will gain traction with Sony and Microsoft and allow consumers to install a Linux distro officially like how Steam has SteamOS?
I also notice that when there is a discussion or video regarding modding a console, it’s to “preserve” its longevity rather than having a practical use.
Installing Linux on PS5 is an exploit as far as I understand it, and requires specific software versions that are already long outdated at this point. But PS5 already runs a Unix like kernel as far as I know. So yes, it would be possible to do it on them if Sony or Microsoft allowed it. Though I doubt they ever will since you could not run Playstation or Xbox games on Linux without huge investment from their side. It's a solution for those looking to jump without the hardware cost, but I am a little anxious in recommending it since Sony full well considers it still their device. And Nintendo has recently shown they aren't shy from just
brickingbanning your device from their services if they think you're not using it the way they want, I would expect the same from Sony. But if you do it right, probably no way for them to find out. But you could never go back to it just being a Playstation 5 too. In the end it's essentially the same path as my first proposal.I think that's in part because it's an attempt to tiptoe around the 'red lines' of console manufacturers. It's trying to stay as inoffensive as possible so that it doesn't get put into the same bag as emulators or third party tools to circumvent DRM.
EDIT: The switch example wasn't bricked, but it was banned from using the official services, which isn't much better, but still a distinction to be made.
I would never buy a car that I had to store in someone else's garage.
I get the point but wouldn't that practically be your garage at that point?
Mostly. But I fear the garage owner may change the locks one day.
ah, just pirate the keyz, kinda what i did anyways kinda
This is pretty much impossible. I don't think y'all realize how much space those corporations control.
It's like trying to boycott Nestle.
You say that as if piracy isn't just a few clicks away.
A better option is to buy games that is not included on this type of lists.
Fuck piracy. The artist is worthy of their hire.
The artist has already been payed by the time the game hits the shelf, sales only go to the people on top.
This is such an incredible level of magical thinking that most 12 year olds already grow out of.
What do you think happens with the artists if the game doesn't sell?
What do you think happens to the genre if the game doesn't sell?
People are complaining about live-service games, but holy fuck, can you not see that these are the direct response to piracy? You literally cannot pirate these games, because they require constant connection to the servers that verify if you have a license.
Paid actor or just retard?
There's clear data showing piracy almost never has a negative impact on sales. If anything, it's usually a positive impact. And the exceptions to this are not video games.
Don't kid yourself. The artists will get fired either way. Whether or not the game sells well will not change anything. Aside from the point above.
Anti-piracy advocates like you are the cancer of the gamer community. You're doing absolutely nothing for the world, but spewing corporate propaganda that is based on nothing but the words of an ultra rich pedophile.
Please share! Would love to read about it!
There was a big study the EU commissioned to show negative effects of piracy on sales of various media. When it concluded that there's no negative impact, the EU decided not to release it. The only exception in the study were recent big movie releases, which did see significant (about 5%) financial losses due to piracy.
Link: https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact.html
In 2016, the Technology Policy Institute looked at 25 piracy-related studies to analyze the combined data. According to them, there was a negative effect shown in 22 out of 25 studies. However, they also noted that it's a very complex question, and that the results were 'economic theory inconclusive'.
Link: https://techpolicyinstitute.org/publications/intellectual-property/copyright-and-piracy/the-truth-about-piracy/
When you take a look at these studies, you will very quickly notice a trend. They're always published by big, very much pro-copyright corporations. They use vague terms and employ questionable methodology.
A study showing a positive impact of piracy on video game sales (but negative for music). Music and movies seem to be the most likely to actually suffer from piracy.
Link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288206476_The_impact_of_piracy_on_physical_purchases_and_pay-downloads_A_comparison_of_four_cultural_industries
While it may be difficult to gauge whether piracy is overall beneficial or harmful to any industry, it seems to be quite clear that for video games specifically, it does not present any threat to sales.
Bonus: several successful studios are getting closed, and others will face layoffs. Because it literally doesn't make a difference how well a game performs. If it's a big corporation - layoffs will continue happening.
Link: https://gamesbeat.com/cwa-represented-workers-at-xbox-criticize-microsoft-management-and-pending-layoffs/
Your two statements have nothing to do with each other. Artists don't get paid for the amount of copies sold, that's executives and shareholders. Unless you're talking about an indie company with shared ownership, which the companies in the post decidedly are not. Artists just care about their game being played and enjoyed, something the scummy practices of these suits actively prevents.
Lots of creators get bonuses or royalties based on sales.
My bigger point is that piracy is bullshit. Either pay the price asked because you want that game or movie so bad, or say the cost is too high and walk away entirely.
Pirating something you're too much of a skinflint to buy is super immature "I want to have my cake and eat it too" mentality. People too spineless to make even a miniscule sacrifice for their beliefs.
Not lots sadly. There are certainly some that have a big enough public profile to demand a share, but those are few and far between, and are often doing pretty well for themselves already. To 99% of the people in the industry the response to "I want to get a cut of the game's profits" is "you can find another place to work then."
I don't entirely disagree with your bigger point. At some point you have to just step away from companies that are set on abusing you. But I don't agree that it's immature or skinflinty. That seems to be a rather uncharitable take perhaps lacking in understanding and perspective of why people pirate. There are pirates that take for the sake of it, but that's not mostly the case. Piracy is trackable to a certain degree, and so it is feedback that people want to give you money, but are protesting your decisions. As has been said, piracy is a service problem. People tend to have no problem parting with their money in a fair exchange, and so they often don't, even if they could.
Wanting to be treated fairly and not taking abuse is the opposite of immature in my opinion, how much it costs doesn't even factor into it. Some fights you fight on principle. Too many people accept being taken advantage of in this world, making it worse for everyone else. And without those people piracy would also have been unneeded, because these companies often opt to not fix their issues and instead enshittify harder to squeeze more out of the people that keep paying.
There's also a huge psychological aspect to it. Pirates often still bond with friends over games and those friends can end up buying, and pirates often still contribute to fan communities. Both of these are hard to let go of. They also happen to still help the original game stay relevant despite pirating, so yes, quitting entirely is more effective of a boycott. But also not being able to sell the experience to someone that has already experienced it is also more permanent, and allows that person to remain in their respective communities. Piracy just hits the sweet spot between quitting and no longer directly supporting, which is why people often end up there. And for creators that have to live under the thumb of executives that sabotage their success with hostile business practices, they would much rather you be there than somewhere else, while they try to improve the situation from the inside.
Sadly, the answer is probably that those creatives need to deprive the corporations of their products. Starve the beast. Hard to do that if you can't afford rent, though...
I don't mind people pirating ROMs or movies or music they've purchased previously and are no longer available in a reasonable manner. I do that myself from time to time. I don't really "agree" with the concept of only buying a license instead of a copy, so I just see that behavior as addressing the obvious and IMO immoral imbalance.
I don't have any sympathy for people who steal shit because they're simultaneously unwilling to pay for it and unwilling to have the strength of character to walk away. I understand your points about social connections via game communities but I think that's part of the cost of standing on principles. You can still stay in touch with friends from games without playing those games. I walked away from WoW and Blizzard in general for example due to their chain of bad decisions (like liquidating their QA and GM/CM staff in favor of chatbots that do a terrible job) but still occasionally touch base with people in those communities to see how they're doing.
That's fair. I just think like your second part, most people have their reasons like that. But you're correct the culture does also simultaneously allow people that pirate just for free stuff to have it easy. But If the companies don't like it, they can fix that. Currently to them it's just the cost of doing business their way. People drove to Netflix and Steam in hordes when they made a service that was easier and better than pirating. Netflix regressed since then, but Steam still shows it's possible. It just takes an industry as a whole willing to avoid the dark patterns that lead people to piracy.
Sales numbers are the telemetry execs use when deciding what games to green-light.
Why do you think suddenly everybody was making live-service games? Battle Royale first, then hero shooters, and now extraction shooters? These games are reporting great income because it's not possible to pirate them. Add MTX on top and suddenly everybody and their mother wants a cut.
Why do you think even GTA became a live-service game, even when it has a single-player story?
Why do you think more and more games have launchers that require people signing in to some accounts to verify if they made the purchase?
All the crap you people are mostly moaning about are a direct result of piracy.
Your point being? I'm well aware these are because of piracy, it doesn't change my point. If you're a shitty company intent on abusing your customers to extract as much money from them, of course you're going to find any way to do it and take away their forms of protest. But in the end, an artist still gets paid for whichever game they end up greenlighting, and not for the amount of copies sold afterwards. Hell they might not even get paid at all since these are the same kind of companies that would rather fire them for AI.
And for the not so shitty companies, they simply make sure people have no reason to pirate them, and there's a hell of a lot more of those. They just don't make unreasonable amounts of money, almost like that's antithetical to treating your customers fairly.
My point being: games and art are not necessities. Don't be a little bitch, if you want to have them, pay for them. If you don't want to support the company under which the game was made, wait for a massive sale on Steam or some such.
Giving "a shitty company intent on abusing your customers to extract as much money from them" is not done by pirating the game (which makes them try to extract even more money out of their clients), it's by financially supporting the companies and creators who don't do that.
Most AAA studios have bonus programs in place for sales up to around a year after release - to theoretically make up for the extremely poor baseline salaries. Artists do in fact get paid for the amount of copies sold.
A bonus is not the same as a percentage cut of sales. Yes, bonuses exist and they can correlate with the success of a game in the best case, but they can (and also often) completely do not, plenty of stories of people getting laid off even if the game does well. These companies are so big they do not hold onto their staff as valuable assets, but as replaceable cogs. And it's also why a lot of artists work on a contract basis and just don't get any bonus to begin with.
And 'to make up for extremely poor baseline salaries'... That's not a thing as far as I know, and if it is where you are, it shouldn't be a thing. It would be the game industry equivalent of tipping culture. Steal from workers ahead of time so you can punish them if the suits' stupid business decisions don't work out, awesome.
EDIT: Perhaps you're referring to the fact that artists get paid badly at all, in which case, sure. But those bonuses aren't to make up for that.
May depends on place, but I believe most of globe is fairly easy to avoid nestle, even with cheaper alternatives.
For games, until following most famous games, theres lot of alternatives to aaaa games, that are often way clearer of bugs on release date, often cheaper, and don't require 5090 to work on medium details in 1080p. Few games like gta-clone, sims-like or diablo-like may be unique on their own, it would be even hard to ignore them in social/popculture aspect, so many gonna compare everything to few biggest. Still it is about paying them lot, preorders or throwing monies at worthless dlc day1 horse armors... We can ez avoid lot of that.
I've not purchased a nestle product in over a decade. Skill issue?
Honestly: doubt. "Nestle" is not only stuff that has their name on it
👍
Sooo, like... entirely possible with some effort?
"Some effort" varies widely on how privileged you are to have wide selections to choose from where you get your groceries.
Games are not groceries, the privileged are already the ones who are gamers.
We're talking about food, not games.
You're talking about food. Everyone else is talking about video games here.
I'm talking about how surprisingly complex it is to avoid a diversified corporation, using Nestle as an example. Is this really that hard to follow?
Except your point is entirely irrelevant when faced with the reality that video games, especially AAA video games, are a luxury item.
There's a major difference between avoiding cheap chocolate and avoiding video game companies. I can't believe that I'm even having to dictate this.
Edit: by the way, it isn't hard to avoid Nestle products either
Looks at list… oh neat I’m already doing this. Thanks indi games and GOG/steam sale
????
Steam sells you a license. You don't own the game. You own a license to access that game from Steam.
Yes, yet they do respect that licence and customers... so far, we trust them mostly.
Once day, Steam may be gone from market, replace by another service, who knows, and our libraries be gone by turning servers down - there is a possibility. But I struggle to imagine Steam would delet a game from my purchases without refunds and without any really serious reason, like few others do.
Didn't they have a system that makes all games DRM free if something like that happenned or somwthing like that?
Guess You mean GoG, they do offer most games as fully downloadable installer and most licences fully allows You to keep them forever, even if servers and services of Gog goes down. Not all of them, as they also offer games with separate launchers and stuff. Some games may be online only, like mmo genre, not much to do here, even if You manage to get all files stored. There's always chance publisher takes the game off the store, or there may be some legal issues. Gog still trying to provide fully offline installers as much as possible, or even provide own, (semi) unofficial patches to old games to make them run smoothly on new operating systems (not intended to by original devs).
Much awesome, even if cannot say all games DRM free.
No, I know GOG provides plenty of DRM-free games, what I meant is, I remember something about Steam having a system to make games DRM-free in case they went under or something. Maybe it was something different or even misinformation, though.
Oh, surely GoG have lots and lots of drm-free games. It is big part of store, mentioned in ads and many interviews. They actively providing more and more drm-free, probably even silently cheer up SKG (even if avoiding saying this loud).
My point was, not every single game on Gog store is drm-free.
That's how all software, except Free Software, works. Most media as well (except copyleft).
The game is downloaded and installed on your machine.
It also is from the other vendors, other wise you could not play offline games aside from all games being very slow probs. They have DRM, you cannot play most games without a launcher (there are some games, most of my steam library is mostly DRM free but maybe cuz they were indie games) unless you crack it.
And requires authentication via Steam to launch. No steam, no game.
At least not unless third parties come up with a workaround.
There are many DRM free games on Steam that don't require the Steam client to run once downloaded
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw
Watch, learn.
Advice:
Just pirate.
I read this as stop PLAYING games and was like "no, fuck you."
This is pretty much every company that publishes games. So we just don’t buy / play games ? We want real change we need to push for more physical releases with game on disc. On top of that we need to push for more single player experiences. This way no matter the licenses agreement I can still boot the games
Going back as far as the mid 90s I recall seeing verbiage in the software agreement that I didn’t own the software. And they had the right to refuse my access without notice But because the software is on the disc I can still boot it to this day
I don’t expect companies to hold servers for the rest of time so I can redownload my game. What I ask for is a physical copy.
Just because it's on a disc doesn't mean it can be played offline. The game that started #StopKillingGames was the 2014 game The Crew that was shut down in 2024, and even if you had the physical discs, the game required internet and stopped working after 2024
That’s my point pushing single player experiences. No online component to check no authentication. If there is no hosts there is nothing they can shut down.
Are the companies shown in the picture selected on what basis? Are they sorted for anti consumer practices or what? Bc like what did SEGA do
The list is so confusing... ESL is an e-sports organisation, they do e-sport events, they don't make games. Why are they on the list? Why is Netflix on the list??
And why is Riot on the list? Their games are free, we're literally not paying for the games, we're paying for the in-game store crap (if at all)...
Because it does make games and is part of the anti-stopkillinggames lobby.
Shit game company in general. Also part of the lobby if I remember correctly.
This one I'm not sure. Probably part of the lobby as well? Can't confirm right now, but a lot ot companies you haven't even heard about are lobbying against it.
Who lobbied against stop killing games
Segas been killing it recently, no hate from me
I feel like President Skroob and his luggage, here. This encapsulates what's already on my own ban list nearly verbatim. Incredible.
We were barely 1.3 million that bothered to sign a petition, and you want to convince a meaningful amount of people to give up games from 95% of publishers? Good luck lol.
I figure this battle is lost so I started hoarding and archiving everything i come across that works/can work offline
You don't have to stop playing games from these companies. You just have to stop paying for them.
Piracy is and has always been easy.
I swear even after staring at it for 30s that said "ESL FACESIT GROUP".
Lol i read it as facsist
Why is this post NSFW?
Ok done I needed to sign in in browser
I can get behind this.
We need free software advocates to get a chance to step into this ring. If we could push for a requirement that companies release the source code for their game engines, and public domain them - while still allowing them to retain copyrights of content assets, it absolves them of the responsibility of having to put more work into ensuring the game remains playable, while still giving fans what they need to make it continue to be playable. It also means players would still have to buy the game to play it, unless a total conversion existed.
The main complication with that route would be 3rd party middleware. They could just be exempt from release requirements, but that would place a rather large burden on fans for having to make alternatives to that middleware to make a game playable.
all corporations are bad
I see this sentiment often: "All politicians are bad", "All lawyers are bad", but it can be very harmful. If one lawyer is crookedly making millions off of illegitimate patent trolling cases, the best person to fight them is another lawyer. If a politician is cozying up to corporations, the best way to fight them is a politician for the people.
On corporations, it sucks to admit, but our lives tie in with many of them no matter how much we try to limit ourselves. I could even see a woodsman living outside civilization being affected by air pollution and land rights claims. People still fall back to needing to buy food, housing, entertainment, even if we agree many evil companies abuse those needs. Supporting responsible corporations, where they exist (and they are not often advertised) can pull power away from the evil ones by showing that the ruthless steps are not necessary, and support workers and hence people; assuming that they're paying employees well.
Declaring they're "all evil" can garner some quick attention - but that quickly boils over into defeatist attitudes wherein people stop taking any sociopolitically advantageous actions like targeted boycotts.
Corporations are part of a structure of might which is called the machine. The machine consists of beatlings where each beatling is the authorities of a geographic area. Corporations sets up veins to the beatling and ensures it is beating, in exchange the beatling gives authority to the corporation. Thus there is a symbiosis between beatlings and corporations.
I believe we should move away from the machine towards horizontally run societies for instance through democratic confederalism. By doing this, we would move away from overproduction, natural slaughter, superficial needs, overexploitation, hierarchy, alienation, and towards natural closeness, the meaningful and connectedness.
The purpose of the machine is not to serve us, but to uphold itself and expand, but the only thing standing in its way is... People. So it creates mechanisms to encourage hierarchical thinking, subordination, coldness, distrust, fear, division, narrow mindedness and dehumanization.
When we horizontalize, people will be attracted to these new societal structures and abandon the machine. Thus removing the existential threats to humanity.
I've been doing this for about 15 years and it hasn't made a difference. Let's not kid ourselves that it's going to change anything except keeping ourselves from getting burned
This is the movement. It is time to take gaming back from for profit studios who want us to have zero rights to what we purchase.
Are there nonprofit studios? I don’t think I understand.
I think you are getting closer to what is needed.
Why is my no-buy list for publishers on m feed?
2K shut down Battleborn, I am still pissed.
Imagining thinking Netflix is a games company.
So bleak
They released crappy games for android
They licensed and distributed them. I'm not aware of any they actually made
And some of those they licensed were really good. Shame they were (are?) only available with the netflix subscription. I would buy Into The Breach immediately if I could :(
Into the Breach is available on Steam
I know, I mean on android
I agree!
All software has been licensed since day 1. You have never owned software in your life, even if you have a disc.
That's just false, you can still buy and sell the games that you bought on disk 15 years ago. It doesn't matter that you only own a license to the software as long as you own the whole end product.
Tell that to the software I wrote
Past you is licensing to future you.
Though software licenses are supposed to be resellable
When you buy software on a DVD, you own the software, at least until you install it and agree to the clickwrap agreement that revokes your ownership.
In the olden days, we installed software by copying it off floppy disks onto our hard drives. There was no clickwrap agreement, because there was no installer. We owned that software.
GOG advertises that purchasers own the software they buy. https://www.gog.com/en/news/welcome_to_gog
Lots of open source software can be owned. You have to do something that grants you ownership in the first place, like buying it on a disc. Downloading it for free might or might not, I don't know. But no FOSS license I know of has any clause that revokes ownership. The GPLv2 has a specific clause that says
so you can always choose to reject the whole GPL, and revert back to the implicit rules of commerce, "Pay money, receive thing" which confers ownership.
Are gamers capable of voting with their wallets? How about slasking for and supporting games that allow users to host their own servers like we had in the 90s? Are there even any games that do this any more?
Most but not all of the survival crafting genre will allow you to host your own servers. Others still have LAN using listen servers, but both are rare.
there is a pretty small game owned by microsoft that allows you to do that
I don't even remember the last game I bought that required an internet server. If I can't host a local game or private server for multi-player, I'm not interested. Of course, I only buy maybe one game a year, and it's never anything current these days.
I already don't, so...
I bought a few games from smaller studios and indie devs and i get "AAA" when it's a giveaway like GTA 5 a few years ago but i mostly go sailing and even that isn't necessary lately because of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. G.A.M.M.A. and been playing it since 0.9.3 so about 2 years maybe and i did try S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and it was meh so paying 60-200$ for 1 game that will most likely barely be played is a waste of money for me so no point in coming into port.
If TES 6 is good when it comes out in 20 years I might buy that, but Ive been doing an unintentional blacklist of these guys for a while now. Maybe it would be hard if they made better games.
.
Riot and square too. Like Riot's business model is one that StopKillingGames recognized would likely get excluded as it's obvious from the start you only get your purchases while the servers are running. And square has supported their two mmos forever already, everybody knows exactly what they get there.
I feel like maybe I need to read more about the whole "stop killing games" thing. It's awesome and fine if they expect at some point the game will be able to be played through a free multiplayer tool that enables someone to host and pay for private games.
It's quite another if they think companies should have to shell money out of pocket indefinitely to run infrastructure for multiplayer games after x years of release and/or once player base passes a certain threshold number.
I'm admitting my ignorance here but I do think it's fair to at least question both sides some
SKG has repeatedly stated, that they don't want eternal support from publishers/developers, but the means to run the games, once the official support and infrastructure is gone. that could mean tools to run private servers locally or online or some sort of offline singleplayer mode.
Thanks for filling me in, I do think that makes sense. I know I got downvotes for thinking aloud but appreciate you answering.
Stop Killing Games explicitly does not want endless support from a publisher. They are advocating for publishers to implement an End of Life plan during the development stages of a game that can be enacted after the publisher wishes to stop supporting a game, so that a player has a reasonable chance of continuing to play the game on their own, either by disabling Always Online DRM, removing the Online component of a game with a large single player campaign (like The Crew), or providing server binaries so the user can self-host a server.
Thanks for filling me in, I do think that makes sense. I know I got downvotes for thinking aloud but appreciate you answering.
You're probably being down voted because uninformed people giving their "opinion" has been a huge issue for SKG. Since big companies have been fighting hard for people to think that SKG means that companies would need to pay for servers infinitely.
Just mentioning that as a possibility could be harmful as it plants the seed of thought of "SKG sounds good, but they could be scheming this evil shit in the shadows". Which is NOT the case, SKG has been very explicit in that they DON'T want companies to pay for maintenance for servers. They only want access to the server software in order for anyone to be able to run it.
No prob :)
This video explains everything about SKG. It was made by the guy who started the SKG movement.
Epic makes popular current games. Valve is more of a retail platform. ffs a majority of indie devs rely on steam, boycotting them wouldn't make sense.
Typical braindead type shit
Oh wait you're that weirdo who censors gamer, 😅 phew, here I thought this was a real argument. Nice catching up man, keep it manic
Gamer! gamer! gamer!
Sorry I know it's scary
Why would I be scared of G*mers?
What are they going to do?
Ask chatgpt to make a mean post about me, to post on the Steam forum for their Hitler dating sim, while they drink gfuel from their waifu cups.
Care to elaborate?
Or just want the headline bs?
What is this vague and undefined thing you keep claiming both companies are doing?
You can't act smarter than the room then peacock when someone calls you out and provide absolutely zero substance.
Either defend your argument or let everyone see that you're full of shit. Doesn't matter either way to me.
This list is of who lobbied against stop killing games
Valve is a member of Video Games Europe. The main group opposing Stop Killing Games.
Just as Valve opposed refunds for digital purchases, they're against this as well
Online games cannot last forever. Just a fact.
How can something be a fact if it's incorrect?
If they release server software required to run online games, they indeed can last forever.
Not true. They can, if the games are made to last forever (besides any game not being compatible to hardware and software, but we are talking about the online functionality here right?). In example by allowing community servers, so it does not depend on the servers from the company. Besides the fact that some games can be played offline without online functionality, like Street Fighter in example. Or do you mean by "online games" as "online required only games".
Like online only games.
I just explained it to you. There are online games that are build to last forever. What type of online game do you mean?
I would use Minecraft as a counterpoint considering it's perfectly reasonable that someone could play the game exclusively online using nothing but community servers while completely ignoring all single player experiences (which I'd argue hasn't truly existed in a long time since the game now hosts a local server which you connect to during "single player"), but I get the feeling you'd still take issue with that example because it does still have a single player experience you could do.
So for a (as far as I recall, it's been years since I last played it) multiplayer only experience: TF2 and its community servers. Valve could shut down all of their own servers for TF2 tomorrow and (aside from a hiccup in operation with making a server to distribute the list of community servers or making some other work around) the game would still have a thriving online community.
Unless you use private servers rather than matchmaking systems and publisher hosted servers.
I can still play the now 19 years old call of duty 4: modern warfare. Online multiplayer works just fine and Activision doesn't have to do a damn thing to maintain it.
Younger gamers may not know this, but all online games used to work this way, you'd hit the "online multiplayer" button and the game would start populating a list of player-managed servers hosting games.
It has always been a superior system to automatic matchmaking, and it still is.
I like the combination of Both Like in tf2
Yeah, I guess the thousands of hours I spent on private servers like runescape, GTA:SA and TF2 were just a fucking figment of my imagination.
Ackchually, the heat death of the universe means that nothing lasts forever. Therefore, boycotting asshole big game companies run by billionaires that oppose the stop killing games makes no sense!
Also, why do we punish murderers? Their victims would die anyway, it's a scientific fact.
Jesus Christ what a stupid take.
I was just regurgitating yours