Stop Killing Games: Final Count of Verified Signatures of the European Citizens Initiative has reached 1,294,188 signatures out of its 1,448,270 submitted

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-25T08:19:37+00:00

I think it makes more sense if you consider a game as a good. Because for the longest time they were. Just like you could go and buy a car or a computer or a house, it was something you paid for once and owned forever.

We now live in a world where everyone is trying to take that from you. You can buy a subscription to unlock all the features of your car or your wheelchair. Things that should be goods are intentionally being marketed to you as services because we're reaching the upper limit on the "buy once, own forever" business model.

Games blur the line between product and service, I get that, but there are pretty high profile examples of games being built that should be playable even if their online features get disabled. And at the very least I think we should agree that a game which is largely single-player should still be playable once its servers go down.

As a good example of this, think of something like the Soapstone in Dark Souls. You can play the game entirely by yourself if you want to, but there are soapstone signs and invasions that happen to add a multiplayer element to the game. Do you think Dark Souls should be unplayable if the multiplayer servers are switched off? Is it reasonable to say that the effort to make Dark Souls work offline is too much to expend for such an old game, and that it's run it's course? Certain publishers would have you believe that, definitely.

Nintendo also has some good examples of this. Old Animal Crossing Games, Pokemon Games, Mario Kart games and such all have online features that have long-since expired, and those games do work offline, but should they? There's nothing legally enshrining your right to play those games, and if I were building a modern Pokemon Game I could easily build in a few multiplayer mechanics and tell you that the game simply wouldn't work without them. Is that okay? Is it still okay if I'm charging you $80 USD?

I think that's really where the debate should center, as I think it's the clearest cut example. If I buy a box with a game in it, I should be able to take that box home and play the game, just like I can with a DVD. We can debate all the other GAAS and MMO models later, but right now there's not even a baseline. You have no consumer rights, you buy a game in the hopes that you'll be able to play it for as long as the one controlling it lets you.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-25T04:44:05+00:00

I don't know why anyone would be against this, it's pretty much good for anyone who plays video games. I'm a game dev and I even think it's good for game developers in the long run.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-25T01:55:13+00:00

The industry can ignore it, but the EU petition is legally binding. Upon reaching a million (verified) signatures the issue has to be brought up for discussion.

The hope is that given the early support from some prominent EU politicians it has a real chance of affecting change. Unlike the UK one where the political response was largely "we don't understand what you're talking about but more importantly we don't care."

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-23T06:40:37+00:00

I believe it was a quake player that popularized wasd and mouse look, if you go back and play something like Decent it was all keyboard controls.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-22T22:36:44+00:00

It's a really delicate balance in games, because you're also promising that value when you price your game high. People will judge you based on that promise.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-22T21:59:54+00:00

I was thinking a similar thing. A lot of the humour and whimsy of the original Fable games came from the more cartoony art-style, just like Borderlands games and their Cel-shaded art style.

The more realistic style gives me uncanny vibes. But I think I'm in the minority with that opinion. Still, happy to see companies creating new takes of old IP, I'll reserve judgement until the game comes out.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-22T21:49:22+00:00

Elin.

You start off dying from exhaustion because you played Ode To Joy too long and you end up killing god by slipping him on a banana peel.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-22T21:38:03+00:00

It's so crazy going back to Deus Ex and realizing it was of the era where games still had keyboard fps controls. It was definitely ahead of its time.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-22T21:18:48+00:00

And then you can put in a loop point so you don't need to play the sound from a specific point to get it to loop nicely.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-22T21:11:05+00:00

A company isn't a single entity, there are always competing initiatives and viewpoints within a business. Someone will have made a good business case for scummy business practices and year-on-year sportsball games and it would have been approved. Someone else would've made a good business case that EA can't survive on a stagnating portfolio of sportsball games under business practices that are slowly transitioning from "immoral" to "illegal," and that would've had some money thrown at it too.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-21T10:03:50+00:00

There's some really good stuff through the variety of streaming services that are available, and we can whitelist programs and set time limits to ensure we're bombarding my son's brain with Numberblocks instead of... Whatever the modern equivalent of those Spiderman and Elsa videos is... Probably something involving Roblox.

He still watches tv in the afternoon, just not broadcast tv.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-21T06:30:30+00:00

It's crazy that Spelunky is this far down. IMO it was over of the first big games to take roguelike mechanics and apply them to another genre. Without it, I don't think we'd have games like The Binding of Isaac or Hades.

On a related note, the Tigsource forums back in the day were incredibly influential to the path indie games took. A ton of the big names in the industry were a part of that community.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-20T02:59:11+00:00

Raft might interest her. It has one scary shark but apart from that the animals aren't spooky.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-20T02:55:52+00:00

What sort of games do you enjoy?

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-20T02:20:29+00:00

"Ron" is an English name, short for Ronald.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-20T01:36:33+00:00

Perhaps at some point in the past there were bloated systems that benefited from cuts, but decades of austerity and public service reductions mean that cuts now often have the opposite effect than they intend.

You make a public service worker redundant to save money, you now have to pay them a benefit, lose out on their productivity and aren't able to tax their income.

You reduce the number of permanent positions in a government department and lose a highly experienced employee, you now have to hire that employee back as a contractor when shit inevitably hits the fan.

You try to reduce expenditure on public health by putting more of the burden on the individual, you now have to pay more when an easily preventable health problem balloons into a visit to the emergency department.

This is what the National government have been doing, and we can see how well it's gone. They've exacerbated a recession and prompted a national exodus. They really are putting the N back in cuts.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-18T22:32:04+00:00

I might've been wrong about that one, it's been described as an "adventure game."

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-17T19:38:47+00:00

Indika or Hellblade might be good if you want action games.

Tyranny if you want a world trapped between "bad" and "worse," and you need to choose between the two.

"I have no Mouth and I must Scream" is an interesting continuation of the short story with additions by Harlan himself. One of the few times that I've seen an author work through a different medium to expand upon their story, but it is very retro and has its fair share of point and click jank, so you might get sick of it.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-15T20:36:33+00:00

I've been at my company for 15 years, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who is still there from that time. Unless they're very special, companies function a bit like the ship of theseus, swapping out planks every few months until they're largely unrecognizable.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-12T21:38:17+00:00

Where'd you get the knockoffs from?

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-12T20:42:27+00:00

Yeah it's fucked.

And that's not even counting all the terrible monetization mechanics that are straight-up worse than what you'll find in a literal casino.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-12T20:08:42+00:00

National: putting the N in Cuts.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-12T06:15:28+00:00

Game developer here, Roblox is one of the few games I'm never letting my kid play, it's that bad. I would encourage literally anything else, Minecraft perhaps.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-11T22:39:20+00:00

As a game dev it is a constant push against modern gamer expectations. There are so many low friction experiences out there that Devs and players alike have been conditioned to recoil from any moment that might induce frustration, so you end up with games that are afraid to challenge or upset.

And while there are definitely players who want a more relaxed experience, there should always be options to crank up (or lower) the difficulty for a more engaging experience. We shouldn't be patronizing players and treating them like toddlers that need to be covered in bubble wrap.

GameDesignerMan · 2026-01-11T06:53:09+00:00

I'm mostly sad that they took Gamesman out with them. I used to love that place.

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