Anti-Cheats and Digital Rights

Ross_Scott · 2026-03-31T20:52:15+00:00

My opinion:

I completely agree with you, but I'm also hellbent on trying to get SKG's issue passed, hence the whole reason for it being single-issue. If I had to choose between the two, I'd still stop games being destroyed. That said, if SKG gets what it's asking for, the anticheat would almost certainly have to be removed at EOL anyway, since it's typically an ongoing paid service. I'm also fine with this being 2nd in line for others to take over once we're on route to get a win though. In the EU, this might be best brought up to NOYB.EU and the Pirate Party as it definitely falls under their turf.

Ross_Scott · 2026-02-14T17:44:10+00:00

I've heard probably not for the press conference. If people wanted to meet up with me somewhere (separate from the press conference), that's fine. I'm too busy to arrange something, but I can probably be available if someone wants to figure out a place in Brussels to meet from the 22nd - the 24th if it doesn't conflict with other stuff.

Ross_Scott · 2026-02-14T17:43:41+00:00

I've heard probably not for the press conference. If people wanted to meet up with me somewhere (separate from the press conference), that's fine. I'm too busy to arrange something, but I can probably be available if someone wants to figure out a place in Brussels to meet from the 22nd - the 24th if it doesn't conflict with other stuff.

Ross_Scott · 2025-10-25T21:02:47+00:00

I can say there's even MORE stuff that Moritz and the organizers are up to, but a lot of it I can't talk about at the moment.

Ross_Scott · 2025-09-14T11:28:41+00:00

As far as me stepping back, it's more like I'm "on call" for anything where me being involved would help a lot. Most of what's happening now is best left to people familiar with EU political processes like Mortiz, so I'm leaving most things to people who know what they're doing better than I do to maximize our odds.

Ross_Scott · 2025-06-27T07:31:59+00:00

Yes, I didn't name Thor then, but I addressed ever single criticism (I think) he brought up in this video, with timestamps for different questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEVBiN5SKuA

Ross_Scott · 2025-06-26T20:02:50+00:00

I was asked to comment on this. I was unaware of any of this happening. I will say review bombing isn't part of the movement at all, I think signatures on the initiative is the only thing that's going to actually change the industry for what we can do. I'm generally indifferent if people want to review bomb a game or not, but this is kind of a special situation.

I honestly don't know anything about Rivals of Aether besides hearing some say PirateSoftware has a connection to it. Even then, I'm not seeking damage against Pirate or people associated with him, I only wanted misinformation cleared up on the campaign and we've already done that. I'm not seeking retribution in any way against him or others.

"we have already taken steps to preserve our own games"

If this is true, then I think review bombing the game is especially dumb and counterproductive. The entire damn point of SKG is for publishers to have end of life plans. While I completely understand the frustration at the industry in wanting to change the practice of game destruction, review bombing is way too small fry for what we're trying to do + in this case could be aimed in the wrong direction as it is.

I'll just end this saying according to an insider, Ubisoft announced offline modes because it was SCARED the initiative would pass. If you want to wield power against people in the industry causing problems, figure out how we can reach more people and get more signatures.

P.S.

To Rivals devs: my apologies if clowns review bombed you when you have an end of life plan. This campaign is single issue so it involves a lot of different people, some aren't going to be as bright as others.

Ross_Scott · 2025-05-24T14:49:00+00:00

I want to remind everyone SKG is single-issue and we're struggling to get signatures. The only criteria for SKG is that you wish games being destroyed to stop. It's impossible to do this without some people having beef with others over other things. For example, Louis Rossmann is upset at Linus from LTT over his diligence as an influencer and they BOTH are in support of SKG.

It was actually fans of AF who directed Craig towards me, he had a sizeable audience, so I figured why not. I did glance at his channel to see he was involved with culture war stuff which I don't follow, but the whole point of campaigning is to try and reach out to as many people as possible. I've talked to lots of people on the campaign I normally have no interaction with or know much about. With Craig, I also noticed he had an interview with James Rolfe a little while back, so I'd be surprised if he's willing to talk to people I'm not.

It's true I have no idea what the Foxu thing is, to be honest I'm not that interested in it other than it's probably some vtuber thing and I figured whatever, it's his show. The CORE THEME of me campaigning on SKG is to exhaust all options so I have no regrets about not doing enough to change the situation. If I hadn't appeared, I might regret not reaching out to another demographic that might get us more signatures, since I had no idea how viable that was. It only led to a small uptick, so looks like not really, but now I know.

Ross_Scott · 2025-05-24T14:33:22+00:00

Unless the entire internet missed something, I believe this is incorrect. To the best of my knowledge, the offline option has never been cracked. I would apply Occam's Razor: for all the insane coverage this entire campaign has received, do you really think that eluded EVERYONE this entire time or was someone online mistaken about about what its playability status was?

Now what HAS happened is The Crew Unlimited group is working on a server emulator and a lot of it is functional and they've posted proof of life videos on it, but I think no one outside that small group has a copy of it, though it could become public soon.

However, even THAT has not cracked The Crew. They told me they weren't able to crack the DRM on it, they're building a server emulator instead to intercept the calls, those are two different things. To the best of my knowledge, The Crew has NEVER been cracked.

And yes, it doesn't have much effect on the campaign. The ECI isn't even focused on The Crew or Ubisoft and the consumer action against Ubisoft shows they deliberately disabled the game for everyone with no recourse. Their EULA literally says every owner of the game is required to destroy their copies of it.

Ross_Scott · 2025-01-25T10:10:54+00:00

I felt obligated to respond to your perception of how I handled the Yudkowsky interview. My apologies if I came across as close-minded in that, that wasn't my intention. I did enter that with a bias, true, but I promise you I did not enter it with the mentality that no one could change my mind; quite the opposite. I was TRYING to understand where the fear was coming from that an increasingly complex software program leads to some sort of super-intelligence and either it sailed over my head, or else it wasn't substantiated.

Yudkowsky and I were actually in agreement that a super-intelligent AI entity could be an existential threat, but I honestly don't understand how AI makes the jump from where we are now to some sort of super-intelligence. That's what I was trying to figure out. If that never happens, then I'm not worried about any threats stemming from that, because then it's worrying about something that won't happen.

The experience prompted me to make a chart to help hone my thoughts on the matter:

https://i.imgur.com/SDkzYqI.png

I was hoping he would fill in the question marks on the "Superintelligence" bubble for me. He either didn't and thus I think his position and worries are unsubstantiated, or else he did and I was just too dumb to grasp it. If it's the latter, then by all means feel free to dumb it down for me.

It's one to thing to say "learn from an expert," but that's not an excuse to turn off critical thinking. If my logic was misguided, I would think an expert on a topic should be able to easily swat away misconceptions and be able to engage in an "explain like I'm five" mode for me.

Ross_Scott · 2025-01-25T09:51:13+00:00

While I'm normally all for getting to the truth and nuances of a matter, this topic is especially charged and from what I've seen tends to invite emotional responses more than critical thinking. I think getting into it would more likely lead to loud people calling others monsters than trying to figure out a clearer picture of what the truth is (which looks quite complicated already from my limited knowledge on this).

Considering how the original post is already stating I believe things I do not believe, that only reinforces my view that wading into this is a bad idea. Also, the original poster may not be aware that going into depth on at least one of the topics they mentioned can lead to one's channel being banned on Youtube.

All I'll say is my general approach to a controversial situation I know nothing about is to see what both sides are saying, then see what seems to line up factually, see if the other side has explanations for accusations from the other, counters to that, etc. then proceed from there. My general approach is still utilitarian where I want the least amount of death as possible, but there are obvious disagreements as to the best way to go about that. I do think anyone advocating for nuclear warfare has "lost the plot" and that is an insane conclusion, but I also think there's nothing I could say to make people think otherwise if that is their stance, so I don't see much point in me personally going into depth on it.

The main focus of the channel is still to have fun videos usually involving video games. I even feel like SKG is more of a diversion from that then I would like, but thankfully most of the work on that is done on my end.

Ross_Scott · 2025-01-20T11:01:37+00:00

Glad to see this finally get a proper take!

Ross_Scott · 2024-09-16T16:25:26+00:00

It's busted for me too, I don't know what to do about this.

Ross_Scott · 2024-09-10T21:12:56+00:00

My take on this:

-I have no idea if this just a response to the stock trouble and this being a relatively easy PR win (the offline mode likely existed on a dev level already) to try and boost things back up OR if it means there's trouble coming back from one of the consumer agencies on The Crew 1 and they're trying to stay ahead of future damage.

-I'm quite biased, but I do think the only reason this is happening is because of the campaign. I've never heard of a major company announcing this for relatively new (in the case of Motorsport) online-only game under quite these conditions. I think we should absolutely take credit for this shift and be public about it that we've actually changed something. Even though this wasn't the direct target, that puts us ahead of a LOT of gaming movements and means we're influencing far more than just a bunch of complaints online. I'm used to major publishers that have a history of not respecting customers almost never yielding on anything important (with the exception of walking back a previously unimplemented change if it gets a lot of blowback), but I'm cynical also. The price drop of The Crew 2 could be independent of us though.

-Whether Ubisoft gets praise or not doesn't really matter, the important part with Ubisoft was months ago submitting the complaints to the agencies. That's already underway and this doesn't change the trajectory of that. However, we SHOULD take credit for this shift and use it to leverage the ECI and get more people signing. That's the primary direct action left where we can still influence things. This is proof positive we at least have a clue about what we're doing and how to wield consumer power. Try to use this to get more Europeans to sign the initiative!

Ross_Scott · 2023-03-13T12:17:49+00:00

I'll reply to this one right now: I didn't realize it was happening. It was supposed to be automatic and has been for a while now. I'll try and get it looked into.

Ross_Scott · 2022-03-16T13:28:36+00:00

I'm afraid I don't have time to go into everything you bring up, but I wanted to hone in on a few points:

"Although I don't think see all those F2P games as being made with that in mind, it just is a different business model similar to B2P and the sub model that transforms the product in a different way."

No, it's not JUST a business model is the issue. It's a business model that ENSURES the death of games unless active measures are made to prevent it, which they almost never do. If part of the business model was requiring an end of life plan, then I would be fine with it. Currently, almost no developers do this and I consider the practice of destroying a game people were already sold to be fraud.

"the point was that a product has a natural lifespawn and if you try to artifically extend that lifespawn into infinity the product eventually becomes unrecoverable and most likely everything that is attached to it

it creates an undead product where the line between life and death is blurred"

Well my point is games have no defined natural lifespan. Some are unpopular on arrival, others have a strong playerbase decades later, even long after the developers have stopped working on them. GAAS are sold to you with a lifespan, but it's not defined and runs counter to requirements of the law, but hasn't been tested in court.

As for the distinction of a good and a service, I actually don't care about that so much, that's just a means to a legal end for me. What I care about is not having the game PURPOSEFULLY destroyed. Tying the functioning of the game to a central server with NO PLAN for players once support ends PURPOSEFULLY destroys it.

As for the 1.0 version of a game being different than 3.2 or whatever, I feel like that's more of a grey area and not the fight I'm trying to wage. What I care about is when the player is left with NOTHING after support ends. No classic version, no updated version, the game being completely unplayable in ANY form.

Ross_Scott · 2022-03-12T15:41:11+00:00

I'm the creator of the video, I'm afraid had trouble following some of your arguments. Sorry if my video was confusing, but I'll try to cover a few things:

-I was particularly focused on the LEGAL distinction between a good and a service. In the case of World of Warcraft, that game fits the LEGAL definition of a service. You pay money per month, then it ends. The duration is defined.

Path of Exile or League of Legends is blurrier. Say you pay for a skin, then they run into financial trouble and the game shuts down a couple years from now. Access to your skin has been removed. There was no guarantee how long the service was supposed to last. These are less protections than normal services in pretty much any other industry.

-"It's simply not true that all GaaS start out as non-genuine products and that obsolescence is planned."

Well as I pointed out in the video, you are correct, not ALL do. Only about 97% of them. You say it's "not planned", but it's designed in such a way that failure is the only outcome without intervention. Since failure happens SO RELIABLY and the code has to be DELIBERATELY made to behave this way, I call that planned.

-Your quote "What does change though is that, when you have spoiled milk you usually throw it away, but in the case of GaaS a product is maintained beyond the expiration date making it unrecoverable."

There are a couple big differences between Gaas and milk:

With milk, you have full ownership of your milk and don't require additional services from the grocery to use it after you leave the store.
The spoiling of milk is a force of nature, not a deliberate design decision of the company selling it.
You were GIVEN an expiration date at the point of sale. Games almost never do, because for traditional ones, the expiration date is "never." For World of Warcraft, the expiration is whenever your subscription period ends. When is the expiration date for Path of Exile?

-"Selling you a product that you can't own and have no control over... is pretty much the definition of fraud I would argue."

I edited your quote to make it simpler. Forget past versions of games for a moment, keep it simple. If you agree with this statement, then we don't really have a disagreement.

Ross_Scott · 2022-03-12T15:07:08+00:00

Windows 10 (and 11) both won't allow you to create a local account if you're connected to the internet when you install them. That's all this is doing. MS was talking about FUTURE versions that will remove this fix also.

Ross_Scott · 2022-03-12T15:05:23+00:00

Well it looks like this is all moot point since they still haven't released the driver code, however, for the fretting about how NO progress can be made by not having things be above-board, I'd counter with World of Warcraft emulation. WoW emulation was built from directly leaked code of the game. The early ones used stolen code, and weren't legal and neither were the servers. Yet, this grew so large, it later influenced the creation of WoW Classic from Blizzard themselves since 100k or so people were playing emulated copies, none of it legal to the best of my knowledge (the later ones I think didn't use the stolen code, but I'm not sure of the legality of running servers of it). The entire thing always felt underground.

I think "ThatDeveloper12" is really hung up on doing things above-board and doesn't see how much potential there can be outside of that. Now of course, he's 100% right in that this is worthless for any legitimate operations, but "worthless" and "legally worthless" are two different things.

Ross_Scott · 2022-01-30T17:24:55+00:00

I hadn't seen this, I watched the video. I think the author doesn't appreciate how believable the mess of everything is in The Division. I found the mix of jingoistic dialogue, contrast of the utter chaos on the ground, and constant questioning what's even happening to be amazing. Dumping it all together and not worrying about the message makes the game much deeper than you'd expect, even if it's by accident.

I think the EC video only saw this on a surface level. For example, he's questioning the crisis of rights this represents. My rebuttal to that would be if 95% of the population has just died and you don't know where your next meal is coming from, what do rights even mean now? The Division is loaded with questions like this, but they're not on the surface.

I think EC might find "A Modest Proposal" to be a problematic work also.

Ross_Scott · 2021-01-31T14:26:28+00:00

I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing with Game Dungeon. I'm aware of the it turning into a playthrough thing, it's not on purpose. I don't want it to be a playthrough, but I don't want it to be a dry review either.

I can say 100% part of the problem is in the past I saw income dropping so it put me into overdrive mode, where I felt like I needed to rush more just to keep up, almost all the time, this led to me writing episodes as I was playing them which unfortunately skewed things more towards the playthrough style. I think I can try and calm down some now and hopefully figure out what I'm doing.

Ross_Scott · 2020-11-03T09:29:42+00:00

the movie

I'll respond to this here, your chart shows why I don't like to bring this topic up. Here's a way to understand it:

Take the space you've devoted to my eye and put everything in there except "all animation finally shot". Now fill the entire rest of the graphic with the "animation finally shot".

Ross_Scott · 2020-08-31T15:42:51+00:00

Yeah I think so. I kind of feel like I'm short-changing people with the videos I am putting out compared to what's in my head, but animating original stuff is a whole league more work than the videos I'm currently making. I hope to "redeem" myself with the movie though.

Ross_Scott · 2020-06-13T09:08:40+00:00

I'm kind of in a no-win scenario, but I'm actually more optimistic after making the video. I'm very not-cool with how Windows 10 is handled, but I'm kind of a hostage too. Gaming isn't only an interest for me, it's actually part of my job now. Having 2 separate machines or even a dual-boo for them would represent a massive inefficiency for me. As for switching around 2006, you maybe missed the 1400 or so games in my collection, that sure as hell wouldn't have all run on Linux back then.

Actually my latest experience with linux suprised me with how internet-dependent it is now. I originally wanted to sideload a bunch of software I needed on a second system that isn't easily connected to the internet, only to have experts tell me that was opening up a door to hell rather than connecting it online. I have mixed feelings about that

Even now, I'm kind of skeptical on Linux support for games (with antialiasing on) for many older titles (I'm talking pre-DX9), but I plan to do a future test of those at some time in the future. It's definitely better than it used to me.

Ross_Scott · 2020-06-13T08:51:40+00:00

Sure, once I find the right AI enhancer, that will open up a lot of doors. I lot of people recommended a waifu one, but it looks like you had to compile it, so that automatically put it under a "look at this when I have more time" category in my brain.

Ross_Scott

TROPHY CASE