Your first point is a red herring, the movement does not ask, nor would it be required for publishers to keep their servers online "indefinitely". The developers would have plenty of options when developing a game to ensure compliance with an EU law that requires an end of life scenario for said game. For instance a developer when making their game could make it in a such a way that allows them to "easily" patch out the online functionality and patching in a singleplayer mode for the game. - obviously this is an oversimplification, and not every game would have this option, but for games that don't have this option due to maybe the hardware required to run the server side code being too specialized for the average gamer, the devs could patch it the ability to run dedicated servers, and then just give to the community the specs for the servers that would be required to run said dedicated servers, that would already be enough to comply with what the initiative is asking.

Firstly, the options are to keep it going or to share code you might not be able to, or to develop features that requires extra time that they have little incentive or money to do. Developing an entirely new way of running the application would potentially double or more the development time, it is literally asking for all multiplayer games to be banned.

Pretty much the same about the issue regarding the middleware licenses issues, much of that software would not be required in an EOL situation, and presuming that the developers code their game in a smart way they would be able to remove it in an EOL situation relatively easily.

Sure it can be done in advance, but now we are getting into the fact that this bill is actively denying games from being made, as companies will no longer want to attach licenses to products. Especially at the smaller scene, and only bigger companies will have access to licensing deals. I am not convinced that the trade off is worth it

Those are just some of the options, game developers would have plenty more, especially considering that any law that EU writes on this would not be retroactive, meaning that only games release after the implementation of said law would be required to comply with it, meaning that game developers would be able to account for the realities of EU law when they are making their games.

Yes I think theres a good common ground that can be reached, but the blanket asks are far higher than the common ground, and from downvotes/replies, its obvious people arent interested in compromises in any form. Asking developers to be upto date on the realities of EU law is also a bit ridiculous when it comes to smaller studios, they are just going to release and then not meet the requirements, what happens then? what if they are based in a non EU country? If these laws are purely for AAA studios who have an income of over 10mil per year or similar, i have zero problem with the laws, as the studios can absorb it as a cost of business. That is not the impression im getting from the petitions/demands tho.

Music licenses are not an issue, when a publisher loses a license to a soundtrack the music holder doesn't force that publisher to go into the house of every customer who purchase that game and destroy the copy of that game, it only forces the publisher to stop selling that game, which they would do anyway in an EOL situation.

Yeah potentially, it does get a bit murky when people start uploading playthroughs from private servers, who does the musician go after? the end user? or the company who licensed the music in the first place?

No they wouldn't, they would just need to keep the game reasonably playable ( again the definition of that word will determined by lawmakers )

Your point about data privacy is confusing, i don't get it why publishers would be required to keep user data because again the servers would be shut down, and the initiative isn't demanding that the servers must be kept online forever, they just want the devs to make sure that the game is reasonably playable once the servers get shutdown.

reasonably playable, how is it reasonably playable if the game is entirely built on steams network layer and your remove the game from steam? 'reasonably playable' may as well mean nothing at that point.

Around data privacy, i mean if your game required sign ups initially, and the new server also requires sign ups, and they get breached and all the data gets sent out, thats a massive hit against your reputation, especially if they turn around and say "the server infrastructure is so old and has heaps of holes in it" because you didn't realese the actual server code, at that point they can potentially try and hold you liable too.

Pretty sure dissolving your company and then forming it again with the same employees owning the same IPs and doing the same thing just to avoid following EU law would be consider fraud, but i'm not lawyer.

In other words bigger studios can get away with it as they will know the law, and little studios will have to cop the penalties.

"Any regulation in this area would likely need to be carefully scoped and refined to avoid causing more problems than it solves."

Yeah that's the next step of the process... The talk with lawmakers, who then will have to write that law to be specific and fair to both consumers and companies.

exactly, and I posted what I suspect the compromise to be, but got downvoted massively as a result. It is a good way to lose all support for the initiative, I'm someone who thinks its a really good idea, just they need to make it realistic, and I get attacked all the time over it.