The “Stop Killing Games” initiative went through all the emotions and drama that an initiative could have. But ultimately it’s apparently going forward. Poland appears to embrace the cause, which is good.

However, my point isn’t with this notion, which is good, mind you. It’s with the whole “You’ll own nothing and you’ll like it!” idea that people say. It’s funny too because we never did own anything.

Intellectual Property

Do you know what is an IP? Not Internet Protocol, but ‘Intellectual Property’. Let me quote Wikipedia here:

Intellectual property rights include patents, copyright, industrial design rights, trademarks, plant variety rights, trade dress, geographical indications, and in some jurisdictions trade secrets.

Plenty of stuff, right? But in essence, the company that makes the game ownsthe game. They can do whatever they want with it, release it again, recall it if there’s any issues and most importantly, stop printing copies to make it unavailable for purchase.

In the good old days without digital distribution, games used to be inside cases. Inside those cases you’d find a manual to play it and… A End-User License Agreement. Sometimes it would be in the same piece of paper, to save up printing costs. That EULA still exists to this day, because it’s what you actually own, a licenseto play. With physical media, it’s a little harder to enforce the whole ‘thou must not playeth anymore’ because that would mean going down your home and taking the game away from you, which wouldn’t be acceptable. Instead, the company just stops printing copies of the game.

Although you own the physical media, that media is only a license that grants you the permission to play, allowing you to play, say, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on your PlayStation 2. But that does not mean you can redistribute the game to run on a Sega Dreamcast or Nintendo Gamecube because you don’t own the game, only what we can call a ‘copy’ of it (because it’s a copy of the master disc, when they make a gold disc where all the other copies come from).

Trying to do so is considered copyright infringement, which goes against the wishes of the IP’s owner. If you owned it yourself, there would be no problem putting it in different places, right? But because you don’t, it’s a problem.

Digital Distribution Changed the Game (literally)

With the advent of digital distribution as a whole, licenses also became digital, so did the games. But that also means that if you wanna scrub a game off the internet, it’s much easier.

As an example, the Tony Hawk series did sell very well back in its Neversoft days, you’ll never see new copies going on. And although many new games were made, it’s pretty hard to find them on sale because licenses expire and the company won’t renew them, meaning they’ll stop producing the game copies. With digital distribution however, they can just take it down from stores and anyone that bought it won’t lose (in theory) but no new purchases will be made.

Other games have lost their licenses and were taken off the store for the same reason, but players could still enjoy them because their license to play wasn’t revoked. This is a key takeaway because any EULA will certainly say they’ll revoke you from playing the game if you do something they disagree with, like cheating. Cheating will get you banned in multiplayer-focused games, because the EULA says so, not only because it’s common sense.

Killing Games

The key difference from what I’m talking about and the whole idea for “Stop Killing Games” is that companies could (and some are!) enforce the fact that they can revoke your license to play. ‘The Crew’ by Ivory Tower, published by Ubisoft was the catalyst. Sure, it could have been a better game, but the idea was that even if you bought a copy of the game and you had the disc or files installed at your system, the game wouldn’t start. That’s the problem that people took offense to, and it makes sense. That is the equivalent of a corporate ninja coming to your house and taking your copy of Super Mario Bros 3 away. That is stealing, plain and simple.

The way that The Crew was designed, however, had that in mind from the start. It didn’t allow you to play offline, meaning that you needed an internet connection to play it. And once the servers were down on the company’s side, you can’t play it anymore.

Games have a shelf life like anything. Companies will keep selling the item as long there’s interest, mostly. The difference is that digital or electronic goods can be used until their physical components expire, so when a disc goes bad or the cartridge breaks for some reason. Until then, they can be used. And that’s why the license being revoked this way caused the whole thing to be done. But in essence, we never owned the games, just a copy of it.

What can we do?

Let’s talk about next steps, both companies and gamers wise.

Companies should stop being dicks, for start.

If they want their games to be played until the next one comes out, then they should support it. But they should also keep supporting it until its shelf life is over, and beyond. Making a game is not a one-time commitment, it’s a long process that might be very risky and could not work out. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to support it.

For smaller companies I understand recalling your game, but for bigger ones? Offer tools that allow the games to be played for years to come. People still play Valve games daily because Valve offers a dedicated servers option for all of their titles that are multiplayer, so you can play it whenever, but if I want to play The Crew, I can’t. If Valve can do it, why not Ubisoft?

Gamers should hold companies accountable for their mistakes and problems, and obviously tell them that this sort of behavior is unacceptable, so the “Stop Killing Games” initiative is a right idea but shouldn’t be the only idea. Ask the companies ‘what happens when the sequel comes out?’ or ‘will you revoke my game access in 5 years?’ and ask for basic post-end of service support. If the community likes the game, it’ll live forever.

Lastly, all games should have (in my opinion) an offline mode, or something akin to it. The multiplayer mode should only connect to the internet when the internet options are launched, not at its launch (looking at you THPS3+4).

The Moral Ground

A lot of the text here will look like I don’t like games or that I support companies for killing games. I’m happy to report that I’m fully against this stupidity and companies need to be smarter about this ordeal.

I never personally liked The Crew so it dying didn’t do much for me, but I can understand that we needed a catalyst to get stuff off the ground. Unsurprisingly, all the major first and third-parties are against ‘Stop Killing Games’ (minus Valve, obviously), because it’ll hurt their bottom line.

For that I say ‘screw them’ because even though we don’t own the games, they are still ours. We play them, we enjoy them, we have the files. Sure, we can’t do much other than to play with it, but that’s the whole point. Shareholders aren’t playing games, most of them at least. So we might not own the IP, but we do have the means of playing it, and even if the company wants to be stupid about it (Rockstar and their Definitive Edition crap), we can safely ignore them.

The issue is when they start revoking games we paid for and are now unable, which is not okay. I’m not fine with that, and anyone that supports this is an idiot.