Two more months to go and more than 50% left to reach 1 million signatures. It's sad to see that with how many people game, this petition has so little reach. I guess we'll have to wait till Fortnite is shut down, then suddenly many more will care that their childhood game is gone forever.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 10 points 19 hours ago

Unfortunately, I think it was just a lack of awareness that the petition in existed in certain countries where Ross just didn't have enough reach, possibly due to language barriers. A big push from native speakers of those countries with large audiences, like streamers, could've pushed it over the edge.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't know if I fully agree with the petition, but I do think that there are some real problems with the status quo.

I also think that either a legislature or courts need to provide legal criteria for the good or service division with games. I think that there probably need to be "good" games, "serviceʾ games, and possibly even games that have a component of both.

But I'm not in the EU or UK.

I also am kind of puzzled by this:

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq

Isn't the law on this already settled?

A: It mostly is within the United States, but not in many other countries.

It doesn't sound like it was as of 2020 in the US, at least on the good/service distinction:

https://www.carltonfields.com/insights/podcasts/lan-party-lawyers/youve-been-served-legal-effects-games-as-service

Of course, case law has never really been settled on whether games are goods or services. Right, Steve?

Steve Blickensderfer: No. No, I haven't been able to figure this out one way or the other looking at the cases.

A few quick searches haven't picked up US case law, if it's out there.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 9 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

It doesn’t sound like it was as of 2020 in the US, at least on the good/service distinction:

The creator of the Stop Killing Games campaign did a segment about the viability of fighting it in the US in a segment here: https://youtu.be/DAD5iMe0Xj4?t=1097

tl:dr, the motivated lawyer he talked with on it eventually found a court case that set a precedent that would be extremely difficult to fight in such a pro-corporate court system without extreme amounts of legal funds. This is why the Stop Killing Games campaign is focusing on implementing laws in the EU and other non-US countries.