PirateSoftware: ππ₯Ύ
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Stop Killing Games
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[EU/UK] Stop Killing Games:
The consumer movement to stop game publishers from destroying older games with kill switches.
The goal is to reach 1 million signatures in the EU so that the european parliament will respond to the initiative that then leads to regulation that requires end-of-life plans for games to stay playable.
Progress Tracker:
UK Final Day 14/7/2025
EU Final Day: 31/7/2025.
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You know, I wondered why PS was so strongly opposing this initiative since I thought he shouldn't be affected by it ... until I read his game terms linked on Steam:
This License will end automatically if you breach any of the terms. When this License ends you must stop all use of the Application and destroy and erase any copies you have.
Oh boy, that's why lol.
If you learn how to pirate games like Destiny, WoW, Fortnight, Anthem, Brink, etc let me know.
Theyβre talking about the YouTuber piratesoftware who is a moron spreading lies about SKG.
Ah, tyvm.
They didn't had private WoW servers? I remember playing Ragnarok Online in a private/pirate server
It's not piracy, it's copyright violation, they're both crimes but they're very different things.
Piracy is when you break a protection system, if you do it or if you take something on which a protection has been broken, you commit the crime.
If you just take copyrighted material you don't break any law, rightfully so, otherwise you wouldn't be able to watch any movie, read any book, listen to any music, etc. because they're all copyrighted (intellectual work).
But if you publish said material without the authorization of the original author, you commit the crime.
I don't know all MMOs emulators out there but I know WoW very well. Nothing has ever been stolen from Blizzard, private servers are ALL based on emulators written from scratch by the community by reverse engineering the client, they're all opensource and hosted on GitHub. The code is legal.
The code alone tho is not enough to run a server, you also need data and some assets the are copyrighted, NOT protected, there's no protection system involved, not even on the WoW client that has always been free and downloadable by anyone (ownership of the game/expansions is checked server-side).
If you take those things and run them on your own PC you don't break any law - you would if you needed to break some protection system but there's none on WoW.
But if you publish them you violate the copyright, that's what private servers do.
You can literly play wow offline with bots now.
Pirate WoW? What do you mean?
WoW server emulators are all opensource and hosted on GitHub, what's there to pirate?
The rest of the game? Lmao
What? The client is free and downloadable by anyone, it's not protected in any way, never has been, ownership is checked server-side on your account.
And if you've ever actually played a wow private server you would realize none of the NPCs or anything is in the game except the world. That's all server sided and needs to be re-coded into the server
I personally don't think that "just playing" on a pserver is enough to realize what's in it, you need to compile and setup one to truly understand.
For those wondering, you can check projects like TrinityCore, AzerothCore or CMangos, those are the most popular ones.
Is there a good read/video about what exactly the movement wants? I looked through the side bar, and I understand that companies ending support for online only games seems to be the big problem
My question is: What does a solution for that look like? Forever servers aren't feasible in any capacity, especially if a company wants to make a sequel.
Any links/info would be greatly appreciated!
The FAQ explains this with a few existing examples.
This isn't about running a game indefinitely, but laying out a plan in which the game is still playable by users after the developer ceases support. Games are so varied, so the end-of-life plan may include a lot of different solutions, but here's a few ideas:
- Remove online service checks, considering there aren't servers anyways. This works for games that are largely playable in an offline capacity regardless.
- Release server binaries or source. There's a lot of this already either with existing or RE'd servers. Any MMO with a private server is a good example.
- Transition gameplay to offline modes. This is a lot more involved, but has been done before.
This isn't about burdening the developers, though all solutions do have developer impact. This is more so about requiring developers to consider the full life time of the product. I'm a developer that has only worked on live-service games. I have very little to show to anyone without a time machine.
As far as I know the specifics you want dont exist as this isn't a movement created by game developers, its created by consumers. You can find developers taking positions on both sides though, with the anti-argument essentially being that the movement is too vague and overly broad, and will cause widespread harm in unintended places.
Here's a sort of generic article but it has references to other stuff that would likely be useful to look up and read about: https://www.dexerto.com/twitch/what-is-stop-killing-games-pirate-software-drama-explained-3218791/
Weβre arenβt asking for servers to run forever as that is not realistic. We just want our games to be left in a playable state.
Must protect games!
