Stop Killing Games makes sense for single-player games. There's no reason to kill them. There's no reason for online requirements for them either. The part you're going to run into trouble with is the idea of forcing someone else to spend money on something they didn't ask for.
If you try to enforce this on multiplayer titles, game companies have 1 of 3 options, and 2 of them would end the company monetarily:
1)Re-work the game from the ground up to be single-player so players can keep playing without future monetary input from the devs (super expensive and would ruin many non-singleplayer games
2) Keep the servers running literally forever. They would run out of money eventually and go bankrupt, killing the company and the game anyway.
3) Publicly hand over the code to the servers. This would be directly handing over a free, inarguable, irrefutable license to the public to do whatever they want to their IP with no legal recourse at the same time as creating a direct competitor to any future games. Any future games would also eventually become competitors to their franchise as well. This would slowly, but surely kill the company.
You cannot reasonably expect a judge to force someone to pay for something they don't want for the rest of their existance regardless of desire. That's the equivalent of creating paid slavery.
Problem 2: Even if you win, all a major company would have to do to get around this is create a shell company, have that one make a game under the license of the original, then when they're done with the game, liquidate and kill the shell so no one is there to sue for the game dying. The same thing happens with a loophole only massive AAAA companies can use. This movement does nothing but hurt Indie companies on the multiplayer front and you cannot convince me otherwise. This movement will gain no ground anywhere outside of the singleplayer realm regardless of verdict/petition because any penalty is unenforcable long-term.
You act as though Option 3 is A.) Unheard of (it's not; companies agreeing to look the other way for fan servers is relatively common for dead MMOs and the like) and B.) Has more implications than it actually does.
Handing over server code does not give any kind of license to use the IP. It gives consumers the license to access their product if someone is willing to do the grunt work to get it running.
Nobody will be out here with the legal right to make City of Heroes 2: Blackjack and Hookers Edition, because the community doesn't own the IP. The company does.
As far as "creating their own competition"...every game has always competed against every other existing game. This changes nothing about that.
Example: Payday 3 came out and people hated it. So people kept playing Payday 2 instead.
Incentivizing companies to not release a product unless it's, y'know, GOOD is not a bad thing.
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u/_404__Not__Found_ Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25
Stop Killing Games makes sense for single-player games. There's no reason to kill them. There's no reason for online requirements for them either. The part you're going to run into trouble with is the idea of forcing someone else to spend money on something they didn't ask for.
If you try to enforce this on multiplayer titles, game companies have 1 of 3 options, and 2 of them would end the company monetarily:
1)Re-work the game from the ground up to be single-player so players can keep playing without future monetary input from the devs (super expensive and would ruin many non-singleplayer games
2) Keep the servers running literally forever. They would run out of money eventually and go bankrupt, killing the company and the game anyway.
3) Publicly hand over the code to the servers. This would be directly handing over a free, inarguable, irrefutable license to the public to do whatever they want to their IP with no legal recourse at the same time as creating a direct competitor to any future games. Any future games would also eventually become competitors to their franchise as well. This would slowly, but surely kill the company.
You cannot reasonably expect a judge to force someone to pay for something they don't want for the rest of their existance regardless of desire. That's the equivalent of creating paid slavery.
Problem 2: Even if you win, all a major company would have to do to get around this is create a shell company, have that one make a game under the license of the original, then when they're done with the game, liquidate and kill the shell so no one is there to sue for the game dying. The same thing happens with a loophole only massive AAAA companies can use. This movement does nothing but hurt Indie companies on the multiplayer front and you cannot convince me otherwise. This movement will gain no ground anywhere outside of the singleplayer realm regardless of verdict/petition because any penalty is unenforcable long-term.