I’m adding some second hand experience here, but what made below zero much worse for my son when he played it was that it constantly crashed, resulting in a lot of lost progress. Often crashing when saving, too, so after having accomplished something. He got it on the switch as some kind of double-feature with subnautica and below zero on a single cartridge. He played through subnautica and loved it but ditched below zero after barely a handful of hours played, purely due to the frustration, not even being at the point where those game design points would have mattered.

the UN gave them money to research ways the UN could use AI, so that is what they did.

That’s kind of my point… They didn’t. To research ways the un could use ai, you could have workshops and interviews with various groups, experts and non-experts alike. You don’t just pick one, utterly insane use case (that is called out beforehand as such) and implement that. You do research on the options and pick either the best ones or, if there’s no good one, none!

To come up with a research project, it has to go through various pitches, drafts and proposals. I can’t imagine every single control instance failing so utterly that this kind of project with this high school level of arguing (“well, we could do this, so why wouldn’t we?”) passes each of them. There has to be a better reason why they did this. And if there really isn’t, a lot of people should ask themselves what the fuck they’re getting paid for if they let this happen - and some other people if they’re the ones who should fire the former.

Alfred J. Kwak was actually a co-production of VARA (NL), ZDF (DE), TV Tokyo (JP) and TVE (ES). Lots of people involved ;).

Didn’t know those German series were popular across the border! Very interesting. And hey, learning a language is never a bad thing, I guess. Sometimes I wish the Germans wouldn’t dub everything.

Those are kind of non-answers… “Why the fuck are you doing that?” and the answers are all “Well, somebody’s probably doing it at some point, so why don’t we do it now?” or “you gotta try stuff” as if that explains anything. Like, no, there are some things that don’t need to be tested. This is arguing on the level of “Caaaaarl, that kills people!” You don’t need to punch people in the face to know that’s a dumb thing to do. You don’t need to spill milk to know it’s a dumb thing to do. And you sure as fuck don’t need to date somebody you dislike to know that fucking them is a dumb thing to do or create ai refugees as the UN to know it’s a dumb thing to do! Like, what argument is that? We’re not talking to three-year-olds that have never touched a candle! The UN should be able to anticipate the consequences of their actions! ESPECIALLY IF THEY HAD WORKSHOPS WHERE PEOPLE TOLD THEM IT’S A FUCKING DUMB THING TO DO!! So, no, those aren’t answers.

When it was released, Alfred J Kwak was wildly popular in Germany and I think the Netherlands, too. I still consider it to be one of the most beautifully produced European animated shows from that era. DVD releases were sparse and I don’t think you can stream it anywhere (except some shady YouTube channels that probably are only left alone because the whole thing has pretty much disappeared into obscurity).

Something that I guess is only popular over here is Tatort, which is essentially your typical crime solving series. It’s released every other Sunday and always plays in some German speaking city or town. Quality varies wildly, but that is also sort of what makes it nice to watch, Tatort just hits differently depending on whether it’s the one from Münster or from Wien.

Wildly popular over here is also “die Sendung mit der Maus”, “the mouse program”, maybe. It’s usually a set of entertaining animated or puppeteered shorts, educational segments and few-seconds-long animations of the mouse. It’s been on air for decades.

In early tests at a workshop attended by humanitarian organizations, refugee aid groups, and nonprofits, Albrecht and Fournier-Tombs said the reactions were strong and that many were negative. “Why would we want to present refugees as AI creations when there are millions of refugees who can tell their stories as real human beings?” one person said

I love how the article then proceeds to not answer this question. What a dumb idea. What a waste of UN funds.

Demanding cars transition to clean fuel alternatives is not the same as demanding game manufacturers design and implement systems that must be fully functional in an offline state. This would be akin to demanding nuclear reactors be retrofitted to use fusion by 2035. Despite it not being sustainable or commercially possible.

Are you even listening to yourself? I’m pretty sure it’s harder to redesign a car’s engine and fuel system than it is to have counter strike call myshittyhomeserver.com instead of valvesmoneygenerator.com - and just the thought that you think it’s about as complex to disable some stupid drm system (which has been done numerous times before by kids with too much time on their hands) as it is to design a fusion reactor is just insane.

But again: they do not have to be fully functional in an offline state. Just release the server if that’s what’s needed. You already sold me the game, you stopped providing the one part that you wanted to provide, now just give me that. Done.

How do you enforce that? Legally compel a company to publish the server binaries with every copy of the game?

No! No no no! It’s after the game reached its eol! The idea is that the companies keep doing what they do, but once they’re done they have some roadmap to leave the game in a functional state. Once they’re done!

I’m talking in 9/10 cases you’d get a physical copy of a game and that was it.

Actual updates that were delivered over the internet came around the same time as Steam and DRM programs.

Bullshit. For games that ran from their ROMs (like snes-era) that was true because there was literally no way to modify them. But ever since they were used on media with write access, they got patched. You should just download a patch, point it to the directory where you installed the game and be done. If your connection sucked you’d buy a magazine that had patches on its CD or something.

Also, steam doesn’t guarantee updates either. If a developer doesn’t want to update their game, that’s it. If a developer wants to update their game, great, that works without any such system as well. Can you force people to apply updates if the game isn’t online? No. Does all of this have anything to do with the initiative? Not at all. This isn’t about patching games that are still supported. This is about what happens long after the last patch was released.

Okay explain to me what happens when Final Fantasy XI reaches end of life and all services that authenticate and host player data shut down? Who hosts that?

That’s not the question! If a developer decided to release server binaries after they shut down the service, at least I could host it. I could just run it locally, the community could come together to run an instance or whatever. This is about having such options, not about forcing publishers to keep hosting their stuff.

Are developers who want massive open worlds going to be expected, by law, to program a world that plays itself? Bots for NPCs, taking the roles of players, pushing events automatically? I am begging for answers because it keeps feeling like I’m the only one trying to figure out what’s going to happen to the games I play regularly.

None of that is demanded! Nothing! And I have no idea where you’re pulling those ideas from!

Massively multiplayer online worlds don’t have to be populated by bots. Multiplayer games don’t have to be redesigned. If a player opened a game to see a barren land, filled with no players and only dead npcs, that’s fine. But hey, they could occasionally stroll through the forest that they met their spouse in or something. Just like looking at a painting in a museum with your friends is different from looking at it at home, this would be the case here, too. But at least you can still enjoy your painting, unlike the game that’s been remotely disabled.

Most online only games are online only because they focus on players interacting with other players on a grand scale. They’re a social experience. Demands that it be playable offline defeats the purpose of it existing and we went over the server binaries thing. Nobody is going to jump at the chance to reset their progress for most of these games just for the shot to play it for however long this specific server is alive.

This is true. Except it might not be nobody. We’re talking about culture. Just like thousands of songs have been written to be forgotten, occasionally there are pieces that become culturally relevant. Sometimes even after the author dies. Imagine Franz Kafka writing his stories just to have Max Brod not publish them but lock them behind a shitty service that shut down after he wasn’t profitable enough, immediately burning all copies that were sold so far.

This is not about keeping the original experience. This is about museums being able to show people works of art fifty years from now. This is about me showing my childhood memories to my kids. Would they see my old friend dragonhaxxor9999 run into battle with me? Certainly not. But would they get an idea and would I be nostalgic about it? Certainly. And why would the profitability of some stupid service be a reason not to have that? Just let me fucking run the software I paid money for! I own those bits! Have my processor execute them if I want to!

That’s not how laws work.

It literally is. You pass a law that states that from 2035, cars must not emit greenhouse gases. The law doesn’t state how that’s accomplished. You can sell battery electric cars, you can sell hydrogen powered cars, you can even sell combustion engine cars as long as you make sure that they only burn biomass-based or green-hydrogen-based fuels.

Great. So the company shuts down the same day, declares bankruptcy, and is immune to further legislation because it’s dead.

Okay, valid point, but that’s the same for everything. It’s literally how capitalism wants it to work. If somebody builds a house for you, messes up the process and then declares bankruptcy, you’re fucked. If you want to change the system, fine, but that’s not what this is about.

However, if those companies have to have a roadmap to work through after they stop providing the service for their game, it might make it even easier for a judge to just tell them to go through with it after they filed for bankruptcy. If anything, your corner case is at least a bit improved.

Cite one.

Release Server binaries.

Traditionally, you’d get a game - then nothing. No update. No bug fixes. No dlc. THAT IS WHAT YOU’RE ADVOCATING FOR.

Are you insane? Patches and expansions have been around since forever. Certainly way earlier than saas infrastructure. The ability to patch games has nothing to do with shitty service based business models.

Internet matchmaking in general was a free service included with certain titles. It can’t be provided perpetually and you expecting them to basically open source their net code is absurd.

Nobody demands that. You’re again arguing against your own strawman.

We have games that cannot work on a LAN model but you’re intent on forcing that model on every game, even if it means killing those games or forcing them to not be made in the first place. That’s what happens when you don’t clearly outline legislation.

Bullshit. If a game requires a server that manages the connection between players then that server software can run on any computer just as well as the publisher’s. There’s no law of physics that requires EA to run a server just to have some jerks lust over loot boxes.

Right. There is no clear solution to the problem, only a demand for a solution.

Yes. Because that’s how laws work.

At what point? When is a game legally considered dead and a company legally obligated to provide that? What happens if they just shut down prior to fulfilling it?

At the point at which they stop providing that service themselves. “What happens if they don’t?” Yeah duh, what happens if you break a law? Then courts can enforce it. Is this the first time you heard about laws?

You don’t actually grasp what you’re asking for or understand what legal measures even exist to enforce them.

I understand it just well. You telling me I don’t doesn’t change that.

Games today are not able to curtail to these absurd demands. Not because they refuse to but because the complexity of what they offer is not easily designed to be replaced.

Bullshit. Also, as I said, they could just release their shitty server once they shut it down. You’re taking one solution that doesn’t require them to do that that I suggested, assume that games are just too complex for that specific solution and tell me that this assumption (which is also debatable at best) invalidates the idea of playing a game locally. What nonsense.

You don’t like the current model but fail to provide an alternative that can replace it. That’s the critique. It’s beyond childish to look at a problem, offer nothing, then get pissed when someone tells you that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I provided plenty of alternatives. If publishers or you don’t like it, fine, then come up with your own. Again, laws work like that: they provide guardrails. The idea that people should be able to keep using what they bought has been the core of trade for millenia but suddenly it’s insane to ask for that? What nonsense. Gog sells plenty of current ones without drm, so somehow it is still possible to compile games without attaching a shitty service model. But even if there’s a some shitty game that the publisher absolutely doesn’t want to release after they already milked it beyond profitability (what you say would be impossible, which I still think is bullshit), according to this initiative they could just stop selling perpetual licenses. At least people then know what they’re getting into.

you own the game, they can’t release a patch to fix bugs or it would be a violation of the law for modifying your property. That’s bad.

What the fuck? No! Nobody wants a law that prohibits changing games. Games have been patched since forever. Where did you get that idea? You keep coming up with nonsense that has nothing to do with initiative. Just because a company can’t shut down my car remotely doesn’t mean they can’t repair it! How do you come up with that crap?

Maybe we wouldn’t have to be such condescending dickheads if you cared to not make up stuff.

the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.

That’s the core idea. Publishers should just make sure that after they milked their product it can somehow be run without their interference.

That doesn’t require sources. In fact, this doesn’t even state any method that is preferred. Could they release sources? Sure. They could also release server binaries. They could also patch out the connection to their servers and only leave people with local multiplayer mode or something. They could do whatever. The initiative doesn’t care.

The practice of licensing a product indefinitely but then just disabling it remotely is hostile to consumers. If they really, really want to keep their business model, they should sell licenses that are limited to a certain timeframe right from the start. Selling perpetual licenses and then disabling them without leaving consumers with any means to still access what they paid for shouldn’t be legal and probably isn’t.

Also this right here:

The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

Nobody wants your ip. Just don’t break stuff you sold.

Upon reading the UK version over again you’re right

:)

it’s even worse.

sigh

Why?

It states that companies no longer be allowed to ‘disable’ games which they often don’t do. They just stop maintaining them until the infrastructure for it disappears.

You’re close. Maybe read it again. Or something. I don’t know.

Legislation will not compel a dying company to release code

Well I guess then it’s a good thing that the petition doesn’t demand that.

No need to be so salty. Maybe instead just read what skg really is about because you obviously have misunderstood it completely.

If it’s drawn art, yeah, same.

BiteAway gang!

If you can bear the cringe of the interviewer, there’s a good interview with Penrose that goes on the same direction: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e9484gNpFF8

No worries, just wanted to check if I’m missing something.

Not saying it isn’t, but if somebody tells me it should be less than half of what I’m seeing it for I might as well ask if I’m missing something, no?

7 bucks? Saw that and immediately opened steam.

Am I missing something? That’s the only bundle I found for animal well…

It’s not a single bit worse than before the announcement.