Rock, Paper, Shotgun had an interesting article on the activities of the consumer protection group Stop Killing Games (SKG). The article inspired some thoughts on my part about what SKG and similar groups are trying to do on the behalf of gamers.
SKG’s raison d’etre
Stop Killing Games was, as I understand it, founded on the concept that games that players pay for should continue to be available for some reasonable span of time. Developers today have full control in this equation for many games: for multiplayer games they operate the servers, and many single player games also have ‘phone home’ features that allow for remote termination. Basically, the producer of the game can turn it off whenever they want without advance notice.
SKG started by pushing for legislation in the EU and in America to put protection of some sort for gamers into law. The idea would be to codify a kind of guarantee of playability: maybe not ‘forever’, but at least long enough that players could get their money’s worth out of a given game. These laws might have escape clauses whereby the publisher could terminate early but then would owe the consumer a pro-rated portion of their purchase price. Regardless, the end user would get at least something for their money.
Thus far, sadly, SKG’s efforts have been in vain. The attempt to get laws in place in the EU in particular failed rather completely and, although they intend to continue pursuit of legal ends to preserve gaming, there isn’t a clear source of hope at the moment.
Where we are now and my thoughts
Thus it is that Stop Killing Games is now, it seems, looking at other ways to be an advocate for game consumer rights. Their latest attempt is to become party to a lawsuit being brought against Sony regarding their game store and its predatory pricing practices (alliteration for the win!).
Sony has an effective monopoly via their e-store now that they don’t support physical game media. This means that the fees they charge developers and the prices they enforce in their store give them undue control over the consumer’s pocketbook as well as the game developer’s bottom line. Sony is different from, say, Steam in this regard because they control both the storefront and the hardware platform it runs on. Microsoft differs to a small degree because their console still, ostensibly at least, supports physical media.
I don’t know whether a lawsuit like this has sufficient merit to stand up in court. But I do respect the effort SKG is putting into the topic of protecting consumers from the corporate gaming overlords. I’d really like to see them circle back, however, to their efforts regarding preservation of game access. Like “right to repair” for physical objects, “right to use” for software needs to be enshrined in some kind of legal framework. Right now the software licenses put all the power in the hands of the developer and publisher, and governments need to see that this is unfair for the consuming public.
I think games companies should just stop pretending to sell games and just clearly market everything that requires anything beyond a local machine to play as a rental. Most of the problem comes from people thinking they’ve bought something when they haven’t. If they knew that before they paid, they could decide whether or not it mattered that they were getting permanent or temporary access and make their decisions accordingly. I wonder how many people really would feel that if they didn’t have the games forever it wouldn’t be worth having them at all and how many would be happy to have, say, a year’s access, by which time they’d never want to play again anyway.
Also, the whole Live Service and Forever Game nonsense has made both sides think games ought to be around, well, forever, instead of just as long as it takes for the next one to arrive. If you took that element out, most games would run locally and again the problem would solve itself.
I agree that there is no “perpetual” license logic in gaming, but I do think some kind of gamer protection is in order. The way I read Stop Killing Games attempts to get legislation passed, their approach seemed measured. The game publishers would still retain the right to cancel or stop supporting games, but there would be a pro-rated mechanism based on date of purchase for a gamer to get some kind of financial recovery.
The devil is, of course, in the details. What is a fair amount of time for a player to have access to a game they purchased? A year, or five years? And how does that pro-rating mechanism for refunds work? And of course if you buy a game today and keep it in your library for a year or two you might get nothing even if it is cancelled the day you finally start to play as it is tracked from date of purchase.
No solution is perfect for gamers or for the corporate profiteers, but there should be some kind of legislation making sure some degree of protection exists on the consumer side of things.