European Commission preparing token gesture for angry gamers and game developers (www.euractiv.com)
from Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 13 Jul 13:08
https://lemmy.world/post/32907072

#games

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CosmoNova@lemmy.world on 13 Jul 13:29 next collapse

There are “challenges concerning scaling up companies, attracting financing” and “managing cyclical waves of labour lay-off”, the Commission announcement stated.

So they don‘t actually want to do anything right now because the same scummy companies that kill live service games are laying off workforce en masse as well? Ugh, I didn‘t expect much but that‘s rich.

They‘re basically saying: „Apologies, but we can‘t improve things right now. You see, the industry is too rotten already.“

As expected from the EU commission that is just as corrupt as AAA studios.

AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world on 13 Jul 18:08 collapse

Sounds like an excellent reason to never buy a non indie game again.

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 13 Jul 13:43 next collapse

Did anyone actually expect the EU to regulate a multibillion dollar industry because it’s trending on social media?

highduc@lemmy.ml on 13 Jul 13:57 next collapse

Lol what a hot take.

No, we expect them to regulate a multi-billion dollar industry because that’s what governments do. Healthcare is a multi billion dollar industry. So is agriculture, and many others.

lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com on 13 Jul 21:27 collapse

  • healthcare: lives & health at stake
  • agriculture: environment & health at stake
  • video games: ?

one of these is not like the others

sorry, bruh: on a scale from critically important to idgaf, this ain’t ranking

khannie@lemmy.world on 13 Jul 23:02 next collapse

What you’re missing is that after Brexit the EU is desperate to appear to citizens that they’re listening and this would be such an easy win that yeah, I really expected them to not only listen but actually get their fingers out of their collective arseholes and do something about it.

Blah blah funding. Sure, start by targeting games that sell over X units or Y euros in revenue.

If the article is correct then it’s a massive missed opportunity.

Katana314@lemmy.world on 15 Jul 23:03 collapse

Even if it’s literally just “money at stake” some countries would have reason to be concerned - because so many zero-IQ MBAs are pushing industries into a hot crash for short term gains that bankrupt any long term growth.

Gamers having no faith that the games they buy remain theirs is one of many things that can drive down spending; though it will never happen on such a granular scale publishers would take action on it.

scintilla@kbin.earth on 13 Jul 14:11 next collapse

Have you read what a citizens initiative is? Have you read about the other successful ones? or do you just spew bullshit online before reading more deeply?

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 13 Jul 15:20 collapse

Give me an example of a “successful one”. I’ve read only two initiatives have lead to law changes. One on the minimum cage sizes for farm animals being slightly bigger and one on banning pesticides that ended up with slightly more oversight on their use. All the others that passed only resulted in a statement by the government with no legal changes.

nyctre@lemmy.world on 13 Jul 19:44 collapse

That’s 2 out of 10, not some hundreds. So if we’re going by the odds, SKG has a 1 in 5 chance of getting a law passed. Better than nothing.

lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com on 13 Jul 14:22 next collapse

Nope, and the suckers who did can suck big, fat ones.

atro_city@fedia.io on 13 Jul 14:49 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://mockingspongebob.org/why_did_you_do_something_instead_of_doing_nothing???">

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 13 Jul 15:23 collapse

I mean to encourage people to actually do something as sharing a post on social media isn’t activism.

atro_city@fedia.io on 13 Jul 15:25 collapse

No of course not. Only what you approve as activism is activism 👌 And using official channels is certainly not activism.

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 13 Jul 15:58 collapse

using official channels is certainly not activism.

Isn’t that called “lobbying”?

atro_city@fedia.io on 13 Jul 16:30 collapse

TIL voting is lobbying

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 13 Jul 16:44 collapse

Voting is activism?

Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world on 13 Jul 18:32 collapse

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e3655b79-9b23-482d-9c71-af71cf646dc6.gif">

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 13 Jul 19:15 collapse

Discussion on the internet is dead. You ask a question and people respond with meme pictures and downvotes instead of a point.

mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works on 13 Jul 22:02 collapse

Only when someone is talking in good faith, which you clearly aren’t. Begone, troll.

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 13 Jul 22:22 collapse

How? I genuinely believe something along the lines of an organized boycott would be far more impactful than a hail mary petition. The reason I think it wouldn’t work is because most people couldn’t commit. That’s why I said this isn’t activism.

It’s not activism if you’re not putting in any effort. I don’t care if people downvote me, but at least post an actual opinion. Have an actual stance. I’m glad others have posted some, although all of them seem to be along the lines of “this petition will definitely fix everything so we don’t need to try anything else”.

Goodeye8@piefed.social on 14 Jul 05:47 collapse

What even is your point? Besides "I don't like this thing so I'm going to shit on it"? You've made no actual arguments against the initiative. All you've said is that it doesn't work (technically you haven't even said this, at best you've implied) and I could just as easily say that about your boycott "solution" as well.

You have no point. You're just shit stirring. That's why you're a bad faith troll.

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 14 Jul 07:24 collapse

My point is that the movement should be doing more than just signing an online petition. What happens if the EU parliament declines to make any changes? Nothing? Oh well we tried? What will you do?

Goodeye8@piefed.social on 14 Jul 07:55 collapse

Okay, so what more should we do? Boycott somehow?

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 14 Jul 09:49 collapse

atro_city said it well:

If the SKG movement doesn’t organise, that’s all we’ll get: a communiqué to shut the hell up.

Over a million Europeans have signed a petition in less than a month. Why only Europeans? Big ecelebs like PewDiePie and Critikal have made videos on this. It’s got a lot of people interested. Why not get everyone in on something more direct? Something international? Why does the world need to sit and wait and hope the EU parliament fixes everything? It seems like a waste of momentum. It needs to be more than just a European petition. A call to boycott the worst companies until they change their EULA and TOS would be a great start.

Goodeye8@piefed.social on 14 Jul 11:07 collapse

Well, if you had been here since the start you'd know that Ross started SKG by having multiple petitions around the globe. The EU initiative is one the last (if not the last) petition he pushed for. For Australia and Canada the ship already sailed, Australia said no and Canada gave a roundabout no. Ross didn't even try in the US because the US is such a lost cause there's nothing to even petition for. I don't remember what happened with Brazil but it was on Ross's radar. Most other countries would simply be too small to have an impact on the global scale. Which is why the last two bastions left are the UK and the EU, because the haven't said outright "No" yet and they're big enough to influence the market. The rest of the world has to wait because the other influential parts of the world have already failed.

As for a boycott, you're free to start organizing one. I see that as a lost cause. If we can barely get 1 million Europeans to do the bare minimum of signing one petition I don't see how you're going to get 10+ million people across the globe to do more than the bare minimum for who knows how long. Boycotts don't work because 99% of gamers do not give a fuck. I've seen different groups of people boycott Ubisoft for 20 years now and I personally had boycotted them for about a decade, it had no impact as Ubisoft made even more profits despite the different boycotts. Modern Warfare 2 boycott had no impact on the removal of dedicated servers. People even boycotted Valve when Steam launched and that did nothing. Boycotts have only had very limited consumer rights successes in individual games, like EA removing pay to win mechanics from Battlefront 2. Meanwhile Australia ended up made Steam to offer refunds to everyone and Belgium and Netherlands restrictions on lootboxes has noticeably reduced their usage in games.

You're free to prove to me wrong but government actions end up being far more successful than boycotts.

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 14 Jul 22:12 collapse

because 99% of gamers do not give a fuck.

Then why would any government care?

Goodeye8@piefed.social on 14 Jul 22:30 collapse

As evident from Australia, Canada and the US, every government does not care. There's no guarantee that the EU commission will care either, but because we've (hopefully) met their pretty significant requirement they have to care enough to address it. And in an ideal society they would have to care because the government is for the people and enough people have voiced their concern.

Also considering there's at least one prominent EU parliament politician showing public support it's bound to get a bit more political attention than just a simple "No" that we've seen so far.

drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world on 13 Jul 21:36 next collapse

They made it further than my country ever will.

Gaylactus@lemmy.world on 18 Jul 15:59 collapse

I’m not sure if this is sarcasm or not… You are aware that, the EU has been famously known for applying huge penalty fines to big tech companies, including Google and Apple, and that even Valve, was targeted for an antitrust lawsuit, that lost?

Are you also aware that the EU forced Apple to standardized their power cables to use USB-C only, which caused Apple to lose a fair amount of money, because now they will profit less from selling licenses to cable manufacturers. The license costs $99, which is really nothing special but for each connector, the cable manufacturer has to pay Apple $4. This is a huge business for Apple, and that the EU completely shot down.

The decreased cable lifespan prompted people to buy new cables more often, generating more profit for Apple. Additionally, Apple earned money by licensing third-party manufacturers who wanted to sell cables under the “Made for iPhones” (MFi) program. The commission and licensing fees constituted a significant portion of Apple’s cable-related revenue, totalling a substantial 10 billion dollars

Did you knew that in the EU, the minimum warranty for any electronic device, is at least 3 years, which can be even higher depending on each member state own laws? From your perspective, this alone, might represent a 200% decrease in revenue, when compared to countries that only provide a 1 year warranty. How is this being pro corporations?

I will say this in the most respectfully way I can, but you’re full of shit.

ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca on 18 Jul 21:18 collapse

Which petitions were those actions caused by?

atro_city@fedia.io on 13 Jul 14:48 collapse

Stop Killing Games should be asking for donations to get the people involved to have meetings with representatives in the EU commission. The big, shitty gaming companies that are firing devs en masse and just out to make money have their lobbyists. If the SKG movement doesn't organise, that's all we'll get: a communiqué to shut the hell up.

Goodeye8@piefed.social on 13 Jul 22:34 next collapse

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that Ross had people prepared to meet with the representatives and present the initiative in case it does go through in the EU. Because it's not like he could do it himself considering he's not an EU citizen.

Peffse@lemmy.world on 14 Jul 00:29 collapse

Didn’t Ross mention that taking donations could jeopardize the movement, since the EU has strict rules?

pugnaciousfarter@literature.cafe on 14 Jul 11:41 next collapse

I think the main reason he didn’t want to take money was because he himself doesn’t think can handle such a campaign or lacks the will to do so.

Peffse@lemmy.world on 14 Jul 14:19 collapse

Yeah, that’s plausible for sure given how humble Ross is… but for some reason I recall him saying quite early into the campaign (which I may be recalling incorrectly since it was almost a year ago, in many 2+ hour videos) that the EU had very strict political lobbying laws.

Receiving funds was a no-no, and even putting up a billboard would have ran foul of the rules and invalidated everything.

pugnaciousfarter@literature.cafe on 15 Jul 01:34 collapse

He did recently mention that you can’t do political ads on YouTube, but he was rather more perturbed at the idea of navigating through the legal and financial system of EU, owing to his own personal troubles with them.

He might have changed his mind based on new info, idk. But he clearly doesn’t want to get involved anymore than he needs to because it’s very taxing.

atro_city@fedia.io on 14 Jul 14:20 collapse

I'm curious about that. Democracy Internation has a course on how to fundraise for an ECI

Together with experts, we will discuss your most pressing questions around fundraising for a European citizens' initiative:

What are the sources of funding for an ECI? How to appraoch large-donors and how to frame your campaign? How, and in what circumstances, do you have to report funding received for an initiative?