Introduction

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Destruction of video games

When a player buys a video game, usually he pays a one time fee to be able to play it. In the 2000s and before, this meant buying a physical copy of the game on a medium like a floppy disk, a cartridge or a CD. While the player was only licensed the copy of the game and did not own any rights to the game itself, there was no limitation as to when the game could be played. As long as the player had the hardware that was able to run the game, he could install and play the game on his computer or console.

Today, many games connect to servers ran by the game’s publisher, either for multiplayer functionality or as part of the game’s Digital Rights Management (DRM). If the server is unavailable, some games do not allow the player to play it (such games are referred to as “online-only”). If the publisher decides to shut down the servers and does not update the game to work without the server, it can no longer be played. Many games were already disabled in this fashion; the “Stop Killing Games” catalogued many of them, and out of the games that publishers did not update after shutting down servers, 63% were never restored by players. [1]

They way sale of and support for online-only games works makes them different from many other media. Physical books and movies, as well as many video games can still be used after they are no longer sold. Movie or theatre tickets clearly define a one-time service. Subscription services like Netflix or Spotify define a billing period when a service is offered [2], while online-only games often do not. For example, the EULA for an always-online racing game “The Crew 2” states: [3]

Termination by UBISOFT will be effective […] at the time of UBISOFT’s decision to discontinue offering and/or supporting the Product.

When a player buys a video game, he intuitively expects it to work like a good, as if it was bought on a physical medium. However, the game can be taken away from him at any time. For example, video game “The Crew” was sold until December 2023, when Ubisoft announced the game’s shutdown four months later. [4] Any player who bought the game right before that date had no way of knowing at the time that he would be able to play the game only for a few months.

To this report’s authors this situation feels like insufficient protection of consumer rights. Something that feels to a customer like a good can be taken away from him whenever the seller chooses. Intuitively, it is as if a book publisher had the right to confiscate all copies of a book once he decided to stop selling it.

Remedies

An online-only game does not have to stop working when a publisher shuts down online support for it. As further chapters will show, it is practical to update such a game so that it is still playable after support ends, or to provide players with other means to make the game playable. If a publisher was required by law to keep the games playable after support ends or to reimburse the purchase, the unfair situation described above would no longer arise. The game would either no longer be taken away from the player after he paid for it, or the player would be compensated.

This report advocates for creating laws that would require publishers to create “end-of-life” plans for video games, so that a video game stays reasonably functional after support from the publisher ends. The report specifically does not ask for:

  • Requiring publishers to provide online services for video games indefinitely,

  • Any additional rights to the video game itself such as rights to intellectual property or access to source code,

  • Any extra requirements on publishers while the game is still being supported.

[TODO: a few more sentences defining what we want] [TODO: move the following paragraphs somewhere else?]

In fact, there is prior policy very similar to what this report advocates, the EU Directive 2019/770. In it, paragraph 8 defines what it means for digital content to conform with the contract, with point 5 saying that buyer’s explicit consent is required if the product is non-conformant when the contract ends. Paragraph 14 defines what the seller should do if digital content is not conformant. It’s unclear to authors of this report if this directive applies to always-online video games as well, but it can serve as a good starting point.