I'll put the response to your delusional rant in all caps and bold since you seem a bit "slow" at understanding almost anything. You claimed there are CRIMINAL laws and that what they're doing is CRIMINAL FRAUD. It is not a criminal law issue, it is a civil law. Shrieking and wailing the same thing over & over like a lunatic after about 12 different people have explained the difference is exactly what makes you a troll.

Same with you. You've been here 16 years and you think "people like you GOG gamers don't care about game preservation". That's what real gaslighting actually looks like. Quite honestly, the pair of your "you people don't get game preservation like us Ubisoft gamers do" sneering are the reason why people here take one look at this and back away, ie, its your own toxicity that's doing more damage to Ross's initiative than those you're ranting about...

My point. It can't be broad because loopholes are adapted out of broadness; nor can broad definitions easily challenge the law. They have to be specified to the very letter, because lawyers are not very spiritualistic. Laws have to be overspecified because there's always going to be someone putting a dog in the basketball team.
"A player must be in this position." Doesn't specify species.

"The player in said position must have four limbs" Does not exclude animals including dogs.

"The player must be homnid" I hope you like a silverback gorilla on the court.

It goes on like this, or you specify from the start what quantifies a player.

The specifications should be precise, concise, and clear from the start unless you want to fight for the exact letter & spirit of the law.

Because if you imagine me, some guy on the internet poking holes for fun? Imagine if I was a paid professional, draining you per hour to oppose you. With inane arguments like above, and more. And unlike you, I'm being backed by companies who have billions of dollars.

Which, in the end, leads to the same result.
So: tomayto, tomahto.

fraud is a criminal offense in most countries around the world. I will give you the example of US where fraud is punished both under state and federal jurisdiction as federal offense. Here is an example of a law at federal level.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1341

I will just quote the first few words from the above example but I suggest you read the rest.

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, or to sell, dispose of, loan, exchange, alter, give away, distribute, supply, or furnish or procure for unlawful use any counterfeit or spurious coin, obligation, security, or other article

To make matter shorts, selling stuff online fraudulently is a criminal federal offense.

Other countries will have similar laws.

Said this and I'm done with your tricks.

Are you fighting along side me to save my games or are you helping the corporations take my games away?

getting back to this law question that probably some of you may got tricked into

One main problem is that by focusing on the specific good, in this case a "videogame" the politicians will play the card of "we don't know, this is a new thing, who knows what is this". The law is clear and has a wild card of "anything else that is sold" that covers this not so new (we had videogames for the past half of century) videogame issue.

After this petition ends I hope the people behind this campaign will finally take in consideration just doing good old thing of going to police and making a complaint for fraud against these corporations that sell you stuff then run with the stuff away.

Then go phone the police, ask them to put Yves Guillemot in a maximum security prison until he gives you The Crew back, and post their response back here. There's no need to change any law at all if it's already clear-cut criminal fraud, right? Case closed. I'm not wasting any more time feeding the trolls here.

As others have explained already: something isn't fraud, simply because you decide it is.

Nothing is hidden from you, if the EULA clearly states, that a service can end at any time and that your access to a game can be barred at any time.

You "signed a contract" with the above conditions, by clicking on the "I agree with this" to purchase, download, install and/or play said game.

I see Ross is also not a big fan of the "vote with your wallet" BS. In fact, I wrote an entire Google Doc to make fun of it (logically). Like he said before, it's never worked for as long as I've been alive, and the more we perpetuate this ideal the more I have to think hard about buying future products. Just the other day I found a bunch of cool Android tablets online, but most of them either have those technically non-ideal MediaTek processors or are just right for the price but lack the SD card slot and/or 3.5mm audio jack - like come on.

But I'd also like you Ross to consider using your newfound platform to drive sales to stores and publishers that encourage or sell DRM-free, because while we can't just change the trajectory of the whole industry by those fancy wallet votes, we can spread awareness about real, consumer-friendly stores that sell you games that don't have artificial expiration dates, and also drive more sales for them so they can stay in business longer to counter those other stores and publishers that don't respect ownership. You can do that in addition to the Stop Killing Games initiative.

I saw some posts here that said SKG could be seen as "Ross is doing this for us so we don't have to fight anything" and so people can just stay on the bad habits that brought us here. I think it has more chances to succeed and you'll be able to plant some future seeds by also actively encouraging everyone to walk the walk with you, rather than having you walk it alone.

boycotting doesn't work when the market is not free

both of you decided to not answer my question if you are my allies in the fight to save our games from destruction. Which means both of you want the game to be destroyed. Which makes any of your post tainted with poison.

the EULA didn't clearly (and also not clearly) "stated" in the case of The Crew. So what is your explanation in this specific case when he EULA didn't stated the state you are stating about? Ignoring the question as always? No surprise.

NO. You are not MY allie. Therefore you are wanting games to be destoyed, and all you say is tainted.

hm.... I do so wonder what a false dichotomy is....

Just for clarity's sake, we mean Libero mercato; unregulated mercantilism.

And last I checked, most economic systems are still held by the throat of this idea; does infinite growth contra limited time & money sound familiar?

I get you, but this is how you kill an initiative though: The need to piggyback every sub-issue on it instead of having a clear goal and realizing "hey, we all benefit from this".

Its like you have a movement about labor conditions, and it starts gaining traction. Then a group slide in and say "But what about women's rights? You're not supporting women." and under pressure you agree that's what you're about too, and then a third group says "I'm not supporting this movement because it ignores me and X issue." and then eventually the message becomes this diluted "If you don't support this list of things, you're not with us."

Very quickly, you end up looking like a party of clowns, you have no real message. Nothing happens because no one agrees. Meanwhile, your more organized rivals have the power to align and get what they want.

This is how you destabilize dissenters or any political movement, really. If I was an Ubisoft paid forum shill (they exist, look up Babel Media), this is what I'd be suggesting.

Good conditions take time, they take steps. I think this step is that the concept of game ownership be strengthened and that players have custody of the means to keep their games working. I think the fight against abusive DRM is shortly after that, and honestly I believe the fate of both of these issues are intertwined.

What the hell I didn't say any of that. Never said anything of GOG gamers or "us ubisoft gamers". Not being toxic, I'm engaging everything you're saying @ me. Also don't imply I'm damaging the cause when the threads saying they long made up their mind things are fine as-is. I read the thread.

Fun fact: the boycotts I took part in, always worked in that no business, which I didn't deem fit to receive my money, ever received my money.
Which is exactly how boycotts are supposed to work.

You seriously expected an answer to that childish question?
Well - here we go (I can't speak for Brian, ofc):
Nope!
That's because I choose my "allies" very carefully, and you (and others like you) don't fulfill the necessary criteria to be chosen by me, as a trustworthy ally.

"not clearly (and also not clearly)"?
Impressive word salad.

See - for obvious reasons, I never played the Crew.
Can you guess, why?

But even from my "blind" standing point, I'm pretty sure, somewhere in it, these things were mentioned.

Why don't you post a screenshot of "The Crew"'s EULA and we go through it together?

Maybe your definition of "clearly" differs from the average person's definition.

Your definition of what constitutes as "fraud" does, after all.

These people attempts to smear the campaign and Ross (as lead figure of the campaign) are disgusting.

I know that not everyone here watches Ross videos, we can argue that you don't even need to watch his videos to understand that paying for games and lose those games is a scenario easy to understand and fight against.

But I've watched his videos and he never promoted DRM or stuff like that. In fact some of his videos are based on games that were saved from memory death by people that fought to remove DRMs and/or fix the game so it works on modern systems.

Painting Ross as some DRM advocate is a big fat lie.

You are absolutely right that these lobby groups will use all the tactics in the book to disrupt the danger their clients are facing. Like this "why don't you talk about DRM" which is not a battle you can win legally. There is no hope whatsoever that any western jurisdiction will push the free open source no drm paradigm on private software developers. It is even worse, the current trend is to disrupt and destroy the open source community because free software helps whatever geopolitical adversary the western world is facing at the moment. So going to the EU and ask for DRM removal, they will just laugh in your face.

obviously that is not how boycott works. at the moment, apart buying Age of Mythology from Steam/Microsoft because that is a game I'm hugely nostalgic about, and also because if strategy games fail to make to make money we are doomed as a gamer community. We will just "play" idiotic games that where we don't use our brain. Anyway so loosing your logic if I'm not giving ubisoft my money, which I don't, then the boycott is successful? Obviously not if we look at the new Assassin Creed sales number. I bet you keep talking about boycotting this and that but you are right now buying DRM games from these companies that you are defending in this thread. So forgive me if I don't care about your advice to just boycott the games and not pursue other legal means like this petition to the EU. Why are you so afraid about this EU petition anyway if it doesn't work.

Great, so you want me to lose my games, wow, just wow man. what a disgrace.


I don't care why you don't play a game. Explain how this "game company informed you so shut up" logic you are keep saying is true, how this logic works in the case of The Crew. So you don't know the game and the game EULA but you try to convince us that these game companies are the good guys and we the gamers we are not? Incredible.

How many times do I need to repeat to you there is nothing about this in the The Crew license of use. Is why I've denounced them to the French authorities (still got no answer from them btw apart the information the received my complaint) and also why this petition exists. Because The Crew is a real world example of a game publisher destroying a game with no legal base behind, stealing hundred of millions of euros from gamers that can't access the game anymore.

What do you think we are doing here? That we are talking hypothetically about DRMs and gamer rights?

What about going and do that yourself and come back with the evidence to back your claims.

Look... there is a huge amount of words trying to improve a own position, countered by either someone pretty good with laws or simply someone who is not a care-bear at all and making laws or "could not care less" working against this position.

Perhaps the view need to be changed a little, into a more realistic light. To the industry, a gamer is not a customer, instead they are being seen as "consumers" which is basically "the lowest end possible" or lets say... those who got the smallest stick. The ones with the true stick are usually any sort of investors, simply the ones "paying for a project".

Sure, we can say if the consumers are making "crowdfunding" such as on Kickstarters, they may actually create the action of a customer because of their "Investment" without buying any goods nor any license which is at that time simply not available. Nonetheless, in the end even those "crowdfunders" are more likely seen as some sort of consuming-customers with lower rights compared to real customers, the "big investors" putting in hundreds of millions of coins single-handedly.

It is simply some sort of "food chain" which everyone seems to take care of and as long as the consumers, not even seen as real customers, are happy with what they got or "how it has been served to them", their voice is weak and often barely heard. Because... as long as the funds are alright and as long as investors are happy, the company got almost nothing to worry about.

Better consumer rights can only happen if their value is even more appreciated, and if they are not only seen as "sheeps" but instead as "full scaled monsters". Sure, some developers was considering it and it was in many terms a successful teamwork such as on Final Fantasy 14. Those publishers automatically are closer to the consumers and may even see them as some sort of real customer. Yet, not every company is like this and for a big mass of companies out there... a consumer got not much to say, as they simply see anything other "more close and more important to them". It could be fatal, but some companies such as Ubisoft or EA are that stubborn... they may never try to go more close to what they consider "lowest end". For those companies, no need to fight for something... they got no open ears in almost any case and the law is very slow and in many cases simply unable to move.

I just say, to be realistic and sure, the consumer mainly is voting with their wallet... this is how it usually works. They got pretty low power elsewhere but indeed... the lack of spending coins is the almost only thing able to "hurt" the ones "above" and perhaps making them become more vulnerable for becoming consumer friendly.

This is the main issue here: The lack of being consumer-friendly because they simply do, in many cases, not put a lot of value into it.

Perhaps watch this video, it is pretty good i feel... so the own position and how it has been exploited can be understood even better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HM9nmqNioQ

Well, i can win it. Everyone simply need to follow my order for the next 2 years and then any DRM will vanish after... The consumers power is their wallet, not their law which is unfortunately mostly working against them. It is nearly impossible to "force" any big player for/into anything because they are just protected "to well". If so... then a "equal player" would have to stand in for them, someone a bit "higher up."

No, 90% may never follow my orders, because they are addicts and they feel happy with being addicted, no matter if it could be even better for them: The short term benefit is way higher valued, for most consumers, than any long term benefits. Fact is, they even was increasing their spending... which can be seen by the statistics.

The things you and Ross demand are pretty big. Sure, it is worth it to stand in for but it is very hard to make it happen as long as we still do respect "intellectual property rights" which even will mean "they are allowed just to kill their game all of a sudden". I mean, many companies may even "fire" 10% of their employee all of a sudden (just because the customers was not happy with the interest rate, which could be negative)... so what to expect from those? If they can not even offer loyalty to their employees... how should this happen at a even lower stage which is not even protected by true laws?