Or the evergreen "Boycott this Call of Duty Game until they add X" image that's seared in my mind. (Modern Warfare 2, it were; they wanted dedicated servers.)

Yeah and remember Left 4 dead 2, people are driven by fomo its why drm is still used average consumers don't involve themselves and buy anything oddly enough something Ross points out. To bad the whole movement is just lolcow Pirate software now.

Stop Killing Games FAQ and Guide for Developers

"This is a FAQ + guide about the Stop Killing Games movement, this time aimed at developers, written by developers, including the creator of an MMO live service game! Some concerns have been brought up on the campaign as to HOW games could start having end of life plans and this presentation covers many bases of it. It gets more technical as it progresses, so this isn't for usual viewers, but can hopefully provide more of a blueprint for developers unsure of how end of life plans could be achieved. A big thanks to Olive and Matt for making this!

0:00 Introductions
3:31 What are some ways to EOL your game?
5:55 Good examples of games with EOL plans
9:31 Designing an EOL Plan
11:29 Suggestions for existing games to support EOL
14:41 How can costs be reduced for EOL?
16:10 What is the minimum viable build to pre serve?
17:19 Replicating your server environment locally
18:39 How Docker and Virtual Machines help with EOL
19:50 Reusable patterns to use now and in the future
21:35 Should the game fail gracefully when servers are unavailable?
22:20 What are best practices for removing credentials, API keys, etc. for EOL builds?
24:04 Conditional compilation and environment specific code in preparing for shutdown
25:17 How to document the server stack for later players
26:55 How do players host servers when setup is complex?
27:57 What happens if your game is tied to platform ecosystems like Steam, PSN, or Xbox Live?
29:15 What if your core gameplay is tied to time-locked events?
30:13 Can matchmaking be replaced with LAN or Peer-to-peer solutions?
31:10 What if the game server requires authoritative logic for fairness?
32:13 Automating an EOL build alongside normal builds
33:13 What tooling can you provide to the community?
34:52 What are the differences between hosting a game server on Amazon compared to locally?
36:04 What if your game uses a lot of services such as AWS, Google Cloud, and other microservices?
37:25 Example list of microservices that could be removed
37:52 How to EOL your game if you are using a managed backend
39:35 Can dependency injection help isolate what needs to be removed at EOL?
41:01 How do you test the final state of your game in a post-server world?
42:13 Can you create a stripped-down server binary for player hosting?
43:31 How do you remove Login or DRM from games that prevent running offline?
45:07 How do you remove anti-cheat for EOL?
46:25 How do you handle data at EOL and protect user privacy?
47:35 How do we patch out authentication servers?
48:44 What if I can't compile into binary?
50:11 What are alternative distribution methods?
51:39 What if I have secrets or private keys in my server binaries?
52:35 What's the safest way to release server binaries if you can't share the source code?
55:38 Communicating to your players that the final build is unsuppored
57:42 Can you delist a game from a store but still let owners re-download it?
58:26 How do you handle games that are part of a larger ecosystem?
59:28 How long should the EOL patch be available to download?
1:00:21 Providing a fallback experience for players who launch the game post-shutdown
1:01:48 How do you decouple online and offline features if the game was not built that way?
1:03:04 How to design your next game to make EOL easier from the start
1:04:14 How much would it cost to convert my game to one that can be preserved?
1:05:48 EOL Case Study - Path of Titans
"

1) Are we being honest or are we being nice? What kind of game? Was the game multiplayer focused or anything like that first? What's the assumed baseline game?
2) The kind of game where nothing changes when the servers are turned off.
3) Assume you design your game from the start with an EOL plan and that the executor wasn't washed out in the regular "wipe the board" that management likes to do to projects that are done.
4) Create a deployable server package such as a "dedicated server", which may be nothing more than a headless program that kiosks maps on rotation and can be configured via a script. Have alternate assets prepared for a debranding.
5) Embezzle funds from the upper management, use creative accounting to siphon funds from other less important departments, use a collective trashcan instead of many bins, ask an accountant; not a developer. That's not their area.
6) Legally or ethically?
7) Design the game up front to be able to run a local server that fits in a sane amount of space like...28 megabytes?
10) Depending on the game, this is simply adding more wheels to a car that runs fine already; redundancy might be fine for industrial design or biological function, but worthless for many applications.
11) So what, like using the same engine, codebase, or assets between projects? Maybe if your Jeff Vogel, but most devs don't even get the luxury.
12) Well duh. Even if it's a series of stationary targets, an infinite road, or what have you. I've known of an MMO that even did a server move, LIVE (they moved the players into a holding area.)
13) Shred them like classified documents. Anything less feels like IntSec and InfoSec nightmares. Hopefully they were airgapped in the first place.
15) Preferably, not needing specific code or compilation for a shutdown condition.
16) Introduce it as part of the opening documentation as a supplemental appendix in the manual.
17) Oh, simple. They won't. If it requires more than 3 clicks to setup, most people cannot nor will not bother. How many IPX, Serial or DECNET things do you know people to regularly bother with?
18) Then I guess your management screwed up. Though, it may be possible to untangle from that.
19) Then I guess your management team screwed up, hard. Who outside of them would hard bake missable events into the game?
20) IMPLICIT YES.
21) What do you mean "authoritative"? Once it is in the player's hands, be it to them to figure this out. I don't recall the designers of Unreal regularly showing up to private instagib servers and telling those players to knock it off. That or your game was designed poorly as a joke, well done bending to your management who seriously screwed up.
22) Have them be the same build, just throw a few compile flags or event flags down when EOL. KISS.
23) As much as can be legally provisioned. Next question.
24) If you're having to answer this question, try again. Either you're talking to management (a mistake) or your audience is unlearned to not know the difference between hither and thither.
25) Then it was either too big or designed wrong.
26) Automatic certificate renewal (just throw a 5 kb patch every once in a while), automatic anticheat updates (prompt em'), Skin/Emblem creator (don't worry, it wasn't long for this world anyways.), Play of the Game (worthless feature), awards/EXP (this encourages toxic behavior), etc.
27) Design your game to never use a managed backend; same as using a solution to a problem that didn't exist until someone invented it.
28) That's a funny way of saying, "Try running it without X and see if it falls over". Stop spending so much time with marketing.
29) Obviously, you run one instance in airgap/airplane mode. This question is absurd.
30) Implicit Yes. See 20.
31) Hopefully that login service and DRM were external and not carefully weaved into the main executable. You did separate it into a launcher or something, right?
32) SEE ABOVE, REDUNDANT QUESTION.
33) See 13.
34) Provide a dummy file, stub, or fake address.
35) Good jorb. Outside of acts of nature, there's not really a good excuse for this. Was your code poorly documented? Did you accidentally tie the BINK video to a critical function? How did you even reach this point?
36) See 24, but replace implications of distance with implications towards file sharing.
37) Then I hope you have a hex editor and a few free hours. 58 is X in hexadecimal. I understand that to be a fine way to blot out sensitive data.
38) Define "safe"?
39) A large clear message either in the main menu or upon opening would be generally the defacto standard, would it not?
40) How do you think Shareware worked?
41) Simple: As if it had never been part of the larger ecosystem. If it wasn't big or good enough to stand up on it's own, well done! We call those mini-games and put them in games for the Amiga or Amstrad, typically in packs of six with a loose theme or license tying them together.
42) Exactly one plank unit of time. Did you make the mistake of asking management again? As long as it is feasible unless you'd rather community host.
43) Didn't we discuss this earlier? Is this the part of the presentation where we make sure people were paying attention during the hour long meeting that could have been a 15 minute presentation?
44) With great care. Mostly by building them as separate ideas.
45) Labor, monetary, or time?

Amazing, 45 questions over an hour because they thought having two talking heads instead of just text would be a good idea.

^ And all that is the "simple lite-touch" alternative to not keep throwing money at online-only, quadruple-DRM'd games? I can see Euro-politicians eyes glazing over with the summary of Docker & Virtual Machine chapter alone...

It's a good thing it is not made for them, then. It is aimed at developers.

The very same developers that SKG want legislators to force to take certain actions, so it's hardly unrelated that legislators will have to understand the underlying issues. "The purpose of SKG is simply to raise awareness that we must do something, it's up to legislators to work out the details". That 'passing the buck' is all well and good but in the real-world functional laws are going to have to be a little more detailed than "Game developers must, uh, do stuff to make games last longer. That is all, because we don't understand any of this shit..." ultra-vague one-liners.

Where's that petition that I could eventually sign is it for instance on change.org or somewhere else?

Literally in the first post is a link that takes you to a page that describes the initiative, with a link to the initiative:

Stop Destroying Videogames European Citizens' Initiative

You're just in time, the signing date has about 3 days to work though signatories. As for people outside Europe? Don't bother applying.

I signed the online petition. Anyway who heard for instance about so-called ACTA 3.0?

How many of you are aware that Half-Life 3's signature is going to be disqualified for being fake?

Stop Killing Games: New option available to get law passed!

"Stop Killing Games has a new option to get legal protections from publishers destroying games! There is an opening to be a potential rider on the Digital Fairness Act. Europeans (minus the UK, sorry) can leave comments on the EU's feedback page to try to make this happen!

Link to give feedback on the Digital Fairness Act:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act_en

More details on the Digital Fairness Act:
https://www.digital-fairness-act.com/

Link to the European Citizens' Initiative [ENDS JULY 31!]
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

Link to unofficial list of dead / at-risk games:
https://stopkillinggames.wiki.gg/wiki/Dead_game_list
"

There are several other European countries that are not part of the EU and can not sign, it’s not just the UK. Countries like Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Serbia, and others. There are in total 19 European countries not part of EU.

How many DRM-free games on this list?
I would need to see actual DRM-free games at risk before I consider signing this petition.