Ars Live Recap: How Can We Stop Publishers From Discontinuing Games?

This week, Ars Technica hosted a live discussion with Ross Scott about the Stop Killing Games movement and the growing fight to preserve video games after publishers shut down the online servers that support them.

Speaking with Ars Technica senior games editor Kyle Orlando, Scott said the issue of long-term access to video games “already became intolerable a decade and a half ago.” He explained that he had been waiting for someone to organize around game preservation and the right to keep purchased games playable. Although Scott believed he had the experience and knowledge to help, he said it was frustrating to see so little progress. Eventually, he felt he had to take on the challenge himself.

During the conversation, Scott argued that publishers should not be able to end access to online games with little notice and for virtually any reason. He compared the practice to other products and services, where customers are generally told when support, coverage, or functionality will end.

For example, let’s say the plan is to shut down a game. If it doesn’t work out, that might happen five years later. This approach doesn’t apply to other products or services, so if you want to go down that path, you need to communicate it. Imagine buying a product with a warranty, but instead of stating when the warranty expires, the company simply says, “We’ll let you know.” Or consider an insurance contract that says, “We’ll let you know when your policy expires.” That could run into other laws.

From a technical perspective, Scott said that planning for an online game’s end of support from the beginning could make long-term preservation far less expensive. Developers could design games with a fallback mode or a path to third-party servers instead of requiring the original publisher to operate the service indefinitely.

I think many developers would support me on this. If you plan for it from the beginning, and it becomes an established requirement, there needs to be a way to run the game at the end of support during development. As I understand it, the cost could be very low because you would build the game differently rather than paying substantial additional costs later.

Most online-only games already have what is called a local testing environment. If a game is hosted on Amazon’s servers and those servers experience an outage or compatibility problem, development cannot simply stop. Developers typically need a working version of the server that allows them to continue testing. If that environment already exists, then much of the work needed for preservation may already be complete.

Scott also said he was disappointed by the European Parliament’s response to the movement’s concerns so far. However, he remained hopeful that lawmakers could take meaningful action to protect video game preservation, consumer access, and the future playability of online games.