Cross-geposted von: https://feddit.org/post/31996415
In a remarkably strange statement at a recent California State Senate hearing over the Protect Our Games Act (AB 1921, California’s Stop Killing Games-endorsed bill to compel publishers to provide ways to keep playing discontinued games), a representative of the Entertainment Software Association declared private servers for the likes of Minecraft and Call of Duty “illegal,” adding that, so far as the ESA is concerned, “we consider it piracy.”
In a statement to PC Gamer, the ESA wrote that, so far as it’s concerned, “Private servers infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers. Publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against them.”
Reading this article, ESA feels like the evil archenemies of the Stop Killing Games folks. As SKG put it, the talk of illegality was to mislead a Californian legislator too busy to fact check.
That said, the real fight ESA is pushing is more in regards to private servers for MMOs and other always-online games that SKG wants to be legal as part of preservation. I personally disagree with ESA in that regard, although I can understand their legal argument regarding the lawsuits on World of Warcraft private servers, mentioned in the article.
(Though, my two cents, I personally feel “free market” should mean official servers are better and earn their subscriptions: more people, more reliable, better content, etc… but they usually aren’t. So fuck them, lol).
Game devs: „Here is the code to run our games on a private server. Have fun!“
Gamers: „Cool, thanks! Will do!“
ESA: „ISN‘T THERE SOMEONE YOU FORGOT TO ASK???“
ESA members: https://www.theesa.com/our-members/
- Amazon
- Atari
- Bandai Namco
- Capcom
- Disney
- EA
- Epic Games
- Konami
- Mattel
- Microsoft
- Netflix
- Nintendo
- Riot Games
- Roblox
- Sony Play Station
- Square Enix
- Take 2 (owner of Rockstar, 2K and Zynga)
- Tencent
- Ubisoft
- Warner Bros
- Wizard of the Coast (owner of MtG and DnD’s rights)
The page also has this quote:
Shape and influence the largest entertainment industry in America.
So absolutely no one I respect. Nice. ESA go fuck yourself.
What’s the point in Microsoft shooting against “their own” product? I mean, the option for public or private servers is literally built into the game. Also there is the option for playing together over LAN which you could also argue is a private server.
If you have the facts, you pound the facts. If you have the law, you pound the law. If you have neither, you pound the table. This is the ESA pounding the table, and the goal is to confuse the gerontocracy LARPing as lawmakers.
This is why tech has gotten so out of control in the US. In the past 40 years, this industry has had so many revolutionary inventions while our legislators on average get older and less likely to understand the newest technology, thereby making them more susceptible to being misled or misleading others. Combined with our legislators not giving a fuck about actual economics, this is how we have oligopolies everywhere in the US with cartel behavior
The way I see it there are two possible reasons:
- incompetence: The statement in question was said by ESA’s vice president for state government affairs, in other words a professional lobbyist. Video games are her day job, not her hobby. I don’t know how much she actually plays herself. It may therefore be the case that she wasn’t briefed properly or she got confused. The ESA is currently persuing legal action against certain private servers after all. The article contains specifics on those but in short: Those servers enable piracy, the Minecraft ones don’t.
- they are lying: the whole thing was part of a hearing on Stop Killing Games. Private servers are one of the ways to fulfill their demands. It is the industry’s position that implementing those is too complicated. Each instance of private servers existing weakens the argument. So better pretend that those don’t exist. After all gamers won’t even learn about this statement. It’s a random California state senate hearing. They don’t watch those!
Saruman and Gríma just want to shape and influence the largest cavalry force of Middle Earth…
If they will still call you a pirate even if you buy the game, and even if the game sells well, they’ll eventually lay off the entire development team, why not just pirate the damn thing from the start?
Screw the ESA and its partners.
Of all the hot takes in the world, that statement is the dumbest thing I have ever heard someone say. Completely out-of-touch with the case, with the subject and with the games referenced. It is literally wronger than Flat Earth and young earth creationism in a single sentence. I would quote Bully Madison but even that wouldnt suffice.
Of all the hot takes in the world, that statement is the dumbest thing I have ever heard someone say. Completely out-of-touch with the case, with the subject and with the games referenced. It is literally wronger than Flat Earth and young earth creationism in a single sentence. I would quote Bully Madison but even that wouldnt suffice.
I’m sorry mate but you asked for it. We are now all dumber for having read the words “Bully Madison.”
F*cking typos!
I lied tho I actually did award you points hehe
Bully Madison
Why is the European Space Agency doing this instead of a moon program or something? /j
For a moment there I was wondering what was happening on the ISS for ESA to make such a statement
the astronauts running a private minecraft server on mission-critical equipment? :P
I had to google ESA multiple times because I kept getting AI summaries for the space agency.
today is a good day to ditch Google
Use DDG and turn the AI off.
AI is always useless.
I’m sorry, WHAT? How fucking stupid do you have to be to think that this makes any sense.
The ESA isn’t stupid, they’re just making the statement to give the politicians in their pockets a cover excuse for making it illegal that the actual dumbasses who support those politicians will buy.
To the rest of us it certainly makes them sound hella stupid.
And they’ve been successful with that strategy (for now)
Regardless, the Protect Our Games Act did not make it out of this stage of the legislative process. With four aye votes, three noes, and four abstentions, it failed to accrue the majority of ayes necessary to pass. Nevertheless, it has been granted a reconsideration, so it’s not the end.
Wait until they hear what Quake, DOOM, Marathon, Half-Life, etc were doing in the 90s…
Big “Home Taping is Killing Music” energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music
I thought it was Napster that was killing music… 🤔
No, that was after the home taping killed it.
It is like Schrodinger’s Cat. Both alive and be killed by anything.McDonald’s getting killed by home cooked burgers.
AI is being killed by local models also. So many things are killing so many things!
Did they let their members know this before they implemented private matches and server browsers in their games?
I’m actually going assume they (ESA) meant the Minecraft DRM servers and not the hosting and playing with friends servers, because they refer to ‘counterfeiting and piracy’ lawsuits right afterwards. I mean its easy to say they don’t know the difference but I’d suspect this was a little more malicious.
My thoughts leaned more towards the World of Warcraft private servers; in many ways it’s the same respect, filling in a role that has been taken by the publisher, but they perhaps didn’t intend it to appear so inflammatory in Minecraft’s case, since the main purpose of those servers is just for gameplay, not DRM.
It’s still a mean sentiment either way, but something tells me they’re not as familiar with the classic, LAN-party, Quake server you’d run.
They don’t know the difference. Oh, you’re right, that was easy.
What are minecraft drm servers?
When you buy Minecraft, it associates a game license to your Microsoft ID. So when you sign in to the launcher, the DRM server is what it checks with to make sure you own and can play Minecraft before letting you in.
Ohhhh, I thaught your servers that implement some kind of drm for some reason
They probably meant to say servers that allow pirated clients to connect. The official server config used to have that option - not sure if it still does.
Yes, you can still turn off validation, at least on Java edition - you can even host your own validation server via drasl and similar, but that requires the server to have config options set to use your custom auth (and probably skin) server, and your client to have the libauthinjector mod installed.
Works great as an alternative to whitelisting IP’s to play with friends, and means you can’t have your Minecraft account deleted because you swore on your privately hosted server and a friend hit the report button.
Calling the Minecraft Cops
Cyberpolice
