Stop Killing Video Games

Why do things have to be like this? There are some people that believe that you should not have opinions over products that you paid for, that you have no right to ownership, and that you are just so tragically undereducated and misinformed into the process in which games are made that your opinions are not only useless, but honestly outright harmful to the games industry itself. Just stop asking so many questions, consumer. Keep consuming. Keep eating your [ __ ] slop. And don't you dare [ __ ] complain. Please. It's been a while since we talked about stop killing games. While the movement has had a lot of success, more success than I think a lot of people probably expected that it would, it now stands against the greatest threat possible. No, the government, not pirate software. No. Instead, it's politicians, lobbyists, and the executives of these companies that, well, are just wearing the mask of people that are trying to protect the games industry when in reality, they're all just career scum that really much more interested in trying to protect their corporate interests from its own customers. True. And in this case, they've turned to just straight up lying to try to get their way. Oh, wow. That's something new. Recently, members of parliament in the EU as well as some people over here states side have been meeting privately behind closed doors with CEOs like the guy from Ubisoft as well as the ESA and video games Europe, the lobbying groups that are representing a lot of these guys. And it's all in an effort to just try to stop you from owning products that you paid for by effectively misinterpreting our demands, reframing the entire argument, exaggerating the damages of proposed solutions, and also trying to make it sound like this is going to destroy indie games. Ah, yes. Why don't we massive corporations try to make it look like these customers are trying to pick on the little guy? Perfect. It's so embarrassing. Today, what I want to do is I want to talk about who is trying to take your rights away. How the games industry is now mounting a defense against its own customers. How they've been trying to twist our words in every single way they possibly can. And for all the kicking and screaming that these guys have been doing, they stand to gain just as much as we do from winning. I'm proud to be an American and I'm proud to own a Helix mattress. That's right. Today's video is sponsored by Helix Mattress in their Fourth of July summer sale. And I'm going to tell you guys right now, if it wasn't for Helix Mattress, I don't think I would have been able to survive Summer Games Fest. I went into that event with like 4 hours of sleep and the sleep that I did get when I finally got back home and crashed out into my Helix mattress with some of the most restful sleep that I could possibly get. And that's exactly what I needed. Helix makes premium hybrid mattresses for different body types, sleeping positions, and firmness preferences. Their sleep quiz only takes a couple of seconds, and it matches you with the perfect mattress that suits you and your sleep habits. I always had problems tossing and turning. The minute that I got mine, I've been getting the deepest sleep of my life. And mine also arrived with free shipping in the US. You also get a 120 night sleep trial with a limited lifetime warranty, so you have plenty of time to figure out whether or not it's right for you. They also have their comfort adjust cooling pillow, so you can actually adjust its firmness and height to the way that you sleep. And the cooling cover really helps to make it stay comfortable throughout the night. I genuinely love my Helix. It's honestly one of the best mattresses that I've slept on in my entire life. And it's fixed most of my bad sleep habits, at least the ones that the mattress can actually fix. And right now, these guys are running 20% off sitewide for their Fourth of July sale, which is running right now. I've only had two mattresses my whole life once this video goes posted. So, make sure you guys check out the link in the description or in the pin comment or go to helixleep.com/leendary drops and check out these guys. Hopefully, they can fix your sleep like they fix mine. Thank you to Helix for sponsoring today's video. I can't speak for everyone, but as somebody that grew up during the physical era of games, the idea of ownership never crossed my mind. It was something that just simply existed. It was never under threat or even in question. Still to this day, I have an entire library of games that remain completely playable. Everything from Super Mario Brothers 3 on the NES and Power Stone on my Dreamcast to Bouncer on the PS2. There is absolutely nothing that is stopping me from playing these games and nobody is going to be knocking on my door trying to take them away. But somewhere during the transition from physical to digital media, seemingly overnight and without any real notification or consent, the games industry stripped that ownership away from us. Now, something they reframed ownership into licensing and then they use their control of licensing and the fact that it's much more favored towards corporations versus ownership and sale of a product to reframe the entire deal that you make with them. It's very annoying. haven't seen too many people try to discuss is exactly how or why this happened. So during the physical era of games, the games were fully contained to a storage device and the licensing agreements were generally tied to the production and distribution of the game. Publishers could print a set number of copies. They would then sell those copies and the customers who bought them could continue using them regardless of whether or not the publisher had renewed those agreements or just stop printing the game entirely. Today, the architecture of that deal has changed completely. companies can now sell an effective infinite number of digital copies. Nothing stopping them from doing so, which is great for their bottom lines. And oh, keep in mind, yes, that's the reason why you need to pre-order, guys. You you you remember you used to have to pre-order so like the GameStop didn't run out of copies of Halo 3, right? Because you're only going to get a thousand copies. So, you pre-ordered so you made sure your copy would be there. You know, the reason why you pre-order right now? Cuz you like eating [ __ ] It's because you like eating [ __ ] is why you pre-order a goals. But when those games are depending on authentication servers and licenses that are no longer renewed, companies can just shut down those servers and take our access along with them. The best way that I can sum this up is that the games industry has conflated its ability to continue selling something with our ability to continue owning it. Two things that should not under any circumstances have anything to do with one another. The only reason they do is because this industry doesn't want to fix the issue that it created. And also, they want absolute control. They do not want you guys trading and reselling games because they don't get a cut. And they don't want you playing an old game forever because you're supposed to be buying the shiny new one that they just put out, which honestly would have worked out flawlessly for these guys if any of this made sense. But it doesn't. I think it makes a lot of sense for sports games because people get traded to different teams. there's, you know, new roster changes, etc., right? And like you've got to have different stats, different players come in, different players leave, etc. So, it makes sense. But, well, a lot of video games, you don't really need a new game every year, and because of that, players around the world organized against it through stop killing games. We've covered this movement many times in the past, so I'm not going to rehash the entire story, but it began with Ross Scott and Accursed Farms. to survive Pirate Software's attempt to stop it. And then it used that controversy to explode onto the world stage. What began as a very niche preservation campaign became one of the most organized and successful movements this hobby has ever seen. I've honestly never been prouder to support something like this. And I'm honestly even more proud of the gaming community as a whole. I think it's really easy for a lot of us just to feel powerless against governments and corporations and just complain. I was talking about the gamer political party. So we need we need to recalibrate. Okay, gentlemen, the gamer political party, gamers interest groups, gamers political action community. You, you know, you have APAC, right? That's Israel. You could have gay pack, which instead of like, well, I was thinking like because the G would be gamer, but like actually it's okay, I'll think of another name of it. Line and assume nothing's ever going to change, but stop feeling games. one of those rare moments where players actually came together, organized and made something happen. We got the petitions in both the UK and EU and we reached the required signatures. Ross Scott represented consumers in European Parliament. The movement is now crossed into the United States where California introduced AB1 1921 to stop these companies from effectively destroying games that customers had already purchased. That bill has now passed the assembly and it's now moving closer to becoming law. Things are moving way faster than I think most people probably expected and apparently it's a lot faster than what the games industry expected. Remember what I told you it's the year of the should because the organizations that are representing these companies are now moving directly against us. After the European petition reached its goal, video games Europe came out in opposition of it. This is a collection of lawyers and lobbyists representing companies including Nintendo, Roblox, Epic Games, Activision, Microsoft, and Ubisoft. They reframed the demand for ownership, exaggerated what it would actually require, and then just kind of dismissed it wholesale. Now, those exact same lobbyists alongside Ubisoft CEO Y Gillum are privately meeting with European officials as they attempt to stop the movement from going any further. The exact same thing is happening right here in the United States. The Entertainment Software Association or the ESA, a group that claims to be made up of people that love games full stop has spas bill. In reality, it's just another collection of lawyers and lifelong lobbyists that are representing companies including Amazon, EA, Netflix, and Wizards of the Coast. Effectively, just the Legion of Doom in this case. And last week, they submitted a letter trying to shut down the entire thing in a letter. That's That's great. Written by the ESA president and CEO, the organization argues that AB1921 threatens modern online gaming because it fundamentally misunderstands how they're built and maintained. According to the ESA, when the publisher shuts down a server connected game, the bill would force them to choose between running it indefinitely, rebuilding it to function without technical support or providing Why is it that there are so many instances nowadays of debates that are built completely around an intentional misunderstanding? Have you guys noticed this at all? I feel like so many conversations are built around people trying to misunderstand the topic and then building an entire foundation of argument off of that misunderstanding. Isn't it so frustrating? It makes me so mad. A full refund to every customer regardless of how long they owned or played the game. This legislation is attempting to guarantee that if somebody pays for access to an online game, they can keep that access for as long as they want. How tragic. They argue that this is unrealistic because online games depend on enormous invisible infrastructure of online servers, developers, moderators, patches, and ongoing technical support even after most players leave. They then claim that that infrastructure would still need to operate at nearly the same cost. They then start pointing to licensed music, likenesses, and branding, arguing that requiring these games to remain playable for as long as they possibly This is like we've created invisible tape and red tape. So the red tape means that we can't have it because we made the red tape gives them a fallback excuse. They can just misunderstand the problem. Yeah, they're trying to reframe the conversation in a way that's beneficial to them. As always, we could go for would force these publishers to renegotiate their licenses forever or remove content in a way that changes the creator's original intent. This is one thing I've also said too is that if this is what I talked about with like, you know, again, this is a gaming video. I don't want to make it like super political, right? But like if you can't make a if you can't make rent and you can't make your job and like your business work without hiring for example like illegal aliens that doesn't mean that you should be able to hire illegal aliens. It means you don't have a viable business. If your business model is structured around not taking advant sorry taking advantage of and not respecting the rights of your consumer then maybe your business doesn't have a right to exist. Really think about that. Like it's like saying, "Well, uh, I have to pay people under minimum wage or we're not going to make any money." Well, everybody acknowledges then, "Okay, well, that means you can't have a you you shouldn't do this thing." But for some reason, we just assume that this stuff is okay. Tell that to the government. From there, they argue that keeping old games alive would drain money and resources from creating new ones. Every dollar spent on outdated systems, they said. Yeah, they're right. Because then you can't resell you the same slop every year. Hey, is a dollar not spent building a new one? With those costs ultimately being passed down to customers. They also claim that if every game becomes a permanent obligation, publishers will simply make fewer games. I thought they were trying to convince me against it. Ambitious games like online games and compare this proposal to expecting companies to continue to support their first car, smartphone, or operating system forever. The ES [ __ ] I I know. I I know I'm I'm actually getting triggered because like Okay, so I had a 2001 Mustang. I had a 2001 Mustang until last year. So, you know what would happen is that the Mustang would have a problem. Do you know why? Because I didn't take care of it. And so, I would have to take it to another place. Now, you wouldn't take it to the Ford dealership anymore. It would go to a mechanic shop. Okay? All we're saying is that we want to be able to take these games and these cars to a mechanic shop rather than have to buy the new Mustang. It's so obvious. Even their own metaphors betray them. They said that this would entirely create a new category of consumer product, conflicting with American copyright law and disproportionately hurting smaller developers, pointing out that nearly twothirds of American game companies have fewer than 10 employees. Their conclusion is that while suck AB1921 might sound like a consumerfriendly decision, demanding forever from developers would harm creators, reduce the number of games being made, and ultimately undermine the industry the bill claims to protect. Oh man, doesn't that just sound absolutely What a shitty [ __ ] build. What a [ __ ] build. Wow. Devastating. Don't you just want to shed a tear until you realize almost none of Oh my god. Are you kidding me? I don't play Destiny. I don't know what the hell he's doing. This is just [ __ ] pathetic. What they just described is what the bill or stop killing games is actually asking for. These snakes immediately try to reframe and obuscate the issue, making it an entire discussion about live service games just the same as Pirate Software did. Maybe that's where they're getting their information from. Now, this is a popular misconception and even some supporters will still repeat it. I'm not throwing any shade here, but it's a deliberate misconception. has made multiple videos on the topic and still frames this all around live service games. The Crew may have launched this campaign. But today, every single game, live service or not, can still fall under this exact same issue. Physical games aren't even physical anymore. Many of these require additional downloads. And if the servers that are supporting those downloads disappear, well, then the disc just becomes effectively useless. The same can be said for a lot of these digital games. The original Allen Wake was delisted because of music licenses. Spec Ops: The Line. Yeah, I don't want to deal with that. It's [ __ ] It's ridiculous. It's been one of the best currently, except for mine. Yeah. Disappeared because of expired partnership licenses. There is a long list of games that have been affected already by this exact same problem. This is not about live service games. about anything and everything being held hostage behind a 20,000word end user license agreement where publishers expressively claim that they can revoke our access whenever they want for any reason they want or no reason at all and that we may even be legally required to destroy. Here's the thing, right, is like they act like, "Oh, well, we can just write this in there." [ __ ] we tell you what you can write. Like you got to remember like we I in a country that's democratic, we are God. We can just tell you what to do. We just make you do whatever the [ __ ] we want. So this whole thing of like, oh well, it's in the rules. Well, [ __ ] Let's make it to where you can't put it in the rules. like this whole mindset like people are so cucked out of their mind. Imagine coming like tell this to George Washington. He'd be like, "What the [ __ ] are you talking about? Property that we paid for these weapons plutonium rich morons trying to use the comparison that manufacturers no longer support their system when that is quite literally the exact contradiction we did. Apple even lose right to repair [ __ ] I mean, it's not even a good comparison again to point out. We can still use and own those products after official support ends. It becomes our responsibility to maintain them. But the manufacturers not showing up at our door kicking it down and trying to take that stuff away simply because they no longer sell or support that stuff. Nobody is asking for permanent updates, moderation patches, or live support. A game being playable is not the same thing as a game being actively maintained. It is such a dishonest reframing. It's deliberate. It's agreements. The argument they had with that is equally dishonest in this case. Losing the right to keep selling a game is not the same thing as gaining the right to erase copies that people already bought. Publishers already remove music, replace content, and delist games when their licenses expire. None of that requires you destroying access for existing owners. Then they go on to claim that game preservation would somehow drain money away from future games. But that only happens when what is this? Like so how is this like so so it's bad for your business so you can't do it? So we have to be able to to delete your games so we can make more money. Like what the [ __ ] Companies build no end of life plan and wait until the server shut down to deal with it. Ridiculous. If preservation is considered during development, it becomes a part of their architecture, a part of their plan without having to be this guys. I'm going to be real, bro. Like I'll see this game play and like Bungie, bro, like I can't believe this. Like I if this game came out today and it didn't have 7,000 expansions, bro, I would start playing this game. This game looks [ __ ] awesome. Like I played First Descendant like crazy. Like they need to make Destiny 3. This looks really cool. Yeah. Like really like I mean what the [ __ ] Like how I not know about this? I guess it's because I was in the WoW cave, right? Damn. I'm actually so sad. you should play. Honestly, bro, like what if I did start playing Destiny 2 now as like a protest? Like, I'm the I'm the last like it's like Children of Men, bro. I'm the last new player. Dude, I'm thinking about this. The last Chud I really, dude, I I really Oh, man. Like, y'all post post on Reddit if y'all want to see that. Like, I'm thinking about it right now. I'm thinking about cuz I got like maybe 10 days, 15 days until uh I got other games I'm going to play and things I'm going to do. Rebuild years later. Keep in mind that the proposed consumer protections have no expectations of games made in the past and instead it's all just for games made in the future. And copyright has nothing to do with this. Owning a copy of a game does not mean you own that intellectual property. I don't know why these guys would try to frame it that way. It just means that you're allowed to continue using everyone knows that you paid for. Well, at least I can say that these guys never fail to surprise me. This is an industry that is in open contempt, active contempt in this case, of their own audience. And they believe that their ability to make money off of something needs to be directly tied to our ability to own something, which makes absolutely no sense. And I'm hoping makes plenty of sense for them. Just doesn't for the lawmakers also see it from that perspective because these guys are trying to do everything they possibly can to say and just wiggle their way out of this situation because they just don't have an answer to this. Weasels. That's really all this is. These guys are so stupid. So unbelievably stupid. The ESA represents some of the largest corporations within the games industry. Yet for whatever reason, you guys are trying to come out and you're trying to move this towards indie studios, 10person teams like these guys. Because it's simple, right? It's like them saying that it's the same as they do this like I'm going to do this with everything, right? It's like, oh, won't somebody think about the little guy? Well, it's like you don't care about the little guy. You're not the little guy. You're you you stand to gain the most out of this. Like you think little guys are making live service long-term video games that need to have endof life service plans. No, of course they don't. Whenever And also like let's be real about this too. Like whenever one of these video games made by a small studio goes into service, usually the company goes goes under. I mean because it's a small company. If you have a failure of a product that goes into service, you're probably done, right? Like that's it. So it's like there it not only does it not make sense functionally, but even if you apply the logic, it doesn't make sense. The ones are going to get crushed under this kind of regulation. Miss me with that. Now you're just straight up lying. These guys don't even use the same kind of infrastructure as you. They're not using the same kind of licenses. They're not using product placement. They're not hiring Hollywood voice actors to come in and voice act gelatinous cubes. They're not using music licenses. I guess unless you're Anna Pererna in some cases, but it just doesn't make any sense. And for the fact these guys would come through and try to steal that valor and try to use their name to be able to shift the focus of this just makes them that much more disgusting because these guys likely want their games to be playable forever. Talk to most indie devs. They support stop killing games. always have. This is just so pathetic. Gaslighting and trying to reframe the issue around live service games as well. That doesn't even make any sense, man. That the the law that's being proposed as well as stop killing games just as an organization has gone out of their way to make sure that the live service free-to-play slop that these companies have been trying to pedal is not a part of this discussion. That expectation's not there. This is about games that people buy for the free-to-play stuff. If it dies, it dies. Most people don't have a problem with that. Oh, it's probably for the best in a lot of cases. I think that they should even do something about that if you want me to be honest, because you buy a ton of services and you buy things inside of the game and then you can just let the game go. Uh, and I I I think that there if if you're taking people's money, there has to be something that they can get out of it. Like, they have to be able to get something out of it. One step at a time. You're right. And it's it's important to keep that in mind. But you're asking me, you know, I'm expressing just my thinking, right? That's all. Like I can go to Magic the Gathering and I can get my cards from like, I don't know, Ravnikica or something like that immediately right now and I can still use them. I can play with them however much I want. Can't take it to a tournament, right? But you can use it. You can play it. Legacy mode. Yeah. It just kind of goes to show that these guys don't have any leg to stand on here. They've been caught red-handed. Yeah, it's absolutely embarrassing. For all the lawyers these guys have, this is all they could possibly muster. The only thing that's going to stop stop Legendary Drops is in chat. He said he had an interview with Jonathan. He's one of the lead guys of POE2 and he said he supported Stop Killing Games because he wanted the game to be playable after he was, you know, like after they were done making it. So, like that's the funny thing. I mean, like in Grinding Gear Games at this point, right? I mean, they make the best ARPG on the market, by the way. And so, and the second best ARPG on the market. So, uh, yeah, I think that's pretty big. Killing games at this point is whether or not any of these politicians can be bought off. Yeah. Yeah. What makes matters worse is just like how stupid all of this is. Because for these grease ball lawyers and CEOs, these lobbyists that are going in and they're trying to actively work against our sense of ownership, these guys don't realize how much this actively works against their own business. Because the minute you start destroying the things that we bought, how is that going to make us trust the next thing you sell? Back in 2024, financial analyst Matt Piscatella reported that 53% of Nintendo Switch software sales were digital compared to 78% on PlayStation 5 and 91% on Xbox. Physical PC releases barely even exist anymore. So that market is makes sense, too, because Switch like I I I feel like Switch is the only console that's a console. Like a PS5 and an Xbox is a [ __ ] computer. like a Nintendo Switch. I I I would go I would grab it, but there's it I'd have to I'd have to actually move my body and I don't want to do that. So, you just got to assume that I have a Switch. Like, it's like an actual thing, right? You do something with it. Effectively, 100% at this point, which all lines up with Capcom's recent financial reporting showing that 90% of their unit sales are coming from digital downloads. Almost everyone buys games digitally now. And it makes complete sense. It's faster, it's cheaper, it's a hell of a lot more convenient. We just press buy and we immediately have access to a game. We don't got to worry about a huge fan of digital downloads. I am about driving to a store, discovering, you know, I remember my friend Austin uh he digitally downloaded Cataclysm and he didn't go to the midnight release with me, Jeff, and my mom. And we called him the homophobic f-word for it for a year. during Mr. Pandaria, we all digital downloaded. We did out of stock, searching for it somewhere else, making room on a shelf, or worrying about a disc being damaged. We just install it, play it, and then uninstall it whenever we want, and then install it again when we want to come back to it. But as the technology has improved, the games industry has quite literally just changed the terms of that transaction. and digital distribution, permanent internet connections, account systems, and remote authentication were all kind of sold to us as these conveniences, but instead they've just stripped away our control while making these games actively worse. And we've seen the consequences of this every single year. Sony completely destroyed the momentum of Hell Divers 2 by trying to force PlayStation account login, revoking access through roughly 180 countries. that damaged the game's reputation, completely destroyed its sales momentum, and then that was all because Sony wanted players inside of their account ecosystem under the guise like it was such a huge mistake. Like Hell Divers 2, like I get the game would have like burned out because like I think that the gameplay loop is it's there's not a lot of like things to do. Like I I I bounced off of Hell Divers 2 pretty fast because there wasn't like a dynamic gameplay loop. But that being said, I recognize that it's an incredible game of better service and moderation. Then there's antipiriracy systems that are forcing single player games online for absolutely no reason, blocking legitimate customers from even playing some of these games. Third party software like Denuvo that is actively damaging performance with constant DLC checks in games like Monster Hunter Wilds or CPU bottlenecks in games like So a little bit of a um a little bit of actuality there. Uh, so Monster Hunter Wilds, one of the reasons why it had really bad performance is that they were doing anti-cheat and antipiriracy checks on such a fast and regular basis that it was slowing down the entire game. Like on an insane level. It was like the it was the most hamfisted. Like there are games like I I don't obviously like the antipiracy measures like I get why companies do them but like as a com as a player I don't really I don't want that right it doesn't improve my experience as a player and so DLC checks too that's what it was yes the DLC checks every single time and so like this would happen and uh that's one of the big reasons why it had performance problems was [ __ ] it's like at least if you're going to do antiche try to make the game play well with antiche right because there's different types of optimization that it can do because Denovo doesn't affect every game equally badly. Some games it's neutral to no effect or to a minimal effect. Other games it's like minus 20 FPS. It's huge. Like Dragon's Dogma 2, which contributed to those games being nearly unplayable for a lot of players. All of these systems are existing to protect these publishers, control their intellectual property, or extract more value from players. They're collecting our data to advertise products to us later. Inflating their account numbers for their shareholders or they're just sharing our information with their other business partners. Whatever the use, it's always the same result. More barriers between the players and the games that they're paying for. And those barriers are burning through a lot of trust. I mean, do you really need to break and create all these wounds on normal Archved? I mean, you've got to be garbage at the game to have to do that. really at an incredible rate. Every time a game launches with antipiracy software and terrible performance, I become a lot more hesitant to buy their next game that's using those tools. Every time a company gets caught selling personal data or suffering a massive breach, like I don't know, Sony or PlayStation in this matter, I become less willing to create another third party account or I'm a lot more likely just to avoid that game entirely. removing our sense of ownership pulls out the very last leg that this entire marketplace has left to stand on. Confidence that the thing that we pay for will remain ours. the digital market also like the the digital marketplace for games also one of the things that you don't consider and it's really hard to measure this right is that word of mouth usership from one person to another like can I borrow this game can I try this game out like you you you miss out on so many theoretical opportunities for people to share games and to become part of the ecosystem because you're too worried about basically you're you're so worried about saving cents that you lose dollars. And I think that's what happens. And I feel like having a LZ fair approach to piracy is on average better than having a uh [ __ ] totalitarian approach to piracy. Place only works when customers are treating these purchases like ownership. Most of us have accepted digital downloads because, well, they promised convenient access whenever we wanted it. Many people probably would have never even accepted that deal if they had understood that that access would disappear whenever the publisher just kind of decided it's just no longer profitable for them anymore. Games have been increasingly designed to just have this built-in death state where there's just so many expiration dates on so many of these games anymore. Even when there's no technical reason for any part of these games to even disappear, your waifu goes into the void. Condemned. Your Aaron one day will be gone. Your huttow one day will be gone and you're never going to see her remote to you ever again. Planned obsolescence in physical products because well deliberately disposable goods harm consumers. Digital products have largely escaped that conversation because well their destruction is not leaving any physical landfill but the financial and cultural loss is still very much real. If a game I paid for disappears, I lose the product and the money that I spent. The publisher loses nothing. Tell me exactly how is that fair. These guys have created a transaction where only one side is assuming all of the risk and then they're expecting that customer to trust them when they go to show up for their next purchase. And also like even beyond that, there's such a huge survivorship bias of this is because there was remember that furry game. There was some like furry shooter or ARPG game. This was like two or three days ago that announced end of service. This is what happens. And so all of those people like we're talking about Destiny 2 or we're talking about, you know, anything else. Wow. No, I know what. No, they haven't announced end of service for a while yet. But ultimately, um, you know, the problem is that many video games go end of service a lot faster than these AAA games. So the whole thing is like you're thinking about the games that are around for, you know, six, you know, like six years. What about the ones that are around for six weeks or six months? Imagine AGS announcing another MMO. I mean, I don't we've been watching as these live service games have been going from remaining playable after active support has ended to dying within weeks and sometimes even days of their launch. Now, there's definitely a lot to say about games like High Guard and Concord. We definitely had a lot of fun watching those games crash and burn, but they're establishing a precedent for just how temporary these games are starting to become. That doesn't necessarily apply the exact same way to single player games, but by stripping away our ownership for the games that we pay for, this is the first step towards treating them no differently. At some point, players are going to start to question whether they should even be buying anything at all, especially at the prices that these companies are charging for. And honestly, it's not even the right language to use because they're changing that language right now. We're not even buying these games. were just renting them under end user license agreements that say that, oh, you don't own the game. You just have a license to the game. Shut the [ __ ] revoke our access for no reason at all. I mean, how am I supposed to feel comfortable spending $40 to $70 on a game when I have no guarantee that that access will remain? Especially when that access can disappear over licensing disputes, account, and we allow this, by the way. We allow this. We can just simply tell them you can't do this anymore. ments and business decisions that have nothing to do with me and are completely outside of my control. How is anybody supposed to justify pre-ordering a game when they don't even own whatever they're ordering? You What are we doing here? I mean, you shouldn't even be pre-ordering at all, but you guys still get my point on this. And if that is the deal, well, then how are these companies going to justify charging even more? We've seen these guys talk about charging 80 or $100 for some of these games. How do they even just Yeah, it's kind of funny how Nintendo sold Mario Kart for $80 and everybody else is like, "Wow, that's stupid. Never mind." Okay, so this one's for 60. Ify selling consoles at increasingly indulgent prices when the software itself can just disappear. The higher these prices go, the stealing games will increase because of this. No, not really. I I I think that honestly people will just wait. Like this is what I do. I just wait for video games to go on sale. Like I mean that's what I used to do is like back in like I mean obviously I can spend a lot of money on video games now but like back in the day like this is what I did and how many of you guys did this is that you would go to um you know like [ __ ] Hollywood video or you'd go to Blockbuster or to Game Crazy or something like that and you knew that the video games that were being rented would eventually hit the uh you know the sale middle area, right? And then you would be able to buy those games, right? Like that's what everybody used to do. And so like really like that's what I used to do as a kid, right? Because you get three games for like $20 or something like that. So yeah, I mean I feel like it's super common. Steam wish list. Yeah. The the clearance spin. Exactly. It becomes to enter into the hobby at all. Remove our sense of ownership on top of that and these purchases become almost impossible to justify. How do these guys not understand this? ownership is not some charitable concession that you're making towards your customers. It's what's giving these purchases value. The idea of permanence is a part of that price and also our willingness to spend money on something. People are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on hardware and build libraries containing thousands of dollars of software because they believe that those games are still going to be there tomorrow. That confidence is a part of the foundation of the entire digital marketplace. The moment that you remove it, well, every single game is going to become a risk. And the higher the game's price, a great like parallel to this is NFTTS. I told y'all when it happened and it turned out to be true that when Seth Green lost access to his board ape NFT and it got ransomed back to him, the NFT movement basically died because people were like, "Okay, this is [ __ ] stupid." Like, what do you mean somebody can steal your NFT and then have it? Right. So like not like not having confidence in a product like the the consistency of a product is like really horrible. Like I mean and there's a lot of other parallels to this you know that we've had like uh for example Intel's uh 14th and 13th generation processors. I think that that was a huge negative. Like people still talk about how bad Intel is now and I think that it led to a lot more people adopting AMD and that was a very very small like that was a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a problem, right? So then you had also you can take it a look at it from the perspective of auto manufacturers. I think it was Toyota, right? that had the break problem and this was quite a long time ago like way before you know like the internet even where there are breaks and this negatively affected them as well. So I think that the moment that you have a product that you know is not certain and people can't use it all the time and it it's dysfunctional in some way people look to go something else. Gas gas pedal stuck. Okay I something like that. It was either it can't it's either it can't stop or it can't stop keep going. The greater that risk is going to become. A $70 purchase is already difficult choice for a lot of people to make. Add expansions, deluxe editions, microtransactions, season passes, and now you guys are asking people to invest hundreds of dollars into something that you refuse to guarantee will even survive. That doesn't encourage trust. It doesn't encourage spending. And it's just teaching people to wait or just avoid these games entirely. I mean, do these guys have any idea how much a position like this is going to bring about not only a loss in sales, but also a massive return to piracy? I mean, my first thought would probably be that an unofficial copy might actually be a little bit more permanent than one I could pay for at this point. As Gabe New had said, piracy is a service issue. Well, this is like the biggest service issue imaginable. It's a Well, it's not a service issue. It's like a It's a It's a service um [ __ ] like a It's service sabotage. It's service sabotage. You're going around and you're intentionally killing it. You're intentionally designing it to fail. These guys just need to change their perspective by retaining ownership and permanence. Your old games can continue creating value long after their initial release. I mean, look at Destiny 2 right now. What if those guys just decided, you know what, we're just shutting down the servers. were done supporting this game. They would have missed out on being the top selling game on Steam for the past two weeks with some of the best player numbers we've seen in years and a ton of people coming back and playing the game. There's a ton of money these guys would have missed out on. These games have a lot more value that I think these guys give them credit for. They introduce players to new franchises. They I think that he I think he's right about this too. And like I think he's right in a way that like I don't know if he's going to really expand on this or not, but like there's a huge cultural and uh you know like kind of just in general value that I think people ascribe to people and companies that are willing to deliver a product regardless, right? And like the security and like for example, let me think of a a great example of this. Uh Lies of P I think is a good example of this, right? where like you had a video game that was released and it was released and it did relatively well, right? But what really was interesting is the fact that the DLC did even better than the base game. And I think that Crimson Desert will also be very successful. It has DLC. You know, Crimson Desert just came out with a new patch like yesterday, right? They're continuing to patch the game regularly and they're doing this all the time. And so like building consumer trust, I think look at Path of Exile for example. Like if you look at Path of Exile, um, and and again, this is this is a weak comparison, but it's not a awful comparison. Okay, Path of Exile, its all-time peak was 229,000 players. Path of Exile 2, its all-time peak was 578,000 players. The fact is that a good product affects your next product and it affects the product after that. there's a ripple effect. No Man's Sky is another great example. Why are people so excited for Light No Fire? Because they've seen that, you know, again, the developers of No Man's Sky have had a continual and invested interest and effort in continuing to improve that game. You see what I'm saying? Those values don't matter anymore. It's all about quarterly earnings reports, shareholder meetings. You say those values don't matter anymore, but what I'm seeing is Capcom selling better than anybody else. What I'm seeing is studios like for example Grinding Gear Games that are taking the same approach to it that let's say you know I think that a lot of us want them to take. I think we're seeing Larian take the same approach. I actually think that video games are fundamentally a I I don't like saying this because it it it validates all the wrong people but video games are art in a lot of ways right they are. And so whenever you look at an artistic endeavor, you can't measure the success of artistic endeavors through quarterly earnings reports. You can't do that. And I think that fundamentally people are beginning to realize that. And more importantly, people that have income, money, and resources are beginning to realize that and they're able to put their money where their mouth is. And I think that we're seeing that with a lot of these new funds, a lot of new gaming initiatives and other types of mentorship programs and just things like I mean as I said like one I I'm doing trying to do my part with my little game event, right? And I'm helping smaller studios not for money but just for the love of the game literally in this case maintain their communities. They're driving interest in their sequels. These companies are constantly digging through their old cataloges for the next remake. Yet here they are fighting for the right to destroy those same cataloges whenever maintaining them becomes inconvenient. Stop killing games is not asking these companies to abandon their profit. It is asking them to stop destroying the trust that makes that profit possible. This is to their own benefit. An endof life plan tells your customers that their money still means something even after the publisher is moving on. It is making these digital purchases safer, giving people more confidence to invest in a lot of these online games and a lot of these digital games, and it's making the future of the product easier to sell. The ESA keeps trying to present ownership as this permanent burden on the industry, but in reality, ownership is one of the strongest reasons that anyone would keep buying from anyone. I'm sure consumer rights are very inconvenient. Oh, it must be so inconvenient for you to have to manage consumer rights. That's too bad. It Oh, I mean, these guys know this better than anybody else. That's the whole reason that Sony had ended up beating Xbox back with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox One era. It's because Xbox came out and wanted to treat games like they were a one punch ticket and the minute it was How many times have I used this example? Right. He's completely right. Listen to this again. one era. It's because Xbox came out and wanted to treat games like they were a one punch ticket and the minute it was on your console, that's it. And people hated the idea of not having autonomy and not having control over their own purchases. Sony came out and said William were not as conditioned at that point and we were still able to revolt. This is how easy it is to be able to trade your games and hand it to one guy from the next and bam, that's how it is. After that, reputation was already cooked on the Xbox's side. Everybody went over to PlayStation. and it was GG after that. But like people just don't want to lose control of their games. It's really as simple as that. These are Isn't it crazy that people that buy things want to be able to use them? Especially with how much money we are spending on these things. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not really somebody that likes to spend $70 on something that I can't hold and keep. If I can't hold it, that's one thing, but if I can't keep it, that's an entirely different story. And you know, like it's so much money that these guys are going to be losing out on if they keep trying to push on this. I'm immediately thinking of CD Project Red right now and how these guys are about to put out DLC for The Witcher 3. And that's going to be so happen if we didn't have some sense of ownership. If people weren't able to hold on to these games, if these guys just cut support and cut access and just walked away whenever. Beyond that, so it actually goes to what I was saying before is that Cyberpunk 2.0 know is a great example of CD Project Redeeming itself. And then on top of that, they sold uh what was it? Phantom Liberty, I think that was what it's called, the the expansion for Cyberpunk. It sold extremely well. And the anticipation for Witcher 4, yeah, there's like a main character switch and you know, people are like, you know, it's like, oh, culture war stuff, but overall people are excited for Witcher 4. They are. They're excited for the game. And so, and I think that would that have happened, would the same enthusiasm had happened if Cyberpunk was never redeemed? Probably not, or at least it would have been a lot more minimized. They wanted to. And these guys are going to be making so much money from this. Everybody that owns that game, which is a lot of people, it's like tens of millions of players, everybody's going to be buying that DLC. Everybody's going to be playing it. Why wouldn't you? It's one of the greatest games of all time. It was I think it was these guys need to stop treating the past like it's something they need to run away from and they instead need to value it because we do because we spent money on it. So, you should value it, too. The game. You wouldn't be where you are today if it wasn't for the support that we showed you before. Stop killing games is effectively saving the industry from itself right now. This is more like an intervention than it is to anything else. They should be trying to support something like this. they should maybe take the time to stop and think, hey, wait a minute. Maybe maybe ownership isn't the problem. Maybe the problem is the fact that we have an over reliance on licenses and third party companies that are doing things and making things that we otherwise should be doing in house like indie games which is why those indie games it can't be our process. It has to be the players that are at fault. No, our process is perfect. can remain. That's why we have 900 people to do it permanent because they don't have to work around any of that stuff. What do you mean a 10 player? What do you mean a 30 a 30 person team made a better game than us with 900 people? No. Save a lot of money and end up being a lot more creative. What do you mean? You kind of get the point, right? This just kind of goes to show how gross things have gotten and also just like how pathetic of a position the games industry is in right now because these guys are just so desperate for any idea of control as they're spiraling right now that this is the one thing that they're chasing. I'm sorry, man, but looking around the games industry at the moment, looking at how much money you guys have lost, looking at how far you've gotten away from your customer, I think this is the last place you should be trying to draw battle lines. Instead, I'd probably be worrying about the quality of your games and also how much you're spending on. If Black Flag Remake is bad, I honestly think that it could be really, really bad for Ubisoft. If you can't remake the game you made 10 years ago and make it good, I think that it's going to be like that. And that's after you said you can't even begin to remake Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Like that is just I feel like it's over at that point. They're going to go under a dollar for their stock. No, I don't know. I think this is going to I think it's going to work out. I'm hoping that it definitely hoping that it does. That's for sure. It's something that I've been really happy to support. I'm I've been talking to some of the Stop Killing Games guys in the background. I'm probably going to try to show up at the next kind of event that they have or there's a signing or whatever it is, I want to try to be a part of it because yeah, this is history, man. This is history for the games industry and it is a history that I think is going to be very important to us and also future generations of players. And if you guys haven't supported it, make sure that you guys do follow what these guys do. Talk about it. Keep it in uh keep it in conversation. Vote on it. If the vote becomes available to you and let's see where this all goes. I know that I want to keep my games. I love them. Anyway, thank you guys for watching the video. If you guys enjoyed the video, like the video, subscribe to the channel, share with your friends, share it on social media, share it everywhere you possibly can. Post it on walls, make like posters for like street lamps and stuff like that. Write my YouTube channel on like um bathroom stalls and stuff. Don't don't actually vandalize. Please don't do that. Actually, right underneath the uh the hooker phone number. Thank you guys for watching. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Follow me on Twitch. Follow me on Twitter. Stay cool. Stay righteous. Stay safe. Family. Family. No, I I I totally agree with what he's saying. I do. I'm completely on board with this and I honestly think that it's a lot bigger than what people imagine. So, yeah. There it is. There's the video. Make sure to give it a like. It's legendary drops video. So, and and the title is so they're just lying now. Yes. It's I I'm so tired of the meta of intentionally misunderstanding and then assuming that the people that are stupid will just be able to not notice it, right? They're just so st it's like the insult to the intelligence of the audience that they just assume that you're so [ __ ] that you can't even tell what's happening. It's so frustrating to me to see that. It really is. Lying is OP. I know. I know. Lying is OP. He was right. Hassan was right about that. And uh you know, he would know. So yeah, I I know. It's just really [ __ ] It's It's really [ __ ] ridiculous. And I I totally support Stop Killing Games. Ideal.