I've been following Ross, the guy behind Freeman's Mind for a long time, and recently he has been working on a big campaign to find a way to stop publishers from deliberately killing off their own games. Any game that requires an online component can potentially be rendered unplayable forever when they pull support, meaning you buy a game, then straight up can't play it at all anymore-- and in some cases, this happens in a matter of months from launch! He wants to put a stop to it, and I'm a big believer in this cause!
He's been searching for ways to fight it for years, and it looks like we've finally found our big in: he's raising signatures to put a new law in front of the EU. He has strong reasons to believe it'll pass if it gets enough signatures, but he needs a full million that aren't invalidated by technicalities. So if you're in the EU, please take a look!
You can GO HERE to sign the petition and get info on how to make double sure your signature counts!
If you want more info, he gives a quick explanation of the cause and the current situation here!
I believe video games are an art medium, one still in its infancy, and probably with greater potential than anything we've made before. I love games, and I think it's important to be able to look back and see the history of games, but this practice is creating a gap where many beautiful games will be rendered completely unplayable-- you can't experience all the work people put into the environment, the characters, the animations, the music, you can't get even a glimmer of what it was like to play it when it was new, even in single-player games. Like the publisher managed to track down and burn every single copy of certain books, or movies, forever. It's a horror show happening in the background, and there may well be a nostalgic game you remember fondly but already can't play ever again.
If we can pass this law in the EU, it will force the vast majority of publishers to spend a very small amount of extra time and effort making sure you can keep the games you bought. We just need EU signatures-- a lot of them. Even if you're not in the EU, you can spread the word wherever people love games and it might get a few more signatures on there. So anyone can do their part!
