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Stop Killing Games Initiative passes 700K milestone
(feddit.org)
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Stop Killing Games is an European Citizens Initiative aiming to keep games playable even after their developers and publishers have stopped supporting it.
To get the initiative onto the EUs agenda so it has the chance to become EU law, it has to both reach 1 million signatures total and minimum thresholds in at least 7 countries. Those national thresholds have been thresholds have been reached. Now it's all about getting to 1 million signatures total.
Even if you are from a country that already reached the threshold you can still sign. Your signature counts to the 1 million goal.
There is zero scrutiny possible for the form which is 100% based on trust that the signer is who they say they are adults where they say they are. If you want to be John Smith in UK, Paddy Murphy in Ireland and Jurgen Schmidt in Germany, you can be. There's a reason none of these initiatives have done anything except keep people who care about something busy with dopamine graphing instead of doing something like boycotting relevant games and publishers.
And no, like to the EU, Youtuber noise is not relevant to me. Millions of views is literally nothing. You see the general state of the world, yes?
Man what the fuck are you talking about, it requires an EU, country specific verification document(s)/id(s) to verify you are an actual real person who lives where you say you do.
Examples:
Estonia
Portugal
Poland
... etc.
I'm with you with the fact that I don't believe there to be any serious botting attempts, but I didn't need a digital ID to sign from the Netherlands.
I think they will verify with the municipality of the person who signed whether they actually exist. Theoretically you could sign on someone you know this information for, but I think IP logging would burn you pretty quick if even one of those is bogus/duplicate.
Also, I don't know whether such signatures would be counted before any verification would take place
I mean yeah, technically there will be some EU member states with different guidelines (due to different id/privacy laws) where maybe yes, a few of them could theoretically maybe be pumped up by a bot.
But uh, for some thing... you'd need a fairly well done bot net to even kind of pull that off for long.
As in like, a new and convincingly distinct bot/ip to burn for each signature, that is actually an ip that makes geo sense for the person/real world address it is spoofing...
As you say: basic ip logging.
If its all coming from... a single, or small number of ips... assuming the EU is at least as competent of a server admin as I am, yeah, that's gonna look pretty fuckywucky in the logs, probably get noticed within 24 hours max.
And yes, I also seriously doubt there would not be some kind of verification of signees at at least some level, that would be initiated after all the thresholds are passed.
But its wildly innacurate to portray this as if... oh yeah any idiot vibe coder could just drill this up to whatever number after 30 minutes.
That was the way the internet worked back in 2006, or how stupid say Twitter polls are now.
Not the same level of inept incompetence going on with EU government websites.
You know you can just fill in what you want right? And the number goes up? They even put the format right there.
Ask ChatGPT to make you a script to fill in that form with Beautiful Soup. Takes 30 seconds, if you haven't already.
It's cool that you led with Estonia, the one that was botted to 100% signatures a couple of days ago.
You are an idiot.
No you cannot fill in any number you want.
This is an official EU webportal for formal citizens initiatives petitions.
Like, ok, I guess you could just spam it with a bot/script, and then INTERPOL comes after you for fucking with an official government website, potentially hundreds or thousands of counts of attempted impersonation / identity theft and lying on a government/legal document.
Like sure, go do a DDOS on I dunno, whitehouse.gov, or your US's state's unemployment assistance application web portal.
Those are approximately equivalently stupid things to do.
I repeat: You are an idiot.
(16 words later)
lol
OK buddy, cybercrime never happens and interpol will come arrest your python script if it did because you messed with an EU "government" form that might have resulted in them having to get a 60 year old Greek politican to ask what a EULA was
You don't get it.
What happens if you try to just brute force guess at a bunch of possible credit card numbers and addresses and names in some kind of online store?
After maybe a couple of tries, 30 seconds or less of that... the system is rejecting your bullshit fake numbers everytime, and after enough, it auto ip bans you, sends an email to the security admin team, and your journey to getting a chat from INTERPOL or the FBI or what not has now officially begun.
This system doesn't just accept any old random bullshit you give it.
It is not a random slapdash online poll.
Its only going to count up on that total signatures count if the system actually verifies the info you put in as being consistent with an actual, real, specific person in the system.
I again repeat: You are an idiot.
And I use idiot specifically: you are not only drastically misinformed, but determined, and seem to think very dangerous actions... are not dangerous... you think very unfeasible methods... are feasible.
That's entirely backwards. I've boycotted these online kill-switched games pretty well, but that means fuck all because the general public is incapable of collectively caring about anything. Regulation on the other hand does have an effect, and should the initiative pass, EU is required to properly answer it.
Answering doesn't mean doing anything, and all they have to do is generally wave in the direction of the overwhelming popularity and profitability of the products compared to the online petition that 0.2% of the EU's adult population will have signed.
If the general public does not care, legislation will not follow. Filling out and promotinh a glorified change.org form is energy wasted on actually popularising your viewpoint instead of trying uselessly to get it in unpopularly.
It does mean doing something: they have to spell out whether consumers should have rights on this or not. Currently it's undefined, which is equivalent to "not."
And the initiative works against that? You say the cause could have gotten more publicity without it? I really don't see how that could happen, or understand the point in guilt tripping over it.
I'm starting to think this argument is energy wasted.
Entirely discounting the fact that the EU has a track record of consumer friendly regulation. I agree, instead of doing what has the highest chance of success, let's do nothing that could have an impact instead.
What on earth makes you think an online petition, which has never led to any of the consumer friendly regulation you mention, has the 'highest' chance? Or that the alternative to a petition is doing nothing?
All of that regulation came primarily from legal cases.
Citizens iniatives may be a form of petition, but the difference is they come with actual legal requirements.
This isn't some change.org bs, a list of names totaling some arbitrary number. That's why it has a hard deadline. And requirements for how signatures have to come from more than one country.
This is a pre-existing system for the people of the EU to force it to tackle an issue. Most EU countries have equivalent systems locally, as well. This isn't new or unusual for us.
Legal precedent is how the US works. Where lawsuits catalyzing the setting of new standards for what is legal, is the most common way the law changes. If you thought that's how EU legislation got done, then you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Almost everything the EU does, is based on proposals. Not legal cases.
Those can happen in the EU, too, but we have additional ways to propose law as citizens, and legal cases are more common on the national level, rather than the continental level.
If you can gather proof (signatures) of concern on a given issue, you can force a proposal through the door that normally has to come from elected representatives.
The fact that it isn't just a petition, and if successful will put the issue before EU lawmakers. I'm presenting the alternative as doing nothing because you talked about voting with your wallet, and that is essentially doing nothing.
The reason I see this as having a higher chance of success than a legal case is the monetary limitation inherent to the latter. As far as I know there isn't a big track record of successful ECI's, so I would assume you're basing your opinions on regular petitions. Correct me if I'm wrong.
No, I talked about putting this energy into convincing others to vote with their wallets, not just "doing nothing". A boycott is an active campaign. It doesnt just mean not buying a product. It means not buying any associated product. Not even tolerating them in conversation.
I'm basing my opinion on how the commission has responded to similar successfully raised initiatives: "that's already covered by legislation and up to EU states to manage", "no that's something we cant support, but feel free to appeal endlessly", and in the most effective one, "committing to making a legislative proposal by 2023 but actually if thats ok we'll make it 2026 and I suppose then if legislation is agreed it may be in place within a decade" (end cage farming, which polls at 86% approval already in the EU).
Yes, that's what I was referring to; I didn't mean you personally voting with your wallet, but in the broader sense. In my opinion there's little chance of having success with this method in this field.
I'm not saying you're wrong in basing your opinion on this, but I think the sample size is very small and not necessarily indicative of future results. I'm not saying the chances are sky-high either, but I think this is the best way forward, especially right now with the campaign having received a second wind.
If there are alternative roads to the same goal, I wouldn't be against supporting those either. I believe this is the best we have right now, that's why I've put it before friends, family etc. If you have a better idea, you should definitely do the same, but downplaying the potential of this campaign helps nobody but those in the games industry.
Right. Because caring about A means you can't care about B. If you support legislation, you must be boycoting nothing, because no-one in the history of existence has ever done both.
You're claiming mutual exclusivity where none exists.
You sound more like you're scared of the implications of this passing, because you'd have us voting with out wallets rather than... actually voting. Nevermind that even games not worth buying should still also be preserved.
Pre-orders, micro-transactions and battle-passes are still a thing, no matter how much we've shouted about "big company bad". This type of crap isn't something we solve by any one method alone.
And you don't need to engage with youtube or any other social media, to accept that the phenomenon they enable, occur. To dismiss that reality would be idiotic delusion.
Millions of views is a lot, when all you need to get started, is one of those millions to sign a petition.
No, I'm not. I'm saying this is a waste of time. Like, writing six paragraphs that say nothing new level of wasting time.
Ok
I... What? Is that not a mutual exclusivity argument? For you to have a point, this time and effort would need to be better spent elsewhere. I not only disagree with that, but I have the time and energy to do the other things you are claiming will make a difference.