Accursed Farms (Freeman's Mind, Civil Protection, Ross's Game Dungeon)

Another instalment of Dead Game News, as Ross fills us in on how the campaign is going:

Here's the main points:

• The Australian, Canadian, and UK petitions are now up and ready to collect signatures (I did my part).
• There's potential for a class-action lawsuit in Brazil, but he needs more information on how many people have actually bought The Crew.
• The main meat of the episode is the response they got from the UK government. For the most part, the response they got either misunderstood what their campaign was trying to do or heavily implied it was not illegal for game companies to end support without any end-of-life plan. However, Ross highlights the response also implies it is a violation for companies to withhold or obscure information from customers that would impact their decision to purchase a product, which Ross believes how long a company will keep supporting servers would fall under. So while they might not be able to get the UK to stop companies from shutting down games, they might be able to force them to clearly label how long support for a game will last before they're shut down, which might negatively affect sales enough for companies to stop the practice altogether. The main issue is that he's unsure about what avenues to report this issue and whether the statute of limitations applies to The Crew or not. Basically, Ross needs some input from some UK legal experts about what his next step should be for tackling this issue in the UK.

At the very least, developers should make it clear to customers that the support will not be indefinite. And that once support ends, they will not be able to play the game at all anymore.

Edited by M84 on May 14th 2024 at 4:09:00 PM