An old acrylic painting.

There is now a (misunderstood) grassroots movement to make it so that the shutdown of any paid live-service game must legally result in customers being given the tools to personally host their own servers so that they can keep the game alive.

Ross Scott does not want to make companies to host at liability their online-only games on a server forever. The company would not be hosting the closed-down game. Somebody who's not you in the community would.

Ross Scott believes that games are art, and even the really terrible ones can inspire a person and so, should be something that can be preserved. Online games have a kill switch that he believes - and I believe - should legally not be there. A common misconception is about how he intends to make the law implement this.

The goal is actually to make games - that currently get "killed" - instead be protected by way of releasing key software needed to preserve them. But this simple fact is terribly misrepresented and misunderstood by many people.

Disinformation is sadly an incredibly effective thing that has fooled consumers, science, and whole democracies time and time again.

Do not be fooled. If you are a fan of video games, or even just like their art, #STOPKILLINGGAMES is something that you want to support. It's not going to drain critical money from the industry or hurt consumers, and the developers have very little downside from it for us to be worried about.

Look into it Here. Remember to not sign any petitions that you are not regionally eligible for.

Too much is at stake for us to let our one fleeting oppurtunity to use The Crew's shutdown go by without putting these principles into legislation. Refunds are not enough. Temporary playability is not enough. Notes on the packaging saying "when a game expires" are not enough. We don't want money. We want games that have already been made to stop disappearing from the world.

Games are a unique medium that has so much importance and such a hard time being defended. As I say, games are not just art but something that can inspire more art, so long as people get to witness them. Even if a game is really bad, it might make you think. There's a game that looks really unfun called Hellgate: London (I guess I should say "was"), and believe me, just seeing footage of that game was enough to inspire my mind. How sad would it be for kids, hundreds of years from now, to realize that a game they looked at and wanted to play went extinct 50 years ago?

By the way, if you have lots of time, watch Game Dungeon. It's quite good.