If you're from EU, take a look and consider supporting this initiative: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en#

We're aware:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/stop_killing_games_campaign_by_accursed_farms_ross_scott/page1

Thanks for the reminder though.

Also force publishers to make games DRM free after 5 years. And if they abandon games (refuse fix mayor problems in timely manner ) (sell it for reasonable price)make legaly free to third parties making fix and resell with limited profit.

That will ensure digital art is not lost ( at least most popular ones)

Jusr look at Command and Conquer series or Battle for middle earth....

"An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or "phone home" to function. While this is not a problem in itself,"

Emphasis mine. Oh yes it is!

This is the main reason why this is not going to get my vote.

The people behind this are clearly OK with DRM, until it actually comes back to bite them. I on the other hand fully reject DRM, no matter how discreet, no matter how "light" it might pretend to be.

This is nothing legislators need to be bothered with. No one is forced to buy video games. Plus there is an easy solution: Buy DRM-free games only. If enough people were doing this publishers would have to change their behavior very quickly.

These 'petitions' are going nowhere fast all the time the people behind them sound as if they don't know what they want / what they're talking about. They are happy to throw money at online-only Games As A Service (with prominent "This game requires a constant internet connection for all game modes" warnings for all to see) during purchase and only 10 years later complain that it wasn't DRM-Free from the start after a decade of apathy. They "have no problem" with online DRM but they "oppose remote killswitches" in the same sentence. They "want the ability for the community to patch it with reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher" yet the games they want patched contain Denuvo or VMProtect that by nature of anti-tamper, locks sizeable chunks of the game code (including all online networking code) inside encrypted virtualized containers stuffed full of obfuscated junk instructions, meaning extensive work from the developer is the only one that can go back and modify it because they sure as hell can't "just be community patched" by scanning the game's .exe / network related .dll with a Hex Editor and replacing hardcoded IP addresses / domain names with community servers as you see in some old 90's-2000's games. Nor can they be forced to "just release the source-code" if they reuse some of the code in a new game or if it contains 3rd party code (eg, BattlEye anti-cheat).

The publisher will argue : "It's 'unreasonable' to have to rewrite server-side only by design games (The Crew = Diablo 3 Racing Edition) almost from the ground up for offline use after 10 years, and since parts of the vehicle handling physics code is shared with The Crew 2, it would be IP infringement to force us to publish the source code. And since our most vocal fans say they're perfectly happy with online DRM, we'll be sure to include more of that in all future games due to 'popular demand'...", and that instantly kills that petition off. The most you'll get out of this is some EU-wide law that forces a more prominent "WARNING: This game is a service and continued server availability is not guaranteed" pop-up warning on store pages (like what they did with cookies) so people aren't 'confused' as to what they're buying (product vs time-limited service), but the same people who ignore Steam's "Game contains BattlEye anti-cheat technology and VMProtect" 3rd party DRM warnings will just ignore that then complain 10 years later.

Lesson Learned = Anything which combines time-limited licensed content (especially sports / racing genres) with online-only content + DRM is a complete "disposable by design" write off rental, unless you actually tackle the latter two issues whilst the game is still being sold / supported / licensed for distribution, not wait until after the game's time-limited licensed content expires and the publisher couldn't legally republish a single-player DRM-Free new version of it anyway with the same (now unlicensed) content even if they wanted to.

The entire C&C franchise is on Steam.

BfME is a problem with licenses. EA can't legally sell the games without having the movie and book licenses for the LOTR franchise, which EA lost more than 15 years ago now. Not to mention that WB has the exclusive rights for making and publishing LOTR games at the moment. It' a mess that pretty much ensures no EA LOTR game will ever see an official re-release.

The person behind this is trying to actually make gains here. Asking for a complete ban on DRM at the time of release is in his opinion, would be great but no publisher would agree to it, very few people in power would introduce it. This was done by Accursed Farms on YouTube. He does Freeman's mind and Ross's Game Dunegeon. His video explaining why he chose the route he did was made a few months ago. I'll take a game they no longer intend to support going completely DRM free. Demanding 100% what you want right out of the gate is a 100% way of walking away with nothing. There are people who can negotiate and those who can't. Just like how gaming companies have done with us with complete success, why can't we do the same in return. He's taking a much more safe and effective way of doing it. I'm the blow up the deal and get the better deal on return type. The riskiest of the deals, but much more rewarding. Then again, I have a talent that very few people have.

Truth is, DRM is in nearly everything. People on this forum isn't the issue. It's your idiot parents, friends, family, and the idiots in the world in general are the problem. Why the hell does a car need DRM? Nothing needs DRM and yet, doing nothing is, suprise, doing nothing to stop it. I'm sick of DRM, I want to do what the hell I want with the useless crap I spend my hard stolen money on. I would love it if everyone who is fine with DRM was in a situation where breaking DRM would keep them alive. I would also make sure that DRM was unbreakable. That way when their life is slowly fading away, they can see and feel that their support for DRM caused their own demise.

If anyone can come up with something better, by all means, put up or shut up.

For me: I live in the US. The land of politicians bought wholesale. The land where half of the population is too stupid to realize how stupid they are, but can see how stupid the other half is. There's no chance for me. I'm always too busy convincing people in real life that an assembled pile of materials is worth at least 100x what I paid. At least you guys can save yourselves.

Why would I want to negotiate with video game companies? They don't sell anything I need for survival. They either offer me the product I want or I spend my money elsewhere. There is more than enough affordable entertainment out there for two lifetimes.

That's not the problem. The problem is that the ECI's text specifically states that on-line requirements are not a problem in themselves. So it's not a path to any further gains, as even if the ECI will be fully successful, ending up adopted, it will actually shoot down any future initiatives against DRM. That little bit of text needs to go.
Why make things better, eh?
When the big corps have their marketing machines to steer people in their desired direction, the masses will never change behavior enough to force them to do things differently, but if a critical mass of interested and determined people can persuade lawmakers to regulate, that desired change will be pushed through.
The problem in this case is that the initiative's text shoots down further developments...

I agree 100% and I couldn't have said it better. The problem isn't 'servers being turned off', the problem is DRM and an unnecessary dependence on centralized servers being built into the games in the first place. The issue at hand is fundamentally a design problem, which this petition does nothing to address.

I was waiting for it. I did everything I could before but now that the initiative is open that's the real deal. I was able to do it in 5 minutes with SPID and it we reach the minimum number we will really be able to make a difference.
And while force drm-free on everything would be even more amazing this is stil a step in the right path. Make so that they should at least leave a working copy once they decide to drop support is a great way to at least save artistic product that should not be lost.
DRM is not ok, but DRM + drop support to stole the game you paid for is even worst.
I will continue to support drm-free only but I also think it is important to do everything I can to preserve videogames for the future, even if they got drm at release.

Also understand that this is not a simple online petition
You cannot sign it multiple times, you need a real ID to log in and sign it. This is something that the UE will need to take into account if enough people sign for it.
This can actually change things if enough people care.

We don't need publishers to 'agree' to anything. We are already very well aware that big AAA game publishers are not going to stop using DRM voluntarily. DRM needs to be outlawed through legislation, by virtue of being an anti-consumer practice. It's the only way it is going to ever go away.

Well, and/or gamers need to wake up and realize that they don't own anything they have bought that contains online DRM and refuse to buy those games. I agree with the above comments that this problem has been caused/fueled by the very people who are pushing this petition, by buying those games in the first place. No-one needs any of that DRM-ed garbage - there are more than enough great DRM-free games out there to play, without resorting to that. How many of them supported GOG over the past 10 years?

If their games got taken away - that's too bad and I'm not going to be crying them a river to sail their stranded ship down. The first thing these people need to do is wake up and stop supporting anti-consumer practices in the first place.

Gains exclusive to customers of pro-DRM companies. These are "gains" I could not care less about. But they pretend at the same time that publishers would be OK with endless maintenance of the games they sell and the servers they rely on? I came up with something much better more than a decade ago: don’t buy any product polluted by DRM. No exception.

But I expect someone making money from YouTube advertisement is never going to willingly give up on the easy views many DRMed titles brings with no real effort. Making them actual adversaries in this fight against DRM.