Personally, I don't support this, just because there were a few cases where studios closed support to an online game, doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be a rule. It is self-regulating pretty well. Games that are good, are going to be popular and don't need their servers closed. I personally don't expect mediocre games to have online support forever.
You're not required to support it longer, you just need to ensure the game is still playable after the support period for the people whose money you received.
Ubisoft killed The Crew servers and then actually revoked the game license from people who've bought it, so even if you bought and "owned" the game, it would no longer actually be in your library.
https://www.eurogamer.net/ubisoft-reportedly-revoking-the-cr...
No it is definitely not. Companies are very abusive to consumers, especially as more games move to a live service model.
Good regulation, I hope it passes.
As for the price, I am not concerned. If customers reject higher price points, they will "self regulate" back to an acceptable level.
Games that pass a certain quality bar and were designed with mass appeal in mind are going to be popular.
I've played at least a few live-service games that I consider good, but were shutdown due to lack of popularity. Some of them I can't even find client files for to start working on a server.
Value is subjective - tons of games that are now considered cult classics didn't gain any meaningful popularity on release.
> neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state
This could not possibly mean forcing e.g. WoW to keep their servers running forever. It just means that if your game could be written without a phone home "feature", then it must be.
In other words, it would not justify an increased price. Publishers may choose to increase the price, because they don't actually need a justification in order to do that. But this legal change would not be a good reason.
Say you have a proprietary game/service now that could include some third party middleware they're not allowed to share, and the game relies upon an online service - right now that's allowed, and there's the scenario where the company is ongoing and want to cease the game the may be obligated to do work to make a community effort to have the game survive viable. If the company is closing, presumably they'd either be obligated to do the work for a release up-front (and maintain it over versions?) and keep it in escrow as when they won't be able to do the work later, or if any other company wants to buy their assets they either inherit the obligation to work on a free/libre release or keep the game/service running even though it may have contributed to sinking the previous company.
This isn't part of this petition though. It would be fine to release server binaies that rely on distributed infrastructure. It would be up to fans to make it work. Which is fine by me personally.