I had no idea about all these but Googled it: So it's one of those "petition" stuff they expect governments would care: They won't. Why?:
1) According to the law what company produces and the services they provide are legally owned by the said company that's legally responsible for the existence of the product and service they provide. Customers can only have a license to use it by obeying the terms of use of in what way and how the company want customers to use the product and service for.
2) If customers could own the product, like a video game, then they could use the assets of video games like textures, models and even codes of it to produce their own video games. So laws and its rules are trying to exist together to make things "fair and square" for everyone, so one change will require tons of changes that lots of parts of the laws had to be rewritten. So customers gotta accept they cannot own anything and the money they paid for doesn't mean anything to the law in terms of ownership, it just means "you have a license to use it". What can be done is to make the reality of "customers using the product" fair by still accepting you cannot own the product unless you are the person who produced the product. "Paying for it" is not enough to own anything.
3) Governments consist of people, usually old people who forgot to die but their mind stuck in whatever popular girl of high school mentality of the era their brain think they still live in, and they even ignore serious social matters like life and death so video games are the least of what they would care. This is why digital reality of goods, products and services are not properly updated to befit it to the current era most of us live, but not the governments.
But what can be done to make governments wanna act upon this topic?:
1) Governments has to understand the danger of how what video game companies does is bad for the economy. Video game industry is a significant plus for the economy. It make money flow and gives people jobs. If they get the danger that will make the industry likely to collapse then governments have to do something about it. The governments has to get what video game companies does is still a scam and it hurts people economically because laws are not enough to prevent them from their brainwashes and scam methods, so it make people don't wanna buy games and as a result this significant part of economy risked to reduce and making people fired when companies collapse one by one and then it will cause a domino effect for related industries too.
Not to mention according to the law we cannot expect "non-adult" people to make "decent decisions" to make the right call and video game industry is what "non-adults" society calls "kids" heavily involved. Companies brainwashed kids to scam them but governments should prevent this. A kid has no idea how law and world works, so they for games in their own way but they are easily a subject to scam so much. No one should expect kids to care about "what is terms of use" so reality of video games should kept simple and fairness regarding video games should be in the way "what society expects and understand" by the concept of "buying a video game". It means, companies may legally revoke access to video game, but this is not what society expect so it causes unfairness, so customers' wishes should be naturally protected by not allowing video game companies to do most of what they can do right now.
2) Who owns video game cannot change by law. But, companies can be forced that customers keep their digital goods by just paying for once and it only means "a license to use the digital good for an infinite time and use". It will mean, for example, Ubisoft cannot remove access from their games just because "it's online only" when the nature of the game is singleplayer so it should have offline access from the start. Laws can be fixed regarding it.
For example back then video games could work offline and activated offline for legit play by the power of "CD-Key". If customers have the CD-Key then the game should work offline too. Customers shouldn't care about piracy and what BS companies does to prevent piracy.
This calls for the topic of piracy methods should be limited by laws. For example, double DRM that forces internet requirement to have to login tons of places to access video game is BS. It doesn't respect life and personal preference of customers. It prevent people from buying video games. So in a way whatever law is needed to make things fair for customers are also good for companies so their BS won't be the reason of their collapse.
That being said the GOG model should be the only way how video games are and how Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft, EA... and whatever digital video game distribution platforms are has to be legally enforced to provide games as how GOG does. No DRM, just download the setup and play it forever. Customers doesn't have to legally "own" games, but they paid for the product so they should be able to access what they paid for forever. If customers lose access to product then they will simply won't wanna pay for video games and it risk the industry collapsing. Good job for Ubishit to risk the whole video game industry turn into something people wanna forget and thanks Denuvo for making people cannot access the game they paid for. Who thought best way to deal with piracy and make people buy games is by not allowing them to access the game they paid for? wow lol
3) We wouldn't expect a company to pay additional cost to make a MMO, like World of Warcraft to allow offline gameplay because the nature of the game is not in that way and we cannot expect companies to provide infinite access to online games. However The Crew 1 is clearly a video game that is barely an "online game", it's more like a singleplayer game forced internet connection which is unfair for customers. Law can establish "type of video games" to distinguish the difference between them by defining how "a video game fundamentally depended on internet connection" (for example World of Warcraft) and "video game, despite forced online, does not require internet connection for core functionality therefore the video game can work without internet connection" (for example The Crew 1 and Need for Speed (2016)) are so companies won't use scams to remove the game from your library just to sell same but newer game (Ubisoft deleted Crew 1 just so people would buy newer Crew games) by forcing unnecessary usage of internet connection. So laws could enforce that if a video game doesn't really need internet to function then don't make it dependent on internet function to provide fair access to customers.
In this context laws regarding video games need to be upgraded because digital goods due to their nature and how they are provided is nothing like physical goods but laws are so stuck in physical good reality. So laws need to care about this:
1) Video games being released in unfair state that customers cannot use it properly, and sometimes video games are not usable even after few years.
Normally governments shouldn't allow this but they don't care. They don't even care customers can refund video games properly or not. You play a game more than 2 hours and then the game crashes so hard you cannot play the game anymore and cannot refund it. This is BS. Companies shouldn't be allowed to leave the game "unplayable" and if they do, if customers cannot play the game and if the game is buggy, no matter for how long they played the game and when they bought the game they should be necessarily allowed to refund the product.
2) DLC is a scam method so it should be removed. Either add DLC to the base game or you won't be allowed to sell DLCs so DLCs should be free of charge because companies intentionally remove features from base game to sell features as DLCs. Persona games are worst on that. In base Persona 4 game people talk about owning a motobike and then travelling between other places, and then they talk about the winter vacation that never happened so clearly the whole content is cut just to sell them as Persona 4 Golden lol. So this scam BS should prevent they selling same game with "little difference". Instead add this content for free to the actual version of the game or not. You shouldn't be allowed to sell the DLC and "another version of the game with little updates". This should be necessarily considered "update" and "updates" should be necessarily free to get and provide.
3) Gacha BS should be illegal. For those who doesn't know, gacha games are a free to play model but what's bad is you cannot "progress" the game if you don't pay for characters and weapons. You can get these "for free" but due to the "luck" system that's a gamble you cannot get the character and item required to progress in games. This gacha BS is necessarily a gamble and gambles in any form should be illegal.
Perhaps lots to say about all these but who reads these shit, innit? lol
