Reopening old wounds, Concord's flop gets brought up again in front of UK parliament

In recent years, gamers have had to get used to the idea that buying a game doesn't necessarily mean they own it. Long gone are the days of everything you need to play being on a disc, and this can mean some games are just ripped from people with very little warning, and very little they can do about it.

This topic was brought up in the UK parliament yesterday, where one MP referenced games such as Concord, Anthem, and The Crew in praising a new law which came into effect earlier in the year. "I know the honourable members will agree that where publishers fail to make the life span of a game clear at the point of sale, they must be held accountable. That's why I welcome the strengthened consumer protections, including the digital markets, competition and consumers act 2024, which came into force earlier this year. This legislation rightly requires traders to provide clear, timely, and accurate information to consumers, including the longevity and functionality of digital products," said debate lead Ben Goldsborough MP (via Eurogamer).

"Gamers still feel the deep sense of personal possession, because they invest more than money. They invest time, effort, imagination, and friendship. When a game shuts down without notice, that investment is lost," he added.

The aforementioned law might require traders to provide clear and accurate information on digital products, but it'll be interesting to see how much this will actually affect the games industry. Games are unpredictable. Concord, for example, was planning a roadmap months if not years in the making before realising it might as well email players individually with the updates planned for the game. It's very difficult for a developer to say "yes we'll support a game for x amount of time," because then you could be either stretching a title past the point people stopped caring, or be cutting it off at its peak hype.

It is interesting to see lawmakers begin to understand games more as an industry. We're not quite past the days of gaming scares just yet, but the Stop Killing Games movement (at least in Europe) seems to have made MPs and other elected officials aware that consumers are at times being treated unfairly by having products they bought swiped away from them at a later date.