Stop Killing Games

This is one of the few places where the USA has a sensible solution. In 2015, my org (Themade.org) worked with Archive.org, MIT, the EFF, and Harvard Law to obtain a DMCA 1201 exemption for legal DRM circumvention for the case of single player games where online validation servers have ceased operations.

Thanks to the hard work of these organizations, the US market, at least, allows for those who purchased these games to continue to play them with a third party patch to their client. See below:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/new-dmca-ss1201-exempt...

That exception expired in 2024 and was not renewed.

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/legally-weird/u-s-copyrig...

Please do not spread misinformation like this.

You are talking about the attempted exception in 2024. The 2015 exemption expires every 2 years and has to be renewed and to my knowledge it was renewed during this last effort, as it had been every 2 years since it was granted. The article you linked has nothing to do with the 2015 exemption. It only has to do with a proposed exemption that was not given in 2024.

> continue to play them with a third party patch to their client

so hoping that a third party patch can fix the issue. hoping it does. sounds like a very hopeless "legal" workaround

Happens ALL the time. Players even figure out how to emulate MMO servers by sniffing network traffic. When people want to play the game, they will find a way.

I'm not saying it does not "happen ALL the time", but this proposed EU law would make that job easier for the third party solutions, instead of "hoping" for one.