You will own nothing and be happy (Stop Killing Games)

tl;dr: If you're an EU citizen, sign the Stop Killing Games initiative here. Or, if you're in the UK, sign this petition.

A month ago, I had a second video on self-hosting taken down. YouTube said it was 'harmful or dangerous content'. I appealed that, but my appeal was rejected.

Luckily, I have enough reach I was able to get a second chance. Most content creators aren't so lucky, and content about tools like Jellyfin and LibreELEC get buried over time.

But it's not just self-hosting.

Note: This blog post is a lightly edited transcript of my most recent YouTube video, You will own NOTHING and be HAPPY (SKG).

I recently wrote a blog post about my frustration buying a dishwasher.

I bought a Bosch 500 series because our old one broke, and we needed one quick. All the online reviews for it were glowing, and Consumer Reports had crowned it as the 2nd best dishwasher out of all the ones they tested!

But they were reviewing the 2024 model.

The 2025 model hid wash cycles behind an app and swapped push buttons for a frustrating capacitive touch panel. The app requires a Bosch account and you have to connect your dishwasher to WiFi!

That's dumb. And yes, I know there's a hack for local access, but that only works after you connect it to Bosch, giving them your data. It's insane. So insane this recent XKCD kinda hurts, being so painfully true.

Self hosting is forbidden, apparently, and so is using the dishwasher I just paid for. Even 3D printer hardware, once a bastion of ownership and right to repair ideals, is getting locked down!

And that brings me to games.

I've been on a retro computing kick lately, restoring my Dad's first computer, and some of the computers I grew up using.

Hardware's neat, sure, but the thing that makes the hobby addicting is the software that runs on the hardware.

Like take Myst. My family played this game together for hours, solving all the puzzles.

I have a lot of great memories playing this game.

And if I want? I can put the CD in an old Mac, and play it again. I can even run it in an emulator, like Infinite Mac!

I've been imaging all the games I bought as a kid and putting them on a Raspberry Pi running AFP. That way I can play them whenever and however I want.

I can do that, because I bought the games. And I still buy games today.

But not all games are built the same. More and more, companies are tying up games to idiotic DRM that requires an Internet connection, or periodic phoning home, and if that goes away—good luck playing.

People who build things should get paid for their work. I'm not at all about pirating software. But if you click on a button that says 'Buy', or you go to a store and pick up a game in a box, you should be able to play it.

Is that not obvious?

And some games have online components. Do I expect, for example, Bungie's multiplayer servers to stay up until the end of time? No.

But do I expect some enterprising community members to step up and build their own self-hosted replacement? Yes, if it's a popular enough game.

But some games nowadays aren't designed that way. They're designed to basically expire after a couple years.

Some people actually care about not only playing games, but also preserving them as part of cultural or even individual history, just like I'm doing with all these old Mac games.

I don't even care if they ship me their code or anything, though companies like Id software went the extra mile in the past. I just care that games are built in a way that I could still play it after the company stops caring about it.

After all, I didn't click 'Rent now'. I paid 60 bucks and clicked a button that said 'Buy'.

Any game that turns into effectively a rental should be required to tell you: it's not actually for sale. It's a subscription, with an expiration date.

We have a tiny fighting chance to slow down the madness. There's an initiative called Stop Killing Games.

If you care about gaming, preserving history, or just preserving the meaning of the word 'buy', I'd encourage you to go there and sign the EU petition (assuming you're an EU citizen).

If you're in the UK, there's a separate petition.

We're finally seeing a pull-back from cloud-everything in software, and it starts with rebels pushing self-hosting and learning bare-metal deployment.

Maybe we can also spare gamers from decades of abusive pricing strategies.