It’s a group representing the biggest publishers in the industry, used as a front to pretend they’re able to self-regulate when it comes to consumer laws vs business wants. So no, not a governing body but more of a cartel or lobbying group, I guess? One with A LOT of money on the line and enough lobbying power to push against things like the Stop Killing Games campaign the moment they feel threatened.

Either way it’s pure speculation considering something truly massive would have to happen for Steam to even get to this point.

He did say something similar years ago if I recall correctly but we never got any details and it was so long ago it’s hard to guess whether that’s still the plan. Reassurance or update on that wouldn’t be unwelcome, that’s for sure.

Here are the board members of this organisation in case someone is curious about their relevancy/neutrality on the matter:

• Hester Woodliffe – Chair (Warner Bros. Games)
• Canon Pence (Epic Games)
• Kerry Hopkins (Electronic Arts)
• Ian Mattingly (Activision)
• Klemens Kundratitz (Embracer)
• Qumar Jamil (Microsoft)
• Clemens Mayer-Wegelin (Nintendo of Europe)
• Cinnamon Rogers (Sony Interactive Entertainment)
• Matt Spencer (Take 2)
• Alain Corre (Ubisoft)
• Alberto Gonzalez-Lorca (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
• Karine Parker (Square Enix)
• Mark Maslowicz (Level Infinite)
• Felix Falk (game)
• Nicolas Vignolles (SELL)
• David Verbruggen (VGFB)
• Nick Poole (UKIE)

You know, the people who “ensured that the voice of a responsible games ecosystem is heard and understood” (direct quote from their website).

Fresh update video from Ross about the campaign.

TL;DW:

• There’s a chance many of the signatures for the EU petition aren’t real. Keep signing to build up a safety margin. Official suggestions are: 10% more minimum, 20% pretty OK, up to 40% more for an actual safety net.
• Some countries had problems with signing using the digital ID system - suggests to use the manual method (instructions on the campaign page) or try again later.
• Someone not related with the campaign released a SKG crypto. Don’t touch it, obviously.
• Ross heard about people harassing Pirate Software, asks to stop.
• He’s got a lot of messages to reply to, prioritises ones important to the campaign for now.
• UK petition cleared 100k signatures. Number is most likely more reliable than the EU one.
• Link about contacting UK MP’s for those who want to do more than just sign a petition.

That’s actually one of the most annoying parts about the whole thing. SKG campaign has been running for what, a year now? Barely anyone with an audience cared enough to even look into it, let alone spread the news. Now that things came close to failing suddenly everyone thinks it’s an important topic and scrambled to make videos/posts/whatever. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt but I just don’t have that in me any more…
We could’ve been in so much better place with awareness, petitions and general sentiment if people in the industry actually cared about these things from the start.

Better late than never, I guess. I just hope there’s enough time to push through the EU petition as well.

After Ross announced the campaign is dead a bunch of YouTubers (and media, I think?) picked up the topic and started spreading the word far and wide. This is the result.

He actively misrepresented the campaign and spread misinformation about its goals. I don’t know if he genuinely didn’t understand or if he was too embarrassed to admit to a mistake but he did a lot of damage to the momentum and perception of the whole thing.

It sucks these big creators only now pick up the mantle but it’s better than nothing. There’s still some time left.

Seems like most people prefer cases based on what I see around me. Personally I don’t like the additional bulk plus I’m careful enough with handheld objects to not drop them. Haven’t destroyed any phone so far.

I still think the act itself is pretty gross but yeah, the harm is the important part for me - and I don’t mean that just in case of sexual images. It’s also a problem in terms of content created to affect people’s reputation in other ways or influence the sociopolitical situation (something that’s already happening around the world).

The harmful potential of generative AI is on a completely different scale than photoshopped images already mentioned in this thread by others. That doesn’t mean genAI can’t be used in fun and interesting ways but stuff like what’s described in the linked article is a big no no for me.

In my opinion absolutely. Whatever happens in your head stays in your head and doesn’t affect the other person unless you take active steps for that to happen. Images or videos on the other hand can not only be distributed far easier, even accidentally, but also have a way higher chance of affecting people’s lives (how can you disprove you didn’t take nude photos of yourself for example? let alone make people believe it). They can lead to loss of reputation, harassment, bullying and serious mental issues for the victims (trust issues, anxiety, depression, self-harm) - imagination can’t really do that on its own.

Perhaps distribution is the real problem but easy access to tools that can create convincing results quickly and without effort makes said distribution way more probable.

Photoshop requires at least some skill and doesn’t allow for mass production of fakes the way generative AI does. Same problem, different scale.

That’s a fair point but, as you already mentioned, deepfakes are a pretty universal problem unfortunately. The type of misogyny in Japan compared to say US or Europe doesn’t seem to affect that much (if at all). Either way, it’s a terrible practice without sufficient ways to combat it at the moment which makes me pretty worried about how things will evolve in the future - in terms of “content”, affecting lives of victims and laws that will come out of this (some probably made in the worst possible knee-jerk reactionary ways).

There’s still a difference between a piece of clothing that may or may not have been worn by anonymous women and creations using real people without their knowledge or consent. Not trying to defend those vending machines but these aren’t the same in terms of results and potential effects on the victims.

You can try reporting the video but that probably won’t do much (doesn’t mean it’s not worth a try). The best you can do is treat it as free advertisement and hope it’ll encourage people to buy the game if they like it.

Remember that pirated copy does not equal lost sale, especially for an indie title most people won’t even hear about.

Edit: well, the double check by the other user makes this thing pretty sus. Either way, my comment still stands in case this really happens for someone.

Yeah, I’ve seen it after writing this. Thankfully, half of these are for PC native games so I didn’t miss completely at least.

Beside the already mentioned Open Source Game Clones there’s also this list on GitHub.

As for specific titles, I’d like to add:

• Fallout Community Edition and Fallout 2 Community Edition
• VCMI (open-source engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III)
• OpenGOAL (port of Jax and Daxter, second and third game in development)
• OpenGothic (officially only supports Gothic 2 but works with the first game as well)
• Perfect Dark port
• Super Mario 64 Port
• TRX – Tomb Raider I & II: Community Edition

There’s also WipeOut Phantom Edition but this one isn’t open-source so I’ll just leave it here in case someone wants to check out the existing build.

Does it though? I feel like there’s a difference between chatting with your mates and posting stuff aimed at your customers - especially things that might drive them to take actions that will affect your bottom line.

You already played the games, you enjoy them - it is what it is. There’s no point in beating yourself over (not) doing something without knowledge about the circumstances. No one is omnipotent and can avoid supporting every single shitty person out there. Just have fun with what you like and don’t support the guy in the future, that’s the best one can do in such situation in my opinion.

I want to say we all found out he was a piece of shit in the lead up to Ori 2?

Eh, not necessarily? I’m sure there are plenty of people who just play the games and aren’t in the know of any drama going on behind the scenes. Heck, I’m pretty tuned in into what’s going on in the industry and while I remember hearing some of this stuff back in the day most of it faded away since I wasn’t particularly interested in the series.

I think it’s better to remind folks about these situations than assume everyone is familiar with what’s going on.