14 DAY TRIAL // As the date for Congress hearings and a possible vote for the Stop Online Piracy Act is approaching a number of video game companies have stated their opposition to the law and said that they would take public action to show it.
The highest profile initiative comes from Markus Person, aka Notch, who said that he plans to shut down both minecraft.net and mojang.com on January 18 in order to protest the possible effects of the Stop Online Piracy Act, as will a number of high profile technology sites.
Red 5, who is the developer of upcoming MMO Firefall, stated, “We are extremely disappointed in this misguided legislation. We are also ashamed of the ESA for supporting a bill which is clearly not in the best interests of gamers or the game industry.”
The developers will also shut down the Firefall beta for a 24 hour period.
Frozenbyte, a developer based in Sweden, also talked about its opposition to the SOPA provisions, saying that its community of players should try and voice their anti censorship opinions no matter where they live in the world.
GOG.com, the digital distribution service based in Poland and has been created by the people behind the popular The Witcher series, added its own voice to the opposition to the bill, saying, “SOPA works in a fashion similar to DRM, if you ask us: it only will have an effect on people who are, by and large, honest consumers. Pirates who torrent via P2P methods will not be inconvenienced in the least by SOPA and PIPA; people who post 'let’s play' walkthroughs of video games on YouTube, though, may be.”
CD Projekt has long said that tough DRM measures are not the way to fight piracy, although it has since taken legal action against a number of syspected pirates.
Jagex, the developer of RuneScape, also expressed opposition to SOPA through its Chief Executive Officer, as did Runic Games, the developers of Torchlight and the upcoming sequel to the hack and slash game.