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Firefall beta shutting down to protest SOPA

by Jef Reahard on Jan 13th 2012 9:00AM

Sci-Fi, Culture, MMO Industry, New Titles, News Items, Free-to-Play, Legal, MMOFPS

Gamers opposed to the controversial new SOPA legislation are somewhat limited in terms of voicing their displeasure. Game companies have a bit more visibility, and Red 5 Studios is making the most of it. On January 18th, the company will temporarily shut down the beta for its highly anticipated Firefall MMO shooter as a form of protest.

The lights will remain off for 24 hours, and Red 5 CEO Mark Kern has some strong words for the bill and those who support it. "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," he told ShackNews.

Kern went on to say that Red 5 has canceled its plans to attend this year's E3 "unless ESA reverses their stance."

Source: ShackNews
More coverage: Official site

Tags: beta, closed-beta, f2p, firefall, firefall-beta, free-to-play, legislation, mark-kern, mmo-shooter, mmofps, protests, red-5, red-5-studios, sci-fi, shooter, sopa, stop-online-piracy-act

Reader Comments (41)

That day, could this be adopted wider. The internet for games effectively shut down, made a ghost-town for that time. Maybe it's too radical, but it would definitely get the message across.
Would you be in favour of such a situation, as a way to demonstrate the effect of the bill, if it goes through, and the opposition to that taking place?

@Allenomura As you say, it's only as if gamers voices can grow so loud, but with a voluntary response like that, it would be able to speak.

@Allenomura

Reddit's going to be doing a blackout on Jan 18th as well. But so far that's all I've heard. Facebook/Google/Youtube should do the same for even just a few hours, imo. And redirect people to a page with information on SOPA. That will REALLY get the masses informed on this pos bill.

@Allenomura I think a lot of sites should follow this example. Even WoW, RIFT, and other MMOs, heck even Steam, even if it's just for an hour. I know a lot of people would be upset is the servers shut down for any length of time, but I think it would get a lot of awareness out. They could credit the accounts with an 'extra' day if the MMOs did it. I'd be miffed at not being able to play my favorites games for a day or an hour, but if SOPA passes, what could we lose? And I'm Canadian! But I still worry of how it may/will affect me.

Imagine what would happen if Google went dark for 24 hours to protest this crap legislation.

@Joaquin Crowe

Just use Bing or yahoo? lol

^ This

@nhat

Actually no.

Bing and yahoo might be nice and etc, but google IS the biggest one. Its not just search engines. Its youtube. VERY popular email system, an entire model of ad-revenue system, one of the most popular map systems and so on.

Google doing that would certainly have an ultra huge impact and make EVERYONE notice the issue :)

@Kitanishi

I'm just saying people can survive google for a few days since there's other alternatives to that. Besides you're hurting your customer more if they did anything like that.

@Kitanishi

Besides its impossible for google to do anything like that since they're contracted with companies to meet service requirements otherwise they'll get sue out the wazoo.

@nhat "Besides you're hurting your customer more if they did anything like that."

More than SOPA/PIPA?

@Joaquin Crowe The collective "iq" of the connected world would drop 20 points :P

It's good to see someone walking the walk, so to speak. So many gaming companies are either refusing to take a stance on SOPA (thus defaulting to the ESA's stance) or making a press release against it while still continuing to pay their dues to the ESA.

I've heard the argument that these companies should not resign from the ESA in protest, but let me say this: If 3 or 4 large gaming companies even just THREATENED to pull support from the ESA their stance on SOPA would go from "For" to "Against" real quick.

Rumor has it Wikipedia is going to go dark to protest as well, lets hope we see more of these actions.

If only people were as outraged at the other 15,000 things govt has done. You can take my healthcare, and my guns, and my money, and my freedom, but youll never take....MY INTERNETZ!

@(Unverified) Haha, this was funny. I think it should be the slogan! XD

@(Unverified) Its sad, but what this man says is the truth. Which is pathetic to admit.

@Jetflame3

That wouldn't work as a slogan, far too many Americans care more about their guns than anything else in their lives including the spouse, kids, and internet!

Soooo Red5 wants to screw the gamer because of some stance? This is the wrong way to do it since it HURTS the GAMERS more than the actual legislation

@nhat

It does not hurt the gamers. It's a beta, a testing phase in the development cycle. It will just make some gamers aware of possible future problems if this bill pass.

@nhat Derp derp. Derp derp derp derp

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Firefall beta shutting down to protest SOPA

Reader Comments (41)

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:09AM Allenomura said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:12AM Allenomura said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:49AM Sorithal said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 11:35AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:12AM Joaquin Crowe said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:30AM nhat said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:33AM Archintyeron said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 10:01AM Kitanishi said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 11:18AM nhat said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 11:36AM nhat said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 11:43AM fallwind said

Posted: Jan 16th 2012 6:06PM emikochan said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:17AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:24AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 10:45AM Jetflame3 said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 12:24PM Zetsuei said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 12:58PM Seffrid said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:25AM nhat said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:40AM Archintyeron said

Posted: Jan 13th 2012 9:45AM (Unverified) said

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