I've seen him described elsewhere as "a poor man's idea of a rich man" and I think it's accurate.

With that said, I don't think it's his fault the petition failed, people just don't care usually.

edit: To give more context, Pirategames literally does not know what the Stop Killing Games movement is about, he thinks it's only about single-player games being always-online (yes that's a component of it but not the whole thing) and converting multiplayer games to be offline-playable single-player games but it does NOT mention that anywhere because it is NOT about that. However, I guarantee you that Pirategames will not admit that he was mistaken about his understanding of the Stop Killing Games movement, he will instead double and triple down and insist that he had the correct understanding of it. lol

Youtube shorts.

Imagine you're a gamer, one who is interested in game Design. Your view history has games, gaming, game design, but it's also full of algotrash talking heads, scam baiters, shit slingers. You open the YouTube app on your phone, and it immediately opens to shorts, you don't remember settings that as the default but it's fine, you recognize the creator and the 45 second clip was neat. Swipe up. Next video, it Nile Blue dropping a beaker of chloroauric acid. Next video, its Chris Boden yelling about some kind of electrical infrastructure you don't understand (and that's pretty cool). Next video, Thor, speaking softly, explaining an aspect of game design that you never thought of. This one catches your attention, its in your wheelhouse, its something you're genuinely interested in. You click the profile, swipe through a few more shorts. Your algorithm is permanently damaged. Your a pirate software fan now, whether you like it or not.

Or you can use freetube and never see algotrash talking heads in your feed and never enter into this cycle.

It just didn't reach enough people, no one I know that is not on Reddit and Lemmy even heard about it or understood the problem to begin with, on top of that, most "gamers" are playstation players that don't know anything about these problems or care for that matter.

Yup, I don’t watch his content, but looking at his actual viewership numbers, he doesn’t even remotely have the impact to make or break a petition by himself.

I mean I'm tired of signing online petitions that get summarily ignored

It really was a good ole' internet argument where he was just obnoxiously wrong in his interpretation and remained just as confidently incorrect the entire time.

what changed his opinion?

The metrics on signatures for the citizens' initiative. If it helped, it would have boosted those too, but it didn't. He also got word that at least one very large YouTuber/streamer that he did not name decided to stay quiet about SKG because it would have contradicted Thor.

I'll also reiterate that 1M signatures out of a population of 450M is an absurdly high threshold to have to reach, so getting 1/10th of that is still impressive, even if it's unsuccessful.

that was sort of the point though. a big case with a narrow focus can later be used as a fulcrum for a wider scope, given that the original case has the right spin. it's also easier than going after the anti-repair people.

Reverse engineering the server is reverse engineering the whole game. It's going to require skilled engineers and a significant time investment. It may be possible, but not practical.

Also, the client will likely verify it is talking to a legitimate server by checking a certificate, so you may also have to hack the client too.

At some point you're better off making your own game with hookers and blackjack.

It's an unreliable solution, because there's no guarantee that even dedicated and talented individuals will be able to reverse engineer every online server, if that game has those individuals in its customer base in the first place. The solution seems to be either legislation, which this campaign is seeking, or for the market to outright reject online-only games, which it isn't doing. I don't even really have an alternative to online-only games in some genres, like FPS for instance, to send my dollars toward instead; sports games are in a similar position, since the sports organizations all signed exclusivity contracts.