they say "developer choice" because they know those words have positive connotations but what they mean is "publisher greed"

The original article completely misrepresents the initiative:

We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

...

Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:

• provide alternatives to any online-only content
• make the game P2P if it requires multiplayer (no server needed, each client is a server)
• gracefully degrading the client experience when there's no server

Of course, releasing server code is an option.

The expectation is:

• if it's a subscription game, I get access for whatever period I pay for
• if it's F2P, go nuts and break it whenever you want; there is the issue of I shame purchases, so that depends on how it's advertised
• if it's a purchased game, it should still work after support ends

That didn't restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they're expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they're done).

I argue Stop Killing Games doesn't go far enough, and if it's pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.

So does not allowing food companies to sprinkle lead and uranium in food. What's the point?

Yes, it curtails you from making absurd choices about how to fuck customers out of the money they paid for your games

Ah, the propaganda war has started.

Yeah, because the choices they have now is working great for quality games...

Fuck developer choice! What about my choice as a consumer?

Corporate jargon translation:

"It's going to limit innovation" = "We won't be able to use those new ways of ripping off our customers anymore"

Backpedaling to "defending creators" - that's a bold move, Cotton.

Keep signing it! Don't stop!

All games become subscription only in 3..2..

"Developers" are the ones who are passionate about the games they make, and definitely don't want their games dead.

"Corporations" are the ones who only want to profit from selling the game, and then ditch it once it's no longer lucrative enough.

We saw the depths a nepo baby from Blizzard would go for this initiative to fail, can't imagine what could happen with a body comprised of people from the biggest worms in the industry (Epic, EA, Activision, Microsoft, Ubi et al.)