3 ms·

Games are essentially solved as far as consumption goes. There's still some fuckery going on with DRM in some companies, but that's the minority. However, they

Games are essentially solved as far as consumption goes. There's still some fuckery going on with DRM in some companies, but that's the minority. However, they aren't solved when it comes to archival. It's getting constantly worse with the rise of online-only games with closed source, undistributed servers. A subject for another day, though.

Freak_NL 10y ago
Fair point. The archival question is complex because of the inherent difficulty in keeping old software running on modern operating systems. At some point it doesn't pay to keep supporting newer operating systems even if you still have sales; only for the really popular titles. Perhaps containers would work?
- scrollaway 10y ago
  Yeah, emulation or containerization works nicely for old games. However, newer games have server components which are required to run the game and/or have any content. When the money runs out, the servers get shut down and usually aren't redistributed. This isn't a problem torrents can solve, unfortunately.
  - Nullabillity 10y ago
    > When the money runs out, the servers get shut down and usually aren't redistributed. This isn't a problem torrents can solve, unfortunately. IIRC, the cracks for the old always-online UPlay DRM basically contained a MVP implementation of their servers. And of course, you have MMORPG "emulators", but those take a lot of effort, only come out for ridiculously popular and lasting games, and end up rewriting most of the game logic based on speculation. So the end result is more like Minetest vs Minecraft than cracked Assassin's Creed vs legit Assassin's Creed.
Nullabillity 10y ago
> There's still some fuckery going on with DRM in some companies, but that's the minority. Sadly it seems to be coming back, with all the recent Denuvo garbage.

3 ms·

Games are essentially solved as far as consumption goes. There's still some fuckery going on with DRM in some companies, but that's the minority. However, they

by scrollaway 10y ago

Freak_NL 10y ago
Fair point. The archival question is complex because of the inherent difficulty in keeping old software running on modern operating systems. At some point it doesn't pay to keep supporting newer operating systems even if you still have sales; only for the really popular titles. Perhaps containers would work?
- scrollaway 10y ago
  Yeah, emulation or containerization works nicely for old games. However, newer games have server components which are required to run the game and/or have any content. When the money runs out, the servers get shut down and usually aren't redistributed. This isn't a problem torrents can solve, unfortunately.
  - Nullabillity 10y ago
    > When the money runs out, the servers get shut down and usually aren't redistributed. This isn't a problem torrents can solve, unfortunately. IIRC, the cracks for the old always-online UPlay DRM basically contained a MVP implementation of their servers. And of course, you have MMORPG "emulators", but those take a lot of effort, only come out for ridiculously popular and lasting games, and end up rewriting most of the game logic based on speculation. So the end result is more like Minetest vs Minecraft than cracked Assassin's Creed vs legit Assassin's Creed.
Nullabillity 10y ago
> There's still some fuckery going on with DRM in some companies, but that's the minority. Sadly it seems to be coming back, with all the recent Denuvo garbage.