4 ms·

A huge amount of games - most, even - are not multiplayer. It’s only within the current AAA environment that multiplayer is placed as a primary feature of many

A huge amount of games - most, even - are not multiplayer. It’s only within the current AAA environment that multiplayer is placed as a primary feature of many games, but even there there’s plenty of options for single-player experiences. And in any case, there’s still dozens of communities around old arena shooters and the like. If those had an arbitrary lifespan applied to them based on when some company or other shut down, that’d be impossible.

dbg31415 8y ago
I have "X-COM: Terror from the Deep" on Steam. The game came out in 1996. And every so often, it'll popup and ask, "What is the icon on page 37 of the manual?" It's a cute throwback to what copy protection used to be. But it's a bit obscene that they didn't run the crack to take out the copy protection checks once they ported it over to Steam. Once the window pops up, the game is unplayable until you type in the right code. I was furious my first time through. I spent all night reliving nostalgic fantasies, only to get pretty far in and hit that wall. And, because I left the game on when I went to bed on Friday, it looked like I had played it for like 48 hours, so by the time I got around to filing a complaint with Steam to get a refund, they were like, "You've clearly been playing the game for 48+ hours..." Frustrating. The person on the other end of the phone thought I was a babbling idiot when I said the game had copy protection and asked for a copy of the manual. It was one of the funniest moments of tech support I've ever been on. Luckily, I found a a PDF of the user manual with all the symbols.
- voltagex_ 8y ago
  Although CD Projekt Red is far from perfect, GOG's version https://www.gog.com/game/xcom_terror_from_the_deep https://www.gog.com/game/xcom_terror_from_the_deep is DRM free and includes the manual. Unsure if the old copy protection has been patched out. Looks like there's also an engine reimplementation: https://openxcom.org/ https://openxcom.org/
  - dbg31415 8y ago
    > https://openxcom.org/ https://openxcom.org/ This is great! Had no idea this was out there.

dbg31415 8y ago

I have "X-COM: Terror from the Deep" on Steam. The game came out in 1996. And every so often, it'll popup and ask, "What is the icon on page 37 of the manual?" It's a cute throwback to what copy protection used to be. But it's a bit obscene that they didn't run the crack to take out the copy protection checks once they ported it over to Steam. Once the window pops up, the game is unplayable until you type in the right code. I was furious my first time through. I spent all night reliving nostalgic fantasies, only to get pretty far in and hit that wall. And, because I left the game on when I went to bed on Friday, it looked like I had played it for like 48 hours, so by the time I got around to filing a complaint with Steam to get a refund, they were like, "You've clearly been playing the game for 48+ hours..." Frustrating. The person on the other end of the phone thought I was a babbling idiot when I said the game had copy protection and asked for a copy of the manual. It was one of the funniest moments of tech support I've ever been on. Luckily, I found a a PDF of the user manual with all the symbols.

voltagex_ 8y ago
Although CD Projekt Red is far from perfect, GOG's version https://www.gog.com/game/xcom_terror_from_the_deep https://www.gog.com/game/xcom_terror_from_the_deep is DRM free and includes the manual. Unsure if the old copy protection has been patched out. Looks like there's also an engine reimplementation: https://openxcom.org/ https://openxcom.org/
- dbg31415 8y ago
  > https://openxcom.org/ https://openxcom.org/ This is great! Had no idea this was out there.