6 ms·

Imagine not being able to rewatch movies from the 50s-80s because "the servers were shutdown". This is what's gonna happen to a whole lot of modern games. What

by bserge 5y ago

Imagine not being able to rewatch movies from the 50s-80s because "the servers were shutdown". This is what's gonna happen to a whole lot of modern games. What a waste. Only pirates can help them.

dharmab 5y ago
Pirates, modders and reverse engineering tools.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  When piracy is more user friendly than a paid service, the service owners should take a step back and rethink what they're doing.
  - alvah 5y ago
    Piracy is almost always more user friendly than a paid service, and has been for as long as I can remember - at least as far back as when DVDs had unskippable "don't pirate this" messages which didn't appear on the pirated version
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      I mean.. netflix had a point... install an app, pay some low fee, choose a show, and watch. Compared to this.. installing a torrent client, finding the torrent file, choosing a right "download" button on non-adblocked browsers, waiting,... it's a pain in the ass. But now... 5 different subscriptions, and still unable to get the show you want,... yeah, not anymore.
      - dharmab 5y ago
        For contrast, try out Plex sometime.
      - jrnichols 5y ago
        and Hollywood acted so surprised when Popcorn Time became popular. Imagine that.
javajosh 5y ago
OTOH these innovations in creating artificial scarcity is what enabled the games to be funded in the first place. At least this way they exist, and can (and will!) be rescued by the hackers of the world. EDIT: it's impossible to make money off of digital goods without artificial scarcity. This is because data is naturally not scarce. In the beginning, physical media allowed data goods to piggy-back on the retail structures already in place. Personal computing and the internet has mostly eliminated that form of scarcity. New forms of scarcity have been invented, some better than others (from the end-user perspective). Note that this truth applies to FAANG as well. Facebook and Google's fortunes have been built on the scarcity of ad space. Gaming companies have invented ways to create scarcity ranging from account-bound DRM (Steam, Battle.net), dongles, and always-on phone-home requirement for the runtime. And more. All of these technologies exist to extract money from something that is naturally not scarce. And rather than hate that fact, consider that without the ability to extract monetary value, these projects would not have been executed in the first place. So what's worse: a world in which we have excellent games hobbled by money extraction mechanisms, or a world in which we don't have excellent games? I know which one I prefer.
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
  > OTOH these innovations in creating artificial scarcity is what enabled the games to be funded in the first place. Maybe I haven't had enough coffee, but I don't think I understand.
  - dharmab 5y ago
    Speak to some gamedevs at various sizes of studios. You'll hear stories like "We can make this game with ads/microtransactions/DLC to fund part of the development, or we can not make this game at all due to lack of funding."
    - jeltz 5y ago
      And speak to the recotd labels during the Napster era to hear thar no music would be made without CD sales.
munk-a 5y ago
A lot of really old games were unplayable without the manuals - most of these have gotten fan-patches to disable the security checks. I imagine we'll see something similar with more modern games but for the always online features. Usually with enough dedication you can track down and hack out the activated code - and if an old DRM system falls into disuse a lot of companies will just release the details on it making it even easier to patch out.
- dmos62 5y ago
  An example I ran into recently is Far Cry 3. It's not that old either. It has a coop campaign that's now unplayable due to server disrepair. Invitations to lobby do not work.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
  How many games didn’t get these patches? Let’s not forget cracking an 80s game is significantly easier than a modern title, too.
  - krageon 5y ago
    Most games get cracked within 1-3 months after release. For specific deep denuvo integration titles it can take a bit longer (or it might never happen if the game is bad or nobody cares about it, but that rarely happens). For smaller titles that use off-the shelf DRM related to a specific store, there are general-purpose bypasses that work fine in basically every case. In summary I would say that the coverage is a lot more complete than you'd expect :)
exporectomy 5y ago
But there are movies that you can't rewatch because the company didn't release them and isn't playing the film anymore.
- TheSkyHasEyes 5y ago
  Neither of you are wrong. But this isn't good context since the game was in their hands. Your example means the movie isn't in your hands.
lavabiopsy 5y ago
Does it matter? The game developers I've talked to are well aware that they're trading some aspect of long-term historical significance for short term gain, and it doesn't seem to bother them. To use a sports analogy here, do you think it really matters to football coaches that the players can't go back in time and play the game exactly as it was played 100 years ago, for various reasons? The equipment and safety practices have changed, the old fields have been rebuilt or destroyed, the minutiae of the rules have changed quite a bit over time, etc. People could try to do a historical re-enactment of sorts, it wouldn't be the same, but that's okay because the game would still be fun if it was done the right way.
type0 5y ago
This might happen, the technology to put ads in old and new movies already exist.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Only pirates can help them. I remember the Battlefield 2 community tried to revive the multiplayer servers after GameSpy shut down. EA sent them a C&D.

by bserge 5y ago

Imagine not being able to rewatch movies from the 50s-80s because "the servers were shutdown". This is what's gonna happen to a whole lot of modern games. What a waste. Only pirates can help them.

dharmab 5y ago

Pirates, modders and reverse engineering tools.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
When piracy is more user friendly than a paid service, the service owners should take a step back and rethink what they're doing.
- alvah 5y ago
  Piracy is almost always more user friendly than a paid service, and has been for as long as I can remember - at least as far back as when DVDs had unskippable "don't pirate this" messages which didn't appear on the pirated version
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    I mean.. netflix had a point... install an app, pay some low fee, choose a show, and watch. Compared to this.. installing a torrent client, finding the torrent file, choosing a right "download" button on non-adblocked browsers, waiting,... it's a pain in the ass. But now... 5 different subscriptions, and still unable to get the show you want,... yeah, not anymore.
    - dharmab 5y ago
      For contrast, try out Plex sometime.
    - jrnichols 5y ago
      and Hollywood acted so surprised when Popcorn Time became popular. Imagine that.

javajosh 5y ago

OTOH these innovations in creating artificial scarcity is what enabled the games to be funded in the first place. At least this way they exist, and can (and will!) be rescued by the hackers of the world. EDIT: it's impossible to make money off of digital goods without artificial scarcity. This is because data is naturally not scarce. In the beginning, physical media allowed data goods to piggy-back on the retail structures already in place. Personal computing and the internet has mostly eliminated that form of scarcity. New forms of scarcity have been invented, some better than others (from the end-user perspective). Note that this truth applies to FAANG as well. Facebook and Google's fortunes have been built on the scarcity of ad space. Gaming companies have invented ways to create scarcity ranging from account-bound DRM (Steam, Battle.net), dongles, and always-on phone-home requirement for the runtime. And more. All of these technologies exist to extract money from something that is naturally not scarce. And rather than hate that fact, consider that without the ability to extract monetary value, these projects would not have been executed in the first place. So what's worse: a world in which we have excellent games hobbled by money extraction mechanisms, or a world in which we don't have excellent games? I know which one I prefer.

pavel_lishin 5y ago
> OTOH these innovations in creating artificial scarcity is what enabled the games to be funded in the first place. Maybe I haven't had enough coffee, but I don't think I understand.
- dharmab 5y ago
  Speak to some gamedevs at various sizes of studios. You'll hear stories like "We can make this game with ads/microtransactions/DLC to fund part of the development, or we can not make this game at all due to lack of funding."
  - jeltz 5y ago
    And speak to the recotd labels during the Napster era to hear thar no music would be made without CD sales.

munk-a 5y ago

A lot of really old games were unplayable without the manuals - most of these have gotten fan-patches to disable the security checks. I imagine we'll see something similar with more modern games but for the always online features. Usually with enough dedication you can track down and hack out the activated code - and if an old DRM system falls into disuse a lot of companies will just release the details on it making it even easier to patch out.

dmos62 5y ago
An example I ran into recently is Far Cry 3. It's not that old either. It has a coop campaign that's now unplayable due to server disrepair. Invitations to lobby do not work.
hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
How many games didn’t get these patches? Let’s not forget cracking an 80s game is significantly easier than a modern title, too.
- krageon 5y ago
  Most games get cracked within 1-3 months after release. For specific deep denuvo integration titles it can take a bit longer (or it might never happen if the game is bad or nobody cares about it, but that rarely happens). For smaller titles that use off-the shelf DRM related to a specific store, there are general-purpose bypasses that work fine in basically every case. In summary I would say that the coverage is a lot more complete than you'd expect :)

exporectomy 5y ago

But there are movies that you can't rewatch because the company didn't release them and isn't playing the film anymore.

TheSkyHasEyes 5y ago
Neither of you are wrong. But this isn't good context since the game was in their hands. Your example means the movie isn't in your hands.

lavabiopsy 5y ago

Does it matter? The game developers I've talked to are well aware that they're trading some aspect of long-term historical significance for short term gain, and it doesn't seem to bother them. To use a sports analogy here, do you think it really matters to football coaches that the players can't go back in time and play the game exactly as it was played 100 years ago, for various reasons? The equipment and safety practices have changed, the old fields have been rebuilt or destroyed, the minutiae of the rules have changed quite a bit over time, etc. People could try to do a historical re-enactment of sorts, it wouldn't be the same, but that's okay because the game would still be fun if it was done the right way.

type0 5y ago

This might happen, the technology to put ads in old and new movies already exist.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> Only pirates can help them. I remember the Battlefield 2 community tried to revive the multiplayer servers after GameSpy shut down. EA sent them a C&D.