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Focusing on the game itself is foolish, in todays cloud-ified world. Microsoft Games for Windows Live is gone (2007 - ~2015), for example, taking down the host
by rektide 5y ago
Focusing on the game itself is foolish, in todays cloud-ified world.
Microsoft Games for Windows Live is gone (2007 - ~2015), for example, taking down the hosting infrastructure for hundreds of games. Games I loved like Section 8 can be started & have some skirmish modes available. But the serving infrastructure is all missing, the core multiplayer expperience is not possible. My all-time favorite game ever, PC or mobile, is Titanfall Assault, a cute fast mobile game: another game that, without the vast wide cloud hosting infrastructure, is dead. All I have are some random cell-phone videos I decided to take.
There's some wild wild works every now and then. Return of Reckoning, for example, is a reverse engineered server for Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, a shuttered MMO. I haven't logged in to find out, but I'm quite curious if any or all of the quest lines &c still work. If the various PvP modes work. https://www.returnofreckoning.com/ https://www.returnofreckoning.com/
As for keeping games running, emulation? He's probably almost certaining meaning consoles. And yes, the people traditionally seen as pirates have long been doing the good thing, have been doing the careful work. But I also think of works like Proton & WINE, who similarly are better at running many old games than Windows often is.
Where we're headed sucks. Endless remakes of games. Oh yet another Skyrim you can purchase. Yet another Grand Theft Auto 3 you can purchase. I feel like trash for eventually having given in to Steam & having collected a huge library of games I don't really own but paid for, games that are non-transferable. The future is only getting worse, is only making us less empowered.
- tech234a 5y agoIt's worth noting that online services for games built into Windows XP, ME, and 7 (Internet Checkers, etc.) also haven't been preserved [0]. While the games were rather simple IIRC, I'm surprised that there haven't been any server reimplementations for these games given that they were included in several versions of Windows. [0]: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/farewell-to-microsoft-internet-games-on-windows-xp/035d5144-6c1b-49bb-b3d5-37f6355fec39 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/farewe...
- usui 5y agoWith death of GFWL, GTA 4 multiplayer was shut down because it depended on GFLW, supposedly. Fallout 3, whose GFLW was removed in a patch a few weeks ago, had to be recompiled with Visual Studio 2019, breaking a lot of compatibility with what modding experts believe to be the entire foundation of mods (script extender). There is a lot of things wrong with depending on a server for local software that could work perfectly on their own. Hopefully people in the future look back at the current era and realize how backwards we thought, but as you describe, it will probably only get worse. I also worry for Steam one day, even though they committed to making a plan for releasing titles if they were to ever shut down. How could they possibly honor that commitment when millions of players log in to download their terabytes of content the day they decide to shut down? Maybe they would do it in waves, but it won't be pretty.
- rektide 5y agoWow these are some great additional concerns to tack on. Some related stuff today, from John Carmack: > I strongly encourage all game developers to take steps to archive their development environment so you are confident you can rebuild things years in the future, which does not automatically happen! https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1461024415274176517 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1461024415274176517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29256240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29256240 (0 comments)
- genewitch 5y agoIf only there was a way for the internet to handle a torrent of bits, like when hundreds of millions of users simultaneously cry out for the same game