4 ms·

This is patently false since plenty of games (including (modded, "classic") Diablo 2) still have real online multiplayer, with multiple anti-cheater/troll solut

This is patently false since plenty of games (including (modded, "classic") Diablo 2) still have real online multiplayer, with multiple anti-cheater/troll solutions : passwords, (unofficial) game admins, (potentially official DRM-backed) player whitelists & blacklists (potentially shared across hosts), not advertising your game-hosting IP on popular matchmaker servers... Please don't buy the "invasive DRM is good for you" corporate advertising - when (not if) the official servers shut down, these games will be crippled ! (We already had a taste of that with GameSpy, and it was only matchmaking servers !)

mschuster91 5y ago
For what it's worth I agree with you that there should be a legal mandate for game companies to make their online servers available for public download once the official servers get shut down. For the time in-between though... self-hosted servers are a niche market, and that is why companies don't care any more. Not enough players care to justify the expense, and ever since Hot Coffee and school shooters game companies have gotten pretty paranoid about moderation and fighting modders or bad press from raging cheaters. Again, there is no hope for the industry to fix that on their own, this is something that must be done by law.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  You also still have games that don't even have any official game servers : Factorio for instance, and I guess "classic" modded Diablo 2 could be kind of considered to be it too since mods were never allowed on ("closed") Battle.net, only on "open" (not-)Battle.net ... (which IIRC only does matchmaking, while it's the player hosting the game that acts as the game server ?) And Factorio has people setting up (usually renting in data centers ?) dedicated servers too (which then are at least accessible to everyone, unlike non-dedicated server games hosted on home networks where people not even bother to properly set up port forwarding any more, forgetting that not everyone relies on Steam to do the job for them...)

mschuster91 5y ago

For what it's worth I agree with you that there should be a legal mandate for game companies to make their online servers available for public download once the official servers get shut down. For the time in-between though... self-hosted servers are a niche market, and that is why companies don't care any more. Not enough players care to justify the expense, and ever since Hot Coffee and school shooters game companies have gotten pretty paranoid about moderation and fighting modders or bad press from raging cheaters. Again, there is no hope for the industry to fix that on their own, this is something that must be done by law.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
You also still have games that don't even have any official game servers : Factorio for instance, and I guess "classic" modded Diablo 2 could be kind of considered to be it too since mods were never allowed on ("closed") Battle.net, only on "open" (not-)Battle.net ... (which IIRC only does matchmaking, while it's the player hosting the game that acts as the game server ?) And Factorio has people setting up (usually renting in data centers ?) dedicated servers too (which then are at least accessible to everyone, unlike non-dedicated server games hosted on home networks where people not even bother to properly set up port forwarding any more, forgetting that not everyone relies on Steam to do the job for them...)