6 ms·

>Closing the online services for some older games allows us to focus our resources on delivering great experiences for players who are playing newer or more pop

by daenz 4y ago

>Closing the online services for some older games allows us to focus our resources on delivering great experiences for players who are playing newer or more popular titles. Then release a container image of your last working server software so that anyone can host it privately. And release a patch to the games to allow pointing at a private server.

grogenaut 4y ago
Having worked on games that old with services, docker didnt exist and I don't work there anymore, I built the server. The ami+server has been chugging omg with minor os updated since 2011. The software would be a pain to dockerize and relies on a config/deploy system that is megacorp proprietary and some internal security libraries with console signing keys for auth that are baked into the binary. We'd have to release the source, libraries, and describe the auth system. It's really not realistic to do what your saying. Then again my feature is only a part of the game and I designed it so you'd get 80% only hosting parts of it statically on S3. Provided as context. The amount of effort the company (not ubi) has given to keep the servers running since 2011 and through gdpr is surprising given how few people actually use the feature. It's be way cheaper to refund the 10s of people actually playing their full price game license. many more people than actually playing would be offended though that we shut the feature down.
- daenz 4y ago
  Well, if Ubisoft starts to see a sales hit from these shenanigans that is greater than the development costs for the migration, I think they'll be able to summon the willpower to accomplish the task. Even just half-assing it and asking the community to help would make a lot of people happy. People reverse-engineer closed games/consoles/services all the time. That's what a lot of cheat patches are anyways.
  - tpoacher 4y ago
    The problem here is there is no direct way or feedback mechanism to link "lost sales" to this issue, other than people messaging directly. Otherwise, it's the kind of thing that usually ends up as a positive feedback loop: "We need more money" -> "Cripple some old games" -> "Users are buying less of our games" -> We need more money" -> "Cripple more old games" -> ... We've seen it before with DRM, we've seen it before with microtransactions. When there's no organic way to complain other than "don't buy", execs don't get the message.
    - daenz 4y ago
      That's a good point. Sounds like the beginning of a death spiral caused by bad management decisions.
- Andoryuuta 4y ago
  It's really a matter of them not doing _anything_ that could help. Asking for additional development work on a game that is being shutdown obviously won't work, as that that amount of time spent on a dead product is just a waste of money for the business. For example, asking the company to dockerizing the server software, or split their code from the licensed third party tools like speedtree, RAD Game tools, etc and release it open open-source just wont work. However, I do think most companies could justify asking one of their developers to spend just a single hour to document/copy+paste the _bare basics_ of the network logic for the good PR alone. They could literally copy+paste their network serialization logic (whether it's something high level like protobuf, or just a raw C++ enum for associating the packet ID's with descriptive names). That's it. Just that one thing alone would immediately raise my opinion of any company that has to shut down an online game service. Just that single thing alone would save their fanbase hours of time spent on reverse engineering the networking for server emulator development.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    Good documentation publicly exposed and reviewed by legal takes a hell of a lot more time than 1 hour with just a dev. Doing this right is likely at least a week of full-time effort by an engineer and probably a month or two shepherding stuff through legal review and all the other crap. I think you're greatly underestimating the efforts and the value that what you're talking about would actually provide. And as I pointed out that still won't work without hacking the actual console game because the console game has pined ca certificates and dependencies on the game network authorization that relies on crypto that just cannot be released. So to make the actual game work you'd actually have to make a change to and recompile the game. Note this is running on a console so there are limited ways to hack/alter the game.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      We aren't talking about a cash strapped startup who penny pinches their way around their devs time. Grow a fucking brain and consider the implications of this little "stunt" where a user who has been playing an old game suddenly cannot play anymore. Why do you think that user will spend their hard earned money to pay you for a new game when they know the company will shut down their servers after a few years? There are limited ways to fuck this up and the company is looking like doing the absolutely worst in terms of looking bad to their "target audience". Cool I guess if that saves them a week or a month of a full time Devs time. That's worth more than the clusterfuck of PR nightmare it is going to cause. Nice. I don't know man. The technical limitations you mentioned should not be difficult for the company that built the darn thing in the first place. Again, I'd say its a matter of priorities.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Kye 4y ago
  Make what can be made public available and someone will fill in the gaps. One infamous example was the leak of the server behind Ragnarok Online (Aegis)[1]. Much of it was missing, but people pieced together a working server over time and eventually there were countless emulator projects built in part on that learning. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/RagnarokOnline/comments/dj3l9c/so_the_story_behind_the_great_big_gravity_hack/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RagnarokOnline/comments/dj3l9c/so_t...
- morelisp 4y ago
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  I guess the only solution is for them not to pull this bullshit in the first place.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  Let's ignore the "how" of releasing server code - I don't care if it's in a container or not. Release the binaries and installation instructions. I used to play on a pirated WoW server. I was not in the community long enough to know /how/ there were rogue instances of a Blizzard hosted server software in the wild, but it was fun. The same should go legally for games that age out of company support.
  - devmor 4y ago
    Wow private servers are largely reverse-engineered, not leaked Blizzard code. That's why Blizzard has such a hard time doing anything about them. There's no violation of IP with the server.

by daenz 4y ago

grogenaut 4y ago

Having worked on games that old with services, docker didnt exist and I don't work there anymore, I built the server. The ami+server has been chugging omg with minor os updated since 2011. The software would be a pain to dockerize and relies on a config/deploy system that is megacorp proprietary and some internal security libraries with console signing keys for auth that are baked into the binary. We'd have to release the source, libraries, and describe the auth system. It's really not realistic to do what your saying. Then again my feature is only a part of the game and I designed it so you'd get 80% only hosting parts of it statically on S3. Provided as context. The amount of effort the company (not ubi) has given to keep the servers running since 2011 and through gdpr is surprising given how few people actually use the feature. It's be way cheaper to refund the 10s of people actually playing their full price game license. many more people than actually playing would be offended though that we shut the feature down.

daenz 4y ago
Well, if Ubisoft starts to see a sales hit from these shenanigans that is greater than the development costs for the migration, I think they'll be able to summon the willpower to accomplish the task. Even just half-assing it and asking the community to help would make a lot of people happy. People reverse-engineer closed games/consoles/services all the time. That's what a lot of cheat patches are anyways.
- tpoacher 4y ago
  The problem here is there is no direct way or feedback mechanism to link "lost sales" to this issue, other than people messaging directly. Otherwise, it's the kind of thing that usually ends up as a positive feedback loop: "We need more money" -> "Cripple some old games" -> "Users are buying less of our games" -> We need more money" -> "Cripple more old games" -> ... We've seen it before with DRM, we've seen it before with microtransactions. When there's no organic way to complain other than "don't buy", execs don't get the message.
  - daenz 4y ago
    That's a good point. Sounds like the beginning of a death spiral caused by bad management decisions.
Andoryuuta 4y ago
It's really a matter of them not doing _anything_ that could help. Asking for additional development work on a game that is being shutdown obviously won't work, as that that amount of time spent on a dead product is just a waste of money for the business. For example, asking the company to dockerizing the server software, or split their code from the licensed third party tools like speedtree, RAD Game tools, etc and release it open open-source just wont work. However, I do think most companies could justify asking one of their developers to spend just a single hour to document/copy+paste the _bare basics_ of the network logic for the good PR alone. They could literally copy+paste their network serialization logic (whether it's something high level like protobuf, or just a raw C++ enum for associating the packet ID's with descriptive names). That's it. Just that one thing alone would immediately raise my opinion of any company that has to shut down an online game service. Just that single thing alone would save their fanbase hours of time spent on reverse engineering the networking for server emulator development.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  Good documentation publicly exposed and reviewed by legal takes a hell of a lot more time than 1 hour with just a dev. Doing this right is likely at least a week of full-time effort by an engineer and probably a month or two shepherding stuff through legal review and all the other crap. I think you're greatly underestimating the efforts and the value that what you're talking about would actually provide. And as I pointed out that still won't work without hacking the actual console game because the console game has pined ca certificates and dependencies on the game network authorization that relies on crypto that just cannot be released. So to make the actual game work you'd actually have to make a change to and recompile the game. Note this is running on a console so there are limited ways to hack/alter the game.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    We aren't talking about a cash strapped startup who penny pinches their way around their devs time. Grow a fucking brain and consider the implications of this little "stunt" where a user who has been playing an old game suddenly cannot play anymore. Why do you think that user will spend their hard earned money to pay you for a new game when they know the company will shut down their servers after a few years? There are limited ways to fuck this up and the company is looking like doing the absolutely worst in terms of looking bad to their "target audience". Cool I guess if that saves them a week or a month of a full time Devs time. That's worth more than the clusterfuck of PR nightmare it is going to cause. Nice. I don't know man. The technical limitations you mentioned should not be difficult for the company that built the darn thing in the first place. Again, I'd say its a matter of priorities.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Kye 4y ago
Make what can be made public available and someone will fill in the gaps. One infamous example was the leak of the server behind Ragnarok Online (Aegis)[1]. Much of it was missing, but people pieced together a working server over time and eventually there were countless emulator projects built in part on that learning. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/RagnarokOnline/comments/dj3l9c/so_the_story_behind_the_great_big_gravity_hack/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RagnarokOnline/comments/dj3l9c/so_t...
morelisp 4y ago
anothernewdude 4y ago
I guess the only solution is for them not to pull this bullshit in the first place.
unethical_ban 4y ago
Let's ignore the "how" of releasing server code - I don't care if it's in a container or not. Release the binaries and installation instructions. I used to play on a pirated WoW server. I was not in the community long enough to know /how/ there were rogue instances of a Blizzard hosted server software in the wild, but it was fun. The same should go legally for games that age out of company support.
- devmor 4y ago
  Wow private servers are largely reverse-engineered, not leaked Blizzard code. That's why Blizzard has such a hard time doing anything about them. There's no violation of IP with the server.