3 ms·
> Only a handful of games in the history of gaming have had open source / openly available multiplayer servers. It was actually the norm in the 90s. Other comm
by hnlmorg 4y ago
> Only a handful of games in the history of gaming have had open source / openly available multiplayer servers.
It was actually the norm in the 90s. Other comments have cited examples but it’s worth noting that consoles supported running local servers too.
What changed was subscription based online services and stupid loot (et al) boxes meant companies could extract a continuous stream of money from gamers without having to put out much, if any, additional content. So everything became online first.
Source: I ran several games servers in the 90s and early 00. (Still do in fact but only for Minecraft these days).
- fastball 4y agoWell, the vast majority of multiplayer games were made after the 90s.
- hnlmorg 4y agoThat’s an unfairly dismissive comment given we are still talking about thousands of multiplayer games throughout the 90s and early 00s. In fact I’d go further than that and say: to old timers like me, this practice of locking multiplayer games to the studios servers feels more like a recent trend than what used to be the norm.