4 ms·

ubisoft deserves to get the source code for all their old games leaked. One by one they have shut the servers down (quite understandable because of server costs

ubisoft deserves to get the source code for all their old games leaked. One by one they have shut the servers down (quite understandable because of server costs) but offered no ways or means whatsoever to play them alienating the old fans really hard. Some of us have memories of playing the older games which we can never relive again. It should be illegal for a game company to shut an online only game down without offering a LAN patch. Developers should bake in LAN functionality from day 1 but keep it hidden which the patch must fix at EOL for games

nine_k 3y ago
Such games are often not peer to peer, like the games of old. Releasing a server in a form that's somehow operable by a third party is not always easy.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  The source should be released. Regardless of how "hard" it is to stand up (it's just a server, stop being ridiculous) the people will find a way.
- vivzkestrel 3y ago
  which is why there should be a law in place to force game companies to add LAN even if it is completely hidden from day 1 which should not be usable if companies care about competitive edge but at EOL they should be forced to add a patch that activates this feature
- dj_mc_merlin 3y ago
  If there's enough people interested in the game, someone will figure out how to run a private server. People are so persistent it happens even without the source code. For many online games the source code is either stolen or dedicated people black box reverse engineer it just to run private servers. That's how runescape private servers operated back in the day, although I don't know if it was a clean room reverse engineer.. someone probably stole the code given Jagex.
- subtra3t 3y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't most old school RTS games peer to peer? EDIT: I misinterpreted the comment as saying that old games weren't P2P, sorry.
ndriscoll 3y ago
Surely server costs for something that's no longer being used much can't be very high? Running an idle ETLegacy server on my desktop uses a whopping 100 MB RAM and 0.02 CPU cores on my 6th gen i5 with the powersave governor on and all cores at 800 MHz. The more obvious motivation is just that they want you to buy their new thing and not have the old one anymore. If the matchmaking server isn't getting requests, you can put it on a potato VM for $5/month or whatever. Likewise at least old games could run with 64 players on much weaker CPUs than we have today. Surely a small VM could keep a handful of 16 player servers around.
- vivzkestrel 3y ago
  legacy games of ubisoft such as watch dogs, splinter cell conviction/blacklist, ghost recon future soldier, far cry 3 etc only need a server to login via ubi credentials, they actually work peer to peer so shutting these down is a crime on so many levels honestly
- klausa 3y ago
  The biggest cost here isn't the hardware, it's the people keeping the lights on.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    I'm used to working in a context where you have to deal with audits and it makes sense to weigh that cost, but for video games, couldn't they throw it in EC2 or fargate in an account with nothing else and forget about it? It doesn't need to have access to anything important (it might not need access to anything at all if you're not persisting any player data). If the only open port is the game server, patch schedules can be somewhere between late and never.
    - roygbiv2 3y ago
      No it's deffinately not as easy as that. You need to manage those servers, manage the updates, security patches, roll out updates to the game server... Because it will need updates because things break or need security updates etc. Managing things like that means it needs to be within the existing infrastructure. Imagine with every old game they just threw up an ec2 and left it rotting, they'd have hundreds of out of date servers running vulnerable software, it would be a nightmare.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
SleepyMyroslav 3y ago
What you wish upon others, you wish upon yourself. Afaik most of Ubisoft games were offline singles. Even the game that sparked always online debate AC2 has been offline playable for very long time. There are ofc online games that were shut down - that's a problem of whole industry.
cpv 3y ago
They did publish the code for World in Conflict online server (initially made by Massive Entertainment), and a few other tools https://github.com/ubisoft https://github.com/ubisoft
buildsjets 3y ago
Indeed, I sincerely hope someone leaks Rocksmith 2014 soon, as well as all the no-longer-available CDLC packs. The current Rocksmith+ is a completely different application and is not a substitute, I want the real thing that I already paid for back.

nine_k 3y ago

Such games are often not peer to peer, like the games of old. Releasing a server in a form that's somehow operable by a third party is not always easy.

mvdtnz 3y ago
The source should be released. Regardless of how "hard" it is to stand up (it's just a server, stop being ridiculous) the people will find a way.
vivzkestrel 3y ago
which is why there should be a law in place to force game companies to add LAN even if it is completely hidden from day 1 which should not be usable if companies care about competitive edge but at EOL they should be forced to add a patch that activates this feature
dj_mc_merlin 3y ago
If there's enough people interested in the game, someone will figure out how to run a private server. People are so persistent it happens even without the source code. For many online games the source code is either stolen or dedicated people black box reverse engineer it just to run private servers. That's how runescape private servers operated back in the day, although I don't know if it was a clean room reverse engineer.. someone probably stole the code given Jagex.
subtra3t 3y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't most old school RTS games peer to peer? EDIT: I misinterpreted the comment as saying that old games weren't P2P, sorry.

ndriscoll 3y ago

Surely server costs for something that's no longer being used much can't be very high? Running an idle ETLegacy server on my desktop uses a whopping 100 MB RAM and 0.02 CPU cores on my 6th gen i5 with the powersave governor on and all cores at 800 MHz. The more obvious motivation is just that they want you to buy their new thing and not have the old one anymore. If the matchmaking server isn't getting requests, you can put it on a potato VM for $5/month or whatever. Likewise at least old games could run with 64 players on much weaker CPUs than we have today. Surely a small VM could keep a handful of 16 player servers around.

vivzkestrel 3y ago
legacy games of ubisoft such as watch dogs, splinter cell conviction/blacklist, ghost recon future soldier, far cry 3 etc only need a server to login via ubi credentials, they actually work peer to peer so shutting these down is a crime on so many levels honestly
klausa 3y ago
The biggest cost here isn't the hardware, it's the people keeping the lights on.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  I'm used to working in a context where you have to deal with audits and it makes sense to weigh that cost, but for video games, couldn't they throw it in EC2 or fargate in an account with nothing else and forget about it? It doesn't need to have access to anything important (it might not need access to anything at all if you're not persisting any player data). If the only open port is the game server, patch schedules can be somewhere between late and never.
  - roygbiv2 3y ago
    No it's deffinately not as easy as that. You need to manage those servers, manage the updates, security patches, roll out updates to the game server... Because it will need updates because things break or need security updates etc. Managing things like that means it needs to be within the existing infrastructure. Imagine with every old game they just threw up an ec2 and left it rotting, they'd have hundreds of out of date servers running vulnerable software, it would be a nightmare.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

SleepyMyroslav 3y ago

What you wish upon others, you wish upon yourself. Afaik most of Ubisoft games were offline singles. Even the game that sparked always online debate AC2 has been offline playable for very long time. There are ofc online games that were shut down - that's a problem of whole industry.

cpv 3y ago

They did publish the code for World in Conflict online server (initially made by Massive Entertainment), and a few other tools https://github.com/ubisoft https://github.com/ubisoft

buildsjets 3y ago

Indeed, I sincerely hope someone leaks Rocksmith 2014 soon, as well as all the no-longer-available CDLC packs. The current Rocksmith+ is a completely different application and is not a substitute, I want the real thing that I already paid for back.