4 ms·

People who build and maintain games need to pay their bills. While publishers are often rich, and pay big executive salaries, there is a limit for how long a mo

People who build and maintain games need to pay their bills. While publishers are often rich, and pay big executive salaries, there is a limit for how long a money-losing server can stay up, especially as they more often than not require babysitting and security/legal patches - it isn't reasonable to expect the server to stay up for decades without any sort of monetary contribution by players. Also, some multiplayer games aren't financed by big and rich companies... So what's the financially sustainable solution? Paying a subscription is not a popular option, but something has to pay for the thing.

vinyl7 3y ago
Back in the olden days, players could run their own server. The only thing the company needed to run was a tiny box that curated a list of running servers. The main issue is that everything is now a complex cloud live service such that there's probably not a single binary that can be distributed to players to run their own server.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  One wrinkle is that effective anti-cheat is much harder with player-hosted servers, and if the game has RCE exploits or particularly nasty bugs, player-hosted servers can exploit them against anyone unlucky enough to connect.
skyyler 3y ago
I've seen people suggest that when an online-only game shutters its servers, the code for the server-side software should be released to the public AS-IS with no warranty. Obviously, that's a take from a gamer that isn't familiar with the legal troubles involved with releasing code for public view, but that's kinda where the consumers are at, it seems. I don't play games with online components, so I don't really have a horse in this race.
- GrantMoyer 3y ago
  This proposal is just for the release of software binaries to run a server, not code. > In asking for a game to be operable, we're not demanding all internal code and documentation, just a functional copy of the game.
TonyTrapp 3y ago
If you read the FAQ on that site, "publishers must run servers indefinitely" is not what this campaign wants to achieve at all. There are other ways of making sure multiplayer games can remain playable (by putting the server in the hands of other people, for example).

vinyl7 3y ago

Back in the olden days, players could run their own server. The only thing the company needed to run was a tiny box that curated a list of running servers. The main issue is that everything is now a complex cloud live service such that there's probably not a single binary that can be distributed to players to run their own server.

kevingadd 3y ago
One wrinkle is that effective anti-cheat is much harder with player-hosted servers, and if the game has RCE exploits or particularly nasty bugs, player-hosted servers can exploit them against anyone unlucky enough to connect.

skyyler 3y ago

I've seen people suggest that when an online-only game shutters its servers, the code for the server-side software should be released to the public AS-IS with no warranty. Obviously, that's a take from a gamer that isn't familiar with the legal troubles involved with releasing code for public view, but that's kinda where the consumers are at, it seems. I don't play games with online components, so I don't really have a horse in this race.

GrantMoyer 3y ago
This proposal is just for the release of software binaries to run a server, not code. > In asking for a game to be operable, we're not demanding all internal code and documentation, just a functional copy of the game.

TonyTrapp 3y ago

If you read the FAQ on that site, "publishers must run servers indefinitely" is not what this campaign wants to achieve at all. There are other ways of making sure multiplayer games can remain playable (by putting the server in the hands of other people, for example).