4 ms·

A "waste of effort" to make it so paid customers can continue to play the games they bought? Oh no, it might not be an "easy task" to undo all their planned ob

by _dain_ 3y ago

A "waste of effort" to make it so paid customers can continue to play the games they bought? Oh no, it might not be an "easy task" to undo all their planned obsolescence. Shucks. Maybe they should have thought of that before they planned the obsolescence in the first place. Seriously, in most cases it will be completely trivial to do, especially single-player games. (Yes, single-player games are routinely getting killswitched by spiteful publishers. It's a fucking outrage.) ------ [It seems I'm rate-limited so I can't reply further, but I have noticed in this thread a lot of people who don't seem to understand all the context behind this, making a lot of naive and ill-informed points. There are dozens of examples of publishers killing games for arbitrary/spiteful reasons, that have nothing to do with the cost it would take to provide an alternative. Ross Scott has many documented cases on his channel, see here https://www.youtube.com/@Accursed_Farms/search?query=dead%20game%20news https://www.youtube.com/@Accursed_Farms/search?query=dead%20... We're not just talking about always-online multiplayer games here. It's also games with single-player campaigns that are rendered unplayable by the deactivation of a central auth server. Or games with a co-op component that are now unplayable because it's gated behind a centralized matchmaking system that shut down. Or games with libraries of shared player-created levels that are now inaccessible, like Super Mario Maker. Also I have to say, I'm flabbergasted at the unthinking deference being shown to enormous conglomerate publishers in this discussion, and the focus on one side of the ledger to the exclusion of the other. People are saying that this will impose a cost on corporations, and this is in and of itself a reason to reject it. Like ... yes, of course regulations impose a cost on businesses! Obviously! The idea is that this small cost will be offset by a larger increase in consumer welfare. Just saying "this will impose a cost on business" is a fully-general counterargument against any kind of consumer-protection regulation. Nevermind the ethics of it -- people should fucking own what they pay for and they shouldn't have the rug pulled out from under them! As for the idea that it is too complicated to self-host a modern multiplayer game: this is Hacker News, not Never-Bother-To-Even-Try News. Mod communities have done impressive feats in reverse-engineering game servers. It can be done.]

nerdjon 3y ago
> undo all their planned obsolescence. In no way is a game shutting down planned obsolescence. If the Fortnite servers are shut down that's not planned obsolesce, that game does not work and makes zero sense as a single play game. A publisher is not going to spend a ton of money working on a game with a plan to shut it down, they hope to milk it for money as long as they can. I agree with single player games requiring always online, but I have not seen an example of this actually being the case that there was not a patch put out at the last moment to make the game not connect to a server anymore. There is a major difference between a game requiring an online connection for a 100% single player game and an online games servers shutting down. The first is bad and I agree and should never be a practice. The second is just reality.
- neurostimulant 3y ago
  > that game does not work and makes zero sense as a single play game. Why not? Just unlock all in-game contents, replace other players with offline bots, then shutdown the servers. Many online games have chosen this route in the past.
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    > Just unlock all in-game contents. This assumes that the content is all client side and some of it is not server side. As is the case with many games. > replace other players with offline bots. That requires work to make the bots know how to play the game, something that even actively supported games suck at. Many bots are really bad with objective based gameplay. and testing. Which is a cost if they are shutting down the game. If the game was built around the assumption that it will always have an internet connection, there may also need to be a lot of changes to the game itself to operate that way.
    - neurostimulant 3y ago
      > If the game was built around the assumption that it will always have an internet connection, there may also need to be a lot of changes to the game itself to operate that way. Then such games shouldn't be sold as goods like the the petition mentioned. They should be sold as services like WoW, so their customers know what to expect at the end of the service. Selling them as goods is worse than selling "lifetime" membership for an SaaS, then closing the SaaS after 3 years, because the customers may not know that the game would become unplayable in a few years when they purchased it.
      - nerdjon 3y ago
        That is a strange distinction that would allow the company to just get out of supporting whatever law they may try to get with just a wording change on the box? WoW you have to buy. Yes there is a subscription but you also have to buy the game and each expansion. Destiny 2 you have to buy each expansion. They are not selling a SaaS as a lifetime one time buy, I checked all of my xbox games and every single one makes it clear that they can change it at any point. So it sounds like your argument is they just change the wording of something, charge the same amount, and then this proposal does nothing? I don't really buy the argument that consumers don't understand that servers eventually shut down.

by _dain_ 3y ago

nerdjon 3y ago

> undo all their planned obsolescence. In no way is a game shutting down planned obsolescence. If the Fortnite servers are shut down that's not planned obsolesce, that game does not work and makes zero sense as a single play game. A publisher is not going to spend a ton of money working on a game with a plan to shut it down, they hope to milk it for money as long as they can. I agree with single player games requiring always online, but I have not seen an example of this actually being the case that there was not a patch put out at the last moment to make the game not connect to a server anymore. There is a major difference between a game requiring an online connection for a 100% single player game and an online games servers shutting down. The first is bad and I agree and should never be a practice. The second is just reality.

neurostimulant 3y ago
> that game does not work and makes zero sense as a single play game. Why not? Just unlock all in-game contents, replace other players with offline bots, then shutdown the servers. Many online games have chosen this route in the past.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  > Just unlock all in-game contents. This assumes that the content is all client side and some of it is not server side. As is the case with many games. > replace other players with offline bots. That requires work to make the bots know how to play the game, something that even actively supported games suck at. Many bots are really bad with objective based gameplay. and testing. Which is a cost if they are shutting down the game. If the game was built around the assumption that it will always have an internet connection, there may also need to be a lot of changes to the game itself to operate that way.
  - neurostimulant 3y ago
    > If the game was built around the assumption that it will always have an internet connection, there may also need to be a lot of changes to the game itself to operate that way. Then such games shouldn't be sold as goods like the the petition mentioned. They should be sold as services like WoW, so their customers know what to expect at the end of the service. Selling them as goods is worse than selling "lifetime" membership for an SaaS, then closing the SaaS after 3 years, because the customers may not know that the game would become unplayable in a few years when they purchased it.
    - nerdjon 3y ago
      That is a strange distinction that would allow the company to just get out of supporting whatever law they may try to get with just a wording change on the box? WoW you have to buy. Yes there is a subscription but you also have to buy the game and each expansion. Destiny 2 you have to buy each expansion. They are not selling a SaaS as a lifetime one time buy, I checked all of my xbox games and every single one makes it clear that they can change it at any point. So it sounds like your argument is they just change the wording of something, charge the same amount, and then this proposal does nothing? I don't really buy the argument that consumers don't understand that servers eventually shut down.