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> There's also the question of preserving gaming history. As we saw with THQ last month, publishers aren't immortal. They can die, and had THQ implemented alway

> There's also the question of preserving gaming history. As we saw with THQ last month, publishers aren't immortal. They can die, and had THQ implemented always-online DRM in Darksiders II, all copies of that game might've died with it when the rights to the series weren't bought up by another publisher. That's the part that concerns me the most. I still install (and play) lots of old games on every computer I own -- King's Quest VI, C&C: Red Alert, Worms: Armageddon, etc. And who could live without the console classics like Goldeneye or Ocarina of Time? All you have to do is pull out the disc (or cartridge), pop it in, and play. We still don't know exactly what will happen with this new generation of games that consumers are merely "renting" from companies like EA, but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them. What happens if you want to play Battlefield 3 again 10 years from now? You might be able to access it IFF: 1. Your account is still in good standing (not banned) 2. EA still exists 3. EA has decided to maintain support for Origin 4. EA has decided to maintain support for Battlefield 3 5. You remember your PW or can prove to EA you're the account owner There's not much history to base this speculation on yet, but what little we do have shows that that's an extremely unlikely scenario. If there's any chance to preserve the games we're playing now, it's probably up to us to make it happen.

danielweber 14y ago
but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taking things over, and the publishers would love to write that and not worry about DRM. But we can't get that because each of us doesn't trust the other party to defect.
- Irregardless 14y ago
  > You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. I'm tempted to believe that due to the simulation grunt work being done server-side. But people also said the same thing about WoW and Starcraft II, yet you can easily play either of those for free with fully functioning multiplayer (just not on Battle.net).
  - sbov 14y ago
    This is wrong. The simulation is not serverside. If you disconnect from the servers you can play your city all you want. The only serverside aspect is saves and social (including region play), which would be relatively easier to recreate.
    - pc86 14y ago
      The only serverside aspect is saves and social Am I misunderstanding what you mean by saves? That seems pretty important to me.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Important yes, but also presumably fairly simple to reverse engineer.
        pc86 14y ago
        Gotcha. If that truly is all that's punted to the server we should start seeing cracks in a few weeks, I would think.
        mratzloff 14y ago
        And that's the point at which I will consider buying this game. When I can play offline, all the time.
      - zalzane 14y ago
        Not necessarily. Implementing client-side saving would be trivial compared to the other kinds of DRM that have been successfully bypassed over the years.
        CaveTech 14y ago
        Client side saving is already implemented. In a few instances where I disconnected from the server and continued to play, SimCity would try to push my work to the server on reconnect. At times this wouldn't work and I would lose my progress, but I'm willing to attribute that to the fact that it was supposed to be a rare case backup mechanism, rather than the necessary crutch it is currently.
- city41 14y ago
  how does iOS or consoles prevent piracy? Piracy is rampant on iOS and every console to date.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  >moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) Where piracy is rampant?
  - danielweber 14y ago
    I'll take your (and a few other sibling commenters') word for it. That just means we'll be moving even more towards not having software that runs just on my hardware.
  - rdl 14y ago
    iOS and console piracy is in no way "rampant". It is possible. It is not mainstream. Most users don't pirate on those platforms, although those who do probably pirate a huge number. PC game piracy at one point was fairly mainstream, but then installing PC games at all ceased to become mainstream. Music and porn piracy is mainstream; streaming services sort of prevent that, at the cost of destroying revenue for creators/distributors. Movie/TV are probably at the tipping point (youtube and netflix helped a lot).
    - papsosouid 14y ago
      >It is not mainstream. Constantly advertised in every free buy&sell paper constitutes mainstream, even if you don't like it. >but then installing PC games at all ceased to become mainstream. The number of people installing PC games has steadily increased. Maybe posting "facts" that are the opposite of reality isn't a great base for an argument.
- masklinn 14y ago
  > You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. If there's interest in it, it'll be done. The connections will be sniffed and reproduced and/or the online component will just be cracked out entirely, but if somebody wants to do it it will ultimately be done.
  - adimitrov 14y ago
    I fear the game might just in general not be good enough for this to happen. Replicated pirate servers barely work well enough for WoW, and that is a hugely successful, and arguably very good game. I doubt SimCity 2013 is going to develop such a cult following to allow for these kinds of cracks.
    - mnicole 14y ago
      > I fear the game might just in general not be good enough for this to happen. My thoughts exactly; Giant Bomb's hour-long video review was pretty telling of the issues in the game that a lot of people just haven't been able to deal with yet. Problems that are only around because so much time was spent trying to implement the multiplayer aspect rather than focusing on the core gameplay itself. I want a new SimCity game just as badly as everyone else, but at this point I'm looking towards other offerings in this space - hopefully by smaller companies - to hold the torch (any suggestions here would be excellent).
      - jgj 14y ago
        I found this in one of the other sim city threads du jour: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-develop-and-manage-the-city-of-your-d http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-... they are getting much of my monies EDIT: Don't remember which thread i found it in, so here are the posts that may have been the one that I found the kickstarter link in: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5343788 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5343788 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5341070 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5341070
        14y ago
- nwh 14y ago
  The simulation is client side. Regions and saves are server side, nothing else. It'll be cracked
- r0s 14y ago
  That is a huge barrier to entry for small developers, so indy games will always be sans-online DRM for the most part. These games are developed on open PC systems, so that's always going to be around too... your predictions for the future look hazy.
- cabalamat 14y ago
  > This is the future of gaming It's a future, but not the only one. There could be crowdfunded open source games, for example.
- npsimons 14y ago
  This is the future of gaming. Then I guess I won't be gaming anymore. Not that I do much now, and I've mostly quit for other unrelated reasons, but if is the future of gaming, you can count me, and I'm sure many others, out. I used to game a lot. I used to spend a not insignificant amount of money on games. If the publishers want to basically steal my money and call me the thief, then they can forget about having me as a customer.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Actually it is the future, and like you I too don't buy games much any more. Your kids or your peer's kids though will play games this way because it is the only way to get them and they will think its 'normal.' Eventually you'll be called an 'old timer' and derided for all your comments about how in your day when you bought a game it didn't need to download 4GB of 'patches' nor did it require Internet access to run. What is most curious though, is whether or not this new world order is stable long term. Other creative works publishers like movie studios or musicians, can capture the long tail of revenue for their products long after the initial 'rush' but for game studios and other 'active' products there is this continual draw on the host companies resources to keep servers alive or what not. So eventually keeping a game 'alive' starts generating negative money. And killing a game generates negative customer sentiment. So the combination might overwhelm the business model. Only time will tell.
    - danielweber 14y ago
      I agree. When I said this was the future, I wasn't saying it with any cheer. We had a pretty good run for a while there, though.
    - treeface 14y ago
      There are countless games coming out that don't use draconian DRM. "The future of gaming" is a lot less monolithic than the two of you would suggest.
      - yareally 14y ago
- drobati 14y ago
  This is not the future of gaming. Look at how badly SimCity flopped. Let me compare to DotA2 which I play a lot. It's exclusively multiplayer and thus needs an internet connection, yet it's free to play. How much have I spent on it? At this point at least $75+ dollars. THIS IS THE FUTURE OF GAMING. Valve has the right model. I know valve didn't create the F2P model but it has implemented it the best as far as I know. They have pulled more money out of me giving me a free game then they would have made if they sold me 60+ copy. EA should of just given out free copies of SimCity. Given out free copies with enough features to keep me entertained without the need to spend money. Then releasing toolsets for modders to create items; resell them to us for profit. The DLC will surely be created but based on how EA conducts DLC in The Sims 3, I expect expensive expansions and stuffer packs.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    Online-only play is exactly what I am talking about as the (dystopian) future of gaming. Pushing more and more of the game into the cloud, so it becomes SaaS instead of worrying about DRM. Freemium versus pay-up-front are both flavors of that. Do we know that SimCity "flopped"? It's gotten lots of people angry at it, but that's not at all the same as not making money.
    - drobati 14y ago
      Oh I'm sorry I misunderstood. Well at this point I guess we could say it's at least on pause and certainly not a success.
  - BystanderX 14y ago
    And you know what's exemplary about DotA 2? All that money you spent isn't even short-cutting grind, it's /only/ on cosmetics. I can't find a better example of F2P models out there, even my beloved Planetside 2 has some pretty big issues with how its model applies to gameplay.
    - yareally 14y ago
      Team Fortress 2, but that's another Valve game, so it doesn't exactly count :)
- axusgrad 14y ago
  Minecraft seems to be doing pretty well. EA can do whatever it wants, that doesn't mean every developer will follow in their path. Sure, lots will sell out, but more show up to take their place.
- Nikaido 14y ago
  > This is the future of gaming. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternit... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-zombie-survival-rpg http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chap... The future of gaming has a few alternatives that look very promising and they're all DRM free.
akurilin 14y ago
Same here, I love re-visiting old titles. Even dead-ish MMOs these days, such as Everquest, have 3rd party servers that still let you play something similar to the original game.
tobyjsullivan 14y ago
I think the real mismatch for EA and Gamers is that EA is effectively selling a SaaS product but pricing it like it's an boxed product. It's not just unlikely but, in fact, impossible for the operating costs of the servers to be worth keeping on forever since no (significant) additional income will be coming in from the title after some point X. SaaS companies have been dealing with this for years quite successfully via their "pay as you go" monthly subscriptions. This keeps the money flowing in and motivation to keep the servers on. And, better yet, it gives the consumer confidence that the service provider is going to pay attention to the product long-term, not just during launch day. My recommendation for EA moving forward would be to move to subscription pricing for any games that operate as online-only - single- or multi-player. Exact pricing is important as well. My initial instinct was to say that they should prorate the cost, something like $5/month but I quickly realized why this wouldn't work. Obviously most gamers are fickle and have short attention spans. 90% of buyers probably wouldn't buy month two and it wouldn't work out. Instead, I would recommend pricing the game at something like $60 for two years. Same price and clearer value to me as a customer. Suddenly I'm not worried if they are going to shut off the servers in four years because that's not what I'm paying for today (and really never was). I'm paying for the opportunity to play this week and, if I love it, play it over and over again for two full years. Is that worth $60? Absolutely! And what about in two years? If I'm still loving it, hopefully they let me renew for another two years, maybe even at a discount. And if the game ends up sucking and nobody renews, they can turn the servers off (or throttle them down) without feeling bad. The real risk with the current system isn't in case the game is a flop and they turn the servers off prematurely. It's actually if the game is legendary, like SimCities of past, and the passion to play keeps momentum for decades. How can EA keep the lights on?
- thebokehwokeh2 14y ago
  This is truly delusional. Your model assumes that the current model, (buy once own forever), isn't making them enough money to keep the lights on. The issue here isn't that EA is not making enough to keep the lights on. It's that EA wants to make more, and more, and more and more, and more... And is too lazy to figure out a true solution to piracy. Nobody will pay $60 to "rent" something for 2 years. You already pay $60 to own for life. If it were some insane price like $10, then yes. That makes a whole bunch of sense. It's the model that Netflix, Spotify, and the iTunes Store subscribes to. Saas will only work if it provides value at an extremely minimal price. What happened with Sim City is not a failure of the Netflix, Spotify, iTunes store model. It's just that EA, as a company, is just simply blinded with so much greed to understand the way the world works today.
nonamegiven 14y ago
This is like the "good old days" of TV and movies, when you could only watch the Wizard of Oz once a year at Halloween, and you couldn't watch any old movies at all unless they came on the Late Show or showed at a local art theater. I don't know why a game publisher wouldn't want to sell new copies of old games forever, like you can do with movies in the good new days.
seanp2k2 14y ago
...and if games these days really are dependent upon services at the publisher working to do more than just validate DRM (which can usually be worked around with some very clever TOS-voiding hackery providing a local server and lying to the game client), there won't even be a way that they could just "tell the game to switch it off" before they decomm that service.

danielweber 14y ago

but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taking things over, and the publishers would love to write that and not worry about DRM. But we can't get that because each of us doesn't trust the other party to defect.

Irregardless 14y ago
> You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. I'm tempted to believe that due to the simulation grunt work being done server-side. But people also said the same thing about WoW and Starcraft II, yet you can easily play either of those for free with fully functioning multiplayer (just not on Battle.net).
- sbov 14y ago
  This is wrong. The simulation is not serverside. If you disconnect from the servers you can play your city all you want. The only serverside aspect is saves and social (including region play), which would be relatively easier to recreate.
  - pc86 14y ago
    The only serverside aspect is saves and social Am I misunderstanding what you mean by saves? That seems pretty important to me.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Important yes, but also presumably fairly simple to reverse engineer.
      - pc86 14y ago
        Gotcha. If that truly is all that's punted to the server we should start seeing cracks in a few weeks, I would think.
        mratzloff 14y ago
        And that's the point at which I will consider buying this game. When I can play offline, all the time.
    - zalzane 14y ago
      Not necessarily. Implementing client-side saving would be trivial compared to the other kinds of DRM that have been successfully bypassed over the years.
      - CaveTech 14y ago
        Client side saving is already implemented. In a few instances where I disconnected from the server and continued to play, SimCity would try to push my work to the server on reconnect. At times this wouldn't work and I would lose my progress, but I'm willing to attribute that to the fact that it was supposed to be a rare case backup mechanism, rather than the necessary crutch it is currently.
city41 14y ago
how does iOS or consoles prevent piracy? Piracy is rampant on iOS and every console to date.
papsosouid 14y ago
>moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) Where piracy is rampant?
- danielweber 14y ago
  I'll take your (and a few other sibling commenters') word for it. That just means we'll be moving even more towards not having software that runs just on my hardware.
- rdl 14y ago
  iOS and console piracy is in no way "rampant". It is possible. It is not mainstream. Most users don't pirate on those platforms, although those who do probably pirate a huge number. PC game piracy at one point was fairly mainstream, but then installing PC games at all ceased to become mainstream. Music and porn piracy is mainstream; streaming services sort of prevent that, at the cost of destroying revenue for creators/distributors. Movie/TV are probably at the tipping point (youtube and netflix helped a lot).
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    >It is not mainstream. Constantly advertised in every free buy&sell paper constitutes mainstream, even if you don't like it. >but then installing PC games at all ceased to become mainstream. The number of people installing PC games has steadily increased. Maybe posting "facts" that are the opposite of reality isn't a great base for an argument.
masklinn 14y ago
> You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. If there's interest in it, it'll be done. The connections will be sniffed and reproduced and/or the online component will just be cracked out entirely, but if somebody wants to do it it will ultimately be done.
- adimitrov 14y ago
  I fear the game might just in general not be good enough for this to happen. Replicated pirate servers barely work well enough for WoW, and that is a hugely successful, and arguably very good game. I doubt SimCity 2013 is going to develop such a cult following to allow for these kinds of cracks.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    > I fear the game might just in general not be good enough for this to happen. My thoughts exactly; Giant Bomb's hour-long video review was pretty telling of the issues in the game that a lot of people just haven't been able to deal with yet. Problems that are only around because so much time was spent trying to implement the multiplayer aspect rather than focusing on the core gameplay itself. I want a new SimCity game just as badly as everyone else, but at this point I'm looking towards other offerings in this space - hopefully by smaller companies - to hold the torch (any suggestions here would be excellent).
    - jgj 14y ago
      I found this in one of the other sim city threads du jour: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-develop-and-manage-the-city-of-your-d http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-... they are getting much of my monies EDIT: Don't remember which thread i found it in, so here are the posts that may have been the one that I found the kickstarter link in: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5343788 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5343788 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5341070 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5341070
      - 14y ago
nwh 14y ago
The simulation is client side. Regions and saves are server side, nothing else. It'll be cracked
r0s 14y ago
That is a huge barrier to entry for small developers, so indy games will always be sans-online DRM for the most part. These games are developed on open PC systems, so that's always going to be around too... your predictions for the future look hazy.
cabalamat 14y ago
> This is the future of gaming It's a future, but not the only one. There could be crowdfunded open source games, for example.
npsimons 14y ago
This is the future of gaming. Then I guess I won't be gaming anymore. Not that I do much now, and I've mostly quit for other unrelated reasons, but if is the future of gaming, you can count me, and I'm sure many others, out. I used to game a lot. I used to spend a not insignificant amount of money on games. If the publishers want to basically steal my money and call me the thief, then they can forget about having me as a customer.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Actually it is the future, and like you I too don't buy games much any more. Your kids or your peer's kids though will play games this way because it is the only way to get them and they will think its 'normal.' Eventually you'll be called an 'old timer' and derided for all your comments about how in your day when you bought a game it didn't need to download 4GB of 'patches' nor did it require Internet access to run. What is most curious though, is whether or not this new world order is stable long term. Other creative works publishers like movie studios or musicians, can capture the long tail of revenue for their products long after the initial 'rush' but for game studios and other 'active' products there is this continual draw on the host companies resources to keep servers alive or what not. So eventually keeping a game 'alive' starts generating negative money. And killing a game generates negative customer sentiment. So the combination might overwhelm the business model. Only time will tell.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    I agree. When I said this was the future, I wasn't saying it with any cheer. We had a pretty good run for a while there, though.
  - treeface 14y ago
    There are countless games coming out that don't use draconian DRM. "The future of gaming" is a lot less monolithic than the two of you would suggest.
    - yareally 14y ago
drobati 14y ago
This is not the future of gaming. Look at how badly SimCity flopped. Let me compare to DotA2 which I play a lot. It's exclusively multiplayer and thus needs an internet connection, yet it's free to play. How much have I spent on it? At this point at least $75+ dollars. THIS IS THE FUTURE OF GAMING. Valve has the right model. I know valve didn't create the F2P model but it has implemented it the best as far as I know. They have pulled more money out of me giving me a free game then they would have made if they sold me 60+ copy. EA should of just given out free copies of SimCity. Given out free copies with enough features to keep me entertained without the need to spend money. Then releasing toolsets for modders to create items; resell them to us for profit. The DLC will surely be created but based on how EA conducts DLC in The Sims 3, I expect expensive expansions and stuffer packs.
- danielweber 14y ago
  Online-only play is exactly what I am talking about as the (dystopian) future of gaming. Pushing more and more of the game into the cloud, so it becomes SaaS instead of worrying about DRM. Freemium versus pay-up-front are both flavors of that. Do we know that SimCity "flopped"? It's gotten lots of people angry at it, but that's not at all the same as not making money.
  - drobati 14y ago
    Oh I'm sorry I misunderstood. Well at this point I guess we could say it's at least on pause and certainly not a success.
- BystanderX 14y ago
  And you know what's exemplary about DotA 2? All that money you spent isn't even short-cutting grind, it's /only/ on cosmetics. I can't find a better example of F2P models out there, even my beloved Planetside 2 has some pretty big issues with how its model applies to gameplay.
  - yareally 14y ago
    Team Fortress 2, but that's another Valve game, so it doesn't exactly count :)
axusgrad 14y ago
Minecraft seems to be doing pretty well. EA can do whatever it wants, that doesn't mean every developer will follow in their path. Sure, lots will sell out, but more show up to take their place.
Nikaido 14y ago
> This is the future of gaming. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternit... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-zombie-survival-rpg http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chap... The future of gaming has a few alternatives that look very promising and they're all DRM free.

akurilin 14y ago

Same here, I love re-visiting old titles. Even dead-ish MMOs these days, such as Everquest, have 3rd party servers that still let you play something similar to the original game.

tobyjsullivan 14y ago

I think the real mismatch for EA and Gamers is that EA is effectively selling a SaaS product but pricing it like it's an boxed product. It's not just unlikely but, in fact, impossible for the operating costs of the servers to be worth keeping on forever since no (significant) additional income will be coming in from the title after some point X. SaaS companies have been dealing with this for years quite successfully via their "pay as you go" monthly subscriptions. This keeps the money flowing in and motivation to keep the servers on. And, better yet, it gives the consumer confidence that the service provider is going to pay attention to the product long-term, not just during launch day. My recommendation for EA moving forward would be to move to subscription pricing for any games that operate as online-only - single- or multi-player. Exact pricing is important as well. My initial instinct was to say that they should prorate the cost, something like $5/month but I quickly realized why this wouldn't work. Obviously most gamers are fickle and have short attention spans. 90% of buyers probably wouldn't buy month two and it wouldn't work out. Instead, I would recommend pricing the game at something like $60 for two years. Same price and clearer value to me as a customer. Suddenly I'm not worried if they are going to shut off the servers in four years because that's not what I'm paying for today (and really never was). I'm paying for the opportunity to play this week and, if I love it, play it over and over again for two full years. Is that worth $60? Absolutely! And what about in two years? If I'm still loving it, hopefully they let me renew for another two years, maybe even at a discount. And if the game ends up sucking and nobody renews, they can turn the servers off (or throttle them down) without feeling bad. The real risk with the current system isn't in case the game is a flop and they turn the servers off prematurely. It's actually if the game is legendary, like SimCities of past, and the passion to play keeps momentum for decades. How can EA keep the lights on?

thebokehwokeh2 14y ago
This is truly delusional. Your model assumes that the current model, (buy once own forever), isn't making them enough money to keep the lights on. The issue here isn't that EA is not making enough to keep the lights on. It's that EA wants to make more, and more, and more and more, and more... And is too lazy to figure out a true solution to piracy. Nobody will pay $60 to "rent" something for 2 years. You already pay $60 to own for life. If it were some insane price like $10, then yes. That makes a whole bunch of sense. It's the model that Netflix, Spotify, and the iTunes Store subscribes to. Saas will only work if it provides value at an extremely minimal price. What happened with Sim City is not a failure of the Netflix, Spotify, iTunes store model. It's just that EA, as a company, is just simply blinded with so much greed to understand the way the world works today.

nonamegiven 14y ago

This is like the "good old days" of TV and movies, when you could only watch the Wizard of Oz once a year at Halloween, and you couldn't watch any old movies at all unless they came on the Late Show or showed at a local art theater. I don't know why a game publisher wouldn't want to sell new copies of old games forever, like you can do with movies in the good new days.

seanp2k2 14y ago

...and if games these days really are dependent upon services at the publisher working to do more than just validate DRM (which can usually be worked around with some very clever TOS-voiding hackery providing a local server and lying to the game client), there won't even be a way that they could just "tell the game to switch it off" before they decomm that service.