General Gaming News and Discussion

Neranja said:

But modern software, and especially modern software development sucks.


Already happened: Dragon Quest X was an MMO, and later they re-released it as an offline version.

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emus are a thing too, but there's a big difference between something being possible and something being required.

Control said:

Yes, for normal software that would be ideal, no argument there. But it's completely counter to the direction of the last couple of decades or more of software development, and basically every big software company would fight tooth and nail to prevent it. That's not to say that the EU still wouldn't do it, but it would be largely flipping the table on modern software.

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I get where you're coming from in that its like talking about a subject that you ultimately have very little control over. But its worth discussion in the hopes that it does trigger a change. All of this subscription shit thats going on, whether its for games, my fucking ring cameras, movies and shows, my fucking business software..

That shit is literally nickel and diming everyone alive and in my head, its extortionist. Change needs to happen.

Control said:

And I'm no fan of microtransactions, but if I buy a virtual hat and we want to call that hat legal property just like a real hat and the game developer is required to make sure that I'm always able to make use if it somehow... And how could you even ban players?

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When an Online Game sunsets, then all the microtransactions should become available for anyone who owns the game. I'm sure the immediate idea is to limit it to just those people that bought - but the game being offline while quickly degenerate into "Jail Broken Cosmetics!" packs. Just like mods. The company should have an expiration date on the availability of the download link, and after that date - they can clean their hands of the game in its entirety.

As far as banning people - Ive always disagreed with outright banning people in an online game. Probably cause Ive lost a couple accounts that way. If its an online game and the player gets banned, just shadow ban them at that point. They can play the game and do everything they want to solo (no grouping/raiding/AH, etc.) - but the online service is a service unto itself and they violated those policies.

Chanur said:

I wonder if the shit pile that will be ME4 will even make it out before Bioware is killed for good.

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Andromeda had some lulz from people ridiculing it, so I guess we can hope it gets to be the final nail.

Re Stop Killing Games: To be clear, there are definitely cases where companies use always online connection checks as a form of anti-piracy, killing any long-term preservation (or even ownership), but this seems like it has wide ranging implications beyond end-of-life scenarios.

DLC - Many games hit an authorization server to validate you have purchased that DLC. And to be clear, losing access to DLC you have paid for because the authentication server has been sunsetted sucks / may potentially even be illegal in some markets. But I don't see any proposed remedy - defaulting to No Authentication Response = authorized just means anyone can download the files from another install and pull their internet connection for access. You could presumably move the authentication step to a permanent account flag at the Steam / PSN / Xbox Live level, but that just moves the sunsetting issue up a level.

MMOs (or really any client/server interaction) - Much like RPGs, MMORPGs are a dying genre because MMO is an ingredient, not a genre, in a lot of games. And its unclear just how integral those server interactions are to many games - does any enemy in Destiny 2 compute anything at the client end?
Beyond the obvious MMO activities, there's been a slow but increasing push to move computationally advanced components off the client. To cloud based deformation going way back to Crackdown 3 to LLM AI voices today in Fortnite, the trend is steady to move these activities off the glorified laptop CPUs game consoles use. So what happens under this initiative? A lot of minimal fallback activities? What happens when all the decision making is cloud based (say, an RTS tthat uses LLM for its move decisions) - does that get released if its main (or any) innovation is dependent on a server connection?
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To be fair, there are definite issues with preservation and long term ownership when it comes to online-connected games. But as others (even in this very thread!) have said, the real issue is an industry-wide conflation of ownership vs license, if ownership even means anythig when we're dealing with computer files that can be copied and distributed at will, and not physical goods.

This topic always brings out my inner unabomber, but mine just turns on my SNES in my basement.

Online connected games feel like rentals. I’m getting old. The impermanence of things I enjoyed as a young adult has hit me hard. From people, to places, to things I did for hobbies….time fucks us all

Sylas said:

it sounds like EU being full retards like usual, and it will probably result in game developers just not selling games to people in the EU, ygwyd.

Could you imagine a company like daybreak being told they have to redesign every game in their porfolio to allow for an offline mode, or just cancel the 50 remaining subs of EU players? Yeah they are going to tell you to get fucked nerds

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Alternatively, could you not release the code free for people to make servers once you sunset the game?

but yeah. I agree. Probably the logical outcome.

kroenen said:

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This is very short and the use of Veni Creator Spiritus did not make sense. Easy to get all achievements though.

Caeden said:

Alternatively, could you not release the code free for people to make servers once you sunset the game?

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What code, though? The back end of these games are giant databases running on enterprise SAS platforms on AWS. It's not like you can just fire that stuff up on your windows machine.