We've all been there right? You paid for a game, it required an active internet connection and a couple of years later the publisher decided they're done with it and shut it down leaving you with a broken game. Annoying.
It should be law that online only games, when shut down, must release their server software, so the games community can continue to play and use the software they bought.
also make it law that buying software means you’ve BOUGHT IT. not leased access to.
And it shouldn’t be just games, any time it says “buy,” that should be understood to mean complete ownership of that thing. That means:
DRM will be stripped in a reasonable time frame (say, 2-3 years)
for physical goods, no prevention of availability of parts
any server components will be made available for private hosting when the vendor is no longer interested in supporting it (ideally FOSS, but any source-available license should work)
And so on. If the product is intended to be available for a limited time, they should instead say “lease,” because that’s what that means.
and I 100% guarantee they dont want to say lease cause they know people wont be willing to pay 70 fucking dollars for a game that they are renting for a time to be dictated by the developer/publisher, which you have no knowledge of. Is it 3 months? 6 months? 12 years? Who knows!
Yup, that’s why they hide this nonsense in the TOS or whatever. If the intent was clear upfront, they’d have to reduce prices. So that means people don’t really understand what exactly they’re buying.
I’d like to add that anything I own, I should be able to sell. Whether the platform supports it is another story, and I think it’s acceptable for the platform to take a cut since there’s work involved moving licenses, but if I own it, I should be able to lend, sell, or gift my copy to someone else.
Only major problem is when software is reused for future games and releasing server binaries makes attack vectors much easier to find. Apex legends has a major issue with this where a significant amount of code was reused from previous games that have server code available, and hackers have absolutely used it as a testing ground for all kinds of cheats.
Wanna know how to make that irrelevant? Make the server files available from the start. Wanna play with just your friends? Host a server. Wanna play with a dedicated group that actually bans cheaters effectively? Join a clan. Then, when the sequel comes out, who cares if the server tech is already known, because we can just host our own and collectively oust the cheaters ourselves. It’s funny because when multiplayer is handled this way, it stays active for decades. Look at the community for the old Battlefield’s, SW Battlefront’s, Call of Duty’s, Unreal Tournament’s, Quake’s, etc etc etc. They’re small, but they’re all still active and not chock full of hackers because they’re community led and community maintained. That’s a hell of a lot more consistent and reliable than trusting the studio to develop and maintain the server tech, and squash cheating long term. Eventually that system will always fail (look at every old CoD on console, where you can’t run your own servers. It’s basically a coin flip whether you end up in a game with a hacker, and I guarantee the devs will never do anything about it).
That doesn’t make the point irrelevant, it makes it even more likely to happen. Most of us don’t want to play on shitty, self-hosted servers and I’ll gladly remove that option to have a more secure game server.
Hot take, but games don’t need to be active for decades. Everything dies eventually. After 10 years there’s no need to keep running the game servers.
We’re on the exact opposite sides of this argument.
Being able to host your own servers means there is a much higher potential to have servers located close to you, giving you much lower latency. If there aren’t, host your own. This is great for people in, for example, Australia, who often get really poor support in terms of servers in large games. Not an issue when they can host as many as they want.
As for security, what’s more secure than having a server with a password only me and my friends know? On top of that, when a server is my own, I know when it’s going to be down. When the studio is the one controlling all the servers, you are at their whim.
As for games not needing to last decades… why? Do you want to be kicked off of a service you paid for, then expected to buy a new one that’s basically the same thing (which you will also eventually be kicked off)? Especially when the original still (in theory) functions perfectly?
It should be law that online only games, when shut down, must release their server software, so the games community can continue to play and use the software they bought.
also make it law that buying software means you’ve BOUGHT IT. not leased access to.
And it shouldn’t be just games, any time it says “buy,” that should be understood to mean complete ownership of that thing. That means:
And so on. If the product is intended to be available for a limited time, they should instead say “lease,” because that’s what that means.
Agree with everything you said.
and I 100% guarantee they dont want to say lease cause they know people wont be willing to pay 70 fucking dollars for a game that they are renting for a time to be dictated by the developer/publisher, which you have no knowledge of. Is it 3 months? 6 months? 12 years? Who knows!
Yup, that’s why they hide this nonsense in the TOS or whatever. If the intent was clear upfront, they’d have to reduce prices. So that means people don’t really understand what exactly they’re buying.
I’d like to add that anything I own, I should be able to sell. Whether the platform supports it is another story, and I think it’s acceptable for the platform to take a cut since there’s work involved moving licenses, but if I own it, I should be able to lend, sell, or gift my copy to someone else.
this part of it is really frustrating for me.
step 1. purchase game that looks cool
step 2. disagree with TOS
step 3. too bad, get fucked
:(
Only major problem is when software is reused for future games and releasing server binaries makes attack vectors much easier to find. Apex legends has a major issue with this where a significant amount of code was reused from previous games that have server code available, and hackers have absolutely used it as a testing ground for all kinds of cheats.
Wanna know how to make that irrelevant? Make the server files available from the start. Wanna play with just your friends? Host a server. Wanna play with a dedicated group that actually bans cheaters effectively? Join a clan. Then, when the sequel comes out, who cares if the server tech is already known, because we can just host our own and collectively oust the cheaters ourselves. It’s funny because when multiplayer is handled this way, it stays active for decades. Look at the community for the old Battlefield’s, SW Battlefront’s, Call of Duty’s, Unreal Tournament’s, Quake’s, etc etc etc. They’re small, but they’re all still active and not chock full of hackers because they’re community led and community maintained. That’s a hell of a lot more consistent and reliable than trusting the studio to develop and maintain the server tech, and squash cheating long term. Eventually that system will always fail (look at every old CoD on console, where you can’t run your own servers. It’s basically a coin flip whether you end up in a game with a hacker, and I guarantee the devs will never do anything about it).
That doesn’t make the point irrelevant, it makes it even more likely to happen. Most of us don’t want to play on shitty, self-hosted servers and I’ll gladly remove that option to have a more secure game server.
Hot take, but games don’t need to be active for decades. Everything dies eventually. After 10 years there’s no need to keep running the game servers.
We’re on the exact opposite sides of this argument.
Being able to host your own servers means there is a much higher potential to have servers located close to you, giving you much lower latency. If there aren’t, host your own. This is great for people in, for example, Australia, who often get really poor support in terms of servers in large games. Not an issue when they can host as many as they want.
As for security, what’s more secure than having a server with a password only me and my friends know? On top of that, when a server is my own, I know when it’s going to be down. When the studio is the one controlling all the servers, you are at their whim.
As for games not needing to last decades… why? Do you want to be kicked off of a service you paid for, then expected to buy a new one that’s basically the same thing (which you will also eventually be kicked off)? Especially when the original still (in theory) functions perfectly?