Why do peeps generally complain about Always-Online gaming?

[Actual_Criminal]

I do agree that the whole reliance on downloadable data is a bit extreme, given that everytime you boot up your console, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll need to download updates and wait. + the whole storage for games thing VS simple discs...

 

However, why are people so bothered about Always-Online games?

 

Pretty much everyone has the Internet these days (if you are a gamer). 

[thevictor390]

The game will be "taken away" from you when the servers inevitably shut down. Sometimes after only a few years.

Mobile systems like laptops or handhelds do not actually have internet all of the time.

Internet can sometimes be unstable leading to being booted out of your single-player game.

 

There's just only downsides and no benefit.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

you can pretty much guarantee that you'll need to download updates and wait

...and that's the issue

 

Also a lot of the time, said games are completely unplayable once the servers are taken down

[ItTakes2ToMango]

What's the benefit of always-online gaming?

[Actual_Criminal]

12 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

There's just only downsides and no benefit.

8 minutes ago, ItTakes2ToMango said:

What's the benefit of always-online gaming?

If it brings such negative factors, why do devs do it?

[ItTakes2ToMango]

1 minute ago, Actual_Criminal said:

If it brings such negative factors, why do devs do it?

It allows them to push constant ads and spy on you, which makes them more $$$ for no consumer benefit

[thevictor390]

5 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

If it brings such negative factors, why do devs do it?

The downsides are for you, the upsides are for them. It (usually) reduces piracy, and when the game eventually shuts down you'll be forced to buy the new one.

[Actual_Criminal]

6 minutes ago, ItTakes2ToMango said:

It allows them to push constant ads and spy on you, which makes them more $$$ for no consumer benefit

2 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

The downsides are for you, the upsides are for them. It (usually) reduces piracy, and when the game eventually shuts down you'll be forced to buy the new one.

Come on though, what PAID Always-Online game spys on you and pushes constant Ads?

[thevictor390]

1 minute ago, Actual_Criminal said:

Come on though, what PAID Always-Online game spys on you and pushes constant Ads?

You quoted me but I didn't make the claim you questioned.

[Zando_]

25 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

The game will be "taken away" from you when the servers inevitably shut down. Sometimes after only a few years.

Mobile systems like laptops or handhelds do not actually have internet all of the time.

Internet can sometimes be unstable leading to being booted out of your single-player game.

 

There's just only downsides and no benefit.

^^^ Also the United States exists, where many ISPs still have 1TB/mo data caps you must pay extra to remove. And where rural areas often have very slow internet (when I lived in Collinwood TN circa 2015 we had 1.5mbps down in the middle of the night when no one else in the county was on, and ~400-500kbps during the day). So downloading updates sucks for data cap reasons, and just logging in can take a bit - especially if the connection is meh quality and it has to retry - with slow internet speeds. 

[manikyath]

40 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

 

Pretty much everyone has the Internet these days (if you are a gamer). 

it's because sometimes you dont, and then having your offline game not work because of some arbitrary restriction is what's in engineering called "a dick move".

 

for example.. one of my computers doesnt have wifi, for a recent family event i loaded some games up on it so we could do some family couch gaming. there's no LAN by the TV... so my options were a shitty wifi stick, or.. just running my games offline, because that should just work.

[Brando212]

42 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

Pretty much everyone has the Internet these days (if you are a gamer). 

Yes and no, this is a very 1st world perspective. There are plenty of countries that don't have good internet, if they're connected at all. And even 1st world countries like the US and UK have many rural areas where internet is crap because of ISP monopolies and such.

 

That aside, I'm not against always-online as long as it's not a single player only game; that's where I personally draw the line.

[ItTakes2ToMango]

21 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

Come on though, what PAID Always-Online game spys on you and pushes constant Ads?

uh - all of them? 

 

I guarantee you, with all my life savings and both nuts on the line, not one company with an always-online game is not harvesting your data and spying on you.

[jaslion]

Basically nothing you buy you own, stuff can be taken away, no servers no game (remember play on lan? that made it so that even when servers go down you can still play), always checking if you are online,...

 

Like I made the mistake of buying pokemon legends arceus on my switch a console that is almost NEVER used at home and always on the go. Turns out if you dont connect to wifi every couple of days the switch will just stop you from playing and close the game mid play.

 

Plenty single player games on the steam deck juat dont work when not on data because of this exact issue.

 

Ita dumb and there is no reason except oh no you might be playing the game on TWO machines that are offline you cant so that! Which like who cares.

 

32 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

Come on though, what PAID Always-Online game spys on you and pushes constant Ads?

Most anti cheat ACTIVELY reads files on your pc AND sends that data to the company including all data relevant for advertisers and whatnot. Its why a lot of anticheats have been hit with antitrust lawsuits and such. They are basically acting like malware

[porina]

7 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Like I made the mistake of buying pokemon legends arceus on my switch a console that is almost NEVER used at home and always on the go. Turns out if you dont connect to wifi every couple of days the switch will just stop you from playing and close the game mid play.

Digital or physical copy?

 

 

More in general, there are some situations where online is genuinely mandatory. MMOs for example, but you could expand it to any online multiplayer game.

 

I play several "free" live service games and accept that some day servers may get switched off and it's all gone. For example, I've been continuously active in Azur Lane for about 5 years since release, and Genshin Impact (with a break) for over 3 years.

 

I do agree there are cases where online shouldn't be necessary, such as single player games. I kinda understand if the store you bought it from needs to go online from time to time to check you have a valid license though, and that is the bigger friction point. I haven't had any problems with offline mode on Steam on the rare occasion it becomes necessary.

[thevictor390]

10 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Like I made the mistake of buying pokemon legends arceus on my switch a console that is almost NEVER used at home and always on the go. Turns out if you dont connect to wifi every couple of days the switch will just stop you from playing and close the game mid play.

I don't think that's supposed to work like that. The only thing I can find is if you are on a "non-primary console" for your account. Which of course is a problem for anyone who has e.g. a Switch and a Switch Lite.

[emosun]

Usually the only people not bothered by it are kids who have only ever experienced gaming with tons of ads , microtransactions , and are used to the idea that no internet = device is broken.

older people aren't as stupid as children though and are well aware that there's about 50 years worth of video games that do not require internet to function.

if I took the toilet out of your bathroom and said you aren't allow to use it anymore because the company that made it decides when you get to use it...... that might piss you off slightly and raise a question like "why would a toilet need internet to work?"

[Actual_Criminal]

1 hour ago, ItTakes2ToMango said:

uh - all of them? 

Name ONE.

[jaslion]

49 minutes ago, porina said:

Digital or physical copy?

Digital

[jaslion]

14 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

Name ONE.

Ok

 

Fortnite

 

Easy anti-cheat is known for scanning your entire pc and reading into files

[ItTakes2ToMango]

26 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

Name ONE.

ALL OF THEM. 

 

Literally every last one. Not taking the time to spell them out doesn't mean that I don't mean literally every single one.  Every one you can come up with. 

 

Figure it out yourself, Chad.

[manikyath]

32 minutes ago, Actual_Criminal said:

Name ONE.

any game company that has a launcher where they sell you games (steam, uplay, epic game store, ..) will at least use stats from having games tied to the launcher to gather play data, to cater the store front page to your preferred sorts of games.

while that's not necessarily malicious, requiring the launcher to be running and signed in to play a single player game is less than stellar game design. (which, by the way, a large amount of single player only games on steam run just fine just clicking the executable without steam even present on the system.)

 

let me put it differently; a single player session should NEVER "disconnect" because steam/... goes down. but unfortunately, that's something we have to deal with these days.

 

i've had problems with conan exiles refusing to sign into a single player session because it tries to connect to funcom services at launch, and does all sorts of wonky things when it cant reach funcom. and all of this is total BS from the start, because even for online sessions i dont use funcom services - i host my own server with steam authentication. all the funcom services do is make it take longer to get signed in, and get occasionally ousted from a session when their servers poop the bed.

[manikyath]

2 hours ago, ItTakes2ToMango said:

 

I guarantee you, with all my life savings and both nuts on the line, not one company with an always-online game is not harvesting your data and spying on you.

while this is a very much edg ecase... Wube software blocks the in-game mod menu in factorio if you're not logged in with an account that's connected to a steam account that owns the game - or owns the game trough them directly (paraphrasing a bit here, it's been years since i've set that up..)

 

they've made it abundantly clear the only reason they bothered to do this, is to reduce the load on their servers (loading the list of available mods makes much more calls than loading them a page at a time) from pirated copies, forcing those who ride the high seas to browse the website manually instead.

 

it's kind of an edge case if it's considered "always-online" or even an offline feature to begin with.. but if you're somehow not logged into the account anymore, you cant even disable already installed mods trough the in-game mod menu (there's a manual process that existed before the mod menu that they still support, so it's hardly a problem).

 

Wube is also very much an indie type company, who are in the business of selling games, not data. and the list of games they sell is factorio, factorio, and factorio. besides factorio.com their company website is literally a placeholder.

[jaslion]

14 minutes ago, manikyath said:

all the funcom services do is make it take longer to get signed in, and get occasionally ousted from a session when their servers poop the bed.

I had this with guilty gear strive. Only authentication servers in Japan with Japan priority. p2p gameplay sessions. Just to get into the fucking game it take 5-10 minutes to just sign in. It is HORRENDOUS.

 

Legit the pirated copy has ALL the functions including p2p gameplay but you are in in 15 seconds. I quit playing the game till a friend of mine showed me and now I'm hooked again because I am not waiting 5-10m to sign in.

 

Bonus there is a VERY good chance authentication just errors out and you have to try again or during gameplay a server error after leaving a match happens and you are back in the queue.

 

Worst part is some random dude fixed it and got it down to a minute. Took em a year to fix it themselves but by now I no longer play it much and if I do the copy on my pc I have still is just click and boom I'm in game.

[Actual_Criminal]

1 hour ago, ItTakes2ToMango said:

ALL OF THEM. 

 

Literally every last one. Not taking the time to spell them out doesn't mean that I don't mean literally every single one.  Every one you can come up with. 

 

Figure it out yourself, Chad.

Name one,

But names none,

But claims all...

 

How poetic.