Community fights back against publishers (i.e. Ubisoft) killing live-service games (i.e. The Crew)

porina · April 4

1 hour ago, SolarNova said:

When EA (fk EA !) bought out Westwood studios, for the sole purpose of owning the C&C franchise, they immediately shutdown Earth & Beyond.

it took many ..MANY years, but a small dedicated group of fans rebuilt the game from scratch using what little info they could get there hands on, and now you can play the fully functional game online again.

I used to play that. A long time ago, so the details are a little fuzzy. I'm pretty sure my box had EA over it, unless they published it before buying Westwood? This was long before EA turned into what we know now.

The game was already in decline before the shutdown. Servers were noticeably getting quieter, and the older players like me simply had nothing to do. It was a relatively "small" MMO in terms of content.

Will see if I can check out that project later.

Mark Kaine · April 4

3 hours ago, jaslion said:

A lot of industries have this as a standard that you simply just dont own what you buy at all.

You buy the right of use for the time you are allowed to use it by the company. Its all in the Eula. Super bullshit but if this goes anywhere I hope it snowballs into other industries. Going back to I buy it I own it.

the problem with this... this is illegal (in eu) yet they keep getting away with it ...

you buy it you own it is the law already - but its not enforced at all, otherwise you could easily resell your steam, etc games.

(technically a license transfer is no issue at all)

Ryzza5 · April 6

On 4/5/2024 at 3:07 AM, jaslion said:

A lot of industries have this as a standard that you simply just dont own what you buy at all.

You buy the right of use for the time you are allowed to use it by the company. Its all in the Eula. Super bullshit but if this goes anywhere I hope it snowballs into other industries. Going back to I buy it I own it.

Business contracts would specify the length of the agreement prior to renewal ('SaaS' = recurring subscription). We're not talking about iRacing here. Prior to purchasing The Crew 1 when it launched in 2014, it was not clear that this game would one day be completely unplayable. We know from leaked screenshots that an Offline mode exists in that game. Devs would've used it to test their creations prior to the netcode being completed. It can't have been that hard to do the bare minimum and make it available to existing owners of the game and provide a window for gamers to download their savegame files from the server during the notice period. (I'm aware of the community efforts to work around this).

If this shutdown occurred 8 months ago, I wonder how many would have bothered purchasing (renting) The Crew Motorfest in September which will undoubtedly face the same fate if nothing is done.

jaslion · April 6

1 hour ago, Ryzza5 said:

. It can't have been that hard to do the bare minimum and make it available to existing owners of the game and provide a window for gamers to download their savegame

Any cost for a eol game is too much. For big studios with the VERY rare exception.

Making it offline playable is seen as giving it away for free to pirates basically. I know there are a lot of cracks that make it run offline (thinking its online) for a fair few games now.

Its just stupid really. But unfortunatly nothing do do about it.

1 hour ago, Ryzza5 said:

Business contracts would specify the length of the agreement prior to renewal ('SaaS' = recurring subscription).

Unfortunatly thats now always the case. I've run into plenty where they went oh that version you need? We are pulling support and you agreed in the eula with the automatic update and blah blah. Then you have a legal mess, not uncommon the offending company loses, however in the meantime to keep working the other paid up and then well rinse and repeat really.

However I was mostly talking about different industries that also cater to consumers