Video game maintenance and preservation. How do we feel?

[Dedayog]

24 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Why not? Eminent domain is a thing.

Slightly different.   Not relevant here, outside of a gov't forcing something.  Which is way too broad.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Dedayog said:

Slightly different.   Not relevant here, outside of a gov't forcing something.  Which is way too broad.

Again, Why not? If the company is hellbent on saying said IP is worthless or negative, then then the government can make it public domain because it's in the public interest.

 

It would be nice if the companies don't try to destroy games for tax write offs, but if they do, then that software should become public domain.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

13 hours ago, Thaldor said:

 

On the other hand, does even all the games (all, meaning every single one, not just the ones you love and like but also those you completely hate are bad and all that) deserve preservation? Remember, saying "all the games need preservation" does include asset flips, the ripoffs and other absolute garbage that is surprising someone managed to even release.

Yes, every game deserves preservation, when "preservation" boils down to a no-scam rule: you don't sell games that will stop to be playable with no reasonable exist strategy (and the level of "reasonable" proposed by Ross is really light on developers/publishers). They can still disappear forever because none of the people who bought it chooses to keep a copy, because no one chooses to keep working hardware that is compatible. Dead by oblivion is still very possible under that scenario. But prohibiting "death by killswitch", even for people who have the game, the hardware and the will, is all the level of preservation being demanded here.

 

13 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Third one is the ability to preserve them. I can give you and example of a "game" that is basicly impossible to be preserved by anyone else than me. It wasn't as much a game but experiment on how to use google maps to create VR game and the server part was basicly scraping Google Maps/Earth for satellite, 3D-city data and streetview for each player and streaming that to the headsets. To preserve that you would have either needed my server that was loaned from Google and directly connected to the Maps network for that data scraping or you would also need to duplicate the around 20 petabytes of Google Maps data. And then I would need to find a way to deliver all that to you, probably as always with these, for free because you didn't take into account that there might be something else than just a database and some calculations on positions and outcomes on the servers, not 20 petabytes worth of data (that HDD/SSD amount you must handle by yourself, good luck).

Would you be willing to invest your money to build custom server infrastructure to preserve one game that you love?

I think that's closer to the case of strictly multiplayer game, where's there's no game without other people, or even Pokemon Go, where the physical world may change so you may not be able to play in the same area you used to. In other words, when interfacing with something that's outside the game is an essential part of the game, especially when it's something out of the control of the game developer/publisher, preservation beyond the software itself cannot be expected. However, it would still be the case that if the Google Maps data was available then the game should run without artificial phone-home requirements failing, and to the extent that you sold that to anyone. The Google Maps data, in my view, is no different from a console or other legacy hardware: the software itself being preserve-able doesn't imply an obligation to presereve working hardware that can run it to anyone.

 

 

13 hours ago, Thaldor said:

 

This brings us to the point I made when someone was collecting money to sue Ubishit for closing The Crew, why didn't he collect the money to buy the servers from Ubishit and host the game himself with that money if it is that important?

Were the servers for sale, or are you just trying to force a fallacious argument?  I'm pretty sure Ubisoft has no interest in that trade.

Also, there's an obvious reason why setting a precedent so the industry stop scamming people by pretending to sell a product is in no way equivalent to keeping one specific game alive.

[Godlygamer23]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

3. If a game is a MMO, and a subscription, or microtransactions are used to secure "property" within the MMO, then a shutdown of the MMO must result in a refund of ALL property transactions back to the customer.

You used Fortnite as an example in your post, that if shutdown, Epic would be required to give a refund to all users who purchased content through the game. The amount of money that Epic has earned is very high(likely in the billions), and as a result, Epic would effectively be forced to keep the game alive indefinitely to ensure they don't have to refund people, based on how it's currently set up - I highly doubt this would occur. If the game goes out of style, and no one's playing it anymore, then it could make sense to simply shut it down and refund people their money, but it might make more financial sense to keep it running, but reduce the number of resources it can consume so they can make room for their other games - whatever that is. Either way, it may require restructuring their resource management.

 

It would probably make more sense to tweak the code of the game to allow people to do a local authorization of some kind, with the ability to store their items locally, and play locally, instead of outright refunding people. At that point, Epic is free and clear of any responsibility, especially if they gave people ample opportunity to update the game as required.

 

However, I don't know that a government would force your specific depiction of what should occur to MMOs. And either way, games should be developed such that it can be shutdown at any time, and allow players to do a local authorization and store items locally(depends on the game. Overwatch stores all content locally, but does remote authorization through login).

[Kisai]

10 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

You used Fortnite as an example in your post, that if shutdown, Epic would be required to give a refund to all users who purchased content through the game. The amount of money that Epic has earned is very high(likely in the billions), and as a result, Epic would effectively be forced to keep the game alive indefinitely to ensure they don't have to refund people, based on how it's currently set up - I highly doubt this would occur.

 

Then they should keep it up indefinitely so they aren't forced to. 

 

Read my point, "any 'property' bought in the game" is destroyed if the game is shut down, and what do we do when companies destroy customer property? We take them to court for damages.

 

Look at damn near every recall when batteries and power supplies are recalled. Everyone gets the item exchanged, or are given money if they sign on to the class action lawsuit.

 

That is what should happen, automatically, any time a MMO is shut down. Refund every single cash purchase. 

 

10 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

If the game goes out of style, and no one's playing it anymore, then it could make sense to simply shut it down and refund people their money, but it might make more financial sense to keep it running, but reduce the number of resources it can consume so they can make room for their other games - whatever that is. Either way, it may require restructuring their resource management.

If and when, and there will be a when, Epic deems Fortnite too expensive, they better either have "refund every vbuck purchance since inception" or "make everything free and open source the server code" to let someone else operate it.

 

It is utter BS, that a game "requires" microtransactions to survive. P2P, and LAN based multiplayer long predates garbage games-as-a-service pump-and-dumps.

 

More to the point, I will double down on this point. Any game that has mandatory "online" microtransactions to an otherwise single player game should end service by patching out the microtransactions and retain the ability to purchase/download. 

 

Not destroying the game. It still annoys me that how Crunchyroll ended MagiReco English by patching out all the Live2D content, resulting in there being nothing to play. All you can do is look at the progress you made when it was live.

 

10 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

It would probably make more sense to tweak the code of the game to allow people to do a local authorization of some kind, with the ability to store their items locally, and play locally, instead of outright refunding people. At that point, Epic is free and clear of any responsibility, especially if they gave people ample opportunity to update the game as required.

 

However, I don't know that a government would force your specific depiction of what should occur to MMOs. And either way, games should be developed such that it can be shutdown at any time, and allow players to do a local authorization and store items locally(depends on the game. Overwatch stores all content locally, but does remote authorization through login).

 

Peer-to-Peer is always an option. But the point is, companies should not be permitted to "Destroy" the players property that they paid for. That includes banning/deleting a player because of terms of service violations. If they do not want the player back and are not going to back down, then refund the player and delete their account.

 

[Thaldor]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

There's only three appropriate solutions:

1. If a game is withdrawn from sale. It must become de-facto public domain.

By the same logic every art piece when it is sold becomes sole property of the buyer and they can do whatever they want with it. Use it any way they ever want, even as commercially as possible, no need to even mention the artist if they don't want to. After all, the art piece isn't property of the artist anymore, they sold it and it is now sole property of the buyer.

 

After all if we take away the copyrights of the games, why should any other form of media or art be any different?

 

Quote

2. If a game remains for sale but it's only the online component is withdrawn, they must open source the "server" component of the game, and patch the game so that the servers it communicates can be defined by the user.

Who's going to pay for that work? The game isn't generating even enough to keep the lights on and probably the preservist side is on the normal stance that especially they aren't paying for it, they just want it.

 

Also comparing to the current games who is going to run those servers. Like Battlefield currently runs quite impressive server architecture to combat hackers. Like if you have 50 player match going, on the server there actually isn't a one match for all but every player has their own match to which their actions are inputted and then actions of other players are selectively copied to that instance and send to the client. And all that so there wouldn't be any chance for client getting more information about the match than is necessary (so no chance for wall hacks).

That also means your normal gaming PC ain't going to run the server.

 

Then there's the hacker problem. To combat hacking you need to make more complicated netcode and strengthen your infrastructure, which will mean it will be more expensive and even further away from being something magically to be turned into open source.

 

Quote

3. If a game is a MMO, and a subscription, or microtransactions are used to secure "property" within the MMO, then a shutdown of the MMO must result in a refund of ALL property transactions back to the customer.

Just say you want the monthly fees back. People really did love that you first bought a game and then needed to pay just to play it. Otherwise maybe you could figure out the mythical way of running servers without costs.

The worst this kind of law making would do is that every game would cease to work way before the laws are made just so companies can run away from the massive refunds and that would be end of that era because only idiots would even try to make online games.

 

But just to make it clear, IMO there's two sides which are both insufferably idiotic. The one side is greedy as hell but I don't think the other side is any better in their greed. Like I said, collecting money to sue a company which closed a game because running the game was unprofitable, instead of collecting money to buy the servers from the company and so preserving the game. I only remember one time someone has actually done something concrete was when Valve bought the rights to Arkham Asylum to get rid of the Microsoft DRM. Otherwise it's always pretty much whining whining and more whining.

 

And it all will be forgotten once the Outlaws hit the shelves. People, people never change, it's so funny how people are at one time on the barricades wanting to burn the company to the ground and the next the company releases new shiny thing, people are again completely fine with the company raping them. Just look at EatAss, it's actually miraculous how fast people forgot about lootboxes and the whole Walletfront 2 fiasco when Fallen Order dropped. Like EA was elbow deep in peoples rectums and people were very fucking angry but new shiny thing and having an arm in you is actually pretty awesome.

But that's pretty much the thing about modern people, boycotts and black listing is so long "fighting the machine" and being tough until it becomes inconvenient or people could actually miss something because they aren't in the bandwagon.

[dogwitch]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

Why not? Eminent domain is a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

[Kisai]

20 hours ago, Thaldor said:

By the same logic every art piece when it is sold becomes sole property of the buyer and they can do whatever they want with it. Use it any way they ever want, even as commercially as possible, no need to even mention the artist if they don't want to. After all, the art piece isn't property of the artist anymore, they sold it and it is now sole property of the buyer.

 

After all if we take away the copyrights of the games, why should any other form of media or art be any different?

You can move artwork from place A to B. You can not run physical cartridges on a PC.

You can not run software designed for one platform on another, even when they share the same CPU. You can not run software bought on one store on another store.

 

Software should be public domain the minute the developer/publisher decides they no longer want to support it, to free them of the burden of supporting it. 

 

And I'm not stopping at "games", software like Macromedia Flash, and old operating systems like MS DOS and Windows 95 should also be public domain.

 

 

20 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Who's going to pay for that work? The game isn't generating even enough to keep the lights on and probably the preservist side is on the normal stance that especially they aren't paying for it, they just want it.

The source code doesn't disappear the minute they shut the server down, don't be silly.

 

20 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Also comparing to the current games who is going to run those servers. Like Battlefield currently runs quite impressive server architecture to combat hackers. Like if you have 50 player match going, on the server there actually isn't a one match for all but every player has their own match to which their actions are inputted and then actions of other players are selectively copied to that instance and send to the client. And all that so there wouldn't be any chance for client getting more information about the match than is necessary (so no chance for wall hacks).

That also means your normal gaming PC ain't going to run the server.

This is just plain wrong. You're suggesting that game developers don't have internal test systems.

 

20 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Then there's the hacker problem. To combat hacking you need to make more complicated netcode and strengthen your infrastructure, which will mean it will be more expensive and even further away from being something magically to be turned into open source.

The hacker problem goes away when you aren't running the servers any more.

 

20 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Just say you want the monthly fees back. People really did love that you first bought a game and then needed to pay just to play it.

 

Maybe read the thread. I said "property", and many games tie "housing" or "storage" to service fees.

 

20 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Otherwise maybe you could figure out the mythical way of running servers without costs.

The worst this kind of law making would do is that every game would cease to work way before the laws are made just so companies can run away from the massive refunds and that would be end of that era because only idiots would even try to make online games.

 

Maybe companies should have thought of that before they decided to make their games into money pinata's by "selling property" in the game.

 

 

20 hours ago, Thaldor said:

But just to make it clear, IMO there's two sides which are both insufferably idiotic. The one side is greedy as hell but I don't think the other side is any better in their greed. Like I said, collecting money to sue a company which closed a game because running the game was unprofitable, instead of collecting money to buy the servers from the company and so preserving the game. I only remember one time someone has actually done something concrete was when Valve bought the rights to Arkham Asylum to get rid of the Microsoft DRM. Otherwise it's always pretty much whining whining and more whining.

Without the government involved, there is no way to compel a company to sell.

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/20/1245594589/house-approves-bill-tiktok-ban

 

We're seeing right now, this is possible.

 

 

20 hours ago, Thaldor said:

And it all will be forgotten once the Outlaws hit the shelves. People, people never change, it's so funny how people are at one time on the barricades wanting to burn the company to the ground and the next the company releases new shiny thing, people are again completely fine with the company raping them. Just look at EatAss, it's actually miraculous how fast people forgot about lootboxes and the whole Walletfront 2 fiasco when Fallen Order dropped. Like EA was elbow deep in peoples rectums and people were very fucking angry but new shiny thing and having an arm in you is actually pretty awesome.

But that's pretty much the thing about modern people, boycotts and black listing is so long "fighting the machine" and being tough until it becomes inconvenient or people could actually miss something because they aren't in the bandwagon.

 

Game preservation means preserving the entire thing. Most MMO's "Content" is in the game client itself, and the only aspect that is on the server is the shared aspect of the world. So games like Fortnite and other shooters, pretty much have nothing they couldn't turn into a Peer-to-Peer LAN style system, which is how they worked in the DOOM (original) era.

 

Games like WoW, Final Fantasy XI and XIV, and some other games that maintain a persistent community, would need the server data to keep the game alive, otherwise all you have is an empty world devoid of everything. And how do we know this? People who made private servers for the games.

 

The point of going "refund of all property destroyed" is to dissuade games from being pump-and-dumps. Operate them perpetually, or sell it off to another company, which is what became of Ultima Online and NexusTK.

 

 

[thrasher_565]

i thought they were trying to make steeling in game make it were you get charged for theft

i guess it never happened yet?

a game like fortnight is free is it not and you buy micro transactions if you want.

the thing about playing an old game is a you will need to fined other people to play with and a way to play it. were are the files held on another server that cost moeny?

there been plent of projects that have been shutdown by the developer like the crone trigger remake. w/e happened with hl3? was that shut down too? 

 

then there getting it working on a newer os looking at you steam... my crysis worked just fine on my w7 pc back in the day... now steam no longer works on w7...

Edited April 21 by thrasher_565

[Mumintroll]

The petition to UK goverment has reached 10 000 now and is waiting for a response from the goverment.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071/

 

It'll probably be something vague and short.

It has until 16 october to get 100 000 signatures from UK people.

[atxcyclist]

On 4/19/2024 at 5:35 PM, Kisai said:

Then they should keep it up indefinitely so they aren't forced to. 

 

Read my point, "any 'property' bought in the game" is destroyed if the game is shut down, and what do we do when companies destroy customer property? We take them to court for damages.

 

Look at damn near every recall when batteries and power supplies are recalled. Everyone gets the item exchanged, or are given money if they sign on to the class action lawsuit.

 

That is what should happen, automatically, any time a MMO is shut down. Refund every single cash purchase. 

 

If and when, and there will be a when, Epic deems Fortnite too expensive, they better either have "refund every vbuck purchance since inception" or "make everything free and open source the server code" to let someone else operate it.

 

It is utter BS, that a game "requires" microtransactions to survive. P2P, and LAN based multiplayer long predates garbage games-as-a-service pump-and-dumps.

 

More to the point, I will double down on this point. Any game that has mandatory "online" microtransactions to an otherwise single player game should end service by patching out the microtransactions and retain the ability to purchase/download. 

 

Not destroying the game. It still annoys me that how Crunchyroll ended MagiReco English by patching out all the Live2D content, resulting in there being nothing to play. All you can do is look at the progress you made when it was live.

 

 

Peer-to-Peer is always an option. But the point is, companies should not be permitted to "Destroy" the players property that they paid for. That includes banning/deleting a player because of terms of service violations. If they do not want the player back and are not going to back down, then refund the player and delete their account.

 

No company would willfully make a product that they have to support indefinitely. While that would be a boon for gamers, it's untenable and unreasonable. There's an argument to be made about how nice it would be if they released the code to other people that wanted to keep them up, but if the game isn't being sold, or a subscription isn't being paid for upkeep, that infrastructure is just a massive money-sink so no one is going to take it on anyway. The EULA you agree to says that in-game items are not your property, and it doesn't technically reside on hardware you own anyway if it's online-only. Those microtransactions are what pay the bills, any online game or 'cheap upfront' game with microtransactions has a profit model based on those microtransactions running the servers. As far as online-connected single-player games, that is almost always for DRM purposes, so if you want to blame someone for that point it at software pirates; They've made companies protect their income stream by putting DRM into games. It sucks but piracy hurts businesses, and they're finding ways to deal with it. Even VHS tapes had copy-protection on them, for decades media creators have taken great strides to limit piracy.

 

Also, safety recalls are completely different, it is an inconvenience that a video game goes offline but it won't cause a safety problem like a PSU or battery failing spectacularly.

 

[Kisai]

12 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

No company would willfully make a product that they have to support indefinitely.

Stop right there. That's exactly the kinds of games they are making, and instead of supporting the game like you would like physical products, it's equal to to being sold a Car with a 10 year warranty, but then having the car explode in a ball of fire after 9 months and the company going "what car?"

 

 

12 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

While that would be a boon for gamers, it's untenable and unreasonable. There's an argument to be made about how nice it would be if they released the code to other people that wanted to keep them up, but if the game isn't being sold, or a subscription isn't being paid for upkeep, that infrastructure is just a massive money-sink so no one is going to take it on anyway.

You're not thinking about the big picture. There are games out there, ones with PHYSICAL media, that can't be played simply because the online DRM componet died, all because an SSL certificate expired. That is pretty much why Nintendo shut down the 3DS, WiiU and Wii stores, because they would need to send firmware/operating system updates in perpetuity just to update the SSL root store.

 

Don't believe me? I can name one software product that does exactly this. Adobe Creative Suite 4. If you want to reinstall it, you have to set your clock back to 2011.

 https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/acrobat-8-unable-to-update-windows-installer-errorcode-1642/td-p/3728766

 

The updaters stop working because the certificate on the update server is expired. They can't update the certificate, because the software doesn't understand newer certificates.

 

THAT is why. You paid for a product, and now you can't even use it because the online mechanism is damaged. An initial install of said product can't speak to an "updated" update server. Yet leaving that server in a potentially unpatched state forever just so it can talk to the retail version, also not a tenable solution.

 

Do you understand the problem? It would make more sense to release a final patch/build of a product, or open source the thing so the community can fix it if they're not going to maintain it.

 

With software, you can easily go "well there is a newer version, use that", but that rarely happens for games, and sometimes those "newer versions" are half assed, like Square Enix's "mobile" ports of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger before they released the pixel remasters, and had their arm twisted to fix the chrono trigger port.

 

12 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

The EULA you agree to says that in-game items are not your property,

Again, stop right there. That comes from a time before games started selling property for real world money. 

https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/asperreview/index.php/asperreview/article/download/25/25/25

This document is circa 2011

Quote

Property recognized within a virtual world is not necessarily recognized in the real world. To date no cases concerning virtual property have been heard in Canada.24 However, the findings of other legal regimes could assist Canada in determining whether or not to recognize virtual property as property in the ‘real world.’

 

The popularity of MMO games in Asia has led to countries in this region being the most forward-thinking regarding virtual property law.

 

In 2001, the Taiwanese Ministry of Justice passed a regulation which stated: “virtual objects are property, are alienable and transferable . . . and . . . the theft of such property is fully punishable under criminal law.” The rationale for this decision was that “virtual property qualifies as electromagnetic records and should be considered moveable property in cases of fraud and theft.” The regulation elaborates that “[a]lthough the above accounts are virtual, they are valuable property in the real world. The players can auction or transfer them online. The accounts and valuables are the same as property in the real world.”  “Critically, the regulation expressly allocates the right to control the electromagnetic record of the virtual property to the owner of the code object, not the owner of the server on which the code happens to reside.”

 

South Korea also took an early interest in virtual property regulation. This is understandable because “[o]ver forty-one percent of South Korean teenagers spend significant amounts of time in virtual worlds.”29 In 2001, the Korean Government reached an executive determination that a clause in software giant NCsoft’s EULA which banned ownership in virtual property was found valid and in accordance with South Korea’s antitrust laws.

 

 It should be pointed out that this was a determination to uphold a contract term and not necessarily an underlying principle of law. However, it is expected that other MMO game creators would write very similar clauses into their MMO games’ EULAs, effectively preventing MMO players from owning virtual property. The ability to sell, and prosecute persons for the theft of virtual property, remains in South Korea even if the ownership of the property is “either ambiguous or located in the virtual environment creator.” 

 

 

 

 

And this is from 2017

https://psmag.com/magazine/the-end-of-ownership

Quote

"There's no deep problem with intangible stuff as property," Fairfield says. "You can't reach out and touch your bank account, you can't reach out and touch your stock portfolio—there's tons of stuff you can't physically touch that we still consider property." But video games, and the digital property therein, "get hit with the other side of the double whammy: They're not just not touchable, they also contain intellectual property. Your bank account is not touchable, but at least it doesn't have somebody else's intellectual property in it. Whereas the magic sword is very carefully controlled by licensing."

 

In a court of law, that makes the sword's theft, however costly, a non-issue. "The courts aren't taking it seriously because, one, this is intellectual property governed by a license, and, two, it's intangible, and that double whammy clouds judgment and makes it hard for people to understand when someone steals $5,000 worth of virtual assets." But surely if every player has accepted a license, and the terms of that license prohibit theft, a victim of theft has the grounds to sue the one who broke the rules? Alas, no. Players enter contracts with the developer of the game—not with one another. "If I agree with the game to be nice," Fairfield explains, "another player who has also made that agreement isn't the beneficiary. Basically, [developers] don't want their user base suing each other."

 

Saying "the EULA says you don't own it" is like saying "your bank owns your money and you only have a license to spend it". Clearly the bank does not own your money, and contrary to how some banks operate, they do not have the right to spend your money. You are paid interest so they can use your money to back loans of other customers. They do not have more money than the culminative assets the bank branch has. The bank can't create money, despite it just being numbers in the computer.

 

A game can create assets at will, so if you were not paying real money for it, then there would be nothing to be pissed off about, but you are paying real money for an asset inside the game, thus you should be entitled to be able to use or destroy that asset as you please, and if the game developers destroy it first by shutting the game down, you should be entitled to a refund of all cash purchases made in that game. 

 

Period. To say otherwise is to say the company that owns your house or car can come repossess it at any time, even after you paid it off. Or can send a kill code to destroy the product.

 

All this right to repair stuff is trying to prevent that.

 

These are equal things. A company should no more be able to destroy your physical property than they can destroy intangible property. If we apply that same logic to it, then if a game developer or publisher destroys the game from working, then they should have no recourse against those who keep the game alive. That can be piracy, that can be cracks, that can be private servers. Heck many of the games on GOG are cracked versions of the game because the developer is long defunct, and the publisher neither has the source code or the original gold masters. They are in fact selling you pirate/cracked copies of their own games because they originally destroyed the game and then they saw another source of revenue after the fact.

 

The argument here is not "The second the publisher withdraws the game, it should be free", the argument is "the developer should never with draw the game in the first place, and any excuse they use to do so should result in the developer losing the right to claim damages." Eg no copyright infringement can be claimed if they are not selling the software in the first place. The software should be de-facto public domain if withdrawn from sale.

 

[Mumintroll]

The main point is to get rid of the always online requirement.

It doesn't make sense especially for singleplayer games.

And when it come to multiplayer games give the possibility to setup own private servers or LAN parties.

 

If a game is killed, like what happened with The Crew, and the publisher doesn't patch the game to make it playable without their support then the publisher should refund its customers. Ultimatly it should give the developers and publishers a reason not to include always online connection in their future games (except for MMO games).

 

Then we have the question of ownership, which is the next level of debate.

Of course we want to own what we bought, not "leasing" it until the publisher/service provider decides to end it.

[Kisai]

23 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

The main point is to get rid of the always online requirement.

It doesn't make sense especially for singleplayer games.

And when it come to multiplayer games give the possibility to setup own private servers or LAN parties.

 

I think the big irony is, "abandonware" or "pirated/cracked copies preserved because the developer is defunct, or incompetent". Certain games have a lot of fans (eg SIERRA, LUCASFILM, ORIGIN(Ultima)) that it resulted in reverse engineering the entire game engine (SCUMMVM) over decades.

 

If the developer would just dump the source code to the game engine in the public, and yet still sell the game asset package" to use with it, that's an OK compromise too. If there is really an interest in the game, the community can recompile it themselves.

 

23 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

If a game is killed, like what happened with The Crew, and the publisher doesn't patch the game to make it playable without their support then the publisher should refund its customers.

 

That's what I'm saying. If a game is "killed", no ability to be played (online, offline, etc.) Then it should be refunded, entirely. 

 

Among my arguments in the thread, is refunding all "property" tied purchases, because the developer or publisher has ultimately destroyed the customers property. We don't tolerate this with physical property, and right-to-repair is pushing back against "killing hardware by making it unable to be repaired through proprietary tools, software or instructions"

 

23 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

Ultimatly it should give the developers and publishers a reason not to include always online connection in their future games (except for MMO games).

Ultimately, "always on DRM" needs to die, and "always on connection to sell you microtransactions" should not be a thing in a single player game, at all. Games-as-a-service is exploitive. It makes people see games not as stories or entertainment, but as slot machines.

 

 

23 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

Then we have the question of ownership, which is the next level of debate.

Of course we want to own what we bought, not "leasing" it until the publisher/service provider decides to end it.

 

I think the real enemy in all of this is the "you will own nothing and be happy" with the renting of games via xbox games pass Nintendo Online. You don't own the game, and if the service operator decides they are losing too much money having that game they shut down access to it, taking your saves games and progress with it. Want to play it again? Buy it, somewhere else, start over.

 

There's only a handful of games I ever bought more than once. Because the media shifted. You can't use a 1991 5.25" floppy in a 2022 PC. You can't even use the 1996 ODD version in a 2022 PC unless you went out of your way to keep a BD drive in your system. I eventually bought it off GOG, but between the time of the floppy disk and the CD ROM, I had to source other versions that people had the balls to copy the disks as images and figure out the copy protection for. I continue to have a PC from 1998 in my closet, just in case I need to read a floppy disk. But the disks often die from just being magnetic media.

 

It's incredibly annoying to want to play something, or show someone a game that has some kind of online component, and it just doesn't work anymore. There was like this golden time during the early internet when everyone had network cards, that LAN parties were a thing, and all you needed was one copy of the game installed on everyone's computers. (see Warcraft 2) and as long as one person had the CD, you could play it this way. But many games wound up being pirated or cracked to play on the LAN because ONLY one person had a retail copy of the game, and the 2-8 friends who wanted to play it , didn't want to buy it just to play the LAN part with you. Good luck even sourcing 8 copies in a small city that has one computer store.

 

Steam changed everything for the better, and then publishers got greedy. EA, Ubisoft, Square-Enix, all started putting out games that they then kill completely, taking the service and any ability to play with it.

 

The excuse "servers cost money to maintain" is quite frankly, a lie. really big MMORPG's like WoW or Final Fantasy XIV have a lot of "server overhead" because they have millions of players. A private server is never going to have more than 100 people, and can be managed with one desktop PC running Linux in the host's home if we're being honest. FFXIV, version 1's fan-made private server requires a PC capable of running one copy of MySQL. That's a super low barrier of entry just to have something you can still use. Private servers for other MMO games, either still operating or defunct, are much in the same boat. We've seen this in games like Among Us, and Lethal Company, that the primary limitation to how many people can be hosted, is not host's computer processing power, but their geographic location. If your host is in Perth and you're in London, then you're going to have a bad time with it. Underlying infrastructure needed for things like proximity voice chat so it doesn't result in echos is harder to address with latency, but it's not an excuse to shut down a game and go "oh, it's too expensive to operate"

 

If people can have massive lobbies for games that rely on being hosted by a player, clearly that's not a problem. So any excuse alluding to "it's too expensive to maintain a server" is a lie.

 

 

 

[thrasher_565]

15 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

so there probably alot that we dont no unless your a programmer that has worked on a game and why it was not backed or w/e the case. alot of inde devs get big compnays to come in and fund them so w/e they own is there even if the game is vary populr not much money gos to them so and exspantion or to make a new game might not be an option. other things are people leave after project looking for more moeny. working on a game sound like its extreme on how many houres they work. there alot of devs will hold on to ip to maybe once make a deal of a remake we see this all the time. other times the dev dose not want the game to be back up. say they make gta 3 and then make gta 4 they want people buying gta 4 and not play gta 3. only way to make it who cares what you play is to have a subscription. how many people will sub to a gta 3? then we go down the road of subscriptions what you own or not.

 

servers do cost moeny to run even if its one in some ones basement. need an internet connection, needs upgrades over time. ways of backing up data. and that cost money. not everyone has free time or moeny to just do it for free. not saying it cant be done.

 

then like you said its location how many people can connect and what connections.

 

 

[atxcyclist]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

Stop right there. That's exactly the kinds of games they are making, and instead of supporting the game like you would like physical products, it's equal to to being sold a Car with a 10 year warranty, but then having the car explode in a ball of fire after 9 months and the company going "what car?"

 

 

You're not thinking about the big picture. There are games out there, ones with PHYSICAL media, that can't be played simply because the online DRM componet died, all because an SSL certificate expired. That is pretty much why Nintendo shut down the 3DS, WiiU and Wii stores, because they would need to send firmware/operating system updates in perpetuity just to update the SSL root store.

 

Don't believe me? I can name one software product that does exactly this. Adobe Creative Suite 4. If you want to reinstall it, you have to set your clock back to 2011.

 https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/acrobat-8-unable-to-update-windows-installer-errorcode-1642/td-p/3728766

 

The updaters stop working because the certificate on the update server is expired. They can't update the certificate, because the software doesn't understand newer certificates.

 

THAT is why. You paid for a product, and now you can't even use it because the online mechanism is damaged. An initial install of said product can't speak to an "updated" update server. Yet leaving that server in a potentially unpatched state forever just so it can talk to the retail version, also not a tenable solution.

 

Do you understand the problem? It would make more sense to release a final patch/build of a product, or open source the thing so the community can fix it if they're not going to maintain it.

 

With software, you can easily go "well there is a newer version, use that", but that rarely happens for games, and sometimes those "newer versions" are half assed, like Square Enix's "mobile" ports of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger before they released the pixel remasters, and had their arm twisted to fix the chrono trigger port.

 

Again, stop right there. That comes from a time before games started selling property for real world money. 

https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/asperreview/index.php/asperreview/article/download/25/25/25

This document is circa 2011

 

 

And this is from 2017

https://psmag.com/magazine/the-end-of-ownership

 

Saying "the EULA says you don't own it" is like saying "your bank owns your money and you only have a license to spend it". Clearly the bank does not own your money, and contrary to how some banks operate, they do not have the right to spend your money. You are paid interest so they can use your money to back loans of other customers. They do not have more money than the culminative assets the bank branch has. The bank can't create money, despite it just being numbers in the computer.

 

A game can create assets at will, so if you were not paying real money for it, then there would be nothing to be pissed off about, but you are paying real money for an asset inside the game, thus you should be entitled to be able to use or destroy that asset as you please, and if the game developers destroy it first by shutting the game down, you should be entitled to a refund of all cash purchases made in that game. 

 

Period. To say otherwise is to say the company that owns your house or car can come repossess it at any time, even after you paid it off. Or can send a kill code to destroy the product.

 

All this right to repair stuff is trying to prevent that.

 

These are equal things. A company should no more be able to destroy your physical property than they can destroy intangible property. If we apply that same logic to it, then if a game developer or publisher destroys the game from working, then they should have no recourse against those who keep the game alive. That can be piracy, that can be cracks, that can be private servers. Heck many of the games on GOG are cracked versions of the game because the developer is long defunct, and the publisher neither has the source code or the original gold masters. They are in fact selling you pirate/cracked copies of their own games because they originally destroyed the game and then they saw another source of revenue after the fact.

 

The argument here is not "The second the publisher withdraws the game, it should be free", the argument is "the developer should never with draw the game in the first place, and any excuse they use to do so should result in the developer losing the right to claim damages." Eg no copyright infringement can be claimed if they are not selling the software in the first place. The software should be de-facto public domain if withdrawn from sale.

 

I could probably go through this and answer these directly, but you're way far off-base and impassioned to points that are not realistic.

 

Bottom line: You do not own any game assets, ever. It's nothing like a bank holding your money, and it's not like repair parts for a physical electronic device you can hold in your hand; With a few exceptions in an in-game market, once you buy something in a game for real money it becomes intrinsically valuable but none of it has a real-world value, nor is any of it deeded/titled to you. Companies don't have to run servers forever for any game, if you spend a bunch of money on a game subscription or items then you've paid upkeep and to purchase servers, pay employees, and marketing costs; Once that money stream goes away the company isn't going to dump money down a hole to keep an old game server running, support for everything ends sometime. And the DRM is copy-protection and anti-cheat, but it's there because of piracy, so blame them for making software companies put things in nightmare-mode for everyone else.

 

These are all just facts, and there's no legal standing for anything you're striving for in this discussion; Don't pay for in-game purchases or get into subscription-based software if you want to keep your money, it's that simple.

[Kisai]

39 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

 

 

servers do cost moeny to run even if its one in some ones basement. need an internet connection, needs upgrades over time. ways of backing up data. and that cost money. not everyone has free time or moeny to just do it for free. not saying it cant be done.

 

A commercial server costs money to run, and even then you can lease bare metal servers for $100/mo. If a game isn't pulling in $100/mo from ... oh two people buying the game every month, then maybe you need to re-evaluate why you're running a server and not letting the users host their own games.

 

That's nearly 3 pages of games with "dedicated servers" the end user can host themselves.

 

And searching for "dedicated server" gives some ambiguous results.

[Kisai]

3 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

 

These are all just facts, and there's no legal standing for anything you're striving for in this discussion; Don't pay for in-game purchases or get into subscription-based software if you want to keep your money, it's that simple.

Kinda hard to do that when the ability to play the game is dependent on the publisher leaving the game up. The entire point of the original video.

 

If you are perfectly fine with being robbed by game publishers putting out a game you put money into and then they shut it down a few months later. This is only going to keep happening, with shorter and shorter lifespans.

 

It's the grocery shrink ray on crack.

https://www.theverge.com/24094441/final-fantasy-opera-omnia-mobile-game-preservation-square-enix

 

https://www.ign.com/articles/nier-mobile-game-shuts-down-in-april

3 years.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/square-enix-re-releases-i-chocobo-gp-i-without-microtransactions

9 months.

 

 

[atxcyclist]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

A commercial server costs money to run, and even then you can lease bare metal servers for $100/mo. If a game isn't pulling in $100/mo from ... oh two people buying the game every month, then maybe you need to re-evaluate why you're running a server and not letting the users host their own games.

 

 

 

That's nearly 3 pages of games with "dedicated servers" the end user can host themselves.

 

And searching for "dedicated server" gives some ambiguous results.

 

$100 a month as a small piece of a huge server colocation, it's an exercise in scaling. The server they're leasing for $100 a month isn't going to run an online game with 20k players on it, that takes a whole room full of them. Companies like Blizzard or EA make this happen by scaling, if a game loses popularity even with subscriptions there's a point where the operating costs don't make sense. 

[atxcyclist]

Just now, Kisai said:

Kinda hard to do that when the ability to play the game is dependent on the publisher leaving the game up. The entire point of the original video.

 

If you are perfectly fine with being robbed by game publishers putting out a game you put money into and then they shut it down a few months later. This is only going to keep happening, with shorter and shorter lifespans.

 

It's the grocery shrink ray on crack.

https://www.theverge.com/24094441/final-fantasy-opera-omnia-mobile-game-preservation-square-enix

 

https://www.ign.com/articles/nier-mobile-game-shuts-down-in-april

3 years.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/square-enix-re-releases-i-chocobo-gp-i-without-microtransactions

9 months.

 

 

I've never been "robbed by a game publisher". If I purchase a subscription for a game I know my interaction with that game is what I'm paying for, and I don't buy in-game assets with real money. I fully realize entertainment costs money, and if I'm paying even the fairly high subscription cost of World of Warcraft at $15 a month or whatever it is, per-hour my entertainment costs $1 or less; That's a win for me.

[thrasher_565]

there plenty of old games i would like to play but would i pay $5 a moth no not that i cant aford it im just not one for subscriptions if i can help it.

 

love to play a shooter but with hacking and auto aim bots there no fun in it. loved playing ut.

would love playing quake 2 and ya i no i could play thows already and host thows already there plenty of games its more complex to just get to run.

 

i dont even no were i would start to find a site to were people host servers or even how to get them working let alon get older games working on a newer pc... my cryces use to play on steam with my i7920 with w7 just fine and now dose not. i buy physical w/e i can and now buy on gog when posable but they dont have it all...

 

the thing is things cost more money these days and people just dont want to pay for old servers. the new gen kids can care less about old games. so you got the people in mid 30 that might still want to re play it.

 

there probly servers that were up and were shut down by the dev and there probly under ground servers that we dont no about...

[Kisai]

10 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

$100 a month as a small piece of a huge server colocation, it's an exercise in scaling. The server they're leasing for $100 a month isn't going to run an online game with 20k players on it, that takes a whole room full of them. Companies like Blizzard or EA make this happen by scaling, if a game loses popularity even with subscriptions there's a point where the operating costs don't make sense. 

EA and Blizzard aren't maintaining millions of dollars in equipment just to have activation-DRM servers. They are maintaining persistent worlds with thousands of players.

 

Games that are expressly "lobby-based", do not have that kind of infrastructure. Even MMORPG's often have their maps bifucated along loading zones. One "server" does not operate the entire game of millions of players, one "server" is really a series of virtual servers, map servers, player servers, marketboard servers, etc.  But if a company decided to shut the whole thing down, it's completely reasonable for someone to be able to take the source code to these services, spin them up on the same machine and still operate a private instance to play the game in a "single player" or maybe a 8-100 player "co-op/pvp" mode. Square Enix has even explained how their infrastructure works, with fixed instances spun up for every dungeon to save loading time rather than forking off new instances on demand. We've seen the consequences of this when certain instances get too busy during new patches and you see 100 people standing around a NPC.

 

But to their credit they've also implemented dynamic server and data center travel so that means players stuck on a busy server can jump to a less busy server and pick up where they were. They don't need to wait for players on their own server to finish fumbling with the instance.

 

But DRM servers? All these things are doing is going "yep, you bought the game, keep going". They can be completely patched out. Single-player microtransactions can be patched out. Any reason to keep servers online can be patched out, save for the multi-player component.

 

There is implicitly a time limit. The SSL certificate expiry, of how long a game can last. Once that expires, nobody can buy the game new and patch to the current version.

 

And I've seen this happen. I've seen it happen with IDV, a game that has a mixture of online play with players, but also single player experiences. If you download the game on too new certain PC's with too old a of game client, the game client can't update because the certificate in the client is expired, or the SSL library has a bug in it (in this case, I had to hunt down a command line work around to disable openSSL CPU optimizations to get the game to update, once it was update, I could turn it off.)

 

That's at least TWO instances I can point directly to how non-multiplayer aspects of a game or software package are screwed, where saving the software's binaries doesn't help because old versions can not update and can't communicate with the server. If the company is unwilling to re-release the client builds every time the SSL certificates expire, eventually they will get a pile of support requests asking why they can't install the game.

 

That's a great way to kill a game.

 

 

[thrasher_565]

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

what about hacker? who and how are you going to combat that? what about ofenders? you have to monitor that too.

 

the devs dont want a game to be played forever thats the point. just means there less people to but new games they put out. ya i no make a good game and people will buy it but its not that simple. ceos want to maximize a game proffets and dont care about keep it around.

[atxcyclist]

38 minutes ago, Kisai said:

EA and Blizzard aren't maintaining millions of dollars in equipment just to have activation-DRM servers. They are maintaining persistent worlds with thousands of players.

 

Games that are expressly "lobby-based", do not have that kind of infrastructure. Even MMORPG's often have their maps bifucated along loading zones. One "server" does not operate the entire game of millions of players, one "server" is really a series of virtual servers, map servers, player servers, marketboard servers, etc.  But if a company decided to shut the whole thing down, it's completely reasonable for someone to be able to take the source code to these services, spin them up on the same machine and still operate a private instance to play the game in a "single player" or maybe a 8-100 player "co-op/pvp" mode. Square Enix has even explained how their infrastructure works, with fixed instances spun up for every dungeon to save loading time rather than forking off new instances on demand. We've seen the consequences of this when certain instances get too busy during new patches and you see 100 people standing around a NPC.

 

But to their credit they've also implemented dynamic server and data center travel so that means players stuck on a busy server can jump to a less busy server and pick up where they were. They don't need to wait for players on their own server to finish fumbling with the instance.

 

But DRM servers? All these things are doing is going "yep, you bought the game, keep going". They can be completely patched out. Single-player microtransactions can be patched out. Any reason to keep servers online can be patched out, save for the multi-player component.

 

There is implicitly a time limit. The SSL certificate expiry, of how long a game can last. Once that expires, nobody can buy the game new and patch to the current version.

 

And I've seen this happen. I've seen it happen with IDV, a game that has a mixture of online play with players, but also single player experiences. If you download the game on too new certain PC's with too old a of game client, the game client can't update because the certificate in the client is expired, or the SSL library has a bug in it (in this case, I had to hunt down a command line work around to disable openSSL CPU optimizations to get the game to update, once it was update, I could turn it off.)

 

That's at least TWO instances I can point directly to how non-multiplayer aspects of a game or software package are screwed, where saving the software's binaries doesn't help because old versions can not update and can't communicate with the server. If the company is unwilling to re-release the client builds every time the SSL certificates expire, eventually they will get a pile of support requests asking why they can't install the game.

 

That's a great way to kill a game.

 

 

So my question is; With you understanding some of the server-side costs and complexities, why do you think some random enthusiasts are going to float those costs for a game? 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

So my question is; With you understanding some of the server-side costs and complexities, why do you think some random enthusiasts are going to float those costs for a game? 

Because they want to play it with their friends. Did you not understand anything in the thread?

 

There are ENTIRE videos of people doing things on private servers of MMORPG's because they've either:

- The RPG has stopped being available (eg FFXIV V1.0, Wizardry Online) 

- The people who played it got banned but still want their fix

- The people want to play for RP/eRP and don't need the entire server infrastructure to do it. (GTAV)

 

Less you dismiss this point, https://fivem.net/ is literately a private server system for GTAV for RP. The maximum it would cost you is $1000/mo if you wanted to run a massive RP server that supports 1024 players. If you only pay for 10 player slots, it's only 12$/mo. And before you go "isn't this illegal or something" no, the fiveM stuff is blessed by Rockstar for RP stuff. These costs are almost entirely for the software license.