[njitram]

The difference with major online services like facebook and twitter is that games have a -very- big launch, and get a lot of users at the same time all at once. It's really hard to test for all that traffic in advance, as there will be so many configurations, (slow and fast) connections, hackers etc coming in all of a sudden. Its almost impossible to simulate the enormous variation.

Facebook, Twitter etc begin by a stable (code) base and then step by step scale up their systems. When something does not scale they can roll back or quickly fix it. They don't have to ramp up from a few hundred players to hundreds of thousands in a few hours like in the gaming industry.

[Umn55]

" It's really hard to test for all that traffic in advance"

There's this thing, they're called dedicated servers. The reality is that game companies CEO's/execs don't want to pay for quality when they can push it out now get the money and patch later, aka. They put in the least effort. The whole thing is intentional at big companies, a combination of intentionality and incompetence at small ones.

[njitram]

I don't know what dedicated servers has to do with it?

I do not disagree on your point that it might be a combination of intention and incompetence, although I think most of them really do not want to see downtime and negative press at release date, when they sell the most. So next to intention and incompetence there is also a strong incentive for them to prevent this from happening.

But the orignal point I was making is that scaling up all of a sudden for an enormous amount of people/traffic is intrinsically very hard, so its easy for them to underestimate the effort needed, and pay deeply for that on launch date (and we too as gamers).

[Umn55]

>I don't know what dedicated servers has to do with it?

First see the science, I can tell you the facts and figures and you won't reason to the conclusion correctly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

If you wanted to avoid "back end problems" (aka problems with 'stressing servers' because of your desire for locked down games where the server code is never released to the public) then you should allow gamers to run their own servers using server software like what games did in the 90's - problem solved. The corporate world basically stole gamers ability to own and run servers and since most gamers are 100's of miles away from these game companies they get away with it.

The free market simply cannot work when buyer and seller are 100's of miles away from each other, the seller has a huge advantage, all the outraged customers can't patrol outside the company and give the people there an earful for being corrupt criminal bastards.

Free market is a fantasy held onto by people who don't know much about how the real world works and gullibly believe the false ideological propaganda in the universities.

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Crisis of democracy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYFxtNgOeiI

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117