[nerdjon]

We had a similar discussion about this before and I feel like this is an incredibly simplistic view of the situation.

How many games actually only phone home and have been rendered unplayable for that reason?

I am struggling to find any examples of this happening, but I am sure there are a few. Unless I am missing it, I don't even see an example listed here.

If the game relies on servers for data, online play, or other things that is a completely different beast. That isn't just, "oh it was rendered unplayable". No it was an online game and the servers were shut down. It sucks but thats the nature of moving away from p2p online games.

To be very clear here, I agree with this when it comes to single player games. But as its written, it has the potential to conflate 2 massively different issues (as the Crew discussion did last time) that it should be very clear on those distinctions and I would love examples.

[ToucanLoucan]

> If the game relies on servers for data, online play, or other things that is a completely different beast. That isn't just, "oh it was rendered unplayable". No it was an online game and the servers were shut down. It sucks but thats the nature of moving away from p2p online games.

A non-exhaustive list of games I have operated servers for: Freelancer, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Counterstrike, Space Engineers, Minecraft.

We know how to solve this problem. Companies don't want to, because they make more money out of lock-in live service games. We're allowed to tell our lawmakers to tell them tough shit. Build games to be used after servers are decommissioned, or don't built games.

[nerdjon]

> Build games to be used after servers are decommissioned, or don't built games.

To my knowledge you are talking about games that all of the core data is stored on the client side and don't rely on updates being able to be applied to servers on data required for the game to work.

How would you propose WoW, FFXIV, or other MMO's continue to be run after? There are fan projects to make private servers for some of those but those rely on data and processes running on the sever's. Controlling bosses, NPC's, events, and other things.

It isn't realistic to expect that these companies would release the source code for their servers. Companies re-using code and components for other projects is very much a thing.

[ToucanLoucan]

> It isn't realistic to expect that these companies would release the source code for their servers.

Why is that not realistic? If the company is ending support, surely that code is ancient at that point. What's the risk? The company is ending support, by virtue of that fact, they are conceding they are not making any/enough money to continue the work. So leave it for someone else to do then, if they're inclined.

I posit the opposite question to you: why is it normal and acceptable for Blizzard to say "WoW is done and no one can play anymore" and an entire vibrant community and player-base just doesn't get to play their favorite game anymore, because Blizzard decided it wasn't profitable enough? Yeah sure Blizzard made it, fine enough, but that's not the sum total of all work involved. Probably millions of hours at this point of streams, guides, explainers, millions of wiki pages, guides, all kinds of shit that tons of people have invested thousands of hours into. What right does Blizzard have to simply take all of that and turn it off? What about people who make their own living in turn with WoW?

[nerdjon]

> surely that code is ancient at that point.

We have seen plenty of games shut down after only a year or so to know that is not the case.

But also as I said in my response, reusing code is a thing. Maybe it relies on another internal tool that is used in some of their other games. They are not going to release that part, which would make the first part they released unusable.

Just because they are ending support doesnt mean that the some of the serverside code is not being used elsewhere or is not a shared service with another game.

> I posit the opposite question to you: why is it normal and acceptable for Blizzard to say "WoW is done and no one can play anymore" and an entire vibrant community and player-base just doesn't get to play their favorite game anymore,

I mean, I highly doubt if it was a "vibrant community" it would be shutting down at this point.

> because Blizzard decided it wasn't profitable enough? Yeah sure Blizzard made it, fine enough,

Regardless of any of our other opinions on this work, that is exactly it. They own it, they run the servers, they update it, it is their creation and with the example of an MMO it has always been clear that it relies on an online connection to work since that is the very basis of the game.

> but that's not the sum total of all work involved. Probably millions of hours at this point of streams, guides, explainers, millions of wiki pages, guides, all kinds of shit that tons of people have invested thousands of hours into. What right does Blizzard have to simply take all of that and turn it off? What about people who make their own living in turn with WoW?

You could say that about anything. Even if Blizzard did nothing, the popularity of WoW going down would still impact all of those people.

What about people that covered a tv show for several seasons just for it to be canceled (or just ending)? Maybe they made a living covering that show, are they somehow owed something because they no longer have new episodes that come out? No of course not.

Are people that made a living on Instagram or whatever owed something if those platforms shut down?

No, they boxed themselves in instead of diversifying. That should be a normal practice and recognize the risk to your livlyhood of relying on a single platform, game, tv show, or whatever other niche.

Also should be worth mentioning that all of that content that was made, won't be disappearing. There obviously won't be new content, but it would still be there and likely for a while there will be people looking it up for nostalga.

[wtetzner]

Honestly (for online multiplayer games) I'd be OK with companies simply documenting the server API and allowing you to point the client to a different server.

[Dalewyn]

>Companies don't want to, because they make more money out of lock-in live service games.

Operating servers paid with company budget makes more money than offloading the compute to customers' computers paid on customers' dimes? What?

No, the reason multiplayer games have moved away from peer-to-peer to hub-and-spoke is because it's easier for the customers. Most people frankly cannot and moreover do not want to be sysadmins when they just want to play their vidja gaemz. This becomes even more of a poignant issue with more "normies" and "casuals" becoming gamers.

Hub-and-spoke Just Works(tm) Out Of The Box(tm) so long as the hub exists, and that's something the majority of people desire and appreciate.

I'm obviously not speaking with regards to games that must be hub-and-spoke (eg: MMOs) or games that do so for no good reason (eg: Hitman World of Assassination).

[phone[phone]]

> Most people frankly cannot and moreover do not want to be sysadmins when they just want to play their vidja gaemz. This becomes even more of a poignant issue with more "normies" and "casuals" becoming gamers.

Normies don't self-host - they go to a game hosting service provider and pay a few bucks a month to have hosting done for them.

[ToucanLoucan]

> Operating servers paid with company budget makes more money than offloading the compute to customers' computers paid on customers' dimes? What?

There's no reason to invest in in-game monetization if you can unlock it all via changing the server you play on, and have access to all of that content without paying. That's a huge part of how live service games are monetized and if people can change how their server works to just unlock it all and be done, the company loses revenue. Or at least, that's what they're going to say.

> No, the reason multiplayer games have moved away from peer-to-peer to hub-and-spoke is because it's easier for the customers. Most people frankly cannot and moreover do not want to be sysadmins when they just want to play their vidja gaemz.

Literally no one in this discussion is saying companies can't run their own servers. The obvious choice would be hosting their own servers with the server binaries they distribute, or perhaps more tuned versions for their hosting arrangements. We're just saying, if at such time a company shuts their servers down, there should be a way to make new ones so people can still play the game they bought.

> I'm obviously not speaking with regards to games that must be hub-and-spoke (eg: MMOs)

Any sufficiently powerful server could host an MMO. This is not black magic, it's computing.

> or games that do so for no good reason (eg: Hitman World of Assassination).

Yes. That's literally what this is attempting to address.

[Dalewyn]

>There's no reason to invest in in-game monetization if you can unlock it all via changing the server you play on, and have access to all of that content without paying.

Choosing servers generally depends on two things: Gameplay quality (eg: latency), and the people playing on the server.

In-game monetizations are done because the market-at-large refuses and continues to refuse hiking up prices despite rising costs and inflation.

>Literally no one in this discussion is saying companies can't run their own servers.

That is not what I said at all.

>We're just saying, if at such time a company shuts their servers down, there should be a way to make new ones so people can still play the game they bought.

That potentially conflicts with safeguarding trade secrets, licensing, and so on. Would it be nice? Yes. But reality is seldom easy or ideal.

>Any sufficiently powerful server could host an MMO. This is not black magic, it's computing.

Hell no. An MMO usually has one world or environment that is consistent, one set of data that is universal to the game. The very nature of MMOs requires that someone central and singular operates the server(s), which almost always is either the devs or publishers so-concerned.

It's dead cheap and easy for anyone to run servers capable of running entire MMOs, it's practically impossible to share the pre-requisite singular data and then also process it identically between innumerable servers owned and ran by independent entities.

You cannot address social challenges with technological solutions (read: more compute).

>Yes. That's literally what this is attempting to address.

And I did not speak as to those games, what are you contesting with me?

[johnnyanmac]

> Build games to be used after servers are decommissioned, or don't built games.

sounds rather dramatic no? Just don't play badly managed games. If others want to be grifted, a fool and their money...

[er4hn]

Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a good example. It is a single player game with some minor and optional online elements, and used to have a pay to win store that needed internet access. It requires an online connection the first time you start it. If that server goes away - we're hoping the devs will patch it before that happens.

[nerdjon]

I was asking for examples of where a game is unplayable.

I know that there are games that only phone home or require an online connection to play online like Kingdom Hearts (which is particularly frustrating on my steam deck).

That part of this I am not disputing.

From the way this is written it sounds like this is a big problem that keeps happening for single player games, but I am struggling to find a ton of examples.

[rybosome]

The poster answered your question.

The game is unplayable without an internet connection - it refuses to start.

In spite of the fact that the internet connection is only used to provide optional content, without an authenticating server this game which is otherwise fundamentally a single player, offline game will not let you play it.

[nerdjon]

No they did not as I clearly stated the distinction in my response.

> The game is unplayable without an internet connection

That was not my question. It is still actively playable. I even gave an example of another game that I know in that situation clearly showing that I do in fact know of games that work this way and I have had my own annoyances with them.

My original question:

> How many games actually only phone home and have been rendered unplayable for that reason?

Unless I am mistaken, that game is in fact still playable.

As it is currently written this petition does nothing about that. It is not banning phoning home, just that a patch is required if/when you shut down your servers. It is talking about games that did not get that patch.

They provided an example of a game that could fit what this is proposing to stop in the future, but does not fit it at the moment.

Frankly I would support a ban on phoning home, but that is not what we are talking about.

See my other comment to the person that mentioned NFS Underground, that is an example of a game that fit the question I was asking and this petition.

[johnnyanmac]

>I know that there are games that only phone home or require an online connection to play online like Kingdom Hearts

play what online? Did they get Mirage Arena working in birth by Sleep?

Otherwise, I think the only online components is the rhythm side game.

[n_ary]

How about NFS underground 1 & 2? Neither will start anymore because neither can reach the server(defunk) to check for multiplayer magics.

[nerdjon]

Thank you! I was not aware of this example.

I fully agree that the single player part of that should still be playable. (And multiplayer if its p2p but i assume it is not).

I don't quite understand why this petition did not list examples of this happening, since I assume some game caused someone to make this petition.

But I still stand by what I originally said that we need to distinguish between games that are offline for no good reason (Like NFS Underground) and games like WoW if/when that shuts down.

[Retr0id]

Minecraft, PC. 33 million copies sold.

Game purchases were originally linked to a Mojang account, and even single-player mode required you to log in at least once before you could play. Fair enough.

The servers are still up, but they forced people to migrate from Mojang accounts to Microsoft accounts. There was a reasonable grace period, but I didn't want a Microsoft account, so now I can't legally play the game anymore.

https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/19615552270221

[johnnyanmac]

>but I didn't want a Microsoft account, so now I can't legally play the game anymore.

I mean, that's a reasonable choice you made. Unfortunate, but 2.5b dollar aquisitions by a tech conglomerate will do that.

Fortunately, that situation is exceedingly rare.

[Gazoche]

> How many games actually only phone home and have been rendered unplayable for that reason?

The entire Xbox Series catalog, for starters. You can't even setup the console without phoning to Microsoft's servers. Meaning units not already associated with an account will become paperweights once Microsoft inevitably kills support.

[beretguy]

You don’t know what you are talking about and you are wasting everyone’s time. Watch this video to understand what we are talking about here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw