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by ToucanLoucan 689 days ago
> Yes, I don't think they understand that running these games isn't free, modifying the games to be self hostable is not free, and giving away the code for other people to run it is ip suicide.

And none of that would be an issue if not for the fact that so many companies are creating games that become paperweights when they shut down the servers.

It used to be very commonplace to include server binaries with multiplayer games, before dedicated servers for every game was the norm. Also before that, modding games, including multiplayer games, was also highly normalized. If anything, the era of live service titles that are completely 100% locked down and only work with the developer's servers, punish modding, what have you is the aberration, not the norm. And those games once the developers want to move on, become paperweights when they do. All the achievements made, all the items unlocked, all the currency invested, instantly becomes worthless.

So like, I dunno, if you as a developer are not in this for the long haul and don't want to have to comply with this regulation at great expense at the end tail of development, then develop it like it used to be done? Include server binaries for people to use at launch? Maybe plan on making your money back on purchases of the game, and not on long-tail monetization that demands more security and locked-down-ness in the software to be viable?

1 comments

And when the binaries inevitably stop working 50 years after release what should be done?
The oldest server binary I've used recently was for Freelancer, which was released in 2003. It required some elevated permissions but otherwise, both the server and the game itself ran fine on newer hardware and versions of Windows.

Failing that, there's always hardware emulation but to be honest, unless you're for whatever odd reason trying to run your server on AMD64, I don't think there's too much to be concerned about. And, if source code is released by the developer, the community that remains could see to continuing support.

Worth noting here that the self-hosting mod for Titanfall 2, called Northstar, already did all of that with nothing but reverse-engineering involved because Respawns servers were basically unusable for years.

Why would they stop working?
Another commenter mentioned mobile devices getting constant security patches that make old software obsolete.

Also, software is not static. Do you really expect programs written today will work in 100 years?

I don't expect programs written today to run on the latest hardware and operating systems 100 years from now. But a machine from today, or its equivalent emulated in software, running the same OS should always be able to run the same programs.