[coryrc]

Which has led to every game needing a central server running, forcing centralization where p2p used to work great. Also how Skype was able to scale on a budget, something now blocked, forcing you to raise money for more ideas than before. Running a matrix(?) node should be as simple as clicking install and it's just there, next time you're with your friends, nfc tap or whatever and your servers talk to each other directly forever going forward. But nope, there always is a gatekeeper now and they need money and that poisons everything.

[everforward]

I don’t think VOIP was a major factor in game centralization. The big one was selling cosmetics (easily unlock able server-side in community servers), and to some extent being able to police voice chat more. Major game publishers didn’t want to be in the news about the game with the most slurs or child grooming or what not.

[chongli]

Central servers are useful for more than just NAT hole-punching. They’re also great as a centralized database of records and statistics as well as a host for anti-cheating services and community standards enforcement.

Peer to Peer games with no central authority would be so rife with cheating that you’d only ever want to play with friends, not strangers. That sucks!

[throw0101a]

> Peer to Peer games with no central authority would be so rife with cheating that you’d only ever want to play with friends, not strangers. That sucks!

Back in the the day RtCW had a server anyone could run and you could give out the address:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein

There was a server that a ISP / cable company in the southern US ran that I participate in and it was a great community with many regulars.

P2P can be awesome with the right peers.

[chongli]

If you can run your own server then that's still a central server. That still lets a community of people work with a central authority. It's just a different authority from the game's publisher.

[Capricorn2481]

In that sense, Mastodon is a centralized service because it's on someone's computer. That's not really what people mean by central. They mean we're increasingly reliant on game companies for networking infrastructure.

Is that all IPV4s fault? I don't think so. But it complicates things

[chongli]

I think you're muddling things up more than they need to be. A peer-to-peer game is one in which players connect directly to each other but neither is the host and there is no dedicated server. Game state is maintained separately on each player's computer and kept in sync by the netcode. Since there is no single source of truth for the game-state, so players are free to cheat by modifying the game's code to lie on their behalf. There is also the side issue of bugs in the game code causing the game-states to become irreparably desynchronized.

All of these issues are solved by having a central server for both players to connect to. Whether that server is owned by the game's publisher or by an open-source community is irrelevant from a technology standpoint. However, the prevalence of IPv4 networks and stateful NAT firewalls is relevant because it privileges those central servers over true peer-to-peer connections.

[Capricorn2481]

I don't disagree with you, I just read your comment as deriding people who think hosting their own game servers is meaningful, because it's similar to a company server. Sounds like you didn't mean it that way.

[coryrc]

Most people can't run their own server, because they aren't on a public IP!

[patmorgan23]

Cool. You decided you don't care about that, but what if I do?

[chongli]

Don't put words into my mouth! I never said I didn't care about peer to peer networking and peer to peer gaming. I said it sucks if your only option to avoid cheating is to play with friends.

If you only care about gaming with friends, then peer to peer is an excellent way to do that (assuming the game doesn't have any synchronization issues, which some peer to peer games do).