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by wagwang 13 days ago
If they dont want to release the source then just keep running the servers! I think its ridiculous that people can buy games and the games just stop working and its ok because of some legalese that literally no one reads. Alternatively, why not just align your incentives with the user and charge subscriptions.

Games are interesting because players will sink a lot of time and sometimes money in and so it goes beyond a smart alarm clock or a fitness tracker imo.
1 comments
gopher_space 13 days ago
> I think its ridiculous that people can buy games and the games just stop working and its ok because of some legalese that literally no one reads.

It's entertainment. It's ok for entertainment to end, especially when it's this cheap. There aren't any situations where I haven't gotten my money's worth out of a title I've played for 1000+ hours.

> Alternatively, why not just align your incentives with the user and charge subscriptions.

Because most people balk at subscriptions. And that's kind of the answer to a lot of "why don't they just" questions in this area. They can't release the server because of proprietary libs, but they're using those because it's way, way, way cheaper than not doing that and the people who write those libs really know what they're doing. People won't buy your game at the price you'd need to set to do everything in house.

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gs17 13 days ago
> It's entertainment. It's ok for entertainment to end

Sometimes it ends right after you bought it with no way of knowing it would, or before you bought it. Not everyone gets 1000+ hours out of a title, sometimes the day you install they announce that the servers are going down forever.

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gopher_space 13 days ago
I'd rather discuss actual problems people had with specific titles. Hypothetical edge cases always turn into corner cases during cross-examination. If we think about people who bought a game closing on day one we need to think about the people who shop at stores with a no-return policy. I'm not sure who's problem that should be.
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skotobaza 7 days ago
>I'd rather discuss actual problems people had with specific titles

Here is one - I never got to play The Crew which got closed in 2024. But I would certainly like to do that now and some time later (10, 20 or even 50 years later). The same goes for Diablo 3 and 4, which did not shut down yet but they might. I just want to be sure that I will be able to play a game in the future. I do replay and reevaluate games, so for me it's important to keep them available all the time. Especially if I paid money for them.

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