[0xy]

Why do you deserve free labor from a game developer that you paid a nominal amount to 10 years ago, not to mention infrastructure costs.

At no point did you purchase unlimited free online service forever, by the way. The game developer did not promise that, and you hold no contract with them mandating free labor and infrastructure perpetually.

It's the equivalent of paying $10 to enter an all-you-can-eat restaurant and complaining when they kick you out at 10pm while you say that you haven't technically had ALL you can eat yet.

[cogman10]

I purchased a toy that I expect to be able to continue playing with long after the company that made that toy loses interest in it. I don't expect the company to run servers for my toy, I can do that if they gave that opportunity.

The way the industry currently operates is you show up to an all you can eat buffet, pay your $10, and then they give you a 30 page contract that you have to sign before you can start eating. You are further SOL if you sign that contract at 4:40 and they decide "well, today we are going to close at 5pm because there's not enough people here. This isn't profitable to us".

Once upon a time, all games operated like this. I could buy half life and run a half life server locally and all my friends could play half life together without valve ever getting in the middle. That didn't cost valve anything to support that. It was all part of the price of purchase of half life.

Heck, for games like Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2, 3rd parties like MSN hosted their own 3rd party services for matching players together. We still hosted the servers, but MSN did the match making. And when they stopped that service, it didn't matter. We can still host and play DF2. Theoretically another 3rd party could start up to match make again.

[0xy]

Games explicitly do not promise online features remain available perpetually. No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either.

I also completely disagree that "it doesn't cost Valve anything to run Half Life". Firstly, it's patently incorrect, given Half Life has received 20+ updates in the last 5 years alone. Secondly, it's technically incorrect, given Steam going offline prevents you from opening Half Life at all. Newsflash, Steam games have CEG DRM and will not function for long periods of time without Steam.

Steam shuts down tomorrow, guess what? None of your games are working without a third party workaround. Even if you had them installed.

[cogman10]

> Games explicitly do not promise online features remain available perpetually. No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either.

Explicitly through a contract you HAVE to sign AFTER the purchase. That's a big problem I have with this model. It's not made explicit until after the purchase.

And, it is reasonable to expect because, as I said and other old game players can attest to, this was the status quo for games ~15 years ago. This was a change in living memory.

> Firstly, it's patently incorrect, given Half Life has received 20+ updates in the last 5 years alone.

How about Quake 1/2/3? I pulled half life just as an example. Valve is making those updates because they want to, not because they have to.

> Secondly, it's technically incorrect, given Steam going offline prevents you from opening Half Life at all.

Ok, Again Quake or Dark forces 2. But also, it's only technically incorrect today. It wasn't when HL was originally released. Valve had to backport in it's integration to the valve servers. That is, they technically had to put in effort to make the game tie to their servers.

But also, I can still dust off my old HL cds, install it, and play it without the steam integration. I can even patch it to a pre-steam version and game with people that aren't using the pre steam version.

> Steam shuts down tomorrow, guess what? None of your games are working without a third party workaround. Even if you had them installed.

That's really only because steam has gone out of it's way to install DRM on top of the games. They have purposely broken my games to be dependent on their services.

None of this makes your argument better, in fact it's a highlight of the broken nature of the games industry.

[ryandrake]

> And, it is reasonable to expect because, as I said and other old game players can attest to, this was the status quo for games ~15 years ago. This was a change in living memory.

I fear an entire generation is growing up thinking that it is normal and acceptable that products you buy can be remotely disabled by the developer, manufacturer or vendor when it suits them, with no recourse to the person who bought the product.

This is one of those tech nerd debate hills I'm willing to die on: It should be totally unacceptable/illegal for someone else to remotely nerf or destroy a product you bought and paid for.

[0xy]

You just finished praising Steam, the company responsible for the proliferation of DRM technology that does exactly what you claim to hate.

If Steam goes offline, billions and billions of dollars of games go with it. The online ones, the offline ones, all of it. Gone forever. Some will not function at all without Steam servers.

Steam pioneered remote DRM attestations for PC gaming, remote product key validation, always-online dependencies on Steamworks and more.

[ryandrake]

You might be thinking someone else. I never praised Steam. It should be totally unacceptable that Steam shutting down would cause the disappearance of billions of dollars of people's games.

[Telaneo]

> No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either.

I expect perpetual access to my game the same way I expect access to my books. Most of my multiplayer games can still be played without involving a clown server somewhere (either by hosting one myself, or by playing over LAN). This is somewhat skewed by me not having bought many of the offending games, but it's clearly not an impossible feat. It's not even a big ask. And yet it's still not done.

> Steam shuts down tomorrow, guess what? None of your games are working without a third party workaround. Even if you had them installed.

The mere existence of that workaround means I still get to play my game. There aren't any workarounds for most of the games Stop Killing Games care about, since developing them requires enormous amounts of man-hours reverse engineering, while the devs could do the same in a fraction of the time (or at the very least give people a head start!).

[ianburrell]

I have books that link to online content. I've had one that had printable workbook that that no longer worked because the site had disappeared.

Are you going pay the extra money to the developers to keep the servers running? What will people choose, the 5 year support for game that might never play again, or the forever support? Game companies will raise prices, by a lot, if forced to maintain or release games.

[Telaneo]

The web archive kind of solves this problem.

Beyond that, I think the authors of your books are idiots for not making whatever content they have online not just a bundled part of the book (throw in a CD or thumb drive or whatever, not my problem. Solve it however you want. Just™ actually solve it). I've had the same happen with a quiz book I found, which had the answers online, with just a QR code in the book, which then lead to a 404 page. They could have just printed a few extra pages of answers in the back, but they didn't, and I mock them for it. They're fucking morons. Thankfully quiz questions tend to be easily googleable.

> Are you going pay the extra money to the developers to keep the servers running?

No, because you don't need to do that to have a playable game.

> Game companies will raise prices, by a lot, if forced to maintain or release games.

Good thing they don't need to do that then.

[cwillu]

> Steam shuts down tomorrow, guess what? None of your games are working without a third party workaround. Even if you had them installed.

That's funny, because most of my steam games will happily run with the network cable unplugged

[Rohansi]

> Steam shuts down tomorrow, guess what? None of your games are working without a third party workaround. Even if you had them installed.

Not true. Some games distributed via Steam will continue to work because they do not use (or require) Steamworks.

[throwaway85825]

Maybe the product stops working tomorrow maybe 10 years from now. Consumers shouldn't have to gamble. If sellers don't like it they need to tell consumers the end date like a subscription does. That's at least honest.

[ryandrake]

I'm not asking for free labor. I'm asking that if someone sells me a product for a one-time cost, then I expect that product to continue working as it did when I bought it. If ensuring it "continues working" represents a cost to the developer, then they should reconsider charging one-time for the product.

[stronglikedan]

> they should reconsider charging one-time for the product

You wouldn't be able to afford it. It's well known at the time of purchase that online games will eventually become obsolete. Comparing that to tools is comparing apples to oranges.

Now, I do think that game companies should be compelled to make their servers available for others to host and maintain if they decide to stop hosting and maintaining them themselves. Some do, but all should be required to.

[wxre]

Okay well how about my EVSE (EV car charger)? Much more akin to a tool. I can't configure it now because it relies on a cloud interface and the company that sold it to me changed hands several times and now doesn't operate in the US. Now it's stuck thinking I want it limited to 28 amps rather than the 50 amps my new car can use.

[Telaneo]

You should be entitled to a fix for that, yes (say, some way to connect it to Home Assistant, or just a physical switch somewhere). That or your money back so you can buy an equivalent product that isn't broken.

I've seen discussions about this exact topic in Europe, but it's a hard topic to tackle, since the relevant services will usually shut down bell beyond five years, and by that time, the statute of limitations will have run out, so even if the product could in theory have lasted for 20+ years longer if you could just have it talk to the computer in your closet, or just flipped a switch to turn it into a dumb-mode where is still does the basics you don't need a clown for, you're out of luck.

[ryandrake]

Yea, it should not be even remotely acceptable that a physical device like an EV charger, installed in the home for the purpose of doing something in the home, can suddenly be nerfed simply because the manufacturer went out of business.

If this were normal, my car would suddenly stop working if Toyota went out of business.

[jasonlotito]

> At no point did you purchase unlimited free online service forever, by the way.

The legislation specifically carves out for things like this.

> Why do you deserve free labor from a game developer that you paid a nominal amount to 10 years ago, not to mention infrastructure costs.

The legislation doesn't add this requirement at all.

> It's the equivalent of paying $10 to enter an all-you-can-eat restaurant and complaining when they kick you out at 10pm while you say that you haven't technically had ALL you can eat yet.

No. It's paying $10 and eating until 10pm and then leaving because they are done.

Your entire comment just reads as someone who has made assumptions about what is being asked for rather than actually looked into it.

Just the opening of your first two paragraphs proves that.