[dpcan]

I’m a devils advocate on this argument.

Yes, a big company can take it away, but I think they have to leave it online long enough to get your money’s worth.

So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.

[operatingthetan]

>So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.

This example is humorously short and this is why there is backlash to game companies shutting down games. What about the people who bought it towards the end? They just get nothing? All that time and money spent just gets thrown in the trash because they don't want a cloud bill? They either need to opensource the games and servers or keep supporting them for a decade or longer.

[danaris]

So who gets to be the arbiter of how much time $70 is worth?

You?

The companies making the games?

Why should they get to destroy games—gone, forever, with no chance of retrieval or resurrection—that hundreds of people put their time and love into, and millions of people want to play, just because they think it'll make this quarter's stock price numbers look better?

Copyright was created to protect the rights of the creator for a limited time to promote the useful arts. Creations are supposed to become part of the public domain once the creator is no longer getting use out of them. Game companies want to break that bargain, scorched-earth style, and ensure that no one can ever use the things that they create to make anything new.

[0x59]

Why would you buy my new game if you're spending all your attention on the one I sold you 10 years ago?

[danaris]

Why should we let these kinds of concerns dictate what happens with our cultural heritage?

Why should profit be the first, last, and only consideration when it comes to deciding whether the art of today is even possible to view tomorrow?

[watwut]

Why would you buy a new bool when old one did not burned out yet?

And you know what ... it is ok for people to buy a thing, keep having a thing and not being forced to buy entirely different thing.

[rolph]

because you made an effort born of true craftsmanship, because you found the properties of the game that appealed to users and preserved them, instead of taking them away, or locking them into a premium paid tier version.

[elondaits]

Not everything is economic value. For gamers, an online game can be a community hub, part of their identity, a hobby. It’s not about whether they got their money’s worth, it’s about destroying a virtual “place” they’re emotionally and socially invested, and the specific skill they posses when they’re there.

[0x59]

I think this is the root of it and what the article describes in the first half. I suspect owning a copy of a game will soon be completely eliminated and replaced w the subscription model. Then when subscription dollars stop flowing, the company naturally winds down the service.

[RobotToaster]

Counterpoint: UK law gives you six years to sue if goods are faulty or otherwise not as advertised, why should software be any different?

[knollimar]

6 years seems pretty reasonable to expect servers to be up. And wouldnt bankrupt every company giving prorata refunds based on that %

[jayd16]

Certainly we'll just move the fig leaf so the free online component of games are now part of a subscription.

Ideally a free subscription through packed in keys and such but we'll probably end up being nickel and dimed even further.

[vblanco]

Every developer on videogames has some kind of offline mode already implemented, because its necessary to be able to playtest the game builds on the developer machines. Any argument against SKG is lobbyst nonsense. With the very specific exception of stuff like MMOs. We are seeing cases of pirates being able to play those "turned off games" through cracks and private servers, so there is absolutely 0 reason why the publisher cant already do it.

[Rohansi]

> Every developer on videogames has some kind of offline mode already implemented, because its necessary to be able to playtest the game builds on the developer machines.

Not guaranteed. Many just run a local server, either in-process or externally. Minecraft's singleplayer mode actually runs a server in-process internally. This simplifies development because singleplayer is conceptually the same as playing alone on a server.

This gets more complicated when there are infrastructure servers in the mix for things like player state, matchmaking, etc. You would bypass that in development but they are required for normal play while being external to the game server.