Comment on MultiVersus officially closes down and is delisted today
osprior@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If you aren’t already aware of it (and in the EU) please sign the stopkillinggames.com petition so companies can’t just drop “support” (that these days means kill) games when they feel like it.
What are you suggesting? That on once a game goes online it’ll require the company by law to keep it running forever? How many companies would still release games that requires backend if they knew it’s a never ending endeavour even if they’ll lose money from it?
Running the infrastructure to host the game’s baceknd requires money, and releasing the server code as binary or open source is not something that’ll happen.
So what is the end goal?
The companies could shut down their servers, if they at the same time would release the software needed to run the servers. This would allow the creation of community servers, without any costs or responsibilities for the companies
There was a time when multiplayer games all came with dedicated server binaries.
Oh for fuck sake, this has never been a good argument, and people who keep repeating these argument-questions (almost like they’re a copy paste) either never read what Stop Killing Games demands, or lack the reading comprehension necessary to understand it.
The third option would be malicious sabotage, but I’m hoping it’s just one of the two stupidity options.
It is kinda crazy how these always pop up immediately.
Yeah I could not comment so quick unless I programmed something to do it for me…
From the FAQ of stopkillinggames.com website
Q. Aren’t you asking companies to support games forever? Isn’t that unrealistic?
A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree that it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way.
Releasing the server code as binary is how it used to work, and there’s no reason it can’t work that way again. It’s one of several ways to satisfy the petition.
Required games and games studios to build the game to be played offline or have the ability to sell host the server.
Interesting how strongly you are opposing an idea that noone proposed.
As you are not a gamer, I’ll try to make it simple.
If a game ask for an online connection, is usually for three reasons:
When the publisher decide to stop the online component, to save a buck, it often mean the game stops working altogether because of the DRM part, as it basically refuses to start without the proper authorization from the now defunct server.
The petition do not ask them to keep running the server indefinitely, but rather to
In both case, the code already exist, and the changes required are minimal, so why not do it? It costs barely anything to the devs/publisher, and gives the game a second life, even without official support.
Of course there is also the open-source way. In such case, the code being public, they can just sit back & relax, the community will do the work for them. Hosting servers, fixing bugs, etc. They can even keep their right to the assets, like many open-sourced games does.
But they don’t. Mostly out of greed, to push people to buy the newest, micro-transaction infused game they wish to sell, sometimes even the same game with half the content replaced by micro-transaction (Overwatch 2 being the perfect example).
They don’t want an older, maybe better game to overshadow their new shiny cash grab.
I agree with most of what you said,.
On the other hand -
If they aren’t good enough to make software that makes sense, we’ll find a way to make them work. Don’t underestimate a band of hyperfocussed nerd.
Some guy already programmed a whole unofficial MMO server from scratch, which ended up to be even better than the official one. Unfortunately is wasn’t ever released for obvious copyright infringement reasons, but still.
You know you can still play Unreal Tournament online against other people? That game came out in 1999!
The problem you sketch has been solved already.
All it takes is for the game developer to release the server binaries. And for fans of the game to run servers.
It would require devs to start planning for indefinite support during development. Wether that means releasing server software and the source code or not making the game reliant on servers in the first place is up to them.
Am not a gamer, and am not informed about your little battle. So i asked a quesion, not made an argument. From the responses to my questions it is obvious how spoiled and toxic your community is. Good luck 🩷
Just click the link and inform yourself. Could have answered the question yourself within minutes.
It’s clear you do not actually want answers at all. I hate your pretentious attitude.
I clicked, and saw an incoherent wall of text. It is not that important for me to understand what you’re whining about, and you fail to deliver your point in a manner which will result in any sympathy.
You are treating silliy video games as if it’s a matter of life and death. Why would anybody take you seriously? You make ot so easy for them to milk you for money. I suggest grow up.
FAQ page has your exact question answered - saved you one click from the link above. Clearly a lot of effort has been put into the site because online spaces we’ve enjoyed can’t be enjoyed any further even if we were interested in maintaining them ourselves as volunteers.
Its like the 6th on the lost or something. Clearly a lot of thought.
Running the infrastructure today is not the same as it was back when unreal was first released, for many many reasons.
Gamers are by and large toxic and ignorant. The ask isn’t as straightforward as they make it seem. It would require changes to the binaries and client code beforehand. This doesn’t come for free. All the examples of ‘how it used to work in the past’ are predicated on the specific choices of development to go that route. If an application and server are not architected that way then releasing the server binaries do nothing for the community.
I’d agree for an MMO, which can be quite complex server-wise. But most “online single player” would be quite easy to modify.
I’m a software developer who worked with asynchronous online systems.
A simple disk caching system could replace any uploaded data, and any online call can be written to work with cached data with a few line of code. Heck, on some frameworks you could write a simple middleware to make it work without changing a line of the original code.
I could do it on such game in less than a week on a language I don’t know, and probably a day or two on one I know about.
Yeah exactly but I don’t think anyone here is capable of comprehending that.
Better service for the community. Take a look over towards Spellbreak for a second and you’ll see a community that has taken what Proletariat had given them after an acquisition by Blizzard and started doing private servers to keep their game functional. I think there’s much to learn from this End-of-Service model, perhaps we could have more privately hosted servers to reduce their overhead if companies truly loved their fanbase; might even be feasible to follow that model from the start for f2p games so the official servers are more capable for tourneys and the like. Either way the goal is end user satisfaction, so if those means are preservation or archival like with Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel, then so be it the fanbase does what they want ultimately, but we just ask companies to offer their olive branch so that all their precious arts don’t drown in the ever expanding sea of data.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It will never work
Elevator7009@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Even if it doesn’t work, I’d at least want to let people try and get practice doing something about a problem (even if that’s just leaving a comment on social media to direct others to sign a petition that will eventually get lawmakers’ attention with enough signatures based on that country’s laws, because that still has more chance for good than yet another comment about X Thing Bad. Even though I agree with a lot of Lemmy’s X Thing Bad takes), makes them more likely to do something in the future. At least they can walk away saying “I tried”. Some people might see no guarantee of results for their time and think of it as time wasted, and that is their choice, but I don’t really see a reason to say “that’ll never work” without any offer of alternative. Most charitably, you are trying to save them time and disappointment and “it didn’t work, activism does not work, I’ll never do anything like that again”, but I think a lot of people are just seeing the comment as pointless negativity.
Phegan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not with that attitude.
XiberKernel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It worked for USB C? And y’all have alternate app stores over there too. I don’t believe it’s unrealistic to guarantee that a product you sell will remain functional after support ends.
MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Eh, we’ll see. USB C and other app stores made Apple gain less money, whereas this petition would make it cost more to implement such a thing, and could be a sizeable problem for specific games which heavily relies on proprietary algorithms or just the game itself, such as mmorpg, small companies…
WhiteBurrito@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s honestly very little work to implement a way for a game to be offline… Basically just remove the method that checks for a server and that’s it…
What could be a bit more costly would be releasing server implementations so people can host their own game servers, but it should still be expected… Actually it wouldn’t be that hard IF it’s taking into account from the get go coz you can just release the last release before being shut down and that’s it