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Comment on MultiVersus officially closes down and is delisted today

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:

multiplayer, or some kind of social interaction
drm, to make it harder to cheat, or redistribute cracked versions of said game
telemetry, either to know how players plays their game, or to sell you as an ad target

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

make it possible to bypass the DRM always online part to be able to play the single player part, if there is one. In most case, it is a simple change to do, a function to modify in order to always return “true” (game can be played)
allow the end user to self host the server. It doesn’t mean open-sourcing it, just to release the server software and allow to point to another server, than the defunct ones

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.

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wondrous_strange@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I agree with most of what you said,.

On the other hand -

If you don’t like their approach, stop buying their games.

Servers today are much more complex than what they were 25 years ago, and making them in such a way to any idiot could run on their laptop requires substantial effort. I can see how it might not be financially feasible for every company to do. Relaaing the server software will introduce a whole new category of issues that the company will need to face. Shipping a stack of 20 independent services that are orchestrated together is not a single binary, and is not meant to run on any platform.
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- Dremor@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Well, I don’t. It doesn’t void my freedom to express my opinion on the matter.
  
  I also maintain server (my own, sometime other people server when asked to), and even worked with an open sourced MMO server (Ryzom). Those don’t need to be hard to maintain, except if the architect is a idiot that followed the tend of “microservices”, which does’t make much sense for an MMO.
  
  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.
  
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  - wondrous_strange@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    1.indeed you do. Still it is advised to think before speaking. 2.I said nothing about “micro”. It sounds like you have great expertise in this area and clearly know how it all works so kudos you won 🥳
    
    You won’t be able to do none of that, cause none of it is yours. If anything, I feel like I’m overestimating you just by having this discussion. Not clear to me why you feel so entitled to the products of others. You are a gamer, it is barly a hobby.
    
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    Dremor@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    On that our opinion differs.
    
    Games, like movie, are a way to make art. It allows ways of expression that other medias cannot.
    
    Of course not all games are made with the artistic value in mind, like not all movies are, but those are nontheless pieces of our collective culture, be it something like a racing game, or a little platformer.
    All thoses are the result of hundred, if not thousands of hours of work, from programmers, to musician, with all others support tasks in between.
    
    For a movie, imagine if you had to constantly be connected to a server, and that suddenly, for nobother reason than saving a buck for the company owning the movie, no one could watch it anymore. Countless masterpieces would be lost to time, not because the original band was lost in a fire like many did through time, but because of someone greed and refusal to make them readable without that punny server.
    
    That petition ask just that same treatment for video games, nothing more. We are not asking for remaster, nor a continued support on new consoles, just a way to preserve the shared memories we hold dear.
    Memories of friends who played with us, friends that may not be of this world anymore. Memories of stories told and lived.
    To not forget what was, what could have been, and what can be.
    
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