cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/34790413
If they're not gonna run servers, then they should distribute and open source the server software so players can run their own servers.
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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Whenever google cancels a cool project a small part of me wishes they would open source it.
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I think Microsoft should be pressured under this with their deprecation of Windows Mixed Reality. They're totally fine with just bricking tons of highly sophisticated, expensive devices people already bought.
And then they have the gall to talk about "sustainability."
Not gonna support it anymore? Give it to the community. Patch out the requirement for your top-secret black-boxed corporate garbage.
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Meanwhile ragnarok online a 2002 mmorpg is alive and kicking with hundreds of private servers..
This is so weird after I was just thinking "I wonder if there's a way to play RO the way it was circa 2007 or so when I remember it..."
If you want to make this a law, how would anyone handle this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3jMKeg9S-s&t=73
This argument holds true for developers of all sizes and is somehow totally ignored by most here.
If a game has reached EoL then they're just being straight greedy worrying about someone else making a little money off it. Running a public server costs money too.
And again, nobody said they have to release a ready to go and fully functioning standalone binaries. Just the documentation on how it works as a bare minimum would go EXTREMELY far for the open source community and then the whole "ThEY DiDnt MaKE anY ConTrIBuTIOns" goes up in smoke
Stop killing games said that games need to be kept in a functioning state afaik. That means exactly that. I am very for modding games but modding a game does not entitle me to the original creators intellectual property, but merely the part j have added.
Also what documentation? :)
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Because it would almost certainly not happen in reality. The server being released means everyone could spin up one for free. You wouldn't be able to monetize it to any significant degree.
If you want to be generous toward Thor, he is a security expert trained to focus on any hypothetical risks, however unlikely. If you don't, he is a game developer with monetary interest in this not passing and vast experience conning people.
idk https://pretendo.network/ seems to be doing pretty good. It would be nice to just host my own small server after the game is done for just me and some of my friends.
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It may be true that it may not actually happen. However:
- I have elaborated on monetization in another long comment.
- it cannot be wrong to have monetary interest in your product.
- A law (which is the goal afaik) needs to account for unlikely scenarios, thats why its usually so hard to make new ones
I am not against leaving games playable, but the fact that people like the game means that the devs did a good job and their fate needs to be accounted for. Devs who make good games are not an enemy
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One thing that would go against monetization of servers after hostility to get the original to go down would be that anyone could spin up a free one in competition. Once the server binaries are available to everyone, anyone can run a server. Why would someone pay for something they can get for free?
This still doesn't cover for the abuse of studios which is the main concern here, after all making games harder to kill off shouldn't come with making the production or maintenance more risky or significantly mor expensive. A malicious party trying to kill a game because they dont like it or part of the community is still a valid motive.
Regarding your Question, minecraft servers are a good example of this: there are many servers out there which monetise in game resources or grind shorteners for real world money. I dont think that it is a stretch to say that a non sandbox game could be adjusted to work in such fashion. Also the point is not that there are other options, but that someone may easily make money with stuff the dont own and have never contributed to in its making.
At the end of the day all of us still want new games to be made. Therefore we need to accept that the people making them need to be able to have a steady income doing their job. Monetising ones own creation is, and should be, well within your rights. Even if some of us dont like it providing a platform in form of a game, as a service / with ever fresh content can be a valid value proposition and there are many studios out there doing this successfully while being well respected, think of Deep rock galactic or path of exile.
You can abuse studios right now. This would not change that. It would not make maintenance risky or more expensive.
It provides an extremely theoretical motive for people to do the abuse, that is unlikely to materialize in reality.
And if you want to be theoretical, it removes ideological reasons for abuse. Right now, if you dislike an online game, and got the studio shut down, the game would be gone. With this initiative, it would survive removing the motivation to try in the first place.
It provides an extremely theoretical motive for people to do the abuse, that is unlikely to materialize in reality.
Yeah, this whole argument seems like a theoretical spurious hypothetical.
The dude in the video is acting like this is completely legal too, when all of the abuse is already illegal and the authorities just cannot prevent it because of the scale and size of the Internet combined with their own ineptitude.
If I'm in the business generally of blowing up and attacking company servers, why would I suddenly want to pivot to hosting monetized game servers? That's an entirely different business. The whole thing strikes me as "OH NOES SOMEBODY MIGHT MAKE SOME MONEY OFF OF MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES!!!".
Centralized, proprietary servers for games other than subscription MMO games are complete and utter bullshit. Either make the game a subscription and keep all of it server-side, or allow people to host the servers and stop acting like assholes.
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"They can't run servers forever!" Open source the server then Let people who want to play it run it themselves then
EDIT: typo
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If your game relies on your servers, I won't buy your game.
Switch this meme with "people want video games they own" and it's this thread. There are still plenty of games you can self host: Palworld, Minecraft, Satisfactory, Factorio, Terraria, Space Engineers, Counter Strike 2, The Forest, ARMA III, 7 Days to Die, Rust, Valheim. The average person obviously doesn't care about self hosting their own game server.
They can connect to a server of those who do care about self hosting their own game server.
It's such a garbage argument when you can just counter with "okay then, release software which allows the public to run them for themselves".
There are plenty of famous games, including Minecraft (only the most famous game in history) that manage to do that just fine. Acting like it's impossible just so that you can force people to buy the next game is bullshit.
"okay then, release software which allows the public to run them for themselves".
Or shit at the very least release documentation on how it works and let the open source community take care of it lol
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If two guys and a basement can run the guild wars 1 servers for next to nothing (their words) than yes, company's very much could run their servers forever.
Here is a completely noncontributory comment.
I stumbled across a copy of a physical book from the author of the comic this is from. I wondered to myself if this meme is in it.
It is.
THE PROPHECY HAS BEEN FULFILLED!
THE CHOSEN ONE IS AMONG US
Their fault. I remember a time when publishers allowed for people to run their own dedicated servers, for FPS at least. They could have modified that existing model, but instead they took that ability away from the user whilst almost simultaneously making excuses about the problem they created.
If their servers can't run forever, give us dedicated servers on a larger scale FFS!
I really believe it has nothing at all to do with running the servers or their maintenance costs.
It's about control. It's a rare sight to see any kind of multiplayer experience that isn't all about selling shit through MTX. If you could run your own server, you might be able to also give yourself the shit they want to nickel and dime you for without paying, and that would really ruin their model.
Yeah, but the point is if they've already shut off their servers and moved on to the next thing, who cares? Just let the dedicated fans and other nuts run their own servers and they can wash their hands of it entirely. They weren't going to make any money on it after pulling the plug anyway.
If they completely replace a game with its successor and shut the former down, then people can only play the latter: the developers don't have to compete with themselves, and the publishers have an easier time with their enshittification of their franchise.
The game that kicked off SKG in the first place is an example of this, as far as I've heard The Crew was better received than The Crew 2 and 3.
I mean you can see it even a bit with Payday 3 and 2, if 2 wasn't such a cash cow you can believe a lesser company would've shut that thing down ages ago
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Ah, but then there's a chance fewer people would buy the next piece of shit designed to extract their money.
Yep, their argument against game preservation is that some people may use the preserved games for *shock* recreation!
That is an idiotic argument.
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Yep.
If its possible for someone to choose an older, less expensive game, then that means those games are market competitors for similar modern games, with more mechanics designed to coax money out of you.
Its basically a hyper charged version of planned obsolesence.
You’ve nailed it with these two points.
I’d like to add they specifically want to determine when and where you access their IP.
It would be great if servers were just running in the background with an update
I feel like wayyy too many engineer minds lean back on “too vague” without understanding how many judgment calls judges make in cases every day. It’s not uncommon for them to have to decide what someone’s intent or knowledge was when taking a certain action.
Software engineer here. I find the petition to be very specific, and totally feasible.
Anyway, this isn't a true referendum where its text would become immediate law as soon as it passes. It's a petition that would be presented to legislators who would write the actual law. The petition doesn't need to be written in legalese.
(Also: if the customer paid them even one cent, then they DO owe the customer something. Also: They should be forced to release the server software when they shut down the servers.)
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Getting back to the old status quo