this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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Better stop making assumptions and start reading. It's about companies providing an offline patch or tools to host a private server. Not giving up source code or running servers indefinitely. For example "The Crew" had a hidden offline mode which got patched out after lunch. Forza horizon 4 always had an offline mode an will continue to run after the server shut down.
Image buying a car that said it requires connection to the manufactures server to drive. Without a date when this connection or manufacture will be abandon. After 5 years the connection is discontinued to deminish costs and you can't use that car anymore. Doesn't it sound a bit scammy for you?
"No, it's not about this thing, it's about the same thing but worded differently" "Providing the offline patch" is precisely what I meant when I was talking about bleeding money, since, again, for online only live service games, the offline patch would take a LOT of work to implement, with no return on investment since this is an EOL game. Who's gonna be paying for that? The underpaid game devs?
And as for tools for hosting private servers, that will allow someone else to come in and harass the game with bots (both in-game and in the community) and exploits to drive up maintenance costs, forcing the studio to shut down and allowing the offender to take the tools, open and monetize the private servers.
As perfect as this initiative may seem in theory, in practice it creates a lot of dangerous scenarios for developers
Also, about the car: when you're paying to play a live service game, you are not purchasing a copy of the game, you are either leasing or purchasing a license to that game, and that licence can be revoked under the terms described in the ToS
Then they will have to stop calling it "buying" and "purchasing" and also explicitly state when exactly will the service expire.
"Stop calling it buying" now that's a good start. Clearly showing the player at the time of buying that the license will expire at EOL is a great way to set expectations properly
As for the exact time the license may expire: that would vary greatly based on the amount of concurrent players and the revenue the game generates, so the best estimate we can really have is whether or not the game generates enough money to continue supporting it (running servers costs money after all)
Overall, clearly setting expectations is the goal that this initiative should have been gunning for, but unfortunately that wouldn't make as much of a sensation in the news
You sure talk a lot for a guy who didn't read the text of the initiative.