Valve hosts it for "free" (30 to 15% of every sale), yes.

I'm guessing this game has some phone-home DRM or something, and maybe it's only required the first time it's executed after installation ? They could of course just give the game a patch that removes it but I guess they don't want to anger the line investors and make it go down by working even a second on a "discontinued" game.

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.

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.

Yeah, they've just ensured the only way a person can play it is through piracy. Very smart move, WB, very smart...

It's not just limited to games...

We see it most prevalently in games because the gaming industry is massive. But this can also happen to your car... Or your fridge...

Here's a fun story:

There were these few blind people who volunteered to have cybernetic implants that would help them (partially) see. The company went under, the patent is held by a patent troll, but the people still have those implants in their head... Which have now either shut down or are malfunctioning...

Another problem is the game director overhyping and saying "any character is possibile" and he wasn't limiting it to warner bros's IPs but if you're going to do that, then they honestly should have made the game launch with at least one 3rd party character.

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.

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 🩷

It is kinda crazy how these always pop up immediately.

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.

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.

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.

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, trying to prevent a "it didn't work, activism does not work, I'll never do anything like that again" attitude if it fails, but I think a lot of people are just seeing the comment as pointless negativity.

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.

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.

Hack the planet, indeed.

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.

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.

Yeah exactly but I don't think anyone here is capable of comprehending that.

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.