Yeah I could not comment so quick unless I programmed something to do it for me....

You're not a gamer but you know how the server infrastructure has changed since Unreal released decades ago. Shove off, dickhead.

You are weird, probably why no one likes you. At least you have games

you dumb fucks won't be able to maintain your own infra since you spend all your time playing games.

This whole ordeal is so moronic

What I'm proposing is for you to get a life and realize how pathetic you all sound

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.

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'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.

"Oh no, it isn't a 20s TikTok video!1! How could anyone understand such gibberish neatly organized text with detailed explaination of why preserving games is important!11!1"

But seriously, you are on a community about games, define yourself as not being a gamer, and clearly show you have no idea of the topic at hand, why do you even bother engaging in this conversation?
Just leave us, silly gamers, try to protect the medium we share and love, and continue on your way.
I doubt anything here is of any worth to you.

But they own the IPs...

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.

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…

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

An online-only game without server requirement… isn’t a game anymore

And yea, if the law only applies in a couple of years, then all good since devs can take that in mind, which makes it a lot easier

It is if there's ways to shift the server connection to a community hosted server...

This is a public forum, and you are acting like spoiled children. I'll comment as I please.

Take all that superior knowledge you have about infrastructure and engineering and build your own games that conforms to your world view instead of gaming all day while complaining and consuming colorful energy drinks.

If it was important to you as you claim, you wouldn't have supported the game publishers from the get go, but you do. It is just easier and funner to shit post instead of doing anything productive, right?

Have fun in your little echo chamber of pathetic nonsense, no one will take you seriously.

I agree with most of what you said,.

On the other hand -

1. If you don't like their approach, stop buying their games.
2. 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.

1. Well, I don't. It doesn't void my freedom to express my opinion on the matter.
2. 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.

Not with that attitude.

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.

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.

Ya know I was really hoping that when Capcom released Mega Man X Dive Offline that it would become a standard that all live service games would adhere to...

How naive