Stop Killing Games is a new campaign to stop developers making games unplayable
Stop Killing Games is a new campaign to stop developers making games unplayable
We've all been there right? You paid for a game, it required an active internet connection and a couple of years later the publisher decided they're done with it and shut it down leaving you with a broken game. Annoying.
When I was younger, you'd still buy games in a physical store and one time I found a great sounding game "Fury" (an online PvP RPG). I went ahead and bought it with my pocket money and was super eager to play it. I even remember reading the booklet in the car while driving home, imagining how fun that game will be.
At home I then installed the game just to find out the the fuckers have shut down the game servers just about 2 years after the initial release of the game rendering the game absolutely unplayable.
I'm still kinda pissed about that, and I still have that box lying around somewhere.
I’ve accidentally bought a couple of ps4 games that lost servers within a year of launch, super frustrating, because they look great to play (and they weren’t exclusively multiplayer, so it makes no sense to me to scrap the single player along with multiplayer servers).
Phew, for a moment there I thought you were trying to take the gratuitous murder out of games
Same. What would I even do if I couldn't stick to my checklist titled "Geneva Suggestions" whenever I play?
Developers? Publishers are the problem.
Publishers? Shareholders are the problem. If any involved can make a change then we should do that. I can't talk of publishers but I can speak dev.
If many of us refused towrite code unless it will be shared under an open source/free software license then publushers would have no choice but to let people self host. Sadly school doesn't appear to teach programmers ethics of software, specifically flsoftware freedomn
The developers willingly entrust publishers to make those decisions.
It should be law that online only games, when shut down, must release their server software, so the games community can continue to play and use the software they bought.
also make it law that buying software means you've BOUGHT IT. not leased access to.
And it shouldn't be just games, any time it says "buy," that should be understood to mean complete ownership of that thing. That means:
- DRM will be stripped in a reasonable time frame (say, 2-3 years)
- for physical goods, no prevention of availability of parts
- any server components will be made available for private hosting when the vendor is no longer interested in supporting it (ideally FOSS, but any source-available license should work)
And so on. If the product is intended to be available for a limited time, they should instead say "lease," because that's what that means.
Agree with everything you said.
and I 100% guarantee they dont want to say lease cause they know people wont be willing to pay 70 fucking dollars for a game that they are renting for a time to be dictated by the developer/publisher, which you have no knowledge of. Is it 3 months? 6 months? 12 years? Who knows!
Only major problem is when software is reused for future games and releasing server binaries makes attack vectors much easier to find. Apex legends has a major issue with this where a significant amount of code was reused from previous games that have server code available, and hackers have absolutely used it as a testing ground for all kinds of cheats.
Wanna know how to make that irrelevant? Make the server files available from the start. Wanna play with just your friends? Host a server. Wanna play with a dedicated group that actually bans cheaters effectively? Join a clan. Then, when the sequel comes out, who cares if the server tech is already known, because we can just host our own and collectively oust the cheaters ourselves. It's funny because when multiplayer is handled this way, it stays active for decades. Look at the community for the old Battlefield's, SW Battlefront's, Call of Duty's, Unreal Tournament's, Quake's, etc etc etc. They're small, but they're all still active and not chock full of hackers because they're community led and community maintained. That's a hell of a lot more consistent and reliable than trusting the studio to develop and maintain the server tech, and squash cheating long term. Eventually that system will always fail (look at every old CoD on console, where you can't run your own servers. It's basically a coin flip whether you end up in a game with a hacker, and I guarantee the devs will never do anything about it).
Just play old games. Many will let you self host!
Neverwinter nights anyone?
The campaign plans to get France's consumer rights agency to rule against Ubisoft's killing of The Crew, making game publishers have to leave games at least partially functional when online service ends (or else risk legal action & costs).
France has strong consumer protections, Europe doesn't treat EULAs as very legally serious, and Ubisoft was selling the game mere months before they "discontinued online service", which also stopped the single player mode from working.
And France's consumer protection agency accepts complaints from international customers, too, in English.
So, no, don't just keep your head down & "play old games". This is a perfect chance to actually fix shit.
You have a point. But "play old games," is also part of consumer choice. OP didn't say "just suck it up and play old games." I'd say it's more like "do not buy new games. Stick to perfectly good and playable old games." In theory, companies should feel it in their pockets.
In theory.
I had no idea they killed The Crew like that, insane.
They should have to offer the server software (or open source it) if the turn off their servers
Similar to computing devices without root rights (mainly phones/tablets) where I want forced root access (or better unlocking of bootloader), if the manufacturer does not offer new (security) updates.
love Neverwinter nights! I need to fire it up again, but I seem to recall the random crashing was moderately annoying.
Short version: Game campaign ADHD version - YouTube
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
There are direct government petitions for the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.
...and, if you actually owned The Crew (20 million people did), even outside of France, the French regulator accepts complaints from international customers. Which is super unusual, and very valuable to the campaign...
The Canadian and UK ones aren't live yet
I remember getting C&C 4 and was playing at my grandma's place on my own in the campaign then I lost Internet and it threw me into the main menu. I stopped playing that day since that's bullshit.
https://segmentnext.com/command-and-conquer-4-tiberian-twilight-offline-patch/
Probably not helpful to you, but there's a patch if anyone else needs it