We’ve all been there right? You paid for a game, it required an active internet connection
Yes I’ve been there. I immediately refunded the game and then downloaded a pirated copy that worked offline.
Stop Killing Games is a new campaign to stop developers making games unplayable
Submitted 7 months ago by ZippyBot@lemmy.zip [bot] to gaming@lemmy.zip
Comments
helenslunch@feddit.nl 7 months ago
papelitofeliz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Not all games allow that. Unless there’s a private server developed for it. The idea is to require companies to provide those tools once the game is taken down.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 7 months ago
I understand what “the idea is”. The only way to make that will happen is to get people to stop buying them. And I think it’s abundantly clear at this point that that is not going to happen.
So yes, piracy is and will be your only recourse.
BossDj@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Refers to publishers, not developers
They want server based games to release individual hosting capabilities at end of life, like games used to twenty years ago.
I feel like the language they’re using (a game as a good/product) could just result in server based games being labeled a service and switching to a monthly fee model. Or setting a predetermined end of life date (changeable to extend but not shorten)?
Maestro@fedia.io 7 months ago
Monthly fees and published sunsets are fine, because then customers know what they are getting in to. Selling you a single player game for 50 euro, then yanking the game away 3 months later is not.
papelitofeliz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
But still, why not provide server tools?
kworpy@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I don’t play AAA games, but if I were you I would simply not buy games from big corps who have a long and notorious history of shutting down games. Don’t complain about bad business practice when you’re rewarding it.
OneCardboardBox@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
The point of this campaign is not that it’s trying to stop a “bad business practice”. There’s a strong possibility that this is illegal in many countries. Just because America is a hellscape of terrible consumer protection rights doesn’t mean people in other countries don’t deserve the products they paid for.
kworpy@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I know that, but the title and body text of this post implies a different subject, which is what I was responding to.
CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 7 months ago
That kind of reminds me of Control on the Switch; it’s a cloud based version so if the host you’re out of luck.
theverge.com/…/control-cloud-version-nintendo-swi…
I’m pretty sure in the situation of The Crew there is a built in offline mode but it’s disabled.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
First and foremost: Maybe don’t rally this around a game where basically everyone’s response was “… that was still a thing?” and we were looking at very low (was it outright double digit?) concurrents leading up to it being killed.
That said: I also think this… completely ignores the realities of development and is dangerously close to a “lazy devs” rhetoric? The idea that devs “just” have to make an offline unlocked version before they sunset a game sounds great. Same with building out self-hosting infrastructure and… emulators for MMOs. Okay
(numbers might be slightly off, roll with me) January alone saw about as many layoffs across gaming as we had in all of 2023. The people who work in those studios don’t have time to sit down and test out some self hosting infrastructure for the game they put their heart and soul into for the past two years. They are busy frantically calling anyone they know to find leads for a job, updating their linkedin, and ripping copper out of the walls in the hopes of making rent.
So I can definitely see an Embracer group signing this for the PR. And, having lived similar bullshit in a different industry, I can see them using this as a weapon against the workers. “Hey guys. I know we are all down because of the announcement that all of you are gonna go fuck off and die so that I can get a bigger parachute. But we have a responsibility to our shareholders and customers to finish this one last project. So we are going to pay you an extra two or three weeks to do these tickets. And if you don’t accomplish your responsibilities we will fire you with cause and take your severance. So… get the fuck to work, I got a hooker coming at 10”
I dunno. On the surface… this still looks naive. But I like the spirit and do wish more games would be developed with an offline mode (even if I know, as a developer/engineer, that that just means a lot of work for minimal benefit to customers). But this REALLY feels like it is going to be right up there with the other insanity if/when people talk about “gamergate 2.0”. Like, I am getting MASSIVE Total Biscuit vibes where he is saying stuff we all are thinking but rapidly becomes a rallying cry for chuds and never does anything to really reject that.
Maven@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I want to point out that the reason The Crew is being pointed out and focused specifically is because it was a large game sold to 12m people and it’s a game from France, a country with fantastic consumer protection laws.
It’s being focused because it’s the game with the best shot of having legal action success NOT because it’s the most loved game of all time.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
12 million sales isn’t actually all that much relative to major games. France definitely is nice (even if the track record of EU rulings having meaningful impact is very hit or miss).
But it still undermines this as “a movement”. When the first response is “no shit that game got delisted?” you immediately give ammunition for why this is untenable.
huf@hexbear.net 7 months ago
they could release it all as-is under gpl when they sunset a game and then someone else would do all the work…
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
I know it makes people cranky, but look at Yuzu “becoming” Suyu. All the Suyu team really has is memes and the ability to selfhost a gitlab. They don’t have the resources to maintain or develop the emulator themselves. And it is only a matter of time until one or more yuzu “forks” become bitcoin miners that improved support for the latest Mario game or whatever.
Licensing? It depends how the company handled it but it is generally “a dick move” to change the license of an existing codebase without the consent of the developers. So you either end up flattening all history (and thus, nobody gets credit for the work they did) or you need to make sure that Jeff who left the company four years ago is cool suddenly getting pinged on issues with the cape physics code he forgot about.
AND that also assumes that it used no proprietary resources. Maybe that cape physics code is REAL good and the company doesn’t want to have to throw that away when it can still give them an advantage for a new title. Or it might be as simple as depending on an internal build farm or tool. While we all make fun of them for it, there is a reason Facebook/Meta developers are fucking idiots when it comes to git. Because Sapling was designed to fit their needs and workflow and changes just enough that you can never trust a former meta dev to understand anything about VCS. But… that also becomes an issue if you are just uploading it to Microsoft’s Github.
zaph@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
January alone saw about as many layoffs across gaming as we had in all of 2023.
This is what they should stop doing.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Yup. But discussions of the impact of venture capital/investors largely abandoning gaming and the importance of Week One sales don’t line up with “Fucking scammers are stealing our games and you are a traitor if you buy any game before it is 90% off on g2a” talking points.
Wheras “lazy devs don’t want to put the effort in to finish their games” is what gets you views and an army of rabid supporters.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That’s actually fantastic. I so hope they’ll be successful.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Legislate it that they have to submit the source code to the government when they release it in your market
Then when the game is shutdown the government releases the source
You can put X number of years in between
rizoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Publishers and corpos are ruining games. Not developers.
Terminarchs@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
Agreed, if anything developers are the reason games are playable!
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 7 months ago
So why is it the devs are the ones to decide to end support for a game finally killing it? All a publisher can do is delist it so it can be sold by them, sometimes the dev can find a new publisher or reself publish if the game was good enough.
maynarkh@feddit.nl 7 months ago
I think the world “developers” means the studios here, which is mostly because the suits who know how to extract value from stuff others create like to cosplay as experts in the industry they are leeching off of.
Look at Musk, he’s a rocket scientist / web developer / automotive engineer / civil engineer. Of course he is.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
sometimes these words are used intechangeably
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Sometimes? A company that makes video games is literally called the developers of the game…… a game can’t be made without some company developing a game, they also have e developers, as well as a host of other jobs completed by other employees, like artists and programmers.
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s the developers killing off a 10 year old game when their third finally comes to steam.
Publishers and corpos don’t decide when to end support, that is entirely a dev decision.
So no one is immune to sucking.
gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What are you basing this on? Publishers fund development, and that funding dictates where development time is spent. Publishers also absolutely can decide when support ends, see WB getting ready to delist a bunch of games adult swim games published from steam. The devs have no say over that.