IMO once you delist a game and shut down servers where people cannot play anymore then it should become open source and not protected IP.
Open source is too far, but as part of a shutdown of a game and it’s servers there should be a year long period where the publisher is required to release the game without DRM, including the server software, to all customers.
I could see it going through Steam, you get a message “Delistment notification: The Crew is being delisted, get your permanent copy now!”
Worse solution, but I would accept if publishers were forced to clearly display the exact date when the game will stop functioning at the point of purchase and all advertising materials.
I see what you’re getting at but this would be difficult for a publisher to stick with in the event the game does horribly. Requiring them to keep their word to the date advertised would end up with them only guaranteeing a week, or send ramifications through all industries requiring truth in advertising.
A middle ground would be simply to legislate that when games require online connectivity for any reason, the appropriate software is released to allow a locally run server to enable online function at the time the company decides to decommission their servers. Then require them to hold these files in an accessible manner for at least as long as the servers had been active for.
That would be difficult in the event the company goes out of business, but I’m sure this would be a difficult thing to explain to most politicians so maybe not so simple after all.
If they can’t keep their committed date (or fold entirely), then the source goes open. If every copy happens to get deleted during the bankruptcy, treat it as criminal fraud by the top levels of the company and go after everyone that could have decided to improve backups and other IT methods of avoiding that but didn’t. That’s assuming it was accidental, higher penalties if it can be proven to be deliberate.
In an ideal world, the penalties you describe are suitable. Though, gaming industry aside, for the executive level of most any corporation, being a scapegoat and handed a golden parachute is the worst case scenario for them leaving. In many cases floating across the street right into another executive position.
Jail time isn’t a likely outcome. It just isn’t the world we live in, unfortunately.
Yeah golden parachutes are such a joke in this society that likes to pretend to be a meritocracy.
Though on that note, I’d love to see a law that limits golden parachutes to the lowest paid position in the company. Hell, I’d be ok with that being scaled to full time. Not because disgraced executives deserve even that much but because it would give some incentive to increase pay rates across the company. I’ve also long thought that executive compensation should also be limited by some multiple of the lowest pay. And yeah, I’d include stock options and grants in that (for both employee and executive compensation).
Agreed. The whole idea of these huge payouts could be eliminated and replaced with what exists for everyone else - severance pay. Calculated off a regulated minimum formula, based primarily on how long the person served the company.
I also agree with you that the top and bottom salaries should have a correlation. The C suite making the salary of a shelf stocker in one day should not happen. I think I could accept that the top gets somewhere around 10 or 20 times higher salary. Even 100x would be an improvement to the way it is now.
Like you point out, between stock options and whatever else, an executive salary could be a few hundred thousand, even if their total compensation is tens of millions. In fantasy land it would be nice if, once a company grows to a certain point, say a billion dollars in value, if it were required to convert to an employee owned cooperative entity.
It’s a shame things are the way they are. Maybe one day we won’t have politicians that can be bought. That’s a different discussion altogether.
I think the company should also be required to clearly state the amount of time they’ll keep supporting the game and will operate the servers for. If they decide to shut them down early, everybody should be given the choice to either receive a full refund or the non DRMd version of the game + the server software like you suggested.
In general I think all paid games should be required to clearly state the amount of time they’ll keep providing feature updates for, as well as support for new hardware, major bug fixes, and minor bug fixes. Although games that aren’t online and just reach EoL are still playable for quite some time, eventually there’ll be some breaking operating system or hardware change that will force the use of a virtual machine, compatibility software, or other types of emulation to keep playing. That might not happen for 50 years, at which point you probably don’t care, but still. I’d give more leniency to indie Devs and games made as passion projects, though.
Although obvious once you think about it, I don’t think most people realise or even think of the fact they will eventually not be able to play the game they’re buying. And these mega companies need to stop making games they dump 6 months after launch.
I get what you mean but that is not feasable, however, if we look back at the old multiplayer experience like in Unreal Tournament 2004, the company runs a master server, and the community runs the game servers.
The master server just lists the game servers and allows for a server browser. That is WAY less resource intensive and can be run almost indeffinately.
The master server for UT2004 ran continously for almost 20 years, and when Epic announce it was shutting down, a fan server was created and after a quick edit of the config file you can play UT2004 multiplayer exactly like it was in the past.
So let’s go back to that model of multiplayer, it requires a bit of skill to set up your own server securely, but you’ll have way more choice and less commitment of resources from the publisher making it available for longer at less cost.
eventually there’ll be some breaking operating system or hardware change that will force the use of a virtual machine, compatibility software, or other types of emulation to keep playing.
I still can play Unreal from 1998 on modern Linux. Faust bless Torvalds and his “never break userspace”.
Full refunds would be reasonable, if they wanted to protect their IP
Ubisoft has done a fantastic job of convincing me to never buy a Ubisoft game ever again.
Not sure that’s how a company is supposed to work, but they sure seem to think so.
Well, they aren’t alone. Blizzard and Activision is on my blacklist. As well as pretty much any studio own by Microsoft at this point… Oh, and Sony! Can’t forget about them.
The list is long.
Nintendon’t!
Here’s a neat tip:
You can go to most publisher or developer pages on Steam and “ignore” them to prevent Steam from ever showing you their slop again.
Example:
- Go to: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Ubisoft
- Click the “Settings” cog.
- “Ignore this creator”
You can do the same with EA, 2K, etc. Don’t even give these parasites microseconds of your time when they release their next slop title.
LEMMY GOLD!!! 😳
Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to apply to publishers or developers that don’t have a landing page
2k? What’d they fuck up?
I purchased Rayman Legends on a big Steam sale because it is a great game and I wanted to play it again. I installed it. I hit play. It tried to install the Ubisoft launcher. I uninstalled it and refunded.
Fuck off, Ubisoft.
There’s a great initiative going on right now trying to hold Ubisoft and other game publishers accountable for shitty practices like this by trying to petition governments from a few different nations to create legal protections for people to continue to have access to their games they purchased after the publisher decides to abandon a game. If you live in an EU country especially, you might be able to help sign a petition still: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
The petition doesn’t seem to be active, i.e. signable, right now.
There’s a bunch of petitions and actions possible on various parts of the world. It’s not just one meaningless online petition but a comprehensive plan to bring this to attention of various governments worldwide. Keep an eye out, there might be something you can help with in the future depending on where you live.
My dream is an “internet archive” for all video games, modded to run offline. If the game becomes unavailable for purchase, the archive opens that game and makes it available for all.
The next step is for this kind of release to become law, and supported by manufacturers.
Do this with books too. How much we’ve lost.
+1 for Anna’s Archive. It’s an amazing resource for students too, since they keep research papers and textbooks.
And before someone gets up in arms about the research papers, the researchers don’t get paid by the journals for publishing with them. In fact, the researchers need to pay the journal to publish, and then the journal turns around and charges people to read it.
If you ever need to get research for free, you can usually email the researchers directly and they’ll be happy to share it for free; They hate the journals too, (because like I said earlier, they have to pay the journal thousands of dollars,) but feel obligated to use them to publish.
Even worse, that research and journal publishing was often funded by public funds and research grants. So the journal is paywalling research that taxpayers already paid for, and should be free to access.
And before someone gets up in arms about the research papers, the researchers don’t get paid by the journals for publishing with them. In fact, the researchers need to pay the journal to publish, and then the journal turns around and charges people to read it.
What you’re describing here is called predatory publishing and is not the norm. It’s the “fake news” of scientific journals. I’m not “up in arms” about the original topic of making info available to the public whatsoever, just wanted to correct this part.
Some respected, high impact journals also charge for submitting.
Lower quality journals charge more and almost guarantee publication.
What you’re describing here is called predatory publishing and is not the norm.
No, predatory publishing “is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors while only superficially checking articles for quality and legitimacy” without real peer review. For context reviewers aren’t paid by high impact journals either.
I just donated to them. :)
Good human.
The fast downloads 🏎🏎🏎
That sounds like a great plan for all types of media. We would better document our history and make so much human creativity accessible to those who cannot afford to indulge in what’s currently for sale.
Why do we not do this? Oh wait, it’s MONEY? Pfft, it will never happen.
Libraries are communist or something and ESA fights hard for games to stay out of them.
Education? Sounds very communist!
Translations of big text from left to right: “Our country should be most educated and cultural country”, “Study and work! Work and study!”, “To have more you should produce more, to produce more you should know more”.
Underdogs was such a great site
I really hate what it’s become. Bit of a hollow shell of the glory days
The next step is for this kind of release to become law
You mean legal deposit?
Fully agree with it, but they’re still extremely popular, and people will gladly keep handing over their money.
For me, I say “Ok” to them wanting us to get used to not owning our content - followed with “Then I’ll pay rental prices. Which means I’m not buying at $60+ dollars, if all I get to do is rent it then I’ll pay <$15 going forward.”
Alternatively: 🏴☠️
Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate! ☠
It’s sad how consumers have zero rights when it comes to digital content. Companies can retroactively make changes, removing content legitimately bought by consumers with no repercussions. I get “not owning” but for a company to collect money for services provided and not actually provide those services will never not astound me.
If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing.
Yarr, matey.
idk how madden players can put so much time and money into ultimate team only for the service to end after 2 years. and they do it every single year
Same way FIFA players do and have been doing, to the tune of over 1 billion dollars since 2018.
Jfc…
Right? Call it what you will, changing terms of sale or use after taking someone’s money is wrong.
Yeah I can’t even comprehend how that just passes as totally normal these days. Make it all make sense…
This is basically why I don’t buy anything that I don’t think I can protect from being fucked with.
That’s all ownership is really.
Because the FTC is toothless when it comes to EULAs. You can sign your rights away by agreeing to it (which is required to play the game).
It’s better than what Bungie did with Destiny 2… just gutted 1/2 the content from the game, including all the story missions and the first several paid expansions.
They wanted to attract new players with a smaller download size, but the new players come in and go “WTF is going on?”
Whoa, wtf? How did I miss that drama, haha holy shit. I definitely remember downloading it a few years ago and being aghast at its absurd size (think it was around 120GB? which nowadays that’s pretty par for the course because fuck optimization). But gutting half your content just to save space… have they not heard of compression? Like what the hell were they thinking haha
They didn’t just remove story missions and quests and things, they removed entire PLANETS from the game. It was crazy!
That’s the most baffling MMO decision I’ve seen, tbh. WoW has plenty of issues but at least they aren’t just deleting the continent of Northrend to save on install space or anything
Bungie’s problem is they don’t really want to make a story based looter shooter, they want a free to play PvP gacha engine.
I would’ve been fine with that if that’s how they launched it. It wasn’t. I stopped when they sunset a bunch of shit the first time in the first game. I figured the second would be more of the same, but sunsetting entire DLCs is nuts.
Both of those things are shitty; it’s just one of them is worse.
deleted by creator
I learnt that over a decade ago.
Don’t buy a Ubisoft, EA, or frankly any big publisher game.
I wouldn’t trust CDPR so easily yet after how diabolical the launch of CP2077 was.
IMO a fumbled and later recovered launch is different from the enshitification of video games like P2W, MTX in general, lootboxes, releasing what should be patches as paid DLC, invasive DRM and anti-cheat. I’d file all of those under bad design, while a bad launch is more of a bad execution. There can be overlap, like if they fully intended for early players to fill the role of beta testers.
The way I approach it is I try to avoid the bad design stuff entirely but just avoid buying new games at release and definitely never pre-order. I’ll also support games in early release if I really like the concept and want to give them a better chance at being able to pull it off, but I go into those with the understanding that it’s not complete right now and there’s a chance it never will be. But I don’t see any reason to hold anything against the games that have messy launches but later recover.
Though I’ve learned to not jump on the hype train and that makes it much easier to not take any of this stuff personally.
The launch was terrible, but there are some things that keep them apart from the rest of terrible launches.
Cyberpunk 2077 was a really ambitious game, with a lot of new mechanics and incredible graphics. Beasts like that are really difficult to optimize for a large range of computers with different specs, so at first it ran poorly on some.
The most notably buggy release was the PS4 one. And rightfully so. They were trying to run a truly next gen game on a console which was more than a decade old. They not only had to optimize the game, but they basically made a completely different game, with different assets and engines, which was really difficult to do. Still, it was too much for the console, especially old PS4s that were full of dust or had old fans and were overheating.
Another important fact is that users were also pressuring CDPR into releasing Cyberpunk 2077. It was delayed at least once (maybe twice, I don’t remember), and people wanted to play the game. They probably had to choose between delaying it another time or releasing it without polishing it that much.
I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of “release now fix later” games. However, I don’t think they really did it on purpose. The game was too ambitious for its own good, and having to develop, optimize and test two basically different versions of it was too big of a task for a studio that in today’s terms wasn’t even that big. The rest of the AAA producers just realized that CDPR still won loads of money at launch, and decided to release incomplete games on purpose, after seeing that CDPR could make profits that way.
But must importantly, CDPR did an amazing job at fixing the game, unlike many other studios releasing broken AAAs. They optimized the code, fixed most of the bugs, improved the AI massively and made the game really stable, to the point where I’ve seen it running at 40 FPS on 10+ year old overheating laptops. Even though it took a while, they still delivered the game they promised to their buyers.
I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of “release now fix later” games.
Hardly. That’s been a thing for a while now.
Decades
I think release then fix became common as soon as internet distribution became practical
Back when everything was on physical media the releases were more polished
Cyberpunk 2077 was a really ambitious game, with a lot of new mechanics and incredible graphics. Beasts like that are really difficult to optimize for a large range of computers with different specs, so at first it ran poorly on some.
What about all the other “Ambitious games” that we’ve had over the years that come out just fine? A game being ambitious does not excuse a company releasing the game in what is blatantly an unfinished state. This isn’t the case of a game having a few performance hiccups here and there but rather egregious bugs and severe performance issues across the board. This is stuff that is all over youtube, reddit, twitter and so on. It’s pretty well documented how bad the game was.
The most notably buggy release was the PS4 one. And rightfully so. They were trying to run a truly next gen game on a console which was more than a decade old. They not only had to optimize the game, but they basically made a completely different game, with different assets and engines, which was really difficult to do. Still, it was too much for the console, especially old PS4s that were full of dust or had old fans and were overheating.
Again, this really isn’t an excuse. They had the power the can the next gen versions of the game if it was so difficult to pull off. They also had the power to delay the game in order to make sure that it was ready for launch. They could have done so many things such that the last gen versions of the day would either never see the light of day or be ready for launch. CDPR are a big enough studio to pull something like this off. They’re not a small indie studio.
Another important fact is that users were also pressuring CDPR into releasing Cyberpunk 2077. It was delayed at least once (maybe twice, I don’t remember), and people wanted to play the game. They probably had to choose between delaying it another time or releasing it without polishing it that much.
Yes, there may have been pressure. But no, the consumer base does not have anywhere near enough power over corporations like you’re trying to imply. Games aren’t just released early because “Oh no the consumers are getting angy”. Though once again this was their fault due to them giving the consumer a completely unrealistic initial release date that they obviously could not hit, considering the absolute state of the game at launch.
The most likely explanation is that they were simply trying to get the game out as soon as possible to cash in and they absolutely did not want to miss a major sales period such as Christmas. They were simply trying to drop a minimal viable product with plans to fix it later. Turns out they dropped a less than minimally viable product in their rush to make some dosh. Knowingly too if you look into the allegations that I’ll link later.
I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of “release now fix later” games.
No. “Release broken fix later” has been a thing for maybe the last decade. Do people not remember shitshows like AC:Unity? Cyberpunk is most definitely not the first game to be “Release broken, fix later”.
However, I don’t think they really did it on purpose.
I don’t think it was dropped broken on purpose. But I do think it was an attempt to drop the usual bare minimum product. Just so happens that they miscalculated and dropped something less than minimal. It’s still gross incompetence and shows the consumer they’re more than willing to drop something bare minimum with the promise of fixing it later. Rather than dropping a complete game.
The game was too ambitious for its own good, and having to develop, optimize and test two basically different versions of it was too big of a task for a studio that in today’s terms wasn’t even that big.
Again, not an excuse. They’re a massive studio, big enough to have people that know how to plan a project like this, people that understand their limitations and what is or isn’t achievable. It’s standard project planning practice.
But even then there are allegations that people in the company were aware that the game was not ready to launch.
And yet they still dropped the game.
There is no excuse for the launch of CP2077.
The rest of the AAA producers just realized that CDPR still won loads of money at launch, and decided to release incomplete games on purpose, after seeing that CDPR could make profits that way.
The industry learned this about a decade ago. We’ve been plagued by half baked launched for so long at this point that you don’t have to go far to find out about it.
But must importantly, CDPR did an amazing job at fixing the game, unlike many other studios releasing broken AAAs.
In this case I think it’s less fixing the game and more finishing the development of the game, all things considered. The thing they should have done before releasing the game as if it was a finished product when, in fact, it clearly wasn’t.
There’s fixing a game and there’s what CDPR had to do to CP2077.
Yes, a lot of companies don’t fix their games. But at the same time most of these companies don’t release their games in such a state that they start getting into legal trouble over the launch of their game.
https://www.nme.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-investigated-polish-consumer-protection-agency-2855205
Cyberpunk was such a massive disaster that they didn’t really have much choice other than to finish working on their game. To repair the massive hit to their PR as well as other issues such as the class action and the whole debacle with Sony kicking the game of the PS Store.
Even though it took a while, they still delivered the game they promised to their buyers.
Yes, it’s good that they stuck with the game and did more than the bare minimum to bring it to a better state. But it’s not exactly something to praise them over. It took them ~2 years to bring the game to a state that it should have been in at launch. Instead of launching the game in a finished state, they knowingly dropped the game in an unfinished state. They also put out a review embargo preventing reviewers from informing the consumer about said issues, they actively worked to mislead the consumer about the state of their game.
What CDPR did is absolutely not excusable under any circumstances.
Their next projects should absolutely be scrutinised until they prove that they have learned from their mistakes.
I would argue No Man’s Sky started the trend of “release now fix later” but I suppose they are not a big AAA studio. I suppose CDPR wasn’t really considered as AAA until the release of Witcher 3.
You guys don’t have good long-term memory.
Thanks for providing a lot of insight to the conversation.
deleted by creator
And lots of gamers praise Microsoft for GamePass, because it’s cheap. When Microsoft’s goal with GamePass is the same as Ubisoft’s. Ms would love that you rent your games from them indefinitely. Wouldn’t surprise me that in 10-15 years you can’t buy the games made by Microsoft anymore only rent through GamePass and the subscription fee would be five times higher than now
I mean depending on your gaming style it might be cheaper.
If you play a game for a few hours and then buy the next new shiny 3A game then the game pass is cheaper.
If you buy one game and then send thousands of hours into it then obviously it is not cheap
I hear about people getting Minecraft on game pass. Those people don’t play Minecraft like I play Minecraft
The single most problematic thing where you should start to notice how bad gamepass can be is when you unsubscribe and decide to buy one of the games you’ve played only to have your savegames in gamepass gulag.
Is that true? PC, Xbox, or both?
It was on PC. See my other reply for the specifics. Very shitty experience and the dealbreaker around game pass since I’ve managed not finish multiple games before they dropped out of the service.
Edit: Sorry, mixed it up, it was on PC
You are really making a mountain of a mole hill, to get my save from Outer Worlds gamepass to use on steam’s version was as easy as just copy pasting the files in another folder
They absolutely are not and you are lucky you were able to get your save game out. The majority of games have their config and save files encrypted and are completely unusable as far as any other platform goes.
There are some exceptions, mainly games that have official mod support tend to have areas you can access but the majority of others won’t.
I really don’t know what to say, I did this both with Outer Worlds and Code Vein. Just went to PCgamingwiki’s entries of the 2 games, saw where the save folders are, and dropped each from the microsoft one to the steam one.
Ah, PC Gaming Wiki, what a fantastic resource. Made realize how many games in my libraries are actually DRM-free
Well you aren’t going to be able to pick out a trend with only testing two games. Its enough of a problem that I would double check where the save is before starting a game on gamepass.
The last game I tried to move and failed was snowrunner I believe.
Well it might depend on specific games, but for like a dragon it did not work out in the end.
You can’t move the files?
I tried to get the save game for yakuza like a dragon and first I had to hack myself into getting permission to access the specific folders ON MY PC. When I managed that I saw that the are in some weird format that supposedly doesn’t transfer to steam for example.
I’m confused. You tell me you had to “hack into your own PC” for the files (which makes absolute no sense at all), while telling someone else this was all on Xbox. Lol which is it?
Sorry it got mixed up, it was in PC. It’s the xboxapps folder or something like that, which windows locks down as a system folder.
I really hope you’re being sarcastic.
If you’re not, and you seriously are this unable to (checking notes) move files from one folder to another… You should probably stay on that Xbox you’re now saying you don’t have.
The poster isnt able to explain themselves but Microsoft encrypts most of the game files for their gamepass games which prevents copy pasting the files elsewhere.
You can move the files but they are useless for any other version, and I believe you can’t even copy and paste from gamepass to gamepass either, but I can’t say for sure on that.
It’s already becoming low quality crap. The GamePass model doesn’t work well with expensive games since they are going for quantity. Hi Fi Rush’s devs have been taken down along with a couple more studios. I wonder if that will make a difference, though. Gamers want it cheap, companies want max profit. I’m imagining shovelware in 5 years and many games taken off of it.
I don’t mind paying full price for a game, as long as I own it in the end and that the game is not ridiculously short.
Paying 70 euros for a game with less than 7hrs of playtime to get to the end, and artificially padded with collectibles around a open world is a ripoff especially when the game requires licensing servers to be online to play, even for single-player.
Make it 5 years.
I legit haven’t bought a game anywhere but steam in over a decade. I simply do not trust the motives or responsibility of any other publisher. And at this point, I’m too afraid of them yoinking their game after I’ve paid for it that I’ll likely never change.
GOG is good too.
We all should be hitting GOG up more often if we want the legit ONLY good competition for steam to not die out one day. They are as good as steam in many ways.
GOG is fantastic but Steam keeps getting my business because of all the extras I really depend on like cloud saves, game library sharing, proton, Big picture and controller mapping.
I just wish they’d support Linux like Valve have
I mean, they host Linux versions of games, it’s close. I get what you mean though, a native Linux program like they have for Windows and MacOS would be great.
As soon as GOG has linux support at least 80% as good as steam, I’ll jump right over. I used to always prefer GOG over Steam but I’ve really felt that they don’t care about supporting my platform at all unless that’s changed in recent times so I’m happier giving Valve my cut.
Yes.
I’ve also been avoiding playing games that involve some third party launcher or login. I’m not perfectly consistent with this and have bought some games before realizing they had this, but even steam games can be subject to a company deciding they don’t want to support their game anymore (which IMO is fair) and just killing the game off entirely, which isn’t fair. I’d like to see a requirement that other steps be taken to keep it going without their active support. Like opening the source and relinquishing all copyrights on that code. If they want to keep parts of it, then pull it out into a library that they continue to maintain.
Meanwhile someone somewhere is having issues with steam taking too much profit. Do note that even if a game is DELISTED from steam, you still can download the game on steam. Of course it is a different story with license revocation and that is a whole different can of worms. I don’t even know if steam allows the publisher to revoke a license for a game that the player already paid for just because the game is not supported anymore (a different case with breaking ToS/EULA).
Steam requires others to keep the game downloadable if its in your library, but they can’t do anything if ubisoft decides to shut the servers down. You keep your license but it’s useless.
Well, yeah for multiplayer only games. Hence why I don’t get the appeal of paid multiplayer only games without dedicated server software available.
Ubisoft has been trash for a long time now. It’s a shame that they control some good IP, but the company’s too far gone to ever be trustworthy. Save your time and money and just play something else imo.
If they die, other companies will buy that IP
They’re sure giving EA a run for their
moneyuniversally despised revulsion…
