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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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If people can run pirate MMO servers, then they can run private Helldivers 2 servers. It's very conveniently impractical for private servers to be distributed when the game has microtransaction revenue streams, because private servers would inevitably provide opportunities to sidestep them. They'd still make plenty of money though, because most people would choose to play on official servers regardless, but they see it as a threat to their business model, which is why they don't do it.
It still stands in the way of preservation, and it's not good enough to release private servers after the game is sunset, because there's no guarantee while the game is still supported that it's going to happen to keep the game alive. Plus, even in a best case scenario, private servers are necessary to get around server downtime, DDOS attacks, queues when the servers are at capacity, or just the ability to play with some friends if you're in a cabin in the woods.
That’s true; I tend to think of a private server hosting a single game session of 1-4 players, but I haven’t interacted with private reimplementing of large community interactions. Generally, the commercial implementation would involve many connected servers, so it’s perhaps a bit more complicated than giving a separate address in a launcher option, but becomes less of an excuse overall.
That said, while the game is alive and well, the only motivating reason for that option’s existence is to support piracy of their game. Depending on how much they care, it’s something they’d have to keep under wraps in a development folder until the day the game dies out.
You may as well say the same thing about DRM-free games then, since this is effectively just a gimmick to disguise DRM. You don't provide the server to endorse piracy. You do it because anything less is giving your customer an inferior product. Even if the preservation aspect of this didn't upset me, I'd still have a hard time buying a game like Helldivers 2 because it comes across as phenomenally poor value compared to buying a game that's built to last.