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Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will end service in Nov 28 - but will transition to a paid offline app
(files.catbox.moe)
Source about the offline app thing: https://faq.ac-pocketcamp.com/hc/en-us/articles/36353725150489-What-is-the-paid-version-of-the-app#
Hi, industry bootlicker here! Nintendo is listening to their consumers. I was told corporations are evil and won't listen to consumers and must be forced to do things by law. I much prefer consumers remain vocal about their wants because corporations do indeed listen. No government intervention required. I worry government rules could cause unintended problems that don't benefit anybody.
"A single company does this and while the other 99 won't, saying pretty please will certainly work. See? No intervention required!"
Bootlicker indeed.
Who are the 99 other companies? Which games have they taken away?
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Category:Unplayable_games
And that's only PC games.
Looks like some of those are games that were cancelled, some were online multiplayer games that had the servers shutdown, some were simply removed from the Microsoft Store and some were single player games with always online DRM for which they shut the servers down. So it's not all super scummy nonsense
Taking away a game you bought because the game was intentionally made to rely on a server is always scummy behavior. That's the whole point.
If it's a game like an MMO (which several on that list are) they'd have to publish the server software in order to avoid fully killing the game. And to publish the server software that was only ever expected to run in their own datacenters they'd then have to publish documentation, dependencies, etc. and this is all assuming that it can be contained in a single installer for a single machine without relying on additional services they host, and assuming it has reasonable system requirements for average users to self host.
That's also assuming playing an MMO alone/with only 1-2 people doesn't suck. Play some 2009scape single player without adventure bots. It feels lonely as all heck
Plus there's all of the legal and PR hurdles to ensure you're not exposing yourself to undue risk.
Basically a million reasons for a company to not spend a thousand work hours ensuring their crappy MMO (I've tried out a couple of the listed MMOs, they were unsuccessful for a reason) can continue to be played after they've divested from it
Licenses and middleware can be chosen more proactively to preserve and distribute the server if they know during development that it's a requirement. There are tons of people who functionally play MMOs single player already, when the server is already running. And I play a 12 year old fighting game that's easily able to coordinate 20-100 people to play it multiple times per week with nothing but Discord; there's no doubt in my mind you'd be able to get 40 people together for a raid on a private server.
The other answer from @ampseandrew@lemmy.world already covers most points, so I'll just a few things:
With the possible exception of games that were canceled, those are all examples of super scummy nonsense.
Oh no! Not Microsoft Bingo! That's a list of D list games nobody has ever heard of that all shutdown years ago. I don't think the world would be a better place if the devs of Radical Heights, a free to play arena shooter that was launched and shutdown a month later in 2018 were forced to give their game out to everyone for free after.
Hello, sole arbiter of a game's worth.
Of course not every game is a certified banger, but there's more than enough notable games on that list that made an impact on the industry and should've been preserved for that fact alone.
You didn't create those games. Games are products people work to produce. Radical Heights was a free to play game that was shutdown in a month. What would you force them to do? Release their server code for free so anybody can run a Radical Heights server that people can connect to and play? So a whole bunch of people who never gave the developers a cent have the right to demand the game be given to them simply because it existed for 1 month?
If a game asks for money in any kind of way: Yes. That should be the cost of (trying to do) business.
Alternatively, a full refund for everyone involved, even Kickstarter backers, would also be acceptable.
The cost of trying to do business? They made a product and nobody paid so now they have to give it away for free because they're the greedy ones?
That's just blatantly false. People bought the founders pack were never refunded for example. Those people being entitled to the server software or a refund is anything but greedy, even if that only applies to a single person.
So the devs give all the founders an empty map they can run around offline in and that fixes everything? The game hasn't been killed? It's been saved?
If they can play against bots, which already exist in the game, or band enough people together with access to the game to play on a server one player is able to host, then yes. That's what I'd expect at a minimum.
How would access be enforced to only paying customers? That would require a server which the company is shutting down
If they want to keep some form of DRM then that's not my job to figure out. This wasn't a problem back in the day when server software being distributed was the norm, so it shouldn't be a problem now.
Though personally I'd be in favor of abolishing online DRM entirely, but that's another story.
So you want people to follow a law without knowing how it should be followed? You signed a petition and now it's someone else's problem if they get in legal trouble or not? This makes the world a better place because it protects theoretical people?
At least try to make an effort to understand what I write.
I said it's their job to figure out how to do DRM -if- they want DRM. If they can't figure out how to do that then the answer shouldn't need to be spelled out explicitly: No DRM. Simple as that.
If you'd rather see games you spent money on being taken away from you based on the whims of corporations, just to make sure others who might not have payed for it also can't play it, then I don't know what to tell you.
Control of the server is the DRM. Radical Heights sold hats for $15. How do they ensure only players who paid for hats get them and that non-paying players couldn't just mod them in? They control that information on the server. Which accounts have cosmetics is controlled by the server. That's the DRM. If they had to release the server when shutting down then they'd have no way to ensure only paying customers play the game since the person who runs the sever can modify it however they want. Everyone could get the $15 hats for free! Or maybe they charge $2 for the hats. There's no DRM that could prevent this because control of the server is itself the DRM.
So a dev is being required by law to give out their game without any DRM meaning anyone can play it for free and even give themselves the cosmetics the original devs were using to pay the salaries of the dev team. I worry very much that this would cause companies to stop producing free to play games or charge a subscription for these types of games instead (since subscription based games would be exempt). I wonder why people would risk this to "save" games like Radical Heights which, in all likelihood, would have no community. A game doesn't shutdown after 1 month because it has a thriving community
Yes, you're just explaining regular piracy here. I do not care. It's a thing that's already been possible for almost every single-player game in existence, and yet, there's a constant stream of new single-player games releasing every day. Weird, right?
When I buy a product, I expect it to continue to work unless I break it myself.
What about Free to Play games? Can they be shutdown?
I have no authority over anything, so yes, they can. What I'd like to see is an option to buy an offline copy of the game and any add-ons I bought, but no one does that. What Stop Killing Games is looking for is for the server to be made available after the game's end of life so that you can continue to use anything you paid for.