1y ago

This should be illegal

This should be illegal, companies should be forced to open-source games (or at least provide the code to people who bought it) if they decide to discontinue it, so people can preserve it on their own.

179 comments

you will own nothing and you will be happy.
- It was a free 'game' that was little more than a tutorial 🤷‍♂️
  
  It's not like it's never happened to paid full games before.
  cries in Battleborn
  
  So why do they need to remove it?
  
  No it's the great cleansing where... checks notes.. billionaires crush the working classes by taking away their free virtual pets?

This is the natural progression of the games-as-a-service model. Any game that relies on online support of some kind just to function will eventually cease like this.
Is it stupid that a vr game about a pet relies on online support to function? Absolutely. But it is what it is. Buy more offline games.
- That's why for the game I develop, players can request a copy of their save file and we have a singleplayer mode you can download and host yourself.
  It's not the most convenient thing, but players use it, and it's future-proof!
  
  You are a god among men
- This is also the reason I'm all open source. Not just games, but seeing someone abandon a program hurts. Or just wanting to make a change on your own to suit your needs. I don't have any big fancy programs, but I at least put my code openly on github.com for that reason. Both my "big" ones are just me using another program and realizing I could make something that worked better for me. At like 100x the time investment, but programming is fun.
  
  Looking at the retro computer scene should make anyone a diehard open source fanatic, it's god awful how much retro stuff relies on a single guy happening to find an old disc in their basement and upload it to the internet, and a lot of the time that never happened and so the software is just lost forever and the only way hardware can be used is by people writing their own software completely from scratch and sharing it with others.
  And of course if they then don't make it open source that's extra fun.
- drg is technically game as a service right? it works fully offline are relies on local save files and steam networking for lobbies
  
  game that doubles as a service? beats me.
  DRG is also a unicorn of a game
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRGszw0KubQ

oh god this reminds me of Japanese man who married Hatsune Miku in hologram form can no longer speak to his wife of four years.
"The doting husband has gained thousands of followers on Instagram by sharing insights into his life with Miku, but things took an unexpected turn during the pandemic when Gatebox announced it was discontinuing its service for Miku."
this is why I have trust issues with proprietary software
- "Megacorp killed my cyberwife" Is a heck of an vigilante origin story
  
  Or, you know, supervillain.
  
  "Ultraweeb's Revenge: Coming this Fall!"
  
  I’d read it! :D
- If that man harnesses the power of LLM like Chat GPT, he can continue talking with his wife
  
  Until ChatGPT is shut down. Have control over your waifus, people!
  
  hmm not sure if that would work as the model that he was using would be different from what's available so he'd probably notice some differences which might cause a mix of uncanny valley and surrealism/suspension of disbelief where the two are noticably not the same
  plus using a chat-only model would be real tragic as it's a significant downgrade from what they already had
  his story actually feels like a Romeo and Juliet situation
- Geez.....that guy really needs ~~to get laid by~~ a Miku Robot.
  
  Next thing you know, he doesn't read the fine print, ther "brain" is internet connected and, sooner or later, he won't have a Miku talking back to him again

Game preservation is dying because of DRM. You want games you can still play in 10 years, pirate that sht and donate to those keeping up the good art of game cracking. It's either that or buying remakes a decade later that are just thinly reskinned. I can live with sht like denuvo since newer games just remove it after a year and then I can buy it. Storefronts like uplay or egs that are dependent on a malignant profit only entity are at best mid-term rentals and at worst spyware you have to pay for the privilege to use.
- Furthermore, if you don't want to pirate: Buy your games on GoG. They are DRM free and you don't need the launcher to play (GoG Galaxy is amazing though btw)

My proposal is for a mandated label on software and hardware to indicate that it will stop working when some online service goes offline.
- And then what? Corporations will just slap a disclaimer on their products informing you of said condition and that you need to agree, understand and accept these terms and conditions and call it a day.
  
  Aye, but forcing them to put a clear "We support this until this date" label will make that a mandated part of their marketed.
  That or, you know, force companies to release server software when they sunset support for their product. That would also be nice.
  
  And then products without that label would gain at least a little a bit of market share. Most people still buy inefficient fridges because they are shinier, but at least a few read those yellow labels mandated by law and choose the more efficient ones.

I've had that thought many times. I wish companies would release the source of games they discontinue instead of letting them completely die out.

This really sucks when you have to explain this kind of thing to your kids...
- That's the horrible thing about online services. You never really own it, it can be taken away from you at any time. If you want to preserve something, you need physical and/or offline access.
  
  And in addition to that sentiment, compression from moving or sending a copy of a copy is known to very slowly degrade digital media, so physical is almost always preferred.

You touch anything from Meta with a 10 foot pole, you deserve whatever comes your way.
- It's not like this phenomena is limited to the Quest or Meta. It happens all the time across the whole industry.
  
  Google
- Or we could make shitty behavior illegal so that people don't have to vet the ethics of every company they interact with.
- Complete agree. Disgusting evil company. Fuck Facebook

You don't own things anymore, you just lease them
- And if you can't own anything by paying, is game piracy even theft anymore?
- I believe the founder and first queen of Carthage said that if we don't learn to circumvent that, we deserve nothing more than we get. She went on to claim that nothing we have is truly ours.
  Is it just me or was that Phoenician quite a bit ahead of her time?

Archival is extremely important and one of the side effects of copyright schemes is that they limit its viability. The less access people have, the more likely some work becomes lost forever. I've seen it a few times already, with recent work, but in one or two hundred years we're talking about libraries of art that could have been preserved but are just gone.
Closed source software, that's actually distributed to people, has all kinds of problems beyond that too. Tons has been written about that, but from an artistic perspective, I think the biggest loss is that people can't legally expand the original work. Giant franchises with a central cultural presence get walled off and usually just go through a huge creative decline, which is crazy because there's millions of people preoccupied with the concepts from the franchise who are barred from using them to express themselves. With software in specific, if it's open source you can modify it, fix it, expand it, maintain it, whatever - there's all these great resources they could use, but we won't let them.
- Pirates keep many things alive. 🏴‍☠️🦜
- It's pretty insane. At first I thought damn, from now on our culture will be so thoroughly documented that future historians will struggle to parse it all, but now I can't trust anything to last for 5 years and I can't have copies of it, either.
  Piracy shmiracy, some random dude's homegrown server is not an archive, and anything that fails without electricity to power it is not a copy.
- Archival projects like ours !2009scape@kbin.social

And this is why I have trust issues
- This is why I don’t touch anything fucking Facebook does

It's meta lol. It's the devil.

Is this made in unity?
- Wouldn't be surprised.
  Partner found out about the unity crap when a bunch of steam library games published updates about changes in development, at least one of which stated they're transitioning from free to paid

Can any owner of this game tell me whether it is online only or not? Or what uses it has for an internet connection? Because back in mah dayTM© that'd be the kind of thing you'd download once and, even if the online service died, you'd still have a working program/game afterwards.
- Why would they want you to have a working program? How does that help sell you more stuff?

This is why I always look for cartridge-based Switch ports of games I play, so they’ll be mine long after the online play ceases, they can no longer be legally purchased and my current device reaches the end of its product life. It also helps that game cards last longer than optical discs
- The updates are still annoying but yeah it's better than nothing. Of course there are some releases with the complete games all patched but those are rare and usually special/limited editions.

the problem is that we've allowed this to happen. all mobile games function this way, the "rug" can be pulled at any time. all that money you spent on gacha pulls, was it worth it?
the problem goes back innocuously to MMO subscriptions, i think. which had a valid reason for existing, but an MMO can be "rug pulled" at any time as well, thankfully most of the greats have stayed up (wow, ffxi, eq) but ONE DAY they will be gone forever, relegated to private servers only.

Pretty big assumption that you own something digital you paid for. Let's be honest, you paid for a license not a product.
- I concur Buyer should not gain rights to product, so they should not be allowed to profit from it, but they should be able to preserve it, unless the license that you actually buy had a time limitation, but that should be clearly stated when you buy it that you only buy access to it to (at least) X amount of time like you have with online subscriptions.
- That’s why pirating is completely based.

"don't worry, you can form a new 3-year attachment with Bogo 2 for just $29.99!"
- Unless we sell less of it than the arbitrary sales number we used a bunch of estimated pseudo math on to ultimately guess. Because if we sell less than that number we pulled out of our rectums with a faulty Excel sheet, we'll just shut the thing down immediately. Because, you know... fuck you.

I'll never miss a chance to shill Ross Scotts excellent video on games as a service and how wrong it is here
My man has been personally leading the charge against this issue and has even looked into making this practice illegal

Is this a Facebook game…?
- It's developed by Facebook, but it's not one of those in-browser games you might be thinking of. "Meta Quest" is their VR platform. So, while the quality might be similar, you do need to buy rather expensive gear to play this particular game...
- Yup. They're complaining about a Facebook game. No fucking shit that company will unceremoniously end support. Everyone who bought into Zuck's vision deserves what they're getting.
  
  I hope you get the help you need.

In theory, Ross Scott is (or at least was) trying to get something done about this. https://youtu.be/tUAX0gnZ3Nw?si=acNlZLK8MRqKWwgh

If people stopped renting games developers would start selling them again. Until then, the incentive is for them to keep pulling this nonsense.
There's a difference between a game having online elements, such as a MMO, and games that require a connection just so they can keep charging you. Even in the first case though, you should own the client, and ideally it either has a single player mode, or the developer releases the code for a basic server when they shut it down.
- That's why I stated that it should be illegal to promise product while selling a undefined time limited license, there should be a clear minimum time stated when you "buy a subscription" for (single player?) games.
  
  Fair, stating a time-to-live when you're paying might make some people think twice. At this point though, I think people need to just not be paying unless they get to keep it permanently. Paying for access to the online portion is fine, but the rest should keep working and you should be able to get your data out of the developer's system.

And this is why I only buy games that I can load on a PC and play without an internet connection.

Why should a developer be forced to forfeit their source code just because they don't want to sell their game any longer?
If people focused on DRM-free games instead, this wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Don't let Meta metastasize.

I think illegal might be a little bit too far
- I read more, and I changed my mind. I think it's fair to require games to state a minimum time frame of support. Like say, a year. And if they cancel the game before then, you get a full refund including microtransactions etc.
- "You know that thing you legally purchased? We're taking it away and you're not getting your money back."
- Someone is very addicted to Facebook games rofl

But then how can they force you to buy a new one?

Image Transcription:
A message from Meta Quest with a picture of quadrupedal orange alien with purple spots down its spine and large green eyes named Bogo from the Oculus Quest experience of the same name. Below the image is the text:
"Hi Kolorafa,
We are reaching out to let you know that Bogo will no longer be supported as of Friday, March 15, 2024. You may continue to wave at, pet, and feed Bogo on your Quest device until 11:59 PM PT on that date.
We admit we've gotten attached to the little guy too! There's still time to grab that just-slightly-out-of-reach fruit one last time. Bogo will appreciate it. And so will we. 🐾 🎆
Thanks,
The Meta Quest team"
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]

Motor City Online all over again

I appreciate the sentiment around preservation, but there's an argument to be made that if you make something, you should get to decide if you want to destroy it. Banksy did something like this recently by destroying one of his pieces of art when it went up for auction.
- @Kushan so you're saying they should be able to take your money and then destroy what you bought with out any sort of warning or compensation right? I strongly disagree with you if that's what you're saying.
  
  This is more like if it was successfully sold at auction, and THEN banksy destroyed it after taking the money.
  
  No no, not at all - I agree with you, if you sell something to someone you shouldn't be able to just take it back arbitrarily.
  However, OP is talking about forcing companies to open source something they created - and while I love open source and am a big supporter of it, I don't think that's necessarily right either.
- I don't believe in that at all, human lives and the feelings associated with them are finite, the appreciation of art lasts as long as the canvas does which can be hundreds to thousands of years depending on what it is. The feelings they feel as the artist aren't significant on that time-frame and whatever respect I have for them is irrelevant in that context. I believe in preservation even against the will of creators because it benefits future generations, for the same reason historical knowledge does and their feelings today do not.
  People have told me I'd feel different if it was my art but not really (I find that argument incredibly presumptuous and condescending which is why I'm acknowledging them here before anyone has the chance to make them as some kind of comeback), I recognize the value of art and the fact that just like these other artists I won't be around forever either.
- The Banksy example is also bad because they didn't take anything away from anyone, just sold something that would change form after sale. And they knew that this stunt would only increase the art's value going in.
- I agree with your sentiment that a creator should have control over their work. However. I do feel that an art piece which can only exist in one form is different from commercial mass media. Mainly because you start getting in to an "original vs a copy" territory. While I believe an owner of something should have control over copyrights...once someone legally owns a "copy" of something that copy should be theirs since the owner made the mass media thing for the public to consume I believe the public should, at some point, have a say in the future trajectory of the product, after all it is still the public who "decide" if a product is good and will be remembered, and they even "decide" the value of the product as well.
  Art is usually only made for a select few to own...it is "artisanal"...meanwhile video games are made for a much larger group...
- Moshi moshi, mr publisher? That book I released a year ago? Yeah, I want all copies destroyed. Yes, I mean ALL of them, including copies currently in possession of people who bought it legally.
  Do you really defend that kind of right?
  
  That's not what I'm defending at all.

I concur

wtf is this this is impossible

Edit2: Jesus people, please engage with the actual argument... not some strawman argument I didn't make.
I must be missing something here.
Company buys land, designs and builds theme park
Company operates theme park.
Theme park isn't profitable.
Company closes theme park
???
Company must give away designs and schematics to theme park rides for free so people can build theme park themselves that might be in direct competition with new theme park company is trying to build???
Edit: I do think that abandonware should be opensourced at some point... but I don't understand this level of entitlement.
- Maybe I'm just missing some crucial info, but an amusement park seems like a fundamentally different thing than software.
  
  It's the designs and schematics part that makes them equivalent.
- Good analogy. The battle shouldn't be about forcing abandonware to be opensource. We should focus on DRM, it makes games almost impossible to play when servers shut down.
  OP should have compared it to other medias such as movies. When you buy a box copy, you expect it to work long after the authors/studios/etc. are gone.
  The issue is about the lack of legal ways to play older games as time moves on. It will only grow bigger in the next few years with even more games relying on DRM and online servers.
  
  This is a good distinction.
  Online only play models are difficult for the consumer. I personally don't play that many online only games for partly this reason... and partly because I don't play many online games at all.
- It's not a good analogy. Buying a one time use ticket to an amusement park is a very different thing than purchasing a game.
  A better analogy would be buying a season pass to an amusement park, which then abruptly shuts down 3 months later.
  
  That's not the analogy I gave.

179 comments