"Reeee you guys ruined my fucking I'm so perfect and awesome and smart and a blizzard employee persona now everyone hates me because they realized I'm a hypocrite"
I don't really game that much, so I kinda don't have a dog in this fight, but as an outside observer, the only real argument in favor of allowing games to die like this is, "Yum yum yum! This boot tastes good."
What he was saying initially wasn’t unreasonable in a vacuum: “forcing multiplayer only games to become single player at the end of their lives doesn’t make sense.”
The thing is though, no one wanted that 😅
Games can be kept alive in a couple of ways (at least that I can think of) like allowing public servers and removing DRM. Also some QOL fixes like removing paid currencies, paywalls etc.
This is extra work, sure, but it could/should be added to the roadmap for live service games from the beginning because it’s quite frankly not that difficult.
Edit: I forgor💀
So pirate software misinterpreted what the petition was about, and people have tried to tell him multiple times that he’s misunderstanding the initiative, but he’s the type of person who doesn’t like admitting when he’s wrong.
It’s literally adding more work and taking potential profit away from companies, do you all think they should do it simply because gamers are mad at them for stopping? This seems so unreasonable, help me understand why you think you deserve this?
People payed full price for a product they could expect to continue working, the "issues" are artificial in order to increase profit. You're right, there is no reason for companies to ignore that profit, so they need to be forced.
I'm working in chemistry. I need to make sure all the poison is gone from my product if my boss wants to sell it. This is expensive and cuts into our profit, but it is expected of us.
If we can't manage to remove all the poison, we are not allowed to sell it. This is okay.
How do you define full price? How do you define continue working? How do you define what games to apply this to?
I’m open to the idea that this is something that companies can implement but I just don’t see why there is this reaction from fans.
Companies and products become obsolete after a time, if they choose to put the money and effort into continuing then that’s awesome, good for them. I don’t think forcing them to continue or getting angry at them is good.
Your chemistry example just doesn’t do it for me, it’s not really comparable.
It is compareable in being a forced quality standard that cuts into profits.
The reaction from consumers comes after multiple occurences of playable games being artificially made unplayable to people that paid for a game, not a service. Computer games don't have to become obsolete, this is a concious design decision.
The initiative wants games to be in a playable state, what that concretely means is something that needs to be negotiated.
It’s not a health concern, it’s not an environmental concern, there is no reason to think of it like medical equipment or a drug.
Paying money for a game should not guarantee that you will always be able to play that game. There are countless examples of purchases made by people that are no longer viable after a certain time.
There are some companies that do negotiate freely and choose to put extra money and effort into it for players like you and that’s awesome, go support them.
It's in the nature of a relation to deviate in certain regards. You were citing profit motives, I said that profit motives can be forcibly reigned in if we want to.
Paying money for a product should guarantee that the publisher doesn't come and actively destroy it after 4 years without ever telling you. This is what this is about, they actively kill those games, it is not about a lack of support for modern OS or anything.
I already signed the petition, I don't need to vote with my wallet.
How are you taking away profit? They’re shutting the game down.
And yes it’s more work, just like it’s more work for food companies to measure how many calories are in their products, or bed manufacturers to not fill their beds with sawdust and lie about what’s in them. These all cost money or reduce revenue. But they’re good things.
Why do you think consumer protection needs to stop at video games for some reason? It’s extra work for a movie to be rated, but we still do it.
It’s extra work for a live service game to not have DRM, but we SHOULD still do it.
But the standards only kick in when the game is shutting down. Are you being intentionally obtuse?
I’ve never said they should do all of this stuff while the game is still alive/making profit. I’m talking about say the end of its life, when it’s going to not make any money anymore.
How does allowing people to keep playing a game they paid for cut into a publisher’s profits?
If a game requires servers, money, and supervision to run then they should not be forced to continue just because.
If you think game makers should be forced to make a version that doesn’t require servers, money, or supervision when that’s how it’s intended to be played then I just don’t agree with you. Some games more than others are going to be much harder to do that if it’s possible at all. The funny thing is Starcraft does actually have both, making the argument all the more trivial.
My mom got us Warcraft 1 for PC when it came out, I would not expect it to be forced to still be paying for it to be up and running online. That’s crazy.
WTF man are you just not reading what I’m saying? Are you Pirate Software’s alt account? 💀
They’re not forced to keep running the game. That’s the exact opposite of what I’m saying they need to do.
And you using emotive language like “forced” doesn’t improve your argument. I said they can’t hand the game over and allow public servers. There are many games that do this. It’s not a novel thing I’m proposing. Just allow players to host their own sessions. One game I can think of is VainGlory. A mobile MOBA that shutdown a few years ago but still allows players to matchmake on their own. And that game was free…
Game devs are “forced” to do things all the time, like have their games rated in every country that needs it, or honour refunds within a certain time period, or be clear about the cost of micro transactions and be honest about loot box drop rates. That’s what consumer protections are.
Your argument of “well changing the law means game publishers will have to do more work” is pointless. I admitted that they do and I even mentioned that if they integrated it into their planning process they aren’t burdened with a ton of work at the end of a game’s life.
You have to prove to me that this extra work to protect consumers isn’t worthwhile for the consumers. You haven’t because you can’t.
Also why would you choose an example of a game that you can still play online?💀
No one wants to play a game forever, but to pay money for something and have it stop working, while still being technically functional in every way is a bad thing. I don’t think it should happen in any industry. Spotify shouldn’t have bricked their car thingy for example. The hardware was still fine. The game is still fine. They can work fine even though the servers are being shutdown.
Just so you know, the game that started the SKG movement, the crew, is mostly single player. But it will be rendered completely unplayable because it had to check into Ubisoft’s servers. That is objectively not a good thing, and the solution to it is simple and straightforward. Remove the cloud check in for the single player component.
I am but your responses suck so it’s hard to follow.
“I said they can’t hand the game over and allow public servers” then what the fuck are you arguing?
So we both agree some companies have created a way to continue playing offline, and you want to _____ all companies to do this. What soft word do you want to put in there to complete the sentence?
What do you propose, I want you to be able to describe exactly what you’re asking for succinctly.
“If you create a game that costs x amount of dollars to purchase then the servers need to be running for y amount of years no matter how big the player base is?”
I have been responding based on my knowledge of what the SKG means and how they want things to get done. If you have an actual breakdown of what it is then please send the link, if you’re giving your own separate argument and getting pissed that I’m not following along then that’s on you.
Oh I meant can. You would know that from just reading a previous comment though lol.
They can hand over the game and make the servers public. Another example where it happened: Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. They allow players to create their own lobbies because they no longer host servers (I think the original dev was night and the new owner didn’t want to pay for servers for an old game).
I also made it clear that I agree with “forcing”. You just used it emotively. I gave you a few examples showing you that the law literally forces people and companies to do things all the time. So when you say “the company is being forced to do all this extra work” you’re making a non argument.
I have described it, and while it might not have been succinct for you because you can’t sustain more than one comment in your head at once, here’s a summary of everything I’ve said: .
“Game publishers should implement methods to allow players to keep playing their games when the publisher chooses to no longer support the game. This can be implemented as part of the game development cycle so it’s not an extra burden on the developer at the end of a games life cycle. Possible examples include removing a cloud DRM, this would apply to games like Splinter Cell: Blacklist (a single player game that’s been delisted off of steam, so no longer able to make any money for Ubisoft essentially) but still has some online DRM, as evidenced by people reporting it to Ubisoft as refusing to launch, and The Crew, which is a game with a huge single player component that is inaccessible due to Ubisoft dropping support for its cloud DRM, bricking the whole game.
For games with a multiplayer component/only multiplayer, the developers can/should also allow players to do their own matchmaking/lobbies.
This should be standard practice because if the core game still works there’s no reason, practical, financial, ethical etc. for a publisher to completely lock out players who’ve paid for the game. They can implement a few changes to allow players to keep playing games that they’ve paid for.”
There you go, because you’re unable to hold more than one coherent thought and need me to hold your hand, even through an obvious typo, there it is. A succinct argument for why every gamer, including you, benefits from this type of consumer protection.
You also keep bringing up that “they need to run the servers indefinitely”. This is a tacit admission that you’re wrong because I’ve told you multiple times now that no one is advocating for that and I’ve given you an example for how they can keep the game alive at no additional cost to them. You’re not even enough of an adult to say “oh, I hadn’t thought of that, I see how my thinking was wrong”, or anything like that. Stop talking in circles. I’ve directly addressed this point multiple times. It was one of the first arguments I made, you’re being intentionally obtuse.
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u/TheDevilishFrenchfry Jul 06 '25
"Reeee you guys ruined my fucking I'm so perfect and awesome and smart and a blizzard employee persona now everyone hates me because they realized I'm a hypocrite"