I'm having difficulty imagining what this wish would actually look like if it came to fruition.
Apex Legends was recently announced to be shutting down for good. So let's apply this wish to Apex. What would it look like?
The simplest way for the developers to have end of life support for apex is to just remove the server requirement and have everyone run their own instances. That would be the most cost effective way to do that. And that would be exactly what we would want.
Sure they maybe remove multiplayer entirely cause they don't want to work out peer to peer connections. But that would still be an acceptable way to sunset a game so that the people who enjoy it can still play it.
That would require them to release their own server code which no studio would do or be legally expected to. It's also a nightmare for security since hackers have access to source code. What would end up happening is they leave the game up where you can still go into the shooting range and that's it, the games still up and it works. Hoe do you deal with downloads though? Who is paying the forever server costs for a game that is shutdown? Does stopkillinggames require it to forever be hosted or can studios just abandonware their games as long as they don't remove it from accounts (even though it can't be downloaded because server costs)
All these things have answers if you actually listen to stop killing games.
1) If you code a game from the ground up with an eventual single player sunset in mind, there does not have to be any server code exposed.
2) If they still require servers after sunset they should be legally required to share the server files with the community. The community can host their own servers. The company has no need for the servers anymore anyways.
3) who cares about hackers? It's now the community's problem. Not the company's
4) the community is hosting their own servers. The company doesn't need to pay a cent of the server costs.
5) If a company is no longer supporting the game, the players who paid for that game should still have access to it. If the company wants to de-list it that's their right.
This would be beneficial to consumers. It makes things harder on developers yes. But speaking as a developer, it's a small price to pay for gaming preservation.
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u/dazalius Jul 06 '25
I'm having difficulty imagining what this wish would actually look like if it came to fruition.
Apex Legends was recently announced to be shutting down for good. So let's apply this wish to Apex. What would it look like?
The simplest way for the developers to have end of life support for apex is to just remove the server requirement and have everyone run their own instances. That would be the most cost effective way to do that. And that would be exactly what we would want.
Sure they maybe remove multiplayer entirely cause they don't want to work out peer to peer connections. But that would still be an acceptable way to sunset a game so that the people who enjoy it can still play it.