A Plea to stop Publishers from terminating their Games

[CrocMagnum]

This is a well argued rant trying to incite publishers to stop them from letting their games go extinct. It’s also an active campaign.

To his credit, famous youtuber Ross Scott succeeds in putting the matter on the table.

 

 

Edited April 3 by CrocMagnum

[dasho]

Damn, who funded all of these undesirable practices I wonder.

[Devalaous]

And then theres Skyrim players begging Bethesda to kill Skyrim because 'my precious sex mods keep breaking!'

[Panzermann11]

I found this comment when I was watching the video. It's very interesting, and I believe more people should be aware of what the commentator said, especially gamers since they mostly advocate for physical copies of games every time there's a discussion of games getting shut down and de-listed from stores.

 

Quote

For the people saying that physical copies are the solution, nope, physical copies nowadays are often a lie:

• The box only has a digital code to download the game.
• There's a disc, but it only has a few files, the actual game must be downloaded and the disc is only a key.
• Sometimes, only parts of the game are available on disc, you can play without internet, but not the full game.
• You can play the game without internet with just a disc, but not the good version of the game, because at launch, the game is full of problems and you need to download a patch later or there's a patch since the launch day.
• Sometimes, the patch is so big that you are almost downloading the whole game.
• You still need to connect to the internet to buy and download DLC.
• To play online, you need to download the most recent version.
• Many games are online-only, require a constant connection to the internet, even on single-player, and to make things worse, the servers often close, making your physical copy a paperweight.

That's what happened to The Crew, even those who had a physical copy lost the game they bought.

Gone are the days of offline patch installers and typing out CD keys from the jewel case.

They weren't lying when they said digital media is the future, and that future is getting really fuckin' grim right now.

Edited May 22 by Panzermann11

[Captain red pants]

On 4/6/2024 at 7:24 AM, Devalaous said:

And then theres Skyrim players begging Bethesda to kill Skyrim because 'my precious sex mods keep breaking!'

Bethesda is breaking free mods so they can sell mods as mini DLC. They're not even fixing any of the decade old bugs the game still has to do it. That's pretty shitty in my book.

Edited April 12 by Captain red pants

[CrocMagnum]

The vid posted by Ross Scott on Youtube, see post 1 here, has gathered 36K Likes and 4900+ comments in just 10 days. People are reacting positively and even other streamers are commenting on the subject. 

 

Among which Asmongold. For those who don't know Asmongold was a legendary pillar of the World of Warcraft community. Today he has diversified and comments on many games/subjects related to gaming. One of his quirks are his "reaction vids" where he comments on other youtubers and gives his fair opinion. He's a bizarre kinda guy but his comments are often quite insightful. 

 

So this time Asmongold commented on Ross Scott's campaign to preserve videogames. It's worth a watch, if you have the time: 

 

 

Edited April 13 by CrocMagnum

[MrFlibble]

I would like to think that supporting and promoting developers that do not do this kind of thing (including developers of free or FOSS games) is a good long-term strategy, but I'm not sure I could bring some rock solid arguments that it will actually work. Besides, there may be game types or genres that are only available commercially and distributed under these draconian planned obsolescence policies, while the playing community cannot be expected to just cough up some talented team that will produce free or low-price, no-DRM equivalents of such games.

 

Yet I do believe that gaming communities dedicated to popular games gain some kind of "moral right" to those games, although I'm not sure all developers or copyright holders would like to agree with this kind of statement. God bless John Carmack and everyone who follows in his footsteps of releasing the source code at least (if not the entire game after its shelf life has played out), but if this does not happen, there is nothing wrong if fans create a replica or a similar "inspired" game that is just as fun yet does not limit its use or life cycle or whatever. Because if a gaming company's first priority is to make money off their games, then the planned obsolescence method is only logical as it would force players to abandon the old product and buy a new one, even if it is not really better than the previous one. Suppose you succeed in legally banning this practice via government or institutional intervention, but who's to say that they will not come up with some other method that is no more friendly to the players as this one?

 

That said, I think there are fan projects of reviving discontinued online games that have been essentially abandoned by the developers/publishers, such as Project Celeste (although I do believe that in this particular case, the team has some kind of permission from Microsoft and does not violate the EULA). I imagine that fans of a particular game could be driven to more dire methods of preserving it against the developer/publisher's efforts, like ways of circumventing DRM, reverse-engineering and running their own servers. Honestly, I think publishers that pursue the planned obsolescence route should seriously consider that it could actually foster these practices and hurt themselves more in the long term by indirectly encouraging piracy from those users that would otherwise pay for the game(s) out of respect for the developer if not for other reasons. 

Edited April 13 by MrFlibble

[CrocMagnum]

@MrFlibble: I feel the same way. I'm also in line with Asmongold's more pragmatic stance on this issue:

 

It's unreasonable to expect publishers to maintain a game indefinitely. From a corporate standpoint this is not sustainable. 

Now when a publishers drops a game which still has a community there comes a moral legitimacy to keep the game/the servers functional. 

Even more so when the publisher doesn't make money from the game or the publisher is defunct. 

 

That's what Asmongold expressed at 20:25 in the vid. 

[DNSKILL5]

They should just release the source code for dead games. 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Many game preservation should put tons of video game preservation propaganda posters on the front doors of the game companies to get them very serious about preservation.

 

Also, all game companies should stop destroying all copies of their source codes for their old and new games, which is now the 21st Century equivalent to the old Wiping trend of the 1960s to 1980s where TV archives junked many old episodes of old shows.

[OliveTree]

definitely think this is a completely necessary campaign

[MrFlibble]

12 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Many game preservation should put tons of video game preservation propaganda posters on the front doors of the game companies to get them very serious about preservation.

Is there a possibility to create an initiative group that would have the power to actually negotiate with game companies on this topic? If yes, this might be a better alternative to just spamming them with posters/leaflets/anything that may remind them of union action or climate protests that seem to accomplish nothing but annoy everyone (climate protests, not union action). I get a very strong impression that the management of such companies often does not have a good notion of why releasing the source code might be important (and why keeping it closed will not actually be profitable), or why they should care about the products that no longer bring them money.

[taufan99]

These faux-90's/early-2000's ads really nailed the aesthetics. Also the nice messages.

 

[Doom64guy]

Adding some opinions, I think 20th century games should denounce their copyright and/or release their source code, since they're too old to make any significant money, while appropriately providing opportunity to preserve those games.

 

For example, it'd be weird if Capcom still linger on the original RE1 while they already release the remake and remastered remake of said game.

[Master O]

On 4/13/2024 at 7:07 PM, DNSKILL5 said:

They should just release the source code for dead games. 

 

On that note, https://github.com/DescentDevelopers/Descent3.

[Bucket]

On 4/13/2024 at 2:42 PM, CrocMagnum said:

@MrFlibble: I feel the same way. I'm also in line with Asmongold's more pragmatic stance on this issue:

 

It's unreasonable to expect publishers to maintain a game indefinitely. From a corporate standpoint this is not sustainable. 

Now when a publishers drops a game which still has a community there comes a moral legitimacy to keep the game/the servers functional. 

Even more so when the publisher doesn't make money from the game or the publisher is defunct. 

 

That's what Asmongold expressed at 20:25 in the vid. 

 

Doom is a 30-year-old game with an active online component; Id Software don't spend one red cent to maintain it. Studios have invented these BS pretenses - that games NEED always-online functionality, NEED anti-cheat spyware, NEED inconvenient DRM - and we will lose the conversation if we let them define the terms.

 

Asmongold is a dusted React Andy who has been gaslit by his community into thinking his hot takes have value.