Except Hasbro didn’t get a game of the year, “someone who licenced an insignificant property of theirs” did, and so who cares (other than everyone who made/enjoyed the game, but nobody “important” like Hasbro’s execs or stockholders)
While I also dislike Epic, I feel that their going under would be a bad thing for the industry as a whole. There are only a few game distribution platforms of this size; Steam, Epic, Prime, GOG, and EA/Origin (not including Consoles). So there will be less competition and less innovation. They give out a ton of free games, and people may lose access to those licenses. They also employ(ed) a large number of people who are going to be jobless. I’d prefer they get their act together and be held accountable.
Epic has never been about innovation in the retail space. Sweeney talks a good game but it’s always been consistently out of his ass. He launched the Epic game store framing it as some sort of crusade on behalf of consumers, “Apple bad”, “Steam bad” but the reality is he just didn’t want to split money with others in the stack. I don’t blame him for that but his marketing was disingenuous and it’s quite obvious, now, that his business plan was inherently flawed.
His performative crusade against Apple has now led to 20% of the company looking for new jobs. We all stood by cheering, selling our souls for a bucket load of cheap games that, for the most part, we wouldn’t actually have paid for and will never get around to playing.
I don’t really care about EGS, I’m more concerned about Unreal Engine. If they keep dumping money into EGS exclusives and whatnot, it could impact UE investment, which would be bad for the industry.
The issue is, once again, about the difference between buying and licensing games
Two Californian gamers are suing Ubisoft in a proposed class action lawsuit over the developer and publisher’s recent shutdown of racing game The Crew. Ubisoft released The Crew in December 2014 and shut down its servers after a decade due to “server infrastructure and licensing constraints.” After the servers shut down, the game became totally unplayable due to its lack of a single-player, offline mode. When the shutdown was announced on Dec. 14, 2023, Ubisoft did offer refunds to people who “recently” purchased The Crew, but given the age of the game, a lot of players were unable to participate in the offer.
“Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed,” lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed Nov. 4 in a California court and reviewed by Polygon. “Turns out the pinball manufacturer decided to come into your home, gut the insides of the pinball machine, and remove your ability to play the game that you bought and thought you owned.”
The lawsuit alleges this is “exactly” what happened when Ubisoft shut down its servers for The Crew in 2024 — suddenly leaving consumers unable to access something they purchased and assumed they owned. The lawsuit says players were duped in two ways: First, by allegedly misleading players into thinking they were buying a game when they were merely licensing it — even if a player bought a physical disk. Second, that Ubisoft “falsely represented” that The Crew’s files were on its physical disks to access freely, and that the disks weren’t simply a key for the game. Ubisoft is violating California consumer protection laws, the lawsuit alleges.
Both plaintiffs purchased the game well into its lifespan, in 2018 and 2020, respectively, on physical discs. The lawsuit says neither would have purchased the game “on the same terms,” i.e., price, knowing the game’s servers could be taken down, rendering The Crew totally unplayable even in an offline mode. The lawsuit also covers the backlash to Ubisoft’s decision to shutdown the servers and not include an offline version of the game; it cites several games that turned servers off but patched in an offline option, like Knockout City and two of Ubisoft’s own games, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3. Ubisoft responded to the criticism and vowed to include offline versions of its existing games in The Crew franchise, like The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest — but the lawsuit says this does nothing to amend the problem of The Crew’s server shutdown.
The plaintiffs are looking for the court to approve the lawsuit as a class action, meaning other The Crew players may get involved. They’re looking for monetary relief and damages for those impacted by the server shutdown. The lawsuit follows a campaign from YouTube creator Ross Scott to urge companies to “stop killing games,” a movement that kicked off after The Crew announcement was made. The Stop Killing Games movement is petitioning the European Union to force game companies to keep games in playable states. It currently has more than 379,000 signatures.
As media continues to go more and more digital, the issue of owning vs. licensing — especially in video games — becomes more of a problem. While some people are taking games into their own hands (like with the player-created The Crew Unlimited), the onus is largely on companies and what they do to preserve their games and servers. But in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill into law that requires companies to tell consumers they’re buying licenses, not games themselves, in online storefronts. The law itself, introduced by California assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, is actually partly inspired by Ubisoft’s shutdown of The Crew. The law, however, doesn’t do anything about the fact that games are licensed and not purchased outright, nor does it stop a company from rendering a game unplayable, but it does, in theory, offer transparency on the issue.
I think we need a very strict regulation, where the wording is never “purchase” or “buy” or “own”. It should always be “rent”. Because that’s what it is.
And like other time-limited services outside entertainment, the duration should be made clear. I’d personally like something as clear and blunt as:
"We guarantee access for at least X months/years after paying the license.
After service is suspended we will release all information and code necessary to set up a private server or otherwise restore function."
And for the worst kind:
"We make no guarantees of access duration, and can revoke your access immediately after paying the license.
After service is suspended we will not release information or code necessary to set up a private server or otherwise restore function."
Ideally the last type dies out completely, or becomes exceedingly rare.
These always online, server-dependent, licence-limited games are very unlike what we used to deal with; Books, DVDs, CDs, and other games on disk/cartridge or with a simple download that you can keep and use for as long as you live as long as they’re still stored and in readable condition.
They’re very different, and should be treated like it.
There should be a very clear visual difference when looking at the box or store page of a game that is made to simply last as long as you keep the code stored, and a game that won’t. A consistent warning design. Maybe two color codes.
Lets be real, while I love the idea of users making informed choices… how big do you think the labels on cigarettes to say “they will give you cancer and kill you”. People aren’t bright, you can warn them until the cows come home, they want to play a game, they will buy it. Very few of them would have listened to any warning no matter how blatent.
People are stupid… for 99.9% of people “we’ll send out the code and let you set up private servers”, is really no different than we’ll shut down the servers and you can never play again. There’s not a huge overlap between people who understand how to create a private server and/or set up their routers to allow incoming connections, and people who actually can convince friends to join their servers.
Now maybe the “the servers are guaranteed to remain until X date”, is a reasonable one. Very least tells people their games have a shelf life and not to buy it after a certain point in time.
Ah, OK 😅. Well, to be fair, we are in the internet, is hard to tell a joke or sarcasm from honest opinions. That’s why i always use “/s.” to not be misinterpreted.
An article that discusses and re-examines if a game you like is good is not a personal attack.
I encourage anyone who thinks it is indeed a good game (hey I also enjoyed it back in the day) take the time to read the article and at least respond to the content posted.
It is absolutely fine to disagree with what the article is saying. And it’s fine if you don’t want to read it. But I don’t think it’s bee-ing nice to comment that you refused to read an innocent article because you disagree with the headline and it’s source. The article was posted to discuss its contents (as the body of the post pointed out). Not whether or not polygon is worthwhile.
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all ya know?
I don’t think this guy understands what innovation is. The Steam Deck and Wii aren’t particularly innovative. The Wii is a bit unusual, but pointer controls didn’t stick (though gyro controls have, in a minor way). The Steam Deck is just a regular handheld but with an x86 CPU.
I don’t think people are going to buy small consoles to play big games. And a powerful handheld is overkill to play small games. If people want to play small games, they use the phone they already have.
The handheld console sweet spot is slightly more powerful than the Switch. But the Switch’s selling power isn’t its hardware, but its library. Nintendo games have selling power. And even outside of that, the Switch has a surprisingly large library of third-party games like Skyrim and Doom. But if people really want a console that will do everything, they’ll get a Deck, because I know you won’t be able to do whatever you want on Microsoft’s handheld.
When the C-suite says “innovation” they tend to mean either “things other companies did that this company hasn’t done yet” or “obvious stuff that we should have done already but didn’t”.
There’s a logic to a smaller team being more “agile” than a larger team, but yeah these companies aren’t turning them into smaller studios. They’re expecting fewer people to do the work of a larger studio. The problems are obviously except to execs who are literally too stupid to think.
It’s basically the same. And it makes sense, it seems that’s what people want. But also, can Nintendo ever go back to the old ways? If ever they make something that isn’t a Switch, they’d have to develop two pieces of hardware, since they’re likely going to want both a home console and a handheld device. I think things might be like this forever.
I feel like the nes->snes, gb->gbc->GBA, ds->3ds, and wii->WiiU were all pretty similar advancements.
In all of those except nes->snes you had backwards compatability, and the wii->WiiU had hardware backwards compatibility (which the switch 2 doesn’t, at least for controllers).
You are right that it is more of just a spec bump, but given the warning that not all switch games may be compatible, I think the controllers are going to have different sensors (some have speculated a more mouse-like feature).
I was going down the same path, but don’t forget about LABO requiring not just the same sensors, but also the same physical size screen and controllers. So even if everything else was backwards compatible, they’d have to include that text for that game series alone.
Space Colony is an older game that was like Sims in space. I got this at Big Lots years ago and played some of it and apparently this is the remastered version on Steam.
The screenshots and video on the Steam page doesn’t go into the detail of what you can do when it comes to controlling your Sim-like characters. But this video shows more of that aspect of the game youtu.be/BEys39TsRdw?si=t3HU3vFlNO9q0O0T
Granted, it’s a lot of games in one like other top down tycoon manager games and has some elements of tower defense.
I played some Tiny Life recently. I liked it, but it is a bit simple, and the bigger issue I had with it is just that there isn't much to it, especially to build. There's like two counters, two fridges, one shower... from my perspective it really needs an artist to just go ham and make tons of options so there's stuff to actually decorate with, even if stats are the same.
Yeah but that game is either (depending on how you view early access) woefully unfinished and shat out in such an incomplete state, or not released yet and possibly years away from release.
Curious why everyone in the comments (as of my own comment) is happy about this?
Sure, he exudes C-suite personality and doesn’t act like he’s a gamer. But that doesn’t matter. He oversaw Sony’s rise to dominance in the console market. That dominance is built on the foundation of their first party AAA games — which is a less than ten year old change for them. Sony porting their big games to PC was a project that was fully embraced under his leadership.
Point being, as a gamer it seems like he’s done a fairly decent job. I don’t care how boring his interviews or speeches are or that he looks and acts like he belongs in a board room — they’re all like that anyway even if their public persona says otherwise. I care about games and treatment of consumers.
I don’t get it either. PlayStation have release some amazing first party games, and equally great consoles over his tenure that have captured my imagination and passion many times over. These are the things that matter, not some idealised or stereotypical c-suite gamer persona. He’s done great things with PlayStation and deserves the credit for that.
I’d hardly pin their rise on him, in 2019 when he took over it was already pretty clear they were on top in the high end console front. If anyone should take credit it’s Don Mattrick lmao
It should be the same for everything: if an ip is no longer used, it should be in the public domain. Therefore, a company holding said IP is forced to use it (as in selling copies) or give it up.
Yes. I can imagine a middle-ground of copyright. If the IP is still being used, it enters the public domain on the regular schedule. But if it’s abandoned, it enters earlier… perhaps after 5-10 years of non-use.
Honestly, in our fast moving world, I‘d do like a year. If nothing gets announced or release, you‘re done.
Example, you take a book, game or song from the market because you want people to be unable to buy it before you release the successor. Then you delay the successor for 5 yrs. Boom, public domain.
polygon.com
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