We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
…
Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:
provide alternatives to any online-only content
make the game P2P if it requires multiplayer (no server needed, each client is a server)
gracefully degrading the client experience when there’s no server
Of course, releasing server code is an option.
The expectation is:
if it’s a subscription game, I get access for whatever period I pay for
if it’s F2P, go nuts and break it whenever you want; there is the issue of I shame purchases, so that depends on how it’s advertised
if it’s a purchased game, it should still work after support ends
That didn’t restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they’re expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they’re done).
I argue Stop Killing Games doesn’t go far enough, and if it’s pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.
If server code is released such that people can run private servers after the official servers are shut down, then legally the people running the servers should be the ones liable for illegal activity that happens on them.
I could imagine third-party companies springing up whose entire business model is JUST providing unofficial servers for discontinued games and moderating them. Maybe a subscription service that provides access to servers for several different online service games.
Of course, it would be more likely that it would be just a player who hosts a server for themselves and their friends and doesn’t attempt to be profitable. That would be fine too.
I could imagine third-party companies springing up whose entire business model is JUST providing unofficial servers for discontinued games and moderating them
That kind of already exists, you can buy hosting for Minecraft and other games. AFAIK, moderation isn’t a part of it, but many private groups exist that run public servers and manage their own moderation. It exists already, and that should absolutely be brought up as a bill is being considered.
We have had that exact model for decades. Hosting companies use to and probably still offer rack space for arena shooters. The main company managed the master server, which was just a listing of IP addresses, but there were only ever a few official game servers with defaults loaded.
Minecraft has private servers (at least on Minecraft java) as well as their own server platform “Realms”, also every client is also a server. Though the authentication system is a Microsoft account so that’s likely to still be online well into the future
I understood that from a IP and trademark stand point. It could be hard to retain your copyright or trademark if you are no longer controlling a product
No, copyright isn’t relinquished from any of that (not even any effect on damages if you still require players to have bought the game to use the private servers), and trademarks wouldn’t be affected at all if you simply require that 3rd party servers are marked as unofficial
Exactly, and that also includes online games like Minecraft. Nobody is going to sue Microsoft because of what someone said or did in a private Minecraft server, though they might if it’s a Microsoft hosted one.
Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers
I don’t think this is what they mean. They say that of they provide the tools for users to deploy the servers, bad things can happen. So I think they understood SKG, they just lie about the consequences for gamers
If that’s their argument, then the counterargument is simple: preserve the game another way. If hosting servers is dangerous, put the server code into the client and allow multiplayer w/ P2P tech, as had been done since the 90s (e.g. StarCraft).
What they seem to be doing is reframing the problem as requiring users to host servers, and arguing the various legal issues related to that. SKG just needs to clarify that there are multiple options here, and since devs know about the law at the start (SKG isn’t retroactive), studios can plan ahead.
It’s just a disingenuous argument trying to reframe the problem into cyber security and IP contexts, while neither has been an issue for other games in the past.
Another part of it is that if they discontinue support, they can’t stop the community from creating their own server software.
There are so many ways to approach this. The point is ensuring consumers retain the right to keep using what they purchased, even if they have to support it themselves.
Sort of. They need to have the tools as well. So I suppose they could release the APIs for their servers before shutting down their servers so community servers can be created, that would probably be sufficient. But they need to do something beyond just saying, “we won’t sue you if you reverse engineer it.”
Yeah… The abstract (sorry, will read article a bit later) is bunch of nonsense to me (in respect to what is written, no offense to you):
online experience commercially viable? The fuck they are talking about? Yeah, I know what is meant, but they would get fucking F in school for expressing thoughts in such a nonsensical way
protections against illegal content would not exist on private servers? Really? Like only your company’s servers can run that? What, you write them in machine code directly? Or is it all done manually? Anyhow, just release source code and it will be up to community to find a way to make it run
I can’t throw boxes away because I’ve moved so many times to avoid rising rental costs. I’m packing again right now, and it’s really nice to have the little inserts that kind of stabilize the consoles in their boxes
Yeah, the person in the picture seems to either not move often or not resell things. I've moved quite a bit and having the boxes for all my things has helped immensely. Instead of buying new boxes for everything, trying to fit stuff in there, unpacking and throwing away all boxes because "somebody held my hand", I just reuse.
In the past 14 years, ever since becoming an adult, I have had to move 11 different times. I have learned just how useful good boxes are. I can’t get rid of them, I’m gonna need them when I move again next year.
It’s crazy how strongly the brain tries to protect us from old stresses, without us being consciously aware of it.
I’m glad you don’t need to move every year anymore! It’s one of those normalized things that truly shouldn’t be. I mean, it’s not the avocado toast that’s keeping homeownership out of reach, it’s the constant moving/application/deposit/etc fees we face so often
The Sniper Elite series is basically nazi-killing porn. Those won’t let you down, especially if you enjoy unplanned testicular detonations happening to nazis of any kind.
The new entry in the series drops today, my nerd herd plans on doing the co-op campaign this weekend. I played SE4 and had a blast mixing WWII with the stealth aspects of Assassins Creed (the old ones where Ubisoft wasn’t just phoning it in).
From the trailer it looks like we got a new MC, or atleast the whole game is more french (because your in France).
Going to miss the wonderbread mouth-breathing american tourist in Italy like SE4 had.
As for game-play, they added Souls like invasions in SE5 and they still have the co-op campaign (which is the important part). Beyond that, looks about the same ol’ shooting nazis like we have always had.
Authentication servers do not run themselves, they need babysitting and patching and upgrading because this is users’ passwords and secrets. Microsoft obviously does not want to keep managing this old login system because it’s miserable unrewarding janitorial work for a sysadmin or a developer.
Oh gosh, they bought a computer game company and they don’t want to pay to support existing customers? They don’t want to maintain accounts that represent HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of hours of creativity, a long-time faithful user fanbase, because they now feel it’s miserable unrewarding janitorial work?
It’s MINECRAFT! Do you even know what people do on Minecraft? It’s not saving progress we’re talking about here. It’s destroying an ARCHIVE. It’s a life some kid has lived in there.
You make it sound like it’s perfectly reasonable to ditch this community because it’s an expense and an inconvenience. Get lost with your Microsoft defense. They don’t need you. They don’t give a shit.
I think they’re a very vocal, but disagreed with, minority. I think some people here think all of Lemmy is unwaveringly anti-corporation and anti-capitalist.
I’d consider myself mostly anti-corporation and mostly anti-capitalist, but I also understand that not everything every corporation does is out of some desire to commit the worst thing possible on mankind (e.g. retiring old authentication servers that they’ve kept running for years while warning people that it’d eventually be cut off).
Anyway, Lemmy hates these 5 Cs (in no particular order): -Corporations
-CEOs (in particular Elon Musk and Spez)
-Conservative politics of any kind
-Capitalism
-Chromium browsers, even the privacy-oriented spinoffs.
The players still have their stuff and their user ID, just under a new login process. They’ve been pestering users to make this migration for years and years.
Edit: also, this is Java edition, meaning the worlds they built are just Minecraft save files that a new user could access. The cloud-based one was Bedrock Edition, that’s the one where you’d have cloud-based worlds that you could lose if you lost your account.
What’s getting destroyed? You wouldn’t be able to login to the server but the data would still be there. Transfer the account (or make a new one) and the data’s still there as well.
I’m more annoyed that Microsoft split off Java Edition and Bedrock into two pieces of incompatible software, but I’m honestly surprised they’ve supported the old auth services for this long.
I don’t see how you could possibly make Bedrock and Java compatible with each other seeing as the whole point of Java edition is compatibility with mods written in…Java…
The shitty thing to do would have been to tell mod users to fuck off and force everyone over to Bedrock. Instead they’ve done well by the community, maintaining Java edition and even giving it preferential treatment when it comes to updates. Bedrock is built for consoles, where mods are not a thing and performance is more important.
The fun part is most of the people bitching have no clue how to do any of this. Probably the same people who bitch about new games not supporting Windows 7.
You’re welcome to take on the rewrite of our auth-service too, since it seems so trivial in your world. Always fun to drag legacy services around for those 12 really loud and angry users.
They don’t want to hire people to build and maintain a secure login platform when their parent company already has one. This is way more work and liability than most people realize.
Assassin’s Creed. The actual gameplay is almost never as interesting as just walking around a meticulous recreation of ancient civilizations as a digital tourist.
Seeing the down votes I have to say this: He has a point here. TF2 is a F2P game that generates its revenue these days from marketplace and key transactions. If someone were to remake the entire game and it was allowed to release, it would most assuredly damage TF2’s revenue. A mod for Portal 2 has more potential to generate revenue because anyone interested in the mod that doesn’t currently own Portal 2, would have to buy the game.
At the end of the day, Valve is still a business. This news sucks for people who love playing games, but is entirely not unexpected.
If this were any other company people would be raging
If this were any other company, I’d be saying the same thing. Nintendo shuts down shit left and right; most of them are mods for games that the only way to use the mods is via emulation. And it’s a lot easier to pirate a game for that than it is to dump one you own legitimately.
It’s certainly within their right to protect their shit. The ethics and morality of what that shit happens to be is irrelevant to the copyright discussion.
Also: TF2 is still supported… It still receives regular updates. It had one on the 9th.
Those “updates” are pitiful. As far as I understand the vast majority of update content is still being supplied by the community. The game is still flooded by hackers with no word on when that will be addressed if ever.
They were probably thinking that by openly opposing it before it collected enough signatures, they would have given it more publicity and hence made more people sign it.
This whole movement really highlights how hard it is to get the word out for me. Fediverse isn't a huge place as it is, relative to other online spaces. But every time SKG related topics surfaces there are always people who have never heard about it and people talking about misconceptions that Ross has addressed many times.
If you’ve somehow managed to avoid Witcher until now, it’s a dark medieval fantasy, 3rd person, open world RPG based on Norse Slavic mythology. Lots of political intrigue, choices that actually impact outcomes in game. Fantastic voice acting, story, soundtrack, and combat/gameplay mechanics. This is one of the best games on the market - if you don’t already have it, now’s the time! There are also two DLCs that are each the size and scope of an entire standalone game - don’t miss those!
I started replaying Witcher 3 a week or so ago. It really is an amazing game. But I will admit that the combat is just ok. It’s not awful, but it sure as heck isn’t great. The magic and other mechanics, I’d also call them just OK, maybe even occasionally bordering on less-than-good. Geralt’s movement, even just traversing or trying to loot things, can often be slippy and weird.
Thing is, all of the other parts that are important for a great RPG and narrative just shine SO much more brighter that they really make up for the very mediocre gameplay aspects. It really is more than the sum of its parts.
Once you get a hold on dodging/parrying/etc, you’ll feel like a damn ninja, especially on harder difficulties; but leading up to that, yeah combat is… OK. Also don’t miss out of experimenting with different builds - one of my favorites optimized using bombs, which later into it makes you a walking B-52 - fun build if you enjoy clearing trash via a wave of pure chaos, then mopping up the stronger guys by way of the sword.
And yeah, the whole package is what counts here: Witcher 3 is a fantastic all around game. It isn’t without it’s imperfections, but they are barely noticeable amidst the tsunami of ridiculously high quality you’ll be hit with from all the other features.
For sure! And as much negative I said about the combat, it’s punchy, never drags on, and the enemies you fight are usually all set up well as part of the story. They’re not just random mobs, so even the fighting has good narrative weight even if it’s not the mechanically deepest ever.
This time through, I’ve been making different choices and stopping to explore more and take in more of the world. First time I played it, I had NO IDEA that if you stopped and listened to some npc convos you can pick up quests that way! Doesn’t even really feel like I’m playing it over again, or retreading the same stuff. There’s SO much in it.
It helps if you know the lore, because at the beginning there is a scene where someone asks you about decisions you made in the first two parts. But I didn’t know anything and just guessed. But after that you don’t really need to know what happens before
Witcher 2’s controls are a bit janky, but it’s a solid game in and of itself for the story alone; if you can stomach some pretty bad mechanics to enjoy an otherwise decent product, I’d say start at #2.
Witcher 1 is… so bad it’s kinda comical. I’d just pull up a story summary of Witcher 1 on youtube and call it a day. If you’re a masochist, go ahead and give the actual game a whirl; but I’d recommend modding the snot out of it to at least make your character OP as fuck, allowing you to mostly skip the god-awful combat. But even then, the only selling point is the story, which again you can just pull up on YouTube.
That said, you can dive into 3 with zero knowledge of the previous two and be just fine. There are things that will go over your head, but nothing significant.
I don’t know if it’s just anecdotal, but it feels like a lot of content is moving to Youtube. People make a 10+ min video out of what used to be a paragraph on a wiki site.
I’ll give you my reasoning as someone who used to heavily use Wikis but now heads to YouTube:
As much as I hate the ads on YouTube, the ads on wikis actually make it harder to process and distill the information I’m searching for. YouTube will get there eventually too but for now it is the most efficient way to gather information.
Do you actually keep ads on, on purpose? I know people turn Ublock Origin off for certain creators for youtube, but browsing the internet at large would definitely be a different experience.
Wiki sites are free too so they’d have to be ad riddled…
Yeah I’ve actually had to resort to this a few times with Armored Core 6 specifically. It seemed like Wiki sites just didn’t have the detail for each spot, but did have generalized information for each mission for example. But the extra tidbits for each just straight up wasn’t filled in. I’d google, find a gaming website which had some info, but literally not all of it. It was also in the classic ‘recipe’ style bullshit website where you get through 3 full screens of fluff before what I needed.
I decided I’d help where I could but it came to me after playing two more games in that time that EVERY free wiki site had the same issue. I just don’t remember that problem 3-5+ years ago.
I normally hate turning to Youtube when there's a text resource available, but I've definitely found there are some situations where explaining a trick or a location in text is massively harder than just watching someone do it in a video.
I'm a mechanic irl, and I have this issue all the time. I don't need a 12 minute 38 second video to show me how to get some particular bits apart, while text and long lost pictures don't work very well either.
Even that feels sketch though. Most of the actual info I really needed had less than 10,000 views. Usually more in the 2-3k range which makes jack squat on Youtube dollars.
Call me an old geezer, but I can’t stand videos for about 95% of all video game guides. They are either too slow or too fast, and include 10 mins of talking for “and the hot key you are looking for is H”.
This is why I only look for the videos where the uploader is showing their screen, and then watch them at 10x speed (using the Enhancer For YouTube addon) with the sound on mute.
I’ve been thinking lately that a lot of people are way worse at reading comprehension than I would have guessed. Like, there’s a large chunk of the population where reading is difficult and uncomfortable. Of course they prefer YouTube.
We’d rarely encounter these people on a text first medium like here.
I can’t stand listening to them. 99% of people doing these videos, any videos, on YouTube have no concept or idea of how to actually talk properly to an audience. I don’t want to have to skip through someone fucking mumbling in an indecipherable accent to find what I need.
Give me written instructions/guides. It’s faster, I can re-read easily at my own pace (fast!) and I don’t get annoyed by someone’s nasally voice. Yes I’m an older one too.
bin.pol.social
Ważne