Ironically I had to buy a subscription to Nvidia to play BG3 on Mac with my friends because they silently delayed the Mac release on release day for 3 months.
I tried running it on Linux, game posting toolkit, and windows via parallels (another subscription, yay), and I could not fix the invisible textures.
They’ve since launched the game fully but it was upsetting they reneged on their release without so much as a word multiple times.
Weil if that isn’t the consequences of your choices.
Seriously I’m sorry for you individually that you were delayed that way - it reminds me of my fellow Linux gamers complaining about incompatibility though - while running Nvidia cards.
Macs are amazing pieces of hardware - and the price one pays is that one has to accept that some devs don’t want to climb the wall into that walled garden.
Weil if that isn’t the consequences of your choices.
So it’s my fault that a studio with a good history, knowledge of the platform and has worked directly with Apple on their last game, with a working public beta running on my machine, decided to delay release without any announcement?
Larian are generally great, BG3 is awesome, the release comms were shit.
Last time I checked working with and for apple platforms is a pain. A release delay after a public test as you described is a strong pointer in that direction - or do you claim that was done out of spite?
Every (your currency) spent on apple supports this holier than you attitude.
We have nothing to worry about because no one wants to play ubisoft games already, I already bought Assassin’s Creed seven times I don’t want to do it again.
Wow, Larian really breaking the 4th wall in this game.
One of those boss fights where you really regret having to fight him because he actually has a good point.
Probably still evil though.
Corporations want gamers to want mass subscriptions because they want to rent out their games forever instead of getting only a single payment for their product. And then they find flimsy excuses to push subscriptions for products that do not warrant subscriptions but are mutilated to squeeze some way of adding subscriptions into them. And then the corporations let games without subscriptions fail while pretending that subscription-based services are delivered because there’s demand and not because they don’t want to deliver finished products that don’t generate easy endless trickling revenue streams.
“I think the argument to make is that The Crew was sold under a perpetual license, not a subscription, so we were being sold a good, not a service,” Ross says in his latest video. “Then the seller rendered the game unusable and deprived it of all value after the point of sale. It’s possible that argument won’t hold up either, in which case I think there’s no possible way to stop this practice, at least in the United States. But to the best of my knowledge, this angle has never been tested in court and might actually have some teeth."
It’s a good point. Interested to see how this unfolds.
I came across this video yesterday, and I'm 100% on board with Ross and his stance toward games as a service, but this isn't a plan for a lawsuit; it's asking for help in creating the plan. I hope he can make something happen, because games as a service is going to leave a wake of destruction in the history of video games, but temper your expectations.
The Crew’s servers, scheduled for Sunday March 31, represents a “gray area” in videogame consumer law that he would like to challenge.
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I think the argument to make is that The Crew was sold under a perpetual license, not a subscription, so we were being sold a good, not a service
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the seller rendered the game unusable and deprived it of all value after the point of sale.
Goddam right, that’s not a grey area IMO, that shit ought to be illegal. Maybe there should be a term, like let’s say 90 years maybe?
My personal favorite is the “companies are obligated to support it forever, or open source the server software hosted by a third party, hosting paid for up front for at least a year.”
While I love the spirit of this idea, it gets complicated fast. Worlds adrift is a great example. The game’s server was created using some closed source libraries with a paid license. So when the owning company (Bossa Studios?) went under, they were unable to open source it.
A law like this would effectively kill all licensed software that isn’t a full product. I do agree though; we need a solution
IIRC Bossa tried to open source it but they used a license for Spatial OS, which provided the backbone of their game. They were unable to make a stable game without it and opted to not open source it. But they were also in an early access that would probably provide an exception for a game closing down.
Bossa did leave the island creator active and has spun up Lost Skies on the same engine, which wouldn’t be possible if they open sourced WA.
Ultimately the issue should be GaaS and MMOs are offerings service while other games are goods which have an artificial expiry date. This is a good test of software judication.
The subscription model makes plenty of sense. But there are loads of games that rely on server side components. That includes basically every multiplayer game that isn’t peer-to-peer. Any very many of them aren’t on a subscription.
I would love to require all that to be open source. But I still don’t see how to do it practically.
When the initially licensed the library, they should’ve included distributed binary copies. That may have allowed them to release the source for their game alongside the binary of the library.
An interesting idea but it’s not possible with all languages. E.g. golang. But probably not the case with worlds adrift. I’m guessing it’s more of an incentive problem for the other company. No more revenue = why bother?
I think it’s like when a tv show doesn’t bother to negotiate the music rights for syndication and then they can’t air it anymore if the audio can’t be removed.
“What happens in 10 years?” Isn’t always a priority. Also, I’m sure that makes the price go up.
Hmm I may be confused. Do you believe that software companies shouldn’t be allowed to build and sell libraries? I.e. They should only be allowed to sell full products, ready for an end user?
Not the person you’re responding to but I definitely think that Library should be able to be made, however I don’t believe that they should be able to prevent a project from going open source in the case of company using the library going under, or if they wanted to keep it closed Source they should have to do something similar to what class action lawsuits do where anyone that is affected by it and opts into the agreement get some sort of compensation. Because it really is like a rug pull you buy a product and then the company makes the product unusable
Except that isn’t how it works, and could lead people to buy a library for a day, then opensource it.
Open source means any code used is widely available to anyone. Having a library you pay for means it cannot be widely available, or nobody would buy it. No more licensing game engines, paid libraries cease to exist since there is no incentive to make them, everything goes the “open source way” which means hard to use, opinionated, unintuitive software that is maintained by random people who rarely know what they are doing. No online banking, since you can’t certify that easily and it wouldn’t be profitable. No card with points and goodies in your supermarket for the exact same reason (points have a calculable value in real money). No online healthcare, etc etc
Fair enough regarding sass, though I disagree with the opinion.
But I’m asking about builders of partial software. For example, consider a single developer that builds a really great library for handling tables. It displays a grid, displays text in cells, maybe performs some operations between cells, etc. On its own, this software is useless but is very useful for other people to build other products. Should it be illegal to sell this software?
Though I would say that the grid software on its own IS useful. It’s useful to developers, otherwise they wouldn’t use it. Saying it’s useless is like saying a hammer is useless because it’s not a house, it’s only good for building a house (among other things).
Or, maybe don’t force online requirement, and allow p2p. Or, better yet, open source the server now that it’s shut down and release a patch to specify where to connect.
Imagine buying a T-shirt, and the manufacturer, without your prior knowledge or consent, could somehow render your shirt unwearable – that’s effectively what’s happening here. The only “gray area” might be that ultimately you don’t own a copy of the game anyway (since digital copies are effectively leased – a whole other issue unto itself), but regardless: more power to this lawsuit. Seriously shady shit getting tacitly accepted lately.
“Imagine everyone moves to electric vehicles, gas stations close down, and people start sueing Ford for releasing a gas car 30 years ago” is the better analogy.
It’s more like, imagine Fords required a connect to a server to run and they turned that server off, stopping a perfectly functional car you purchased from working.
Then you sued them to force them to make the car work without the server.
I just expect a popup in the game which says something like “Could not connect to server, some multiplayer features will be unavailable. Continue offline?”
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