Unfortunately, my friends play it and I’m often roped into playing it with them. My advice: The game is greatly improved if you disable all forms of interaction with other players. Chat is muted by default now, but I’d also recommend muting pings and emotes. No form of interaction is ever positive in that game.
Even then, their matchmaking algorithm seems to be designed to hand an easy win to one team and just switches up which side you’re on enough times that you won’t quit.
If you don’t retain some kind of actual ownership, they will not be allowed to use terms like “buy” or “purchase” on the store page button. I hope there aren’t huge holes in this that allow bad actors to get around it, but I certainly loathe the fact that there’s no real way to buy a movie or TV show digitally. Not...
Games sold on Steam are not required to use Steam’s DRM. There are lots of DRM free games on Steam. Steam is only required to be installed to purchase/download them but not to run them. After download, the game files can be copied and ran on any computer without any verification.
$200M before the Sony acquisition and $200M after. It’s a little hard to believe. The story seems to only be coming from Colin Moriarty right now, but I trust Jordan Middler to consider it at least reasonably plausible if he wrote it up for VGC....
It’s crazy that they released it. They had early access and preorders and those only attracted something like 1,000 players. This is a game that had a $100 million budget. So few players during the early stages should have told the studio to cancel it while it was still in production. Apparently they thought they’d release it and would just jump from 1,000 players to 100,000 overnight with no changes.
In the “other references” they link to the bulbapedia article for Pokemon box so I figured thats what the whole thing was about, but yeah it does read like accessing data on a server
They’re doing this because they’ve lost so much money investors are angry and the executives want to win people back. They aren’t worried about law changes, they’re worried about their stock price and reputation.
If ECIs are to become a useful tool for civil society, campaigners would benefit from a better understanding of how to craft their demands in a way that is likely to lead the Commission to actually propose a legislative initiative. There have now been 133 ECI attempts, millions of signatures collected, a significant amount of money spent, and little to show for it.
What is the benefit of forcing developers to provide access to old games that require online functionality indefinitely, instead of just hard limiting them to say 10 years wich is essentially indefinite in terms of non-live service games.
In a choice between “you can play online until 2035” and “you can play online forever”, the answer is pretty obvious. All things being equal, the indefinite option is better. I think the problem is that all things are not equal, and making it a legal requirement that all games with online features come with a guarantee those features work indefinitely is incredibly vague and can lead to situations that outright hurt developers.
If the devs need to provide a server binary for players to host a server, how do they ensure these servers only allow players who have purchased the game to play? If they can’t ensure it, then the law is forcing companies to allow pirate servers to exist
How do they ensure people running these community servers aren’t charging money for people to play? If they can’t ensure it, then the law is allowing people to use a company’s IP to generate money without a licence.
If the original version had an in-game shop where you can unlock things with real life money but the offline version doesn’t have a shop, thus making parts of the game forever unobtainable, did they follow the law? If not, then devs would have to give out paid features for free.
Unless these kinds of details are accounted for, this vague idea is doomed to fail because no government is going to force a company to give up their copyright/IP for free. I know a lot of people have also said “fuck these giant corporations” but this also affects indie developers as well. Copyright protects small creators as much as it does large ones.
Honkai Star Rail, a free-to-play gacha game (basically, gambling game of chance) in which players spend anywhere from $5 to $10,000 to get characters, gear, equipment… is now releasing a disc version of their game on PlayStation 5. First issue with this is that many people don’t have a disk drive in their PlayStation, and...
A gacha game asking money for something useless? That’s the entire model!
Players that buy stuff in these games usually see it as a donation to devs making a good game. If nobody bought any of the useless stuff the game would shutdown. That’s how I treat the $10 a month I spend on Reverse 1999. Or they’re a gambling addict and can’t stop themselves from spinning the wheel.
Literally how would this change anything? Nobody played the game because it’s bad. Everyone who bought it got a refund. Why would you want a law forcing them to give people a game they don’t want?
This is so important to you that the government must be petitioned to act but you don’t have a single example? Did you purchase Concord? Have you ever purchased a game that no longer works? Why do you think you have the right to tell the devs what they should be doing if you didn’t buy their game?
It feels like new games are just more of the same, with no real meaning. However I recently started playing “Return of the Obra Dihn” and love open ended deduction in it. It feels like I’m actually figuring things out by myself without being handheld through it. Are there any other games that don’t coddle the player that...
Personally, I really liked Papers, Please. You play as a customs agent checking people’s paperwork as they seek entry into your country. The idea of the game is very simple but it’s surprisingly good at telling a story and putting you in situations that are morally difficult.
Runescape is jacking up their subscription prices next month, going from like 12 bucks to 14 bucks a month. The increases range from 20% to 56% in price depending on currency. Players are PISSED about it especially since the company got bought out by some investment firm earlier this year, and they see it as a shameless cash...
My brother has been playing for years and has a few paid accounts. Here’s how he explained it to me. All paid accounts had their prices locked in until you cancelled them. His first, and main, account had a price of $5 a month because he first bought it 15 years ago.
There are also “ironman” modes that exist in the main game. It’s an option at character creation that will restrict your account from trading with other players forcing you to obtain all items on your own instead of just buying them from the trade board. Since you need to make a new character, this is also another payment. My brother has two ironman accounts.
There are “leagues” which are new temporary servers where the rules are different and XP gain is incredibly fast. You’re given tasks to complete before the “league” ends and are awarded cosmetic items based on how much you complete. This requires its own paid account to play. My brother has one of these too.
In total he spent about $20 a month on the game for his various accounts. This change to the subscription will set every single one of his subscriptions to $14 a month raising his monthly payment to something like $56 a month which is ridiculous. He plans on ending all of his subscriptions since there is now no incentive to stay subscribed (the price is no longer locked in). So my brother, a long time and devoted customer, will play the game less and give less money because Jagex is hoping most people like him won’t go through the hassle of unsubscribing.
He, and lots of other long time players, are hoping that Jagex does what other MMOs do and allow multiple accounts for one subscription price.
Hi, industry bootlicker here! Nintendo is listening to their consumers. I was told corporations are evil and won’t listen to consumers and must be forced to do things by law. I much prefer consumers remain vocal about their wants because corporations do indeed listen. No government intervention required. I worry government rules could cause unintended problems that don’t benefit anybody.
Oh no! Not Microsoft Bingo! That’s a list of D list games nobody has ever heard of that all shutdown years ago. I don’t think the world would be a better place if the devs of Radical Heights, a free to play arena shooter that was launched and shutdown a month later in 2018 were forced to give their game out to everyone for free after.
You didn’t create those games. Games are products people work to produce. Radical Heights was a free to play game that was shutdown in a month. What would you force them to do? Release their server code for free so anybody can run a Radical Heights server that people can connect to and play? So a whole bunch of people who never gave the developers a cent have the right to demand the game be given to them simply because it existed for 1 month?
So you want people to follow a law without knowing how it should be followed? You signed a petition and now it’s someone else’s problem if they get in legal trouble or not? This makes the world a better place because it protects theoretical people?
Control of the server is the DRM. Radical Heights sold hats for $15. How do they ensure only players who paid for hats get them and that non-paying players couldn’t just mod them in? They control that information on the server. Which accounts have cosmetics is controlled by the server. That’s the DRM. If they had to release the server when shutting down then they’d have no way to ensure only paying customers play the game since the person who runs the sever can modify it however they want. Everyone could get the $15 hats for free! Or maybe they charge $2 for the hats. There’s no DRM that could prevent this because control of the server is itself the DRM.
So a dev is being required by law to give out their game without any DRM meaning anyone can play it for free and even give themselves the cosmetics the original devs were using to pay the salaries of the dev team. I worry very much that this would cause companies to stop producing free to play games or charge a subscription for these types of games instead (since subscription based games would be exempt). I wonder why people would risk this to “save” games like Radical Heights which, in all likelihood, would have no community. A game doesn’t shutdown after 1 month because it has a thriving community
Hello all! My buddy and I finally finished up Baldur’s Gate 3 this week and we are not left with a giant co-op game shaped whole in our hearts. It was such an incredible experience and it was truly even more fun running through it together. We are excited to hop into another game, but we have no idea what to play. We’ve...
This is about starting a conversation, so hopefully we can have a conversation. I don’t disagree with consumer protection nor do I want to protect billion dollar corporations. I just don’t think that signing petitions to create new laws isn’t the best way to go about this. Law changes come with all kinds of side effects. Anti-abortion laws have caused lots of issues that even pro-life supporters aren’t happy with. I think it’s much better to directly bring concerns to the companies that are causing the issue. I really do think it’s only a handful of corporations pulling these anti-consumer shenanigans and I think they should be called out directly.
He makes it clear that this wouldn’t affect most games, since most games aren’t sold as a service, and even those that are often do have a way to continue to run after the service ends. So this initiative is quite literally aimed at a specific style of game that he doesn’t like and fears will become more common. He’s afraid selling games as a service is too profitable and companies will start selling all games in this way even if there’s no need. To the question about “why not boycott companies selling games this way?” he explains boycotts don’t work. But when Bud Light ran a pro LGBT ad, so many bigots switched beer that Bud Light had to apologize and fire their executives. It fell from #1 beer to #3 and the parent company is now switching their flagship beer from Bud Light to Michelob. Boycotts work. The fact that gamers can’t stop themselves from buying a single game shows they don’t actually care. It’s way easier to sign a petition then it is to not play the newest Ubisoft release. If 1,000,000 people didn’t buy the newest Ubisoft game, they would change course. Helldivers said everyone would need a PSN account to play the game on PC and it got so much backlash that the company changed course in a few days. Companies absolutely listen to their customers.
This is my issue with the direction this is heading. The question is “I am a developer with an online-only game. What will happen if this initiative passes?”. The response is “Shut down your game and never make another online-only game ever again”. He spends a lot of time talking about how games are works of art that need to be preserved for the sake of humanity and the good of consumers, and then he tells devs to shutdown their game and never make another one. This isn’t preservation of games anymore than an anti-abortion law is preservation of life. Anti-abortion supporters don’t actually care about life, they care about restricting choice because they don’t think the choice is ethical. It’s like saying any company that sells a movie must ensure the purchaser can watch that movie forever and when told that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for movie theatres and streaming services to run, respond by saying “Oh well! Who cares about theatres and streaming services? Those shouldn’t exist anyways! They’re unethical and anti-consumer!” Nobody supports a company selling you a licence to watch a movie on a specific date and time…unless it’s a movie theatre. Sometimes, what sounds anti-consumer, isn’t actually anti-consumer, and a broad law could take away something that people actually like as collateral damage.
Creating a law to change how companies operate brings up a lot of issues and questions. This video explaining all the issues and questions is 40 minutes long and often says there’s no clear answers to the questions and concerns since no actual law exists yet. I honestly think that the better way of handling this is an awareness campaign (like is currently happening, keep the conversation going!) and boycott against the worst offenders, not a petition to create a new law. Even if this did get 1,000,000 signatures, I don’t think that any government would pass a law that consumers actually like. No government is keen on messing with multi-billion dollar a year industries. I do think that if 1,000,000 people told Ubisoft or EA or any company to do a specific thing with a specific game or they won’t buy it, they would make the change.
Alternatives would be boycotts directed at the worst offenders and a law that ensures service games are clearly labeled so consumers can make an informed choice instead of banned outright. I’m going to get downvoted and told to fuck off because I’m wrong regardless of what I say unless it’s “I 100% support this”.
First off, thanks for a response that isn’t filled with hate! It’s been rare when I’ve made posts about this topic. I appreciate it!
If we went this route, the issue is that this tactic is done frequently enough that people would likely get boycott fatigue. “Ugh, another campaign? Another publisher screwing us? I just can’t anymore.”
Are there really that many companies screwing over consumers? I’d appreciate if Stop Killing Games actually kept a running list of which companies and which games are anti-consumer. They’ve got The Crew but what other games? If it’s really just The Crew then the issue is with Ubisoft, not the gaming industry. A big list would make it clear this is an industry wide issue that needs to be addressed.
I’m also not sold on the idea that a ban is the only way to protect consumers. Cigarettes literally kill consumers, but total bans on them are rare. Instead, consumers are given a very clear message when buying cigarettes. It’s up to the consumer to decide if they’re alright with it. Are service games worse than cigarettes?
Now a practice doesn’t need to kill people before a law bans it. Recently there have been laws enacted so that if a company sells a subscription online they must allow for cancellation of that subscription online. Frequently, companies would require people to call a customer service line to cancel a subscription, but that could be a huge hassle to do! It’s clear that companies do this only to try and screw over customers and there’s no reason it should exist as a practice, so banning it makes sense. Are live service games the same? They definitely could be, but I also think there are legitimate reasons to sell games as a service. Instead of banning it completely, why not just ensure service games come with a clear label like cigarettes. A note that access to the game is not permanent and the company can revoke it in the future. If someone doesn’t like that, they don’t need to play it.
Ive seen two arguments against “why not just let consumers decide for themselves?” The idea that consumers don’t have a choice. All companies will eventually sell their games in this way and consumers won’t be able to avoid it even if they wanted to. I would agree if the gaming industry was a monopoly and gamers really didn’t have any choice, but that’s not the case at all. Gaming is probably one of the most competitive industries in the modern world thanks to how easy it is for anyone to make a game and sell it worldwide. Gamers have enough choice that I don’t see the “monopoly” argument as persuasive as it is in something like the right to repair movement.
The other argument seems to be “games are art and must be protected” but that leaves the realm of consumer protection and enters philosophy. There aren’t laws mandating the protection of other forms of art so I’m doubtful any government would enact such a law. Also, personally have to disagree. I’m in favour of the Buddhist idea of impermanence. Everything is temporary and trying to make a game exist forever is as silly as trying to live forever. Focus on enjoying your life, as temporary as it is, instead of being down that it is temporary. I think games can be enjoyed in the same way. Of course, if a company is purposefully making it temporary to try and make a few extra bucks, that’s shitty and should be called out, but we’ve gone back to consumer protection instead of philosophy.
Thanks for the lists! Delistedgames seems to focus more on games that aren’t sold anymore rather than shutdown. For example, they list Grand Theft Auto IV as a delisted game because they only sell Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition now.
Weird that TVTropes seems to have a better list of games that not only aren’t sold anymore but don’t work even if you bought them. It’s an interesting list. I feel bad for all the people who played Family Guy Online for the 8 months it existed in 2012!
The Kotaku list is nice too but they do note that some of the games are still playable single player. It’s only the online multiplayer that’s not going to work since the servers are shutting down. I’m not sure how I feel about that one. Is it still killing a game if single player modes still work?
I’m a vegetarian. If I asked everyone to sign an initiative called “stop killing animals” that sought to make it illegal to sell animal products wouldn’t that make me a dick for trying to dictate what companies can sell and what people can consume? You think it’s morally wrong to shut down an online game. I think it’s morally wrong to eat an animal.
There’s nothing wrong with voicing your opinion, but trying to push through a law that conforms to your moral view of the world is weird. It’s exactly the same mentality of people who want it to be the law that the ten commandments are in every classroom.
I’m fine with having more consumer protection and making it clear if a company is selling ownership or temporary access. Right now it’s often not clear and that is definitely an issue. But completely making the sale of temporary access illegal is just strange. If you dont agree to temporary access, then don’t buy it. There are many games that are being sold DRM free, you own them completely, and they’ll work forever. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy something they don’t agree with.
Someone’s morals push them to dictate having the 10 Commandments in classrooms. My morals push me to oppose that happening
It’s not like we must choose between a law mandating everyone must do something or a law mandating its forbidden. There can also just be no law or some nuanced law. It’s not black or white. Saying you’re against a law requiring the 10 commandments being in all classrooms doesn’t mean you support a law banning the 10 commandments from all classrooms.
The free market is incapable of policing itself. If your belief is that voting with your wallet is effective, that just shows how uneducated you truly are.
Ah! Thank you. Now I know why despite not buying any meat for nearly two decades hasn’t caused the meat industry to collapse. It’s because the free market is incapable of policing itself! I had originally thought it was because other people had different opinions but it’s actually the fault of capitalism and lack of regulations. I knew nobody actually wants to be able to purchase meat. It’s that they have no other choice!
I’m unsure of what you mean by ‘temporary access’. Are you referring to the practice where corporations are trying to take advantage of selling licenses for games?
I meant like when you go to a movie theatre you can only watch the movie at a specific place at a specific time and only once. You don’t get to own the movie. I also think this must be some kind of loophole that corporations are abusing and anyone paying for a movie ticket is being taken advantage of and they might not even know it. Perhaps a stop killing movies initiative should be next where we ensure movie theaters must give a copy of the movie to anyone who buys a ticket. Temporary access to media is wrong and the people buying it are uneducated and must be saved.
The whole point is getting people to agree to these morals, and its difficult due to how entrenched a lot of people are in their own heads or scriptures. But the fact that the initiative is pulling these kinds of numbers proves that it’s not being a dick to ask for laws to back up customer rights that people feel are being violated.
Finland has about 660,000 vegetarians. That’s way more than the 9,000 needed to sign an initiative! It actually looks like all of Europe has enough vegetarians to easily pass an initiative requesting to ban the sale of meat. I guess banning meat wouldn’t actually be extremist at all with those kinds of numbers!
That’s fine for single player games but modifying some massive MMO so that someone can host it on a laptop is literally impossible. This language applies to everything. EVE Online, WoW, FFXIV, all of it would need to be able to run on someone’s home computer when they’re purposefully built from the ground up to work on massive servers?
Right, so an MMO charging a monthly fee shouldn’t need to make their game available to everyone if they stop charging people the fee and shut it down? Because that’s what I think too.
I agree with that. That’s what I meant in my original comment that applying this to all games is ridiculous. Subscription based MMOs are a game but this initiative shouldn’t apply to them.
And every single game dev would be required to do this for the thousands of games released every year? Who would host this massive repository? Who would determine access on a case by case basis? It’s a nice suggestion but mandating this as a law everyone has to follow? Why? I thought this was about consumer protection
I’m being specific because this is being intended as a law everyone must follow. “All games need to be available forever” is very vague. How will this vague law be applied in practice? People brought up the idea of eternal code preservation. Alright. How does that work?
I’m not picking a fight. I want supporters to explain in vivid detail their expectations because it’s clear not even all the supporters agree on how it would be implemented. Some said it doesn’t apply to MMOs. Some said it does. It needs to be one or the other. That’s not being pedantic, it’s being realistic.
Is that repository required by law? Is every author and director required to follow it or be punished? What if an author only publishes it on their website and then takes the website down and it never makes it to the archive are they in trouble? It’s a nice thing, but mandating it as law is ridiculous.
An indie dev recently lost the source code to their early access game and had to remove it from Steam. If this law was in place, what punishment would they face for their incompetence? It would be rare for a massive company to not have source control, but it probably isn’t uncommon for small first time devs. So now you have a well intentioned law putting regulations in place that hurt small devs and raise the barrier to entry.
Oxford Study: Those Dastardly Video Games Are Good For Improving Your Mood (www.techdirt.com) angielski
California’s new law forces digital stores to admit you’re just licensing content, not buying it (www.theverge.com) angielski
If you don’t retain some kind of actual ownership, they will not be allowed to use terms like “buy” or “purchase” on the store page button. I hope there aren’t huge holes in this that allow bad actors to get around it, but I certainly loathe the fact that there’s no real way to buy a movie or TV show digitally. Not...
Sony’s Concord reportedly cost $400M to develop | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
$200M before the Sony acquisition and $200M after. It’s a little hard to believe. The story seems to only be coming from Colin Moriarty right now, but I trust Jordan Middler to consider it at least reasonably plausible if he wrote it up for VGC....
Concord Director Steps Down As Studio Behind Historic PlayStation Flop Waits For Sony's Decision (kotaku.com) angielski
Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, Inc. (www.nintendo.co.jp) angielski
After 350,000 signatures in an EU consumer rights campaign, Ubisoft is adding offline modes to The Crew games - but not the now-dead original (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
This is definitely one of the strangest cash grabs I've ever seen (lemmy.world) angielski
Honkai Star Rail, a free-to-play gacha game (basically, gambling game of chance) in which players spend anywhere from $5 to $10,000 to get characters, gear, equipment… is now releasing a disc version of their game on PlayStation 5. First issue with this is that many people don’t have a disk drive in their PlayStation, and...
An in-depth look at Romance in video games (youtu.be) angielski
Denmark is the 5th country to pass the #StopKillingGames EU threshold - 340K out of 1M signatures in total! angielski
Link to sign EU initiative: eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home...
Any good games that break the mold angielski
It feels like new games are just more of the same, with no real meaning. However I recently started playing “Return of the Obra Dihn” and love open ended deduction in it. It feels like I’m actually figuring things out by myself without being handheld through it. Are there any other games that don’t coddle the player that...
RuneScape is increasing their membership price by 50%, and Reddit is trying to censor it angielski
Runescape is jacking up their subscription prices next month, going from like 12 bucks to 14 bucks a month. The increases range from 20% to 56% in price depending on currency. Players are PISSED about it especially since the company got bought out by some investment firm earlier this year, and they see it as a shameless cash...
Masters of Albion trailer, an in development god game x colony builder hybrid with custom crafting recipes (food, armour), custom building design and optional 3rd person combat from Peter Molyneux (www.youtube.com) angielski
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will end service in Nov 28 - but will transition to a paid offline app angielski
Source about the offline app thing: faq.ac-pocketcamp.com/…/36353725150489-What-is-th…
Can anyone suggest some good co-op games for two people? angielski
Hello all! My buddy and I finally finished up Baldur’s Gate 3 this week and we are not left with a giant co-op game shaped whole in our hearts. It was such an incredible experience and it was truly even more fun running through it together. We are excited to hop into another game, but we have no idea what to play. We’ve...
Giant FAQ on The European Initiative to Stop Destroying Games! (youtu.be) angielski
Link to sign EU initiative: eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home...
#StopKillingGames update: Finland just passed the threshold. angielski
The initiative is at more than 20% of the 1 million signatures necessary....
Louis Rossmann's response to harsh criticism of "Stop Killing Games" from Thor of @PirateSoftware (www.youtube.com) angielski