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The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

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Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#41

Post by junaru »

sph wrote: post #26

A lot of “yes, but…” in this comment section. Hard to tell if it’s HN playing contrarian as it usually loves to do, or just people so brainwashed they default to defending corporate interests. Nothing makes me as hopeless for the future as reading people trying to one up the negativity about any initiative at all, and if no one did anything, they’d hit you with the snarky ‘go vote to make your voice heard instead of…

You can't make a person see a problem if his livelihood depends on not seeing it.

In my gaming circles, people who work on SaaS solutions are against SKG even though they are avid gamers and even open source contributors. They just recoil on a thought of an EOL plan. Same on HN.

"Think of the indies" is just same old "Think of the children" astroturfing.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#42

Post by bpavuk »

vitalyan1234 wrote: post #32
superkuh wrote: post #2

Good cause, but society has rapidly moved passed them just switching off games after people bought them. Now the hardware production companies for gaming are winding down and not producing gaming computer parts because megacorp datacenter parts have a much higher margin. The future of gaming will unfortunately be renting from the cloud; a context in which these "stop killing games" arguments will have much less lever…

fortunately, that's been already attempted and despite the best circumstances imaginable resulted in a much welcome failure. >On September 29, 2022, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia, citing its lack of traction with users. The service was shut down on January 18, 2023, and Google refunded all purchases for hardware and games made through the Google and Stadia stores. even more fortunately, further atte…

some timing-sensitive games such as Clair Obscur (parry) or I Am Your Beast (movement)? sure, they depend on low latency. that said, GeForce Now is, sadly, pretty good nowadays. enough to play a moderately fast paced game such as DEATHLOOP. Ukraine, streaming from Germany. 5 GHz is basically required, but in slower-paced games, on a phone, with 720p streaming, you can get by with 4G.

even games are not really a moat for owning hardware - next Gears with its timing-sensitive reloading mechanic can just get adapted for cloud.

if cloud gaming gets another hype wave for one reason or another, this time I am pretty sure they will lock in a much bigger user base. me personally? still committed to owning my hardware, but I can totally imagine my mother playing some RTS on a GeForce Now-connected tablet and having zero complaints.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#43

Post by rolph »

aurareturn wrote: post #33
ryandrake wrote: post #9

The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn dow…

It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This is silly. No developer should be obligated to support an online game forever. Imagine a highly complex online game that requires a few people and tens of thousands a month in cloud costs to keep it running. Now imagine that this game is 25 years old and only has 100 players total…

what is truly silly, is the practice of online requirements, to operate software.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#44

Post by mystraline »

cogman10 wrote: post #17
mysterydip wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Ah, but you didn’t buy a thing, you bought a license to temporarily use a thing in ways we deemed acceptable!” -publishers somewhere

"Here's a device we sold you, but when you first turn it on you need to sign this 30 page contract which says you actually don't own the device, if you are mad at us you have to go to our preferred arbitration, and we reserve the right to turn your device off at any time on a whim because you left a bad review somewhere. Sign it or enjoy your worthless brick which we will not refund. Oh, and now every single manufact…

My opinion is that is a fraudulent rental masquerading as a sale.

And any and all EULAs or similar documents presented after a sale should be completely null and void. But any corporation attempting to that should be fined a signficant portion of their revenue. Past that, dissolution of company.

But no, we live in a shit society that someone who signs up for a demo of Disney+ and then has his wife die due to bad food, and they tried to slap indefinite arbitration on him.

https://lawreview.missouri.edu/infinite-arbitration-how-one-...

This whole country feels like one big fucking company store scam.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#45

Post by [deleted] »

operatingthetan wrote: post #18
dpcan wrote: post #6

I’m a devils advocate on this argument. Yes, a big company can take it away, but I think they have to leave it online long enough to get your money’s worth. So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.

>So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it. This example is humorously short and this is why there is backlash to game companies shutting down games. What about the people who bought it towards the end? They just get nothing? All that time and money spent just gets thrown in the trash because they don't want a cloud bill? They either need to o…

[deleted]

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#46

Post by rolph »

KolibriFly wrote: post #21

Just don't design the game so that, when the business model stops working, every paid copy becomes a brick

i remember when multiplayer games could be connected to a user operated server.

the basic function of a multiplayer server is to keep the players game state synched, large numbers of players, and very fast gameplay vs connection rate and jitter is fly in ointment.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#47

Post by _aavaa_ »

mysterydip wrote: post #15
ryandrake wrote: post #9

The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn dow…

“Ah, but you didn’t buy a thing, you bought a license to temporarily use a thing in ways we deemed acceptable!” -publishers somewhere

That’s the exact excuse used by the publisher in the article.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#48

Post by vblanco »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #22

Why California's New Save Our Games Bill Could Kill Indie Studios: https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-...

Im a professional gamedev. There is pretty much no indie on earth who actually depends on cloud systems to work, because that stuff is expensive and indies dont have money. Thats a megacorp thing particularly from AAA publishers. Indies are either singleplayer (this is 0 problem) or they have local servers.

That article is paid for by the lobbysts and completely incorrect and wrong.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#49

Post by junaru »

aurareturn wrote: post #33
ryandrake wrote: post #9

The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn dow…

It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This is silly. No developer should be obligated to support an online game forever. Imagine a highly complex online game that requires a few people and tens of thousands a month in cloud costs to keep it running. Now imagine that this game is 25 years old and only has 100 players total…

That game is called World Of Warcraft.

It had its server reimplemented by enthusiasts [1] with no access to this "one of a kind cloud" for decades now. Heck it even supposedly had game client ported to new engine [2].

> B-but we can't release the binaries due to licensing...

Release the source. As a developer you should be able to write code that allows to stub out all the propriety parts. The community will replace your speedtrees, matchmaking, netcode, anticheats and so on.

Change is hard we get it, but the excuses are on par with any other industry..

[1] https://www.getmangos.eu/

[2] https://turtlecraft.gg/remastered

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#50

Post by rolph »

0x59 wrote: post #29
danaris wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who gets to be the arbiter of how much time $70 is worth? You? The companies making the games? Why should they get to destroy games—gone, forever, with no chance of retrieval or resurrection—that hundreds of people put their time and love into, and millions of people want to play, just because they think it'll make this quarter's stock price numbers look better? Copyright was created to protect the rights of the c…

Why would you buy my new game if you're spending all your attention on the one I sold you 10 years ago?

because you made an effort born of true craftsmanship, because you found the properties of the game that appealed to users and preserved them, instead of taking them away, or locking them into a premium paid tier version.
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