Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

> Even the singleplayer components [of Ubisoft’s “The Crew (2014) were unusable when the servers were turned off]: [Y]ou just wanting to race around cars in a world with you and other NPCs in it, is no longer viable. Essentially, you didn't "buy" the game, but in a sense were "renting" it for an indeterminate amount of time, a lease that expired due to the publishers and developers no longer wanting to provide that service for you.

Probably true! There is likely some additional revenue that the publisher gets from running servers, even for single-player mode. The question then is what will change in these games if that revenue is no longer there to fund them? Will the quality be lower? Will the price be higher? Will the publishers release new games less frequently? Maybe they just don’t make single-player games anymore?

Honestly? I think we can do without these predatory practices even at the cost of some games.

And I somehow doubt there’s revenue to make off these single player games being online dependent, because the most probable ways simply wouldn’t fly in Europe due to consumer protections.

Most likely it’s just “anti-piracy” or something like that.

Yup

Something I am noticing more and more is how stagnant the North American game industry is. Meanwhile Europe and Japan are still killing it

Larian with BG3 - Europe Cd Projekt with Witcher and Cyberpunk - Europe

Nintendo rocking on as normal Monster hunter wilds and the RE remakes? Capcom, Japan

Elden Ring and Nightreign. FromSoft, Japan

Helldivers 2. Arrowhead Studios, Sweden

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Warhorse Studios, Czech

I cannot remember the last time I bought a new game and had a blast with it from a North American studio. Certainly not a AAA studio anyways

If this happened all multiplayer titles would turn F2P.

People do not appreciate quite what a narrow path has to be walked by games from an IP standpoint. Code libraries, licensed property, per platform (and platform category) restrictions, general IP restrictions (not showing vehicles being damaged, or UI overlays on certain parts of licensed objects) and so on. This is why in the recent ROG Ally announcement Microsoft could not say all XBox games will run on it, because if it's a PC it's not a console, so various games will not be allowed to be sold on it as those contributing IP rights will have been split up separately.

Simply pretending these very real concerns don't exist is nonsense land. You want games with real vehicles or licensed music? This is what you have to deal with. At least these days they have learned to license music for longer than used to be the case.