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Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

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Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#41

Post by Rucadi »

proc0 wrote: post #21
dtagames wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the cost and knowledge base required to keep servers running. A game server is a big proprietary ball of spaghetti with hundreds of API endpoints and only the people who built it really know how it works[0]. It's expensive to keep those folks around and expensive to pay for the cloud services and SaaS tools they need to do their jobs. All software has a "lifecycle" and has to be turned off at some poin…

It could be paid by taxes, and run by government. Something like the Internet Archive (not sure if that's public but the entire Internet is much larger than all games put together).

And why not by private entities receiving donations of people that care about preservation?

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#42

Post by gjsman-1000 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #33
mattl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the Switch any amount of flash memory for those game cards is expensive. They previously offered much smaller, slightly cheaper cards that started at 2GB. Unfortunately this time they’re only offering 64GB cards or these key cards. I’m curious how much storage they have, I’m sure very little.

Brand name 64GB microSDXC UHS-I cards are $10 retail. Figure Nintendo can get the actual flash storage directly much cheaper than that, probably more like $3-5. That hardly seems like a meaningful cost saving measure for a physical game, especially on a console that's pushing upwards of $80 as the game price.

> Figure Nintendo can get the actual flash storage directly much cheaper than that, probably more like $3-5

Not necessarily. Nintendo’s variant is built by Macronix under their XtraROM service; a variant of NAND flash designed to be a reliable Mask ROM substitute (including only being writable once, automatic repair afterwards, etc). Officially, their chips are rated to last 20 years at 85 degrees Celsius, which is insane.

This isn’t your off the shelf SD card chip built by a no-name Chinese design company that fails after 3 years of not receiving power. Combine the niche flash with a custom security chip (Lotus3) on every game card; that’s not cheap.

While we don’t know the exact pricing, the rumors are that 64GB is somewhere in the $15-$25 range per cartridge. At those prices, even if I ran a game company, I’d be reserving the non-game-key versions for a Deluxe Collector’s edition.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#43

Post by [deleted] »

luma wrote: post #34
2mlWQbCK wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some future manager will look at a graph and think monetization can be improved X% while only losing an estimated Y% of users. It is guaranteed to happen. Question is only if most in the current generation will outlive free access to their entire Steam library or not.

Valve quite famously doesn't have managers and instead runs a "flat" org chart.

[deleted]

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#44

Post by gjsman-1000 »

luma wrote: post #34
2mlWQbCK wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some future manager will look at a graph and think monetization can be improved X% while only losing an estimated Y% of users. It is guaranteed to happen. Question is only if most in the current generation will outlive free access to their entire Steam library or not.

Valve quite famously doesn't have managers and instead runs a "flat" org chart.

This can easily be changed if Gabe Newell dies, commits a crime, or gets divorced, his estate or trust wants a change in direction, a lawsuit costs Steam a ton of money and they need to get cash quick, take your pick.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#45

Post by codedokode »

dtagames wrote: post #14
Y_Y wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be nice if the Library of Congress or the Bodleian or some other prestigous clouty institution could demand that these published artworks be given to them as an unencumbered copy? I know that such a thing might have to include server code and some agreements on runtime environment, but I don't see that as insuperable. This is culture and it's part of our patrimony. The privilege of getting to publish thin…

The problem is the cost and knowledge base required to keep servers running. A game server is a big proprietary ball of spaghetti with hundreds of API endpoints and only the people who built it really know how it works[0]. It's expensive to keep those folks around and expensive to pay for the cloud services and SaaS tools they need to do their jobs. All software has a "lifecycle" and has to be turned off at some poin…

This might be solved in future by more advanced LLMs as long as binaries are preserved.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#46

Post by kmeisthax »

> So far the vast majority of third-party Switch 2 games are Game-Key Cards, with only a few exceptions such as Cyberpunk 2077 and the Western version of Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion.

AFAIK this is only in Japan. The Japanese Switch 2 experience is going to be vastly different from the international one in ways the average Japanese player won't immediately notice, because Japan's economy is in the toilet and Nintendo is engaging in several desperation moves to avoid selling a product nobody living on a Japanese wage can afford.

If you're wondering what I mean by "vastly different": the Switch 2 you can buy at Yodobashi or Bic Camera is going to be region- and language-locked to Japanese only. You will only be allowed to sign in with a Japanese account, which can only be funded with Japanese credit cards. You can't change the system language to anything other than Japanese, and any games that rely on the system language will consequently be locked to Japanese, too. In exchange, the system is $100 cheaper[0].

Switch 1 also had Game Key Cards, but they weren't branded this way. Instead they were games that required a software update containing the rest of the game in order to work, with an appropriate warning on the box about this. For the record, Switch 1 updates could be downloaded peer-to-peer, and I'm assuming this carries forward for Switch 2, but I have no idea if Game Key Cards work the same way.

[0] If you live in Japan and want an international-spec Switch 2, that's an exclusive My Nintendo Store item that costs the same as it does in the US.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#47

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

jerjerjer wrote: post #28
dtagames wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the cost and knowledge base required to keep servers running. A game server is a big proprietary ball of spaghetti with hundreds of API endpoints and only the people who built it really know how it works[0]. It's expensive to keep those folks around and expensive to pay for the cloud services and SaaS tools they need to do their jobs. All software has a "lifecycle" and has to be turned off at some poin…

Games with single-player mode must be playable in a fully offline mode. Would solve your (very valid) issue for a large chunk of games.

There is a petition that would require publishers to leave games in a playable state at end-of-life (https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home), but it doesn't look like it will reach the threshold that would require the parliament to respond. It is one of the bigger petitions though, so it might still trigger some action.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#48

Post by altairprime »

jsheard wrote: post #16

I get that Switch 2 games need faster storage, and that makes the traditional model of running games directly from the cart prohibitively expensive, but they could have just copied the Xbox/Playstation model of shipping physical games on slow media (Blurays in their case) and then having a mandatory installation step which copies the data to the fast internal SSD before you start playing. That way you're not entirely…

It’s to prevent warez rips as well, though. Performance of the SD card can be easily worked around; blocking the non-preservation segment community that just wants to download and play Switch games without paying for them — the majority of which don’t care about historical preservation or speedrunning — is made much easier by simply not loading new games from SD cards at all.

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#49

Post by [deleted] »

altairprime wrote: post #48
jsheard wrote: post #16

I get that Switch 2 games need faster storage, and that makes the traditional model of running games directly from the cart prohibitively expensive, but they could have just copied the Xbox/Playstation model of shipping physical games on slow media (Blurays in their case) and then having a mandatory installation step which copies the data to the fast internal SSD before you start playing. That way you're not entirely…

It’s to prevent warez rips as well, though. Performance of the SD card can be easily worked around; blocking the non-preservation segment community that just wants to download and play Switch games without paying for them — the majority of which don’t care about historical preservation or speedrunning — is made much easier by simply not loading new games from SD cards at all.

[deleted]

Re: Game preservationists say Switch2 GameKey Cards are disheartening but inevitable

#50

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

addoo wrote: post #31
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Plays are ephemeral and should really be enjoyed in the now. Even if you can perfectly preserve a play, and the means to perform it, tastes change so quickly in theatre that a play that’s entertaining today might not be enjoyable even a year later.” - you, in the 1620s, probably.

Now imagine that the play cannot be altered (game build), it can only be performed on a specifically shaped stage (hardware requirements), actors can only be replaced by lookalikes (‘remaster’ tweaks), it can only be performed with a full theatre (online requirements), and the playwright retains the only copy of the play (source code). Then you start to approach the problem that is gaming.

Which is exactly why more needs to be done by governments to stop this. A simple fix would be to say that in order to qualify for copyright protection, a national archive reserves the right to request a functional copy of the work in a form compatible with any future data migration projects.
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