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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

#51

Post by jsheard »

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.

If stopping piracy was the main motivation for this change then all games would ship on GameKey carts, but they are still offering real carts to publishers who are willing to pay extra for the flash.

It's rare for physical media to be the weak link in console DRM nowadays, when piracy does happen it's nearly always enabled by a full system jailbreak at which point you can just as easily pirate digital games.

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

#52

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

zirgs wrote: post #17
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #2

I can play all the on disk ps3 games I own, the downloadable ones are dust on the wind.

Disc rot is a thing unfortunately. And they are no longer making new PS3s.

GP didn’t say that they were playing them on disk, only that they owned them on disc. Backing up PS3 games is relatively easy these days. I fully expect PS3 emulation to be good enough long before working PS3s are unobtainium.

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

#53

Post by altairprime »

jsheard wrote: post #51
altairprime wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If stopping piracy was the main motivation for this change then all games would ship on GameKey carts, but they are still offering real carts to publishers who are willing to pay extra for the flash. It's rare for physical media to be the weak link in console DRM nowadays, when piracy does happen it's nearly always enabled by a full system jailbreak at which point you can just as easily pirate digital games.

It’s not all or nothing. They made ripping of the most valuable games more difficult in exchange for lower prices for publishers, a win-win scenario for their platform, and those few who will insist on having a no-download experience can pay extra to do so. Obviously platform compromises will continue to make ripping possible, but this isn’t about all or nothing prevention, it’s about ratcheting up the difficulty level.

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

#54

Post by proc0 »

Rucadi wrote: post #41
proc0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That could work I guess.

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

#55

Post by ldng »

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…

What your saying is true BUT. Your are talking about keeping servers (plural ?) running but, for conservancy, you should not need a full fledge cloud. It not about keeping it running for millions of customers. It's about being able to run for research to study games in the long run. One server that can handle a couple or two clients should be enough for conservancy.

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

#56

Post by dtagames »

ldng wrote: post #55
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…

What your saying is true BUT. Your are talking about keeping servers (plural ?) running but, for conservancy, you should not need a full fledge cloud. It not about keeping it running for millions of customers. It's about being able to run for research to study games in the long run. One server that can handle a couple or two clients should be enough for conservancy.

People are the harder problem. A game server is not a box you turn on and it just runs. The platforms themselves change under you all the time as do all the SaaS tools you rely on. Clients change all the time, too, and one missed update can make your game unrunnable. Folks don't want to train or pay the humans needed to keep server-based games alive.

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

#57

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

zirgs wrote: post #17
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #2

I can play all the on disk ps3 games I own, the downloadable ones are dust on the wind.

Disc rot is a thing unfortunately. And they are no longer making new PS3s.

yet, empirically, the seven or eight disks work, and the downloadables are gone

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

#58

Post by Ferret7446 »

jsheard wrote: post #51
altairprime wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If stopping piracy was the main motivation for this change then all games would ship on GameKey carts, but they are still offering real carts to publishers who are willing to pay extra for the flash. It's rare for physical media to be the weak link in console DRM nowadays, when piracy does happen it's nearly always enabled by a full system jailbreak at which point you can just as easily pirate digital games.

It's up to the publisher how much DRM they want. Just as publishers choose whether or not their game on Steam uses DRM, publishers for Switch 2 decide whether their game will use GameKey or not.

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

#59

Post by jbm »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #42
kllrnohj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Strange, my copy of fitbox died after about 2-3 years of occasional use without any abuse.

To be fair, this was the case for my Joycons too (Calling it drift is branding, they are effectively unusable)

I like Nintendo's games but their QC has always been a little off. I got bad joypads even in the 80s when we got a NES. (Not having the internet and being a dumb kid I thought I was only limited to moving up and left on Zelda for whatever reason)

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

#60

Post by autoexec »

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.

> It’s to prevent warez rips as well, though.

There's basically no chance that this scheme will prevent piracy. Once again the pirates will have the superior product and paying customers will be screwed over.

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