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[-] Retrograde@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I mean subscription gaming properly started on the PC with MMOs

-and I say this as a mainly PC gamer. I remember thinking how insane it was that my friend paid monthly to play the new Warcraft game..

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 5 points 10 months ago

To be fair, running servers for MMOs wasn't cheap. Network cost alone could be quite high, not to mention the storage and backup they'd have to keep rolling in order to ensure small blackouts or crashes didn't doom months of player progress.

That's completely different from what microsoft offered with the xbox, which was effectively a master lobby server to find matches. Little processing and networking needed.

[-] Epzillon@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

This.

I have no problem subscribing for a (good) MMO. The extreme development times, investments and high performance servers as well as (somewhat) frequent content updates as well as long lifespan makes the subscription worth it.

But when a subscription provides nothing else than access to simple features or low-performnace/unoptimized servers then I cannot understand why it would be needed. Sure there are operating costs but today you can literally just do peer to peer hosting. No need for devs to host anything. And with full control of their consoles they could even validate the clients creating the lobbies. The added cost for online gaming is the worst scam Microsoft invented.

[-] gmtom@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

And you think it's cheap to run cloud computing data centres?

[-] hark@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Yes, especially for a simple lobby server. Not much "computing" in that "cloud data center".

[-] gmtom@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah my bad. I'm dyslexic and read the "could" in the meme as "cloud" and thought it was talking about Microsoft gamepass cloud stuff.

[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

Doesn't matter where it started the point is that most pc gaming can be done without a subscription

[-] Thermal_shocked@lemmy.world -2 points 10 months ago

They provided years of content, dedicated support and actively stopped glitches and hacking. Paying for solid service and no hackers can be beneficial.

this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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