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this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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For single player games, I absolutely agree. If you're going to stop supporting the game, send out one last patch turning off any always online DRM and let people keep playing their game.
For multiplayer games, it seems like it's a bit more complicated. Who should be shouldering the cost to keep the game servers alive?
In the olden days, online games didn't have servers run by the publisher, they came with a separate program users would run to host their own server. Things like Minecraft still work that way, although I think there are servers run by Microsoft too now. For some games, this will be more complicated than others, but it's not impossible.
And if it were impossible (or infeasible), they shouldn’t be able to sell you a perpetual license knowing that it will expire when they take down the servers. If they are selling it as a service, there needs to be a minimum length of service specified. If the game is rendered unplayable before that date, the customer should be entitled to a refund.
As it is right now, you buy these games with a hidden expiration date. You could buy The Crew as late as December 14th, 2023 with no way of knowing you only had 4 months to play it. Those people don’t receive a refund.
Releasing a standalone server, the server source code, or spec for how the server runs sonit can be reverse engineered.
There is no financial incentive to do this, there is reputation incentive to do it. But I think it needs government regulation to make it actually happen.
A final patch removing any online requirements (accounts, DRM etc), a standalone server and the source for it would all be amazing!
I know it would be radical, but you could require that they release the server code open source. So it's not their responsibility to run it, but if the community wants to run it, they can.
Or, if that's complicated due to licensing etc, they could release a minimal server implementation that maybe doesn't scale the same way, but at least has the interfaces covered so the community can take it from there. The game could at least still be played.
They don't need to release it as open source. They could just do what games used to do, have a server executable so people can host their own sessions.
They could let users connect to each other directly, or host their own servers
They should be required to serve a minimum amount of server time, or be forced to refund customers.
Or allow p2p where applicable.
The users should be hosting the servers
Honestly, just release the server software. Or better yet, the source. There are plenty of peeps willing to take the time to host for small communities.