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Stop publishers from destroying games

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Buy physical copies of games which don't require perpetually online servers to work

Problem solved

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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Its impossible to get people to understand that all they ever own are keys, and the digital "locks" into which they fit can be unilaterally removed by the supplier because there's no law that says they need to maintain them in perpetuity!

What's more its completely unenforceable because who'd pick up the slack were the supplier go out of business or noone remained able to maintain said digital locks?
 

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
I know it doesn't mean much, but if you're from the UK please consider signing the 'The Stop Killing Games' petition.

 
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WitchHunter

Banned
Multiplayer games get sold physically too. And when those servers get shut down, if they can't open source the online netcode they should at the very least refund you everything you paid
They could release a vm image with binaries and let anyone pull up servers...
 

Deerock71

Member
For every schlub that fast-forwarded through the terms of service and user agreements and clicked [I AGREE], let me sum up from the other side what you agreed to:
Lose Willy Wonka GIF
 
I totally get why this upsets people, but at the end of the day, money has to be spent to keep servers online, if the money isn't there, who's going to pay to keep a game online just because? These ain't fucking charities.
 

Guilty_AI

Gold Member
I totally get why this upsets people, but at the end of the day, money has to be spent to keep servers online, if the money isn't there, who's going to pay to keep a game online just because? These ain't fucking charities.
Don't force the game to check with servers then? Let players make their own servers? There were various cases of fans being able to run private servers from games that supposedly needed company servers.
 
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Don't force the game to check with servers then? Let players make their own servers? There were various cases of fans being able to run private servers from games that supposedly needed company servers.
Sure, those are actual solutions, what I'm saying is it's weird people expect companies to just throw money just cuz (tbf, they do that a lot these days anyway)

Game devs could also move away from this stuff back to single player focused.
 

Guilty_AI

Gold Member
Sure, those are actual solutions, what I'm saying is it's weird people expect companies to just throw money just cuz (tbf, they do that a lot these days anyway)
Even more reason to make a law on it. They weren't forced to give refunds for digital purchases 15 years ago either, nor would some since they'd only have to lose.
 
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mdkirby

Member
I totally get why this upsets people, but at the end of the day, money has to be spent to keep servers online, if the money isn't there, who's going to pay to keep a game online just because? These ain't fucking charities.
Very true, but at the same time media preservation is important. It’s always been a thing. Games are a major new media and this capability is being compromised. The companies themselves shouldn’t be responsible for maintaining it, as you’re right, it costs, and companies go out of business. It needs to be funded and performed by either publicly funded, or charity based archival libraries. But companies should be made to ALLOW that to happen. Currently most don’t. They just turn them off and they vanish into history.
 

Bojji

Gold Member
Really ? That vhs collection doing well for you now? 🤣

Technology advanced since VHS and we have DVD, BD and UHD BD formats - modern players can play them all (including consoles).

You buy them once and own them for the rest of your life, same is true for majority of games through history. You also have ability to sell or trade/borrow them.

You probably don't care about things like that but many people do, letting corporations do whatever they want will be bad for everyone in the end (including you).
 
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coolmast3r

Member
I don't see how anyone wouldn't want to support this initiative. Unless you are a corporate shill that cares more about short term $$$ vs preserving games as a form of art.
 

YeulEmeralda

Linux User
They could, but why would anyone choose to place their work in the public domain decades before their copyright expires?
Copyright for a videogame is 50 years I think?

But the vast majority of games don't make any money after a decade.
 
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