We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws. Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create. We welcome the opportunity to discuss our position with policy makers and those who have led the European Citizens Initiative in the coming months.
I can find a community for a fighting game from 2012 to get together every Thursday night for a 30-person tournament via Discord. 100 people in a battle royale could work much the same.
As long as people can host a server instance, does it matter?
Hypothetically, even if it costs 1000$ per hour in AWS fees to get the required hardware to run that, at least you have the option to, alternatively have a peer to peer option to play smaller version on a LAN with a max of however many players your own network can support, there could be many implementations, which at the end of the day would still allow you to play the game when the official servers (authentication or room hosts) are shuttered and inaccessible
The main point of SKG is that currently, we, as customers, are not even getting the short end of the stick, we are getting no stick, despite having paid for it.
And ultimately, at the end of the day, not our problem to try to figure this out, the point is we’re unhappy with the current situation and want things to change.
Also note that none of this is retroactive, will only apply to games released in the future, so having an end of life plan as a requirement from the get-go is pretty simple to work on when nothing was done yet.
Enabling the ability for purchasers to specify an arbitrary server to connect to would require a design change compared to how most games are recently. That feature used to be standard in the early years of online gaming.
We had online-only multiplayer games in the early 2000s with self-hosted servers supporting over 60 players per map. It’s absolutely possible to do better with today’s tech.
Man. Y’all really think I’m talking about networking design?
I thought we were talking about gameplay design. That’s why I picked 100 player battle royal.
“Change the game design” implies that, to me. I didn’t pick a single player experience with always online requirements. Or a 4 player game with online matchmaking and no direct connect options.
There’s such a strong, and obsessive need among a bunch of people on this topic to explain and explain, and not parse the precise thing being asked.
There’s also a lot of people who conflate having the opinion that the effort will fail due to its approach and the person/people behind it with not wanting it to succeed.
What I’m doing is poking at how people are behaving and how they talk about this initiative. And how the messaging is confusing and all over the place. It takes 5 people racing to explain it to me when I understand perfectly, and lay out a specific case. Yet no one replies to explain how my example would work.
I’m not the only one who sees this initiative as misguided, and mis framed.
Sorry for coming off like a troll, usually my outlier questions get responses instead of people acting like they are here.
I’ve really dug a bit too deep on this one, and I’ll try to stop replying now.
There are, it may surprise you to learn, different types of game that have online connectivity for different reasons. And the appropriate EOL response may differ across those games.
“Live-service” games where the main gameplay is singleplayer but an online connection is required so they can enforce achievements and upgrades (…and “anti-piracy” bs) may be best served by simply removing the online component so it can all be done locally.
Online competitive games can be switched to a direct connection mode.
MMOs and other games with large numbers of users and a persistent online server can be run on fan-operated servers, so long as (a) the server binary is made available, and (b) the client is modified to allow changing settings to choose a server to connect to (it could be something as simple as a command-line flag with no UI if the devs are being really cheap).
I picked an actual “online only” example for a reason. Yet everyone is jumping around talking about other things.
Turning a battle royal into a lan only game sounds like the solution I was expecting in my replies. And then yeah, you can even route that over the internet.
But that’s not changing the design, really. It’s providing the infrastructure needed to run it, even if it’s lan only, and would need more to run it over the internet.
Depends on what one means by “change the design”. It doesn’t make a fundamental change to the deeper architecture of the game, no. But it does require some relatively superficial changes, which are themselves a design problem of sorts.
The initiative’s issue isn’t with them being online-only (though personally people hate it). The initiative aims for games to have the ability to have a reasonable state of playability past the end of life.
This is for all kinds of games - single-player, multiple player, live service, only only. The point is to keep what you paid for.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
I tried to pick the most obvious example of an online only title.
What’s the plan with a 100 player battle royal game?
Edit: the guy I replied to chose to quote someone saying a game is online only, and their suggestion was to change that.
And then ya’ll come in with replies about keeping it online only, and they have 55 upvotes as of this edit.
Hosting your own server and playing multiplayer games over LAN is playing offline. Is that what you’re asking?
I can find a community for a fighting game from 2012 to get together every Thursday night for a 30-person tournament via Discord. 100 people in a battle royale could work much the same.
That fighting game is not online only, I bet.
I replied to someone saying that an online only game should change their design.
It’s not online only, but this Thursday night get-together is online-only.
As long as people can host a server instance, does it matter?
Hypothetically, even if it costs 1000$ per hour in AWS fees to get the required hardware to run that, at least you have the option to, alternatively have a peer to peer option to play smaller version on a LAN with a max of however many players your own network can support, there could be many implementations, which at the end of the day would still allow you to play the game when the official servers (authentication or room hosts) are shuttered and inaccessible
The main point of SKG is that currently, we, as customers, are not even getting the short end of the stick, we are getting no stick, despite having paid for it.
And ultimately, at the end of the day, not our problem to try to figure this out, the point is we’re unhappy with the current situation and want things to change.
Also note that none of this is retroactive, will only apply to games released in the future, so having an end of life plan as a requirement from the get-go is pretty simple to work on when nothing was done yet.
That’s not “changing that” it’s keeping it online only.
Enabling the ability for purchasers to specify an arbitrary server to connect to would require a design change compared to how most games are recently. That feature used to be standard in the early years of online gaming.
We had online-only multiplayer games in the early 2000s with self-hosted servers supporting over 60 players per map. It’s absolutely possible to do better with today’s tech.
Man. Y’all really think I’m talking about networking design?
I thought we were talking about gameplay design. That’s why I picked 100 player battle royal.
“Change the game design” implies that, to me. I didn’t pick a single player experience with always online requirements. Or a 4 player game with online matchmaking and no direct connect options.
There’s such a strong, and obsessive need among a bunch of people on this topic to explain and explain, and not parse the precise thing being asked.
There’s also a lot of people who conflate having the opinion that the effort will fail due to its approach and the person/people behind it with not wanting it to succeed.
What I’m doing is poking at how people are behaving and how they talk about this initiative. And how the messaging is confusing and all over the place. It takes 5 people racing to explain it to me when I understand perfectly, and lay out a specific case. Yet no one replies to explain how my example would work.
I’m not the only one who sees this initiative as misguided, and mis framed.
Sorry for coming off like a troll, usually my outlier questions get responses instead of people acting like they are here.
I’ve really dug a bit too deep on this one, and I’ll try to stop replying now.
There are, it may surprise you to learn, different types of game that have online connectivity for different reasons. And the appropriate EOL response may differ across those games.
“Live-service” games where the main gameplay is singleplayer but an online connection is required so they can enforce achievements and upgrades (…and “anti-piracy” bs) may be best served by simply removing the online component so it can all be done locally.
Online competitive games can be switched to a direct connection mode.
MMOs and other games with large numbers of users and a persistent online server can be run on fan-operated servers, so long as (a) the server binary is made available, and (b) the client is modified to allow changing settings to choose a server to connect to (it could be something as simple as a command-line flag with no UI if the devs are being really cheap).
You guys…
I picked an actual “online only” example for a reason. Yet everyone is jumping around talking about other things.
Turning a battle royal into a lan only game sounds like the solution I was expecting in my replies. And then yeah, you can even route that over the internet.
But that’s not changing the design, really. It’s providing the infrastructure needed to run it, even if it’s lan only, and would need more to run it over the internet.
Depends on what one means by “change the design”. It doesn’t make a fundamental change to the deeper architecture of the game, no. But it does require some relatively superficial changes, which are themselves a design problem of sorts.
The initiative’s issue isn’t with them being online-only (though personally people hate it). The initiative aims for games to have the ability to have a reasonable state of playability past the end of life.
This is for all kinds of games - single-player, multiple player, live service, only only. The point is to keep what you paid for.
Of course it’s not. That’s why I made my initial reply.