It’s going to be far easier to get up and running and playing the game by connecting to official servers. But it will sure be nice have to a safety net.

It’s nice to have in the worst case, I agree. My only point in all of this is for you to agree that there are reasons beyond greed to centralize servers. It’s not always that they want to be the next Fortnite. There are practical budgetary and gameplay reasons to prioritize central servers. One does not simply ship a binary to the public and forget about it. It’s a whole product they need to support and test along with every update.

I think devs get more information about what their players actually want if they look at how many people choose the unintended experience over the intended one…The only reason the unintended experience is a detriment to them is because they see it as a threat to their business model.

Again, I disagree with this cynical take. Games worth playing are art, and art is not about giving the audience what it wants, it’s about an artist who has something to say that can’t be conveyed through words alone. I applaud a dev who has the guts to say, “I don’t care what you want, I’m making the experience I want people to experience”. I’ve seen too many games lose their vision, turn to their playerbase, and just do whatever the players tell them to. To me, that’s making escapism, not art. To me, the mark of a successful game is one where the creator makes exactly what they intended to, even if no one wants to play it.

The Factorio devs let you turn off aliens because that’s their intention for you to be able to do that, and that’s fine. And I defend your right to hack at any software running on your hardware to experience it however you want to, that’s fine. But it’s not an artist’s responsibility to help you achieve the experience you want, and we shouldn’t require them to. We can ask them to, but we shouldn’t require them to.

I know what SKG is asking for, and I’m not suggesting they change it. What I personally want is…

So, yes, there may be a breakdown in terminology here. When I hear someone say they “demand” something from someone, for ex.

It’s not an absurd demand to get a game built for offline play

I’m hearing that you want legislation to require offline play. To me “demand” means non-negotiable.

If you aren’t saying that you think SKG should introduce legislation to make your preferences legally mandated, and instead just indicating what you would like to see from devs, maybe a better word to use is, “ask”. I don’t think it’s an absurd ask for a game to be built for offline play. But for games where offline play doesn’t make sense, it’s absurd to make it mandatory.

it’s really fucking hard to know which is which sometimes, even when doing research

Agreed, and there’s no legislation requiring devs to lay out their plan ahead of time, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the people to demand that information.

The only thing that necessitates a central server that only the company controls, even for an MMO, is the business model

I disagree. By releasing a dedicated server binary for a game, you are inviting a fractured playerbase. “Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”, and sometimes, letting players host their own game server gives them that opportunity. It is difficult enough to get people to play your game to begin with, it can be a deathknell to your intended experience if you allow players control over hosting your game.

I’ll give a tangible example: I played Sea of Thieves several years ago. The intended experience is that you are sailing on an open sea with your crew, collecting treasure, and always with the possibility of running into another crew. Sometimes those other crews would be friendly, and you’d team up and complete content with them, or maybe just pass each other by while keeping a sharp eye on them. Other times they would be openly hostile, and you’d immediately be thrust into a ship battle. But most interactions fell in the middle somewhere. They might help you defeat a boss, only to then turn on you and take the treasure for themselves. Because you’re pirates. That tension of not knowing who you can trust was core to the game.

But for the entire life of SoT, players complained about running into pirates in their pirating game. “Just give me a way to do the PvE content by myself” they would complain. Eventually, they caved. They were likely losing too many players to inconvenient experiences with other players. The result is that now all the peaceful players isolate themselves, never to experience any random human interaction in game ever again, and the vast majority of people playing on open seas are just cutthroats trolling for blood. You end up with, what I believe is a less interesting experience for everyone, none of it is the original intended experience. IMO, by allowing players more choice, they chose money over the novel experience I loved the game for.

But even though I don’t play any more, the moment SoT decides they’re done hosting their servers, I don’t care what they do, as long as I can still play that game with other people. I can’t demand that they preserve the experience I liked; that’s their art and they’ve done what they want with it. But I can demand that my license to play the game never expires for any reason.

They can have a ladder and matchmaking while still providing a server browser that goes to self-hosted servers

True, but I explained that for a small team who has to choose where the spend their resources, supporting both can be prohibitively costly

these are things that you set up with the assumption that your game is going to have a massive population

False, I listed several features a game of any size might reasonably want.

MMOs have been self-hosted for as long as pirates have been reverse-engineering the code

That’s irrelevant to the discussion for multiple reasons, but the part that is relevant relates to the control over content, and an intended user experience. No one on a community MMO server is able to play alongside people on official servers, which is literally the point of an MMO. They can’t because there’s no control over the content; admins of those servers can (and do) hand out 100x the gold, XP, and top level gear, which is not the intended experience. Allowing the servers to exist is a completely separate legal matter (using a fully reverse engineered backend should not be a problem, but distributing copyrighted IP, much less charging money is a problem), but you can’t demand that a dev dedicate resources to support an unintended user experience.

If they wait until the game is a failure and about to close shop, I have no guarantee that this update will be its fate.

It would be as simple as saying, “if you can’t release a proper server binary, then you have to make your source available to license holders” (There may need to be an audit step when selling a game in a country to prove that they have the legal ability to open source their backend if it comes to that, but that is tenable.)

I still end up with all the other negative side effects of an always-online game in the interim.

Then make your own game. That’s an absurd demand. That’s like going to a theater or buying a bluray, and then demanding the director re-shoot various scenes on your behalf. They made the experience they made, they’re willing to sell you a license to experience what they made. No one is forcing you to buy it, and we should force them to ensure the license never expires and that experience can always be experienced.

This is just not the case. There are many reasons to have a centralized model, especially for a small studio who has to focus their efforts.

If you want to have a ladder, a matchmaking system, unlockable content, or even just to guarantee a smooth user experience, then you need the server to run on your own trusted hardware.

Literally no MMO could work without a centralized model. Destiny relies on this. Every competitive shooter, or extraction shooter relies on this.

And when you’re a small studio, and you have “support the server that won’t be distributed publicly” and “support the server that will be distributed publicly”, one of those requires an order of magnitude more effort just for validation. When you have to crunch for a deadline, sorry, the primary user experience is going to get priority.

They are doing voluntarily what I want a Stop Killing Games initiative to require from all studios: just ensure the game continues to work.

Hopefully their next project isn’t built with the same naivety.

You understand they’re out of business, right?

You’re just making me wanna play this game lol

But all games have a rate of refunds, including refunds due to rage quitting. Our null hypothesis should be that the refund rate should be the same as any other game (controlling for difficulty).

I don’t know what a normal rate of refunds is, that is probably data that is out there. But if the refund rate for this game is significantly higher than normal, then we can say that SOMETHING about this game is different.

If we control for every factor besides hltb, and it’s still higher, only then could we say with high confidence that the difference is due to people finishing and refunding. But we technically can’t ever say that with 100% certainty unless we go to every person’s house and watch them do it.

We’re overloading the term “ownership”.

• When a company says “ownership” they mean over the property itself. Copyright. Only the rights holders “own” the game, only they can make a sequel to the game.
• When a player says “ownership” they’re referring to their copy of their game, i.e. their license. No copyright. They do not own the game, they just own a license to experience it, they cannot make a sequel.

People then try to say “well the issue isn’t ownership, it’s DRM”. No. DRM that makes the experience worse for paying customers is annoying, but it’s not the issue at hand. Virtually all your games for all your consoles have some form of DRM, and yet you consider them “owned” in your collection.

What we need to demand is: ownership of a license that grants perpetual access.

• We don’t want the license to expire.
• We don’t want it to change what it grants us access to after we’ve purchased it.
• We don’t want them to stop making the content available because they don’t want to host their servers anymore.
• We want the ability to play without needing an internet connection.

If all of that can be guaranteed, then the license is on par with a physical copy.

But until we have legislation forcing it to be the case, we have to assume they fully intend to take your money and one day not be willing to provide what you paid for.

only 7% users have actually beat the game of the people who kept it. the people who refunded shouldnt be that different than the average

You would need data to show this hypothesis to be true, you can’t assume it, the variables are not independent, that’s the whole point being made.

I’d be surprised if the arbitrage opportunities are that broad, but yeah, it would be dominated by automated trading. It would be the same as trading stocks. Every piece of content would effectively have a bid/ask spread for its licenses, and people would have bots that are constantly speculating on them. I suppose when trade volume is low and prices vary, the swings could be quite wide trade-to-trade.

But this is what NFTs are, just with a decentralized exchange so that no single company can take a cut of every trade, and we already know how people felt about that.

the right of first sale in the digital space just need to be created to fix this mess

That sounds nice at first, but if you think about it, the logical conclusion is that: rather than an artist making a sale per person who wants to experience their work, they would make sales proportional to the maximum number of simultaneous viewers. With digital ownership, it would be trivial to instantly transfer ownership, so the moment someone is done playing a game or watching a movie, they’ll sell it instantly to someone else.

The only content that could benefit in such an economy is low production value slop that seeks to go instantly viral and issue licenses while there’s still demand. Then by the time it dies down they’re on to their next slop hit. That and live-service titles that try to keep people holding their licenses. Short single-player experiences, and games from small creators who rely on passive income from a few new people finding their game over time would sell a few copies at first, and then the licenses out there would just always undercut the purchase of any new license.

Also the exchanges would make a bunch of money by taking a cut of each sale. Which is arguably better than just Sony or Valve taking their cut.

I don’t like it either, but we can’t act like right of first sale for digital licenses would solve all problems and not create any new ones.

To publishers, if there’s no piracy happening, then they’re leaving money on the table. They’re offering too good of a deal to people. Piracy was at an all time low probably around 2010-2015 because there was a lot of disruption happening in the digital media space. But as the dust has settled, Netflix et. al. are now scooping up their spoils, and exploiting their advantage for profitability. Piracy rising is an inevitability. It’s a measure of how effectively they’re capitalizing on their content.

I don’t know what his point is. That we can mass produce slop for the lowest common denominator without needing to pay anyone? I legitimately don’t understand who he thinks he’s talking to! None of the players who would be fine with slop are listening (by definition), and he can talk to his rich buddies without the bad PR. And those are the only two groups who could possibly stand to benefit from what he’s suggesting.

You know the people being laid off are not the ones making those kinds of decisions, right?

That sounds like you’re describing someone who is only making a lemmy account because they see potential customers they want to advertise to.

That’s the exact reason I don’t want someone to make a lemmy account.

I was looking to buy a PC version for longevity/future proofing

For the record, physical PC titles are probably the worst way to preserve old games. Unless you’re ok with having to rely on a crack. Modern Windows and drivers often break support for old titles. Also there were a lot of games that relied on a key auth server that is no longer running.

Here’s a video from a couple of years ago on the subject.

Ironically, buying a physical console and copy of the game is the most dependable way of preserving old game libraries. Why do you say your 360 is on borrowed time? It should hold up fine.

I also just recently finished Forbidden West a couple of months ago! Just prior to that I had finished Silksong, and just afterwards I returned to Baldur’s Gate 3 and finally finished that!

I’m now playing Expedition 33 and Fez.

Yeah, it’s definitely not a drop-in replacement. But the Witcher 3 side quests are excellent, made the world feel alive in a way Elder Scrolls never did (to me). I think Skyrim is just so ambitious that the NPCs feel robotic in their inability to act appropriately, and it kills my immersion.

But I agree, idc about Yennifer or most of the main storyline. Basically the same for Skyrim too.

When I played Witcher 3 I remember immediately thinking Skyrim felt extremely dated. I would play any quest in W3 again before any quest in Skyrim.

But yeah, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is recent and supposed to be for Skyrim fans. Haven’t played it yet.

According to their recent feedback hub, what gamers really want is exclusives.

Why do consumers want so badly to be abused?