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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

As much as I don't like a company taking something away that you paid for, where is the line when it comes to online games? Most of the games on that list are from 2009-2013 which makes them all 9-12 years old at this point. At what point can you say the company has done enough, because keeping the servers running indefinitely is clearly unsustainable.

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A server that exists solely to unlock local content.

--------------- <- the line

A server that exists to facilitate online play.

It’s fine if they don’t want to support a 12 year old game, but then they should release one last update that removes all DRM and lets anyone who is willing to host the multiplayer infrastructure.

Or they should be required to tell you when you purchase it at what date multiplayer function will become unavailable so you can make an informed purchase decision. Perhaps they can give disclose a minimum service period and offer full refunds if they shut down before that date.

Also I believe there should be some minimum time from last sale that these services are available. Let's be reasonable and say 3 years.

The line is "whenever they're old enough that the publisher doesn't see any commercial disadvantage to releasing an update that removes all DRM, unlocks all DLC, and allows multiplayer without a centralized server".

Revamping multiplayer to be entirely P2P seems a bit excessive if there's no commercial advantage left.

I would be satisfied with releasing the server as freeware (or open-source!) and adding a feature to set the multiplayer server by domain or IP address.

Yes, I'd be fine with that too. As long as there's zero functionality lost by the central servers being turned off, I don't care how it's done.

I'm fine with losing some functionality. Let's say community leader boards. Ofc, a nice thing would be then to provide API description and configuration options and allow fans to implement their own.

It would be kind of cool if the big engine developers would include a "switch to P2P mode" in at least their built-in multiplayer engines. Wouldn't help in this case, but would be nice going forward. Then at least we could say "well there isn't much commercial advantage but why not be nice? It isn't difficult."

I do wonder if Ubisoft would gain some commercial advantage from being known a company that isn't just waiting to rip off their customers. Hard to speculate as most of their games look pretty mediocre in the first place, IMO.

A game does not exist in a vacuum. There is always going to be a commercial disadvantage to releasing anything, since that would divert attention from other, newer, more expensive games which the publisher would much rather that everyone bought instead of playing old games.

If you never want to let your game that people already bought and paid for work without your central server being up, then I do think you should have to keep it up literally forever.

There's a commercial disadvantage to car owners continuing to drive 10 year old vehicles instead of purchasing new ones. Doesn't mean Ford (or Tesla, more likely) should be allowed to remotely brick sedans.

> Doesn't mean Ford (or Tesla, more likely) should be allowed to remotely brick sedans.

I agree – I was not arguing that anyone should be allowed to do that. It’s just obvious why they would do this, if it was allowed. And Ubisoft is allowed to do this, so they do it.

I once read an article making the point that copyright is "[economic] protectionism against the past" - its purpose isn't really to accomplish anything in the present or future, but to prevent current producers of intellectual property from having to compete with the intellectual property produced by the past. When you read Pride and Prejudice instead of something "more appropriate" to the modern day, that's money taken out of the pocket of a book publisher today.

You've rediscovered that concept as applied to video games.

1) They're literally still selling the game that will be completely turned off today for $20. They've been selling each and every one of these games far more recently than 9 years ago.

2) Really? 9-12 years is too long for you? I can still play the entire version of virtually every single game I bought prior to 2010. (Okay, that's a lie, I've lost a lot of the discs and keys. But if I hadn't I could.)

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