Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdasdf | Hacker News Reader

>The idea that you can't shut down your servers is just wrong.

Personally i find the idea of deceptive advertising and breach of contract with no recourse to be wrong too.

How about we meet in the middle?

No one is forced to keep any servers online any longer than they want to, but if a game is reliant on such a thing, then they must provide such information and state upfront the exact date in which the game will stop working before selling a single copy.

That way would be buyers can decide whether it is worth it with that information in mind.

View on HN

> Personally i find the idea of deceptive advertising and breach of contract with no recourse to be wrong too.

How is it deceptive marketing? It's an online game. It should be well understood in today's world that something that is Online and requires online functionality to work may shut down at some point.

If it is truly an online game, something that does not work single player.

I would agree with you if we are only talking about single player games that require an online connection to play. Those are wrong.

But that isn't what this seems to be focusing on.

This is exactly what this is focusing on. The Crew, shut down in March 31, is a single player game with a whole campaign already installed on your hard drive, with an online component. Gamers are OK with losing online play, but why are they also losing the single player campaign? Honestly, I feel some comments here are from people that haven't played a game in 20 years, and believe there is an actual technical reason for the online DRM.

We are not talking about MMOs. This issue affects single player games as well.

That is the problem, it is not clear exactly what it is we are talking about with this campaign.

We have online DRM which I agree with is a bad thing.

But if you look at the FAQ they are also clearly talking about online servers for games.

So this is conflating 2 very distinct issues here.

Regarding the Crew, do we know for a fact that it is 100% installed on your hard drive? Or are we making assumptions.

Edit:

> We are not talking about MMOs.

There is literally a FAQ entry for MMO's.

Edit again:

Just realized that you are the one that posted it here. Assuming you are also the person that made the website, this is way too broad.

If we actually want to talk about online DRM than yeah, I stand behind it completely. it is stupid that I can't play Kingdom Hearts without being online.

But the moment that you start mixing that with actually online games that may require an online connection for the actual gameplay itself, than your argument completely falls apart.

Those are 2 very different issues and I would recommend not only making the home page clear on what exactly it is you are talking about (I should not have to go to the FAQ to understand your point) but also make sure that we are talking about a core issue of online DRM.

GaaS is not online DRM. I don't know of a single actual single player game that could be considered GaaS. The Crew doesn't even seem to fit this idea. Maybe it has a GaaS component, like Halo Infinite, but the single player part of Halo Infinite is not a GaaS.

So this entire thing is confusing because we are mixing 2 distinct problems and hoping for a single solution to both which is not realistic.

You are all over the thread suggesting this is impossible and a lunacy to even suggest players keep access to their games.

Are you a manager at Ubisoft by any chance? Otherwise I do not get why you are so adamant in defending the practice on behalf of these large studios.

At least the other commenter strongly against this initiative says they have worked for AAA studios before in their HN bio, so their bias is clear.

Instead of responding to criticism you focus on something else entirely...

Nowhere am I stating that gamers should not have access to their games, I have made it clear that I disagree with actual online DRM.

but GaaS is NOT online drm. An Online Multiplayer game is NOT Online DRM. That is a frankly absurd argument to make.

Again you are mixing 2 very different things.

The reason I am all over this thread is because of the problem with arm chair developers in the gaming community thinking that certain things are easy or just free to do.

I am not a manager at Ubisoft or have any particular stakes in this except for being a gamer.

Please actually respond to why you are choosing to mix up 2 distinct issues here and fix the website (if it is yours) so it is actually clear what your problem here is.

> the gaming community thinking that certain things are easy or just free to do

It's not easy nor free, but if you're buying the game (not renting). There should be atleast some guarantees that it won't be a piece of junk (or piece of virtual junk) in a year or two. There are such guarantees provided for most types of other goods, why games or software in general should be treated differently?

Think this way: if your game has an expiration date - it should be on the label plain and clear.

And no, there's no general understanding that Online multiplayer games are going to close some day. Do you really believe that little Timmy playing Fortnite and his single Mom who's giving Timmy money to buy more Vbucks follow all game industries' new trends?

> There are such guarantees provided for most types of other goods.

There is? Like what. Software is unique in this aspect that it may require external sources to work.

At absolute best we have a warranty for hardware or a guarantee that food will be good until an expiration date. But I can't think of a single other thing that you spend money on that would have a guarantee that is anything like requiring the company to open source their server side infrastructure if they shut down the online services.

It isn't an expiration date. In most situations, they are not publishing a game saying, oh we are going to shut this down in 3 years. No, they are hoping it will succeed, that they can continue to make money selling DLC for as long as they can.

If the game flops or just doesn't have enough players at some point, then yeah it will shut down. But that isn't an expiration date when it is announced.

I am not going to argue about "Little Timmy" since their parents should understand this well. It isn't line games are the only online services that ever shut down and you loose time, money, etc.

I don't understand how this is so hard to comprehend, we are mixing 2 distinct problems here. One is actual online DRM, which I agree with is bad.

The other one is an online game that eventually runs its course and is shut down. That happens.

As far as labels go, I checked all of my xbox games and it is clear that the online component can cue changed at any point. Obviously it doesn't give an expiration date since one doesn't exist as of time of publishing. But the notice is there and should be well understood by this point.

Again my problem with the OP is trying to call GaaS "Online DRM" which it frankly isn't. They tried to say "it isn't about MMO"s while MMO is one of the few FAQ.

This happened with Nosgoth which shook me and my friends.

My take is that the game should provide self-hosted server options or open-source the IP.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com