Hosting servers isn’t free. Someone, somewhere, is paying for it. It’s easy to forget that that someone used to be advertisers via GameSpy for so many games. Now, on PC, you’re paying for it via digital purchases on the same store that hosts the servers.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
And it’s game devs that pay for the multiplayer server upkeep, not the storefronts.
And I highly doubt that any money spent on XBox Live or PSN subscriptions was ever sent their way.
This is just flimsy defense for greed
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It wasn’t always worth it back then, hence why it was supported with ads or a subscription. Did you ever patch your game back then? Even that was subsidized by ads; the devs didn’t host the patch files themselves in most cases. Live services, which are unfortunately all too often synonymous with online games, host their own servers, and you’re paying for them with microtransactions. If a game uses the platform’s matchmaking for peer to peer multiplayer, which was just about all of them on Xbox Live in its early days, then you’re using the servers your subscription was paying for. Even today, many still use these features. But you’re correct that the ones not using these features are still locked behind that subscription on consoles unless they’re free to play.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 days ago
I think game patches were even charged to the developers, which is why a lot of them were loath to patch minor bugs.