Comment on Closed game studio returns to un-live service its game with community servers before shutdown: 'We don't believe Deceive Inc. should quietly disappear'

ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• Alatarius@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  You are correct, and to expand upon that, it also shows they learned from their mistake and are trying to make good on that implied promise 🤞

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    It shows that they’re trying to keep the game in a state where they’re spending no money and still potentially making money, but that may not be mutually exclusive with what you said.

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    • Goodeye8@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      They’re spending a lot of resources to get the game to a state where they wouldn’t need to spend money on it. I’d be surprised if they recouped those costs.

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      • Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Studio is shut down anyways. They are literally just leaving their legacy alive instead of allowing it to be buried with them. I don’t think any costs are gonna be recouped.

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• teawrecks@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  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 going out of business, right?

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    They can have a ladder and matchmaking while still providing a server browser that goes to self-hosted servers. Even then, these are things that you set up with the assumption that your game is going to have a massive population, which is the foolish assumption all these live service games make. MMOs have been self-hosted for as long as pirates have been reverse-engineering the code. The only thing stopping it from happening more is the rights holders’ willingness to allow it. Competitive shooters started from server browsers and self-hosted servers.

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

    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. But let’s say I know in advance somehow that the game is going to survive the servers’ decommissioning; I still end up with all the other negative side effects of an always-online game in the interim. Server queues, downtime that I can’t do anything about, no ability to play LAN with friends in a place with lousy internet, etc. SKG is looking for a minimum of preservation that I can get behind, but I don’t think it would be enough for me as a customer unless it was never always-online.

    You understand they’re out of business, right?

    Looks like I missed it as I scrolled by a block on that page trying to recommend me other articles, as I was looking for the rest of this article.

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    • a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Looks like I missed it as I scrolled by a block on that page trying to recommend me other articles, as I was looking for the rest of this article.

      The first three words of the title are “closed game studio.”

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      • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Fair enough, but the fourth is “returns”.

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    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      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.

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      • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I think you’re conflating a few things of what I said here. I know what SKG is asking for, and I’m not suggesting they change it.

        What I personally want is a game that survives offline today, tomorrow, and indefinitely, for the reasons I’ve stated.

        And I think that regardless of whether or not anything changes legislatively, it’s such a losing bet to design your infrastructure for online matchmaking only, since most populations drop off extremely quickly, that you end up with costly retrofits like this in a best-case scenario after that point, so you may as well prepare for low population instead. This game, for instance, went from thousands of concurrent players to hundreds in just two months. It’s not an absurd demand to get a game built for offline play. They still make those. No one is forcing me to buy a game that isn’t built that way, but it’s really fucking hard to know which is which sometimes, even when doing research.

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• Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Not possible. They won’t be able to get any funding if it isn’t closed down, because the people who make the decisions are greedy fucks

  The only recourse we have is to legalize game preservation, but unfortunately stop killing games got killed by the courts

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