Comment on Ubisoft sued for shutting down The Crew

vikingtons@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It gets to be way harder to argue in court when it isn’t a “clean kill”, using Ross Scott’s words, so The Crew is going to be one of the best examples we’ll ever get for courts to rule on. I expect Ubisoft would rather settle than let this one go that far though.

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• Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I imagine a lawsuit would likely bring up the topic of how hard it would be for a developer to keep the game around past purchase.

  For instance, imagine a massively multiplayer online game; everyone playing the game is acutely aware of how much server hardware is needed to maintain that online presence, and it’s unrealistic to assume it would exist forever.

  That’s probably why attention was pushed onto The Crew. It’s a racing game that shouldn’t need much from a server, so it’s arguably unfair to tie it to that access and take it offline.

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  • cbarrick@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    it’s unrealistic to assume it would exist forever.

    Older multiplayer games would let you self-host the server, long before the current trend.

    Ubisoft doesn’t have to continue to host servers. They just have to release the server code. Zero cost to them.

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    • emax_gomax@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      zero cost to them

      I would imagine it would reveal how sh*tty the ubisoft code bases are and has a reputation cost XD. But if it’s that big of a risk then they should keep the servers running indefinitely.

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      • cbarrick@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I mean, they don’t have to release the source code. A compiled version would be fine.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Pirates have managed to run servers for tons of MMOs. The only thing stopping people from running servers themselves is that they’re not made available.

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    • Starbuncle@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That’s why companies shutting down online games need to be compelled to open-source or at least provide binaries for their servers.

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  • yamanii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Don’t get it wrong, the reason The Crew was the perfect game to start the movement is solely because Ubisoft is french, a country that has pretty strong consumer laws that they aren’t respecting.

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