'Make a private hosted version of your game': Knockout City dev's top tip for studios shutting down a live service game is to give players the keys

nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksmod to Games@sh.itjust.works – 131 points –
'Make a private hosted version of your game': Knockout City dev's top tip for studios shutting down a live service game is to give players the keys
pcgamer.com
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There are a couple of decent reasons. One is that your servers may be a network of services that can't operate independently. Another is that they may rely on things you don't have a license to distribute.

You make good points. I was not completely clear in my post.

There are situations where what you say is true. (Were they setup that way intentionally though, for this very reason? Don’t think we will ever truly know.) There are certain multiplayer focused games that could be destroyed by client side affirming. I get that there are legitimate situations that makes this difficult for corps.

There are licensing issues as well but so many games face this and many offer “streamer friendly” options where the licensing of the music isn’t an issue.

Many of these live service/ server dependent games are completely completable single player and they could disable any licensed music/ multiplayer licensed components? Most of them are P2P anyway like Helldivers 2.

These are the ones I draw issue with.

Edit: to your point of multiple servers; why couldn’t we host the required servers privately if they so wished?

The real reason that companies don't all do this is that it involves a nonzero amount of work to convert a game to work without the live service it originally depends on, and because there's no legal obligation to do so, most companies just... Don't care enough because they're onto the next thing. For example, Helldivers 2 chooses what missions and modifiers exist based off of the meta war decided by a lore master. To convert off of live service they'd have to program some intense stuff to get it to generate random possibilities that act like a meta war independently and such, which is not trivial.

It'll never be widespread until it's mandatory because it's asking the company to do work to allow players to continue playing a game when the company would reaaaally like it if you were just playing something else they make instead, something you might spend money on.

It’ll never be widespread until it’s mandatory because it’s asking the company to do work to allow players to continue playing a game when the company would reaaaally like it if you were just playing something else they make instead, something you might spend money on.

Then sue the shit outta them until it's mandatory.

I wish Ross the best of luck in that, it's almost our only hope to getting this required legally, though separating games from licenses for a product into a service begins to get weird and means even if Ross wins it likely won't cover everything, but it'd go a lot further than we have already.