Last year, in December the servers for it got officially shut down by EA. And you know how I felt? I barely cared. It is still one of my favorite games of all time, and while there are private servers still active, I have no intention to play. And the reason for it that is simple. I've played enough of that game, I feel fully unsatisfied with the time I've spend with it. Its like 2 people growing apart over time.

Just to play devils advocate here. What is the benefit of forcing developers to provide access to old games that require online functionality indefinitely, instead of just hard limiting them to say 10 years wich is essentially indefinite in terms of non-live service games. If you haven't managed to get enough joy out of something during a decade of you life, then maybe the developer isn't responsible for your personal issues.

By this time The Crew 2 would've been 6 years old. I agree that's fairly short time to turn of the servers, but would people be still as frantic about the server shut down in say 2028? Wouldn't 10 years be enough? Why straight up go for indefinite access.

[–] vxx@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

10 years seems fine, but only if they start counting the moment they sold their last copy.

[–] absquatulate@lemmy.world -2 points 1 month ago

Lol, getting downvoted into oblivion because you offered a different viewpoint. Classic lemmy.

The thing is, nobody really expects the companies to keep the servers online forever ( at least according to the petition ), that would unreasonable. People ask that online games are either patched to allow offline play after delisting, or provide protocol information to allow non-official servers, again after delisting.

Normally I'd agree with you, it's the developer's prerogative to schedule games in order to maximize their profits, but for the past decade there have been A LOT of online only games, even single player games that require a connection just because ( see the recent forza motorsport, or simcity 2013 ). There's a clear tendency in the industry to force this as a form of planned obsolescence and that needs to stop.

And yes, I realize that even if the petition materializes into something the developers will find a loophole. This is why I'd advocate more towards educating gamers to recognize and avoid abusive patterns. See the crew 2, where even if they basically give it away now, it's still chock full of mtx and dark patterns, and a lot of games that are designed to be online only have those patterns ( I for one learned to recognize these and avoid the game and/or the developerr altogether ).

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