Fighting For Game Preservation - DF Backs 'Stop Killing Games' 

it has a hidden offline mode

​@@Agent-mb1xxHow?

@@tabbofii trainers

I remember system link cables as well. Although I guess that effectively just another word for a LAN. Another thing developers should do is allow customers to host servers themselves.

It must've beeen around 1945

I miss the days of GameSpy network

There are plenty where you still can! But neither Steam nor GOG are interested in making it easy to identify it, even though the tags are there. Developers/publishers themselves will sometimes have LAN and not list it. Palworld says it requires an internet connection, but it actually doesn't. It's so annoying.

Only Nintendo and AA developers do that nowadays

Bless your soul. I got gears as a kid. Only reason i got the xbox 360. Fun times. Even better with friends.

All Gears has Split screen including Judgement, 4 and 5

Giga games

I'm only wondering when he'll return to the Freeman's mind series. I mean this cause is certainly worth putting his other projects on indefinite hold. But I'm a little sad about it still

It blew my mind when I learned the Stop Killing Games guy was also the Freeman's Mind guy. I saw that shit like 15 years ago.

They say taking action on the crew will cause a ripple effect, but I feel like all it will do is encorage companies to make sure they cant get sued for it

​@@gamesmaster1060 For a reason imo. But it would also affect gaming in a bad way. Only bigger companies would be able to go into the risk. Because forcing developer into contracts / rules guaranteeing that the games continue to run burns huge amounts of money. So there is even a bigger risk than before (not every developer is big enough to do it) for developers in general to make an online based game. Means this would create only more and more money making games... This is really one sided. It is completely against freedom to do what you want and like. I mean you as a buyer takes the risk with every buy, but you can do your research. Physical games are the best option, because it doesn´t need energy all the time. You can play it when you want. But buying an Online Multiplayer game is a risk (also MMORPGs), but on all sides, because nobody knows how it will perform and how much player will play it over the years. If it not brings the money, it will affect the hard working people behind it as well. For you it is "only" some money that you have spend once (most of the time, or so much like you want). But the other people may lose there jobs. It is stress on top. Don´t get me wrong, i´m a fan of Game Preservation... but to me "physical" is the only real thing here. Only if a game has an multiplayer that doesn´t need servers, it will work competely. Digital is not that easy to handle, because it needs to be cared for and maintained from other people all the time. At some point it is not worth. So it will never work for every type of game... it is how it is. Private server are a solution, but that´s up to the player itself. And when it comes to drm free games, it is up to the player. But this could be an easier way for even more pirate stuff and would hurt (imo) the gaming industry also in long term.

@@gamesmaster1060 They just have to call it rental, but for some reason they didn't or are too afraid to use it.

Any games sold for a single payment and without any clear expiry date is sold as a perpetual license. Only subscription based games like WoW are not.

However terrible it is. Its legal. They sell consumers a "limited license" to the product with which they reserve the right to end access to at any time. I think pretty much any game has these terms of use. In order to play the game we have to agree to it. Legally they cover themselves. To counter it we'd have to push for changes in the way these terms are written

Unless those laws allow you to let friends borrow your digital copy, or sell it when you're done with it, then yeah, the fixation DOES need to be on physical copies.

​@@Xoulrath_it needs to be on both

Physical media doesn't last forever anyway, so part of the argument always a bit of a dead end.

​@@originalbadboy32The only real conservation is a cracked game with multiple backups and not physical media. People who argue for physical media for preservation reasons or because "you dont actually own the game otherwise!!!!1" are fucking stupid.

Mobile market will love this idea

Based 😎

I was proud of survival game players for giving Nightingale a hard time over its required internet connection. Then I was disappointed in everyone who bought Helldivers despite the problems with online-only games being shoved in your face at launch, rendering the game unable to be played at all.

the issue is Ubisoft blocked you form even install the game. they delisted it from your library.

@@matthewjuarbe5826 If you owned it on Steam, you can still install it but it has nowhere to connect.

Yeah imagine if historic music & movie catalogues were treated like this. "Sorry, the CD you purchased in 1994 is inoperable due to an arbitrary external kill-switch. If we feel like it, maybe we'll include it in a subscription service with no option of download-to-own."

​@@InnuendoXPI believe early on, the formats for records weren't great and a lot were on hard wax which melts then warps in the heat.

@@FoxUnitNell wax wasn't used for long, they quickly moved on to shellac, which is basically a set resin & while brittle, can still be found in playable quality today.

Yeah, it's pretty awful, because it was very predictable. Same as lootbox gambling, dlc skins, missing dedicated servers. And even now you see some people trying to downplay the initiative.

Petition, not legislation (even if it gets 100k signatures, it won't become law. Unfortunately, in this case). And it still says " 20 people have already supported this petition. No more people can sign this petition until it has been approved. We need to check it meets the petition standards before we publish it. Please try again in a few days." as it has done for more than a few days.

Look at Baldurs Gate 3. It was always available on GOG. Ultimate game of the year, sold like crazy, loved by pretty much everyone. That is the way! All arguments and doubts that games without draconian DRM or always online modes would be a disaster are artificially created and just plain garbage. It's all about control.

I just bought a copy of it on the Xbox 360 and the original xbox. They each cost about 55 bucks online.

Iirc the PC port is awful so chances are unless you mod it your best shot is getting a physical copy for Xbox/PS2 or PS3/360

@@jimbob1862 ya, that's why I didn't even bring it up. The pc port is not great. The best version is on the 360. I've really enjoyed playing it again.

myabandonware

reddit/abandonware

You don't need physical media for this to be true. GOG allow you to download a backup installer that's completely DRM free for a lot of games.

we need drm free games for proper preservation on HDDs take your discs and shove it

Well, except that doesn't fix devs killing games that rely on online servers. The Crew discs are just pretty frisbees now.

@@gearoidodonnell3661 I'd argue that you definitely do need physical but i respect your opinion :)

@@floppyD They should let the community run them at that point (but i wouldn't know if that would be feasible)

They sell a perpetual license. Selling a good and then destroying it remotely without previously informing the consumer is textbook fraud.

Most of the time no one has agreed to anything. But Ubi will alter pre-existing agreements to match their own desires.

Not necessarily, EULA/TOS cannot override laws. If you did a purchase it should not be possible to delete it remotely. Just like artists or authors cannot destroy a book or painting they've sold to you. This is a gray area and not tested in courts I understand, but there is a decent chance this remote deactivation is against some laws.

That's why us gamers should be unionist, and collectively pay for lobbyists and lawyers on our behalf.

At least it's better than nothing

@@federicocasali1565 nope it's the same as emulation . At least with better hardware emulation becomes better but not a bad port.

@@dr.sivavignesh664 I mean depends how bad we're talking about, if it's something worse than emulation sure, but I can't think of that many games that got a port so bad. I was thinking more of bad optimisation

Like take Dark souls 1, the pc port was terrible, but a modder made a fix that made it completely playable and that led to all the rest of the series being ported with huge success, and I fee like in the long run it helped us get more pc ports from japanese companies

@@federicocasali1565 the recent ports are disastrous. Especially the unreal engine ones. Jedi survivor , Jedi fallen order , dead space. Yeah most of them are EA shit. Gone are the days where it would be a bad port and the devs would fix it with patches. The current trend is , launch a bad port with premium editions that grant early access , capitalise on the hype make some money and move on. Sure modders could make it better. But that's not a guaranteed fix. They may or may not find a fix for it. Jedi survivor will never be fixed. The dev team has moved on to part 3. The creative lead has left the studio. It's baffling that the bugs that existed in Jedi fallen order still exist in Jedi survivor. Comes to show that they have no respect for their customers. The solution for how to fix performance issues in dead space remake and Jedi survivor was to get a ps5. Cyberpunk was a disaster at launch . But kudos to cdpr for making it nearly as good as the gameplay announcement trailer. Most devs/ publishers just launch and forget. It's just sad.

The DF Retro video on Google Stadia is gonna be nuts

This is Gold!😂

Consumers never asked for the service either.

actually, it's all part of the plan. they are happy to destroy their own products, because then their now products have less competition.

People basically do this with Splatoon. Some router changes etc. and people manage to connect through the local play mode

Trouble is if the game isn't designed that way in the first place that's a significant amount of work to make that happen. Yiu wouldn't be able to do that with an MMO for example.

@@originalbadboy32 what do you mean? Before Blizzard officially provided WoW classic it was basically done by users hosting pirate servers - it exists because a grey-market solution showed that demand for it exists. What you're talking about 'has' been done with an MMO before, and not a small one either.

You know the funniest thing? The game doesn't actually use dedicated servers for the player interactions. It's all peer to peer. There was some Guy that was able to keep playing the crew for a day after the servers went down.

@@InnuendoXP Yes I know that already. Whats your point? That was and is technically illegal , we want to ensure there is a legal route to do that, and that the publishers abide by that.

Same thing

no, its not theft, you cant be hyperbolic when fighting legal battles, you kids ruin everything with your lack of professionalism

​@@SobeCrunkMonsterWho says you can't be hyperbolic? Tell that to Nintendo lawyers who will put alleged pirates in forever debt. Besides, what else is it if not theft when ownership is revoked permanently? If you buy milk from the store, they won't come and take it back from you.

control. it's all about control.

Yeah, they don't want their past catalogue competing with their current catalogue. Madness I know.

how is turning a game off related to “monetization”? turning a game off is the opposite of making money, you kids dont even know what youre saying. just using terminology all willy nilly like its a sentence enhancer rather than actual vocabulary.

@@SobeCrunkMonster ok condescending shitebag, I'm in my 30s so let me spell it out for you. Back in the day they had these things like dedicated servers, peer-to-peer connections .etc where the users could sustain the multiplayer ecosystem entirely on their own. Then MMOs came along, microtransactions came along, suddenly having the player base able to host whatever kind of game states they wanted, modded however they wanted, with whatever cosmetics they wanted, wasn't so appealing when you could make them pay for these things instead through the 'live service' model. But the only way to achieve this is with a closed multiplayer host maintained by the publisher. And once they are no longer making money, they shut it down, and so shut the game's multiplayer - and in some extreme cases where the live service is integrated comprehensively, shutting the whole damn game down. As for "shutting down is less money than not shutting down" - maintaining a live service costs money, if a game is years past what the publisher deems 'end of life' then it won't be profitable to maintain it. They also have no current financial incentive to open the multiplayer hosting to the community, that takes money, testing, all for people who aren't going to be paying any more money for the game. And lastly, if they've made all the money they're ever going to make from that game, they don't need it competing with new games they're wanting to sell. That's why pervasive post-launch monetisation and live service models lead to dead games - they directly tie the operability of the game to the publisher's willingness or ability to sustain it in perpetuity, which they've clearly shown, they aren't.

​@@SobeCrunkMonster Epic would be in shambles if I could run my own Fortnite server like I did CS 1.6, Team fortress, and Killing floor. Reason it's only through their servers is to monetize their skins. At least that's how I see it. After I ran a private WoW server years back I learned how little power and bandwidth it takes to run most online services; if I could run that on a crappy dual core a decade+ ago I doubt there's an online game that people couldn't host themselves.

Ubisoft games are honestly not even worth pirating. But if I really feel like I need to play one of their games, just know I'm putting on my eye patch. Their launcher is single handedly some of the most infuriating peace of software I've come across

how is turning a game off generating any “short term profit”? is that just a sentence enhancer rather than a statement that actually makes sense?

@SobeCrunkMonster what ubisoft did to the crew on pc is unprecedented. Most companies will let you reinstall the game so legally you own the key for the game and therefore technically own the game even if the key is usless. Ubisoft went the extra mile by taking away the digital key on their launcher, meaning legally you don't own the game. My guess to why they did this was due to the crew lawsuits. If they lose, all they have to do is implement offline modes in their online only games or refund their customers which for ubisoft is basically a slap on the wrist. But if they win, they can legally revoke your games or force you to pay for your games again. Imagine buying star wars outlaws for 70 dollars, and 2 years later you'll be forced to pay 30 bucks for an update or you can't play the game, that would be on the table if they win. This would be incredibly greedy and short sighted, but I can easily see ubisoft doing it.

@@danielgrezda3339 They also disabled the DLC on ANNO 2070. I'm boycotting them ever since, and I know other people who do the same. But this is not enough. Those companies are oligopolies and all of them do this, there is no real choice anymore. Ubisoft even doubled down that 'gamers should get used to not owning games'. Only actual consumer protection legislation can fix this. EU has the best chance to do this, so you should tell everyone you can to support the initiative!

Even if you didn't play it online there was an offline mode you could play. I used to have a GC and PSO, I don't have that anymore but I have an OG Xbox where i can fire up the same game and play offline. If a game says "Purchase" when buying it, they should have to offer a way to play it, even if limited in capacity, after the servers shut down. Otherwise you didn't purchase it, you rented it.

@@DigitalHaze65536 Yeah the GameCube version also has split screen multiplayer, which was a nice option. I usually play PSO with a friend I know away from the game, so I was so pleased to be able to play on private servers. As well as being a game, it’s a familiar place to meet up when a busy life gets in the way.

Dreamcast still online with it too

@@southsidetherealest2860 I do have the Dreamcast versions too but it's hardware limiting my play there as I can no longer connect the modem. I'd love to put the time in and get the Dreamcast connected again, you can never have too many PSO options.

🤣

Have been boycotting them for a very long time. They've only doubled down since. Regulation is the only meaningful solution.

😅😂

The Crew is totally dead.

@@usul573 Did it have Single Player?

​@@konstantinlozev2272 It had singleplayer. It was a bit cheesy, but gameplay loop was alright.

There were already attempts to make heated car seats a subscription.

Damn did not even think about that :/ and the first game is better than the 2nd one.

Going to be gutted when that game goes offline forever as I put 4100 hours into that over the years doing all the gear sets, optimising every piece to the max and spend so much time doing 100% of the commendations, so much work put into that game just so one day Ubi can shutdown the server and its all lost forever. It's still a fun game with plenty online still, same goes for the Division 2 one day. Something needs to change because with most games requiring you to be online nothing will be playable in the future after a short while.

No. I'm boycotting Ubisoft ever since they disabled ANNO 2070 DLC, and I know other people who boycott them. It does not work. Since then they've only doubled down. Boycotting bad companies is good, but the only real change can be achieved with consumer protection laws.

I'm boycotting Ubisoft for quite a while after they discontinued ANNO 2070 DLC, and I know others who do. Has not stopped them from doubling down on taking away games from people. These companies are oligopolies, there is no real alternative, they all do this and they feel they can get away with this. The only real solution is if the law gets passed. So everyone who can should support the initiative, it's the best chance we have!

This! Basically what happened to Overwatch

Yeah, this is a big problem. People willingly giving away their consumer rights and fighting for it to happen. It's insane.

@@CodeStructureTalk exactly! They’re fighting to give their consumer rights away and it makes no damn sense.

​@@Wezly17pride and ignorance are the biggest sins

Fuck the EU

@@ProfessorTrippthey are literally our only hope

The Crew was also released on discs. didn't stop Ubisoft from killing it.

This has nothing to do with physical vs digital media. Thats a whole other battle

@@ssjbargainsaleactually in all honesty it really is. Hell PS and XBOX could do this anytime with a digital game as we speak even Steam did with Spec Ops the Line

@@vagamer522 The crew had a physical release, so it doesnt mean much in this case

Yeah, I agree. This is also crucial with non-live service games. I latched onto your comment because I'm one of those people that just won't shut up about Spec Ops The Line. I cherish it. Once I FINALLY convinced my friend to try it, it wasn't available anywhere anywhere. It's a single player game that can be played offline. He couldn't get it on Steam. The only solution was to have him borrow my xbox and lend him my 360 copy. ​@vagamer522

physical is good for nothing except as proof of ownership.

​@@arsenii_yavorskyi say that to all my 130+ installed games that I can play entirely offline but simply putting in the disc :) can you do that with a digital version?

⁠@@gamingedition5165Go to Vimm’s Lair, download a good GameCube game, boot it up on Dolphin, and see for yourself that you can run a digital game without an internet connection and that you can claim full ownership of it.

License hell was created. It was not there before. If the law passes that all new games have to remain playable, the providers would either have to provide a perpetual license for the perpetual game license, or other providers that can provide alternate technology on such terms would take their place. I think it's an easy one to solve once the regulation is in place. Remember, this issue was created. Nothing is disappearing from Need for Speed 1 CD. The issue has been created recently.

They could easily do it, but won't. The likely reason being is that they think that any large amount of time spent on old games may prevent people from wanting to buy new ones. It's sabotage due to greed.

Didn’t MAG also carry a pretty attention grabbing sticker on the front cover, advertising it as online-only? Transparency goes a long way

@@ElTequilla Yes, it did say that it was "Multiplayer Online Only" and I knew one day it would go away when I was playing it.

Yea ve sen this trick happen in software before

Have been avoiding anything Ubisoft related for years, has it changed anything? Regulation is long overdue!

You mean Ubisoft CEO.