this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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“Running servers costs money and it resources to patch, secure, monitor, etc. and we don’t want to spend those costs on these games after so long”
Why not just be honest and let users know. And have a planned server maintenance expiration date upfront when you release the game. And, if it’s doing well, or if you release a DLC, shift that date.
We get operational costs. Don’t treat consumers like we’re idiotic children.
I think there should be law that forces online games to have a „switch“ to change from public servers to private ones when they shut the public ones down.
There also needs to be a law that makes all inventions that are no longer sold public domain immediately, including machines and everything else. As in „this car is no longer sold so it’s building plans go public and people can rebuild it and build parts without copyright infringement.“
This will force companies to either give up their IP or maintain it while making money with it instead of artificially shortening the lifespan of a product while raking in billions.
We absolutely need to understand that companies didn’t make more profit every year in the past. Profits were to bolster bad years. Today, if a company doesn’t have a great year, it gets sold and then closed. (Obviously gross oversimplification but the pattern is clear).
The problem with changing from company-owned servers to private servers is the question who will maintain the server software.
Making it open source is not always an option because I can imagine there is a lot of shared code with other projects which the company want to keep propriety. This means the company would have to maintain the code for others to be able to host the servers, which I doubt makes financial sense.
I‘m pretty sure the assets such as textures need to be installed in the client anyway and the server code does not necessarily need to be open source to make it available for use.
But you‘re correct. Neither the game nor the server software would be maintainable (same as, for example nvidia drivers btw) but it would take away the „kill switch“ for bought software. As long as no major changes come to the system, they would be runnable. Even indefinitely if you dockerize it or otherwise use virtualization.
That would be my minimal goal. But actually, I think there is no reason to keep the majority of the code under wraps. Certain game mechanics and assets are patented anyway. There is no use in having them and breaking the law when using them.