Thoughts on publishers pulling the plug on their games?

[georgemoody]

Yesterday i managed to stumble upon this video in my Youtube recommended of a Saul Goodman-esque "commercial" about the racing game The Crew getting shut down by Ubisoft and decided to do a bit more research.

Apparently, Ubisoft decided to shut down the servers for it on March 31st as well revoking licenses from players, making it unplayable, and prompting Youtuber Ross Scott to launch the "Stop Killing Games" campaign, with the campaign's website being in said youtube video. It's great to see people caring about this type of thing and rallying for it to be stopped.

[BlazingCobaltX]

A similar discussion can be had about TV/movie production studios shafting finished pieces shortly after (or even before!) airing. We have come to the point where even the most basic respect for a piece of artwork (a game or show) is no longer guaranteed, because it's apparently profitable to produce something JUST for tax reasons.

As for games, I understand at some point discontinuing live support for a game that's long past its prime, but completely revoking access to it seems extremely unfair. This kind of happened with the Legend of Korra game made by Platinum Games, which is no longer accessible through any storefronts. It almost seems a bit spiteful - what reason would you have for doing that?

In situations like these, where publishers are no longer guaranteed to respect the IPs they publish, piracy has free reign. I'm not sure if petitioning things will help, because if Ubisoft cared about their playerbase (or developers who want to have proof of their work) they would never have come to this decision.

[xXWebMasterXx_Gina]

I'm glad that there is a movement to push back on this kind of thing; but overall, I'm pretty jaded at this point. So many things nowadays are lacking in any long-term viability and ownership in favor of subscription services, streaming, planned obsolescence, forced software updates, DRM, what have you; and now this over-adoption of "live-services" in games. It made sense for MMOs for obvious reasons, but its been creeping into many AAA games (even single player ones) in tandem with always online DRM requirements. 

I'd say just retroactively removing any online requirements and releasing the source code would be a fair compromise, but we all know that most companies would rather see their products unusable/destroyed than being given away  but, that's a much larger issue that permeates in nearly every market.

All that said, I don't worry too much about what the AAA games are doing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. For every shitty publisher there are like 50 indie devs out there making games honestly without all the bullshit that's become the norm.


The real thing we should be worrying about is the distribution of all these games; Steam can't/won't last forever! 

[starbreaker]

IMO, if a corporation stops selling a movie, album, game, etc. then they should forfeit all copyright protection and that product should enter the public domain. Copyright is supposed to expand and improve our culture, not impoverish it.

[StickTrix]

Companies should have to allow players to be able to play a game after they end support. Not even saying they have to keep is updated or anything just don't take away the players right to play something that they paid for. Even if that means just making sure it has single player, but the even easier option is allowing community servers.

Something like TF2 still has a major community because of it allowing community servers.

I would love them having to release the source code, or put it in the public domain. and I think in the long term thats possible, but in the short term just allowing community servers would fix a lot of issues

[garystu]

I wish it went further. Always-Online DRM is ALWAYS bad, and they could campaign around that. Any game which only allows proprietary servers is ALWAYS bad, and they could campaign around that.

I get where this campaign is coming from, as it's rallying around the shutdown of a popular game, but it stops there. "Stop killing games" with no insight into what's killing games. Asking game devs nicely to please make a patch at the end-of-service, instead of demanding their art doesn't have a kill switch in it from the start. Oh well. A bit of incrementalism probably can't hurt.

I mean if we're talking incrementalism: all open source software, open free and permissive culture for everything, and copyright abolishion are what I want

[petrichoran]

IMO, if a corporation stops selling a movie, album, game, etc. then they should forfeit all copyright protection and that product should enter the public domain.

totally agree! it's crazy when it's illegal to obtain a once sold work at all because the only option is piracy. it's super scummy to force someone into punishment for just wanting to experience a story, piece of art, etc.

I mean if we're talking incrementalism: all open source software, open free and permissive culture for everything, and copyright abolishion are what I want

oh yeah. it's very much a deep rooted problem with the economy and capitalism. there's a reason why these companies are oftentimes essentially throwing away art that means a lot to people for some extra cash.

[Scootarooni]

Recently, Microsoft axed a couple of their studios. This included Tango Gameworks, who developed one of my favorite games, Hi-Fi Rush. Despite the odds being stacked against it (like being dropped out of nowhere after one single trailer) it performed extremely well and won quite a few awards! ...But microsoft still killed the studio and fired all those people. To say I'm pretty bitter about the gaming industry is an understatement.

I think it's one thing to pull the plug on older, "obsolete" games. Even if I don't like it, I get it. But it's another thing entirely to treat newer/modern games like that. Gaming companies only do this sort of stuff to line the overstuffed pockets of their CEOs and it makes me really mad :/ there's no actual love for gaming or the players. Just whatever makes them the most money.

[Junebug]

My honest opinion is that it makes sense for publishers to stop caring about old games, and for them to stop financially supporting them if it serves them no purpose. Companies aren't charities putting money and effort into things just to allow them to persist for other people, with little to no return to themselves. I dislike that game studios go out of their way to make it harder for people to play old games—if the plan is to neglect the old games then that should be enough, and there's no reason to be needlessly antagonistic by forbidding conservation efforts—but I don't agree with the attitude that it's some great wrong being committed against other people. Why should they be obligated to do this?

I think people have a bad relationship toward the ephemerality of things and this is why they interpret other people moving on with their lives as people trying to take something from them.