#games as a service

[tigerbears]

DO YOU... 1: CARE ABOUT VIDEO GAME PRESERVATION? 2: OWN A COPY OF "THE CREW"?

PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO!

You might now that The Crew's servers are going to be shut down in April, but this guy is planning to launch an international campaign to prevent the game's shutdown, thus preventing the shutdown of all video games that rely on a central server.

"Oh, but you can't expect the company to run the servers forever."

Your right, that's not what Ross is arguing for. He's arguing that Ubisoft (and any other company that cant run the servers forever) either patch the game so it can run offline/run servers locally, or release the server software.

Guess how much you can help depends on which country you live in

(For example, if you bought the game in the US your very likely f@#ked. Ross explains the only thing you can do is contact the FTC, but if that doesn't work the only other way to stop this practice is an act of congress because the law is f@#ked and the company can do almost anything as long as the EULA says it. If the EULA says you don't own the game, then legally you don't own the game.)

However, if you live anywhere else (like France, Australia, or the EU) you have a better chance because you have rights.

"But I don't care about The Crew."

This isn't about just The Crew. If this campaign is successful, then it could set a president to save all online only games in the future.

"But I don't own The Crew."

Then reblog this post so someone who does can read it.

[vadapega]

TO ALL EUROPEANS

Go sign a thing to prevent Games as a Service from killing games.

[whydidisavethistomyphone]

[sablegear0]

For people with an interest in media preservation, I recommend you give a follow to Ross Scott of Accursed Farms. He's extremely passionate about preserving old games and his most recent video is a call to action/for advice on potentially taking Ubisoft to court over their plans to shut down The Crew (2014) at the end of March of this year (2024).

Anyone who has purchased and played The Crew, OR with a background in consumer rights, especially in the USA and EU, consider contacting him via the emails in this video. Ross is sending out feelers for the best way to take Ubisoft to task over this. The scale and details of The Crew make it an ideal case to hold up as a point against the current trend of killing games that have not explicitly been sold as a service/subscription, and "games as a service" as a whole.

I unfortunately do not fit into either of these categories but I suspect with a little more reach we can get this to people who do, and might know some way to help.

[askagamedev]

Why many live service games are now shutting down, even you guys are tolding us its the future of gaming?

Live service games typically get shut down for one major reason - they are unable to find or sustain a sufficient player base to keep development going. Any live service game needs players playing the game and some number of them paying into the game. That money pays for the developers to continue building new content updates for the game, plus some profit for the publisher.

Game publishers aren't charities. Live service games need to earn their keep. If there aren't enough players playing the game or there aren't enough players paying into the game to sustain it, the publisher makes a choice - if they think that the game is salvageable (usually if the numbers are close enough to target), they'll give the dev team a chance to save it. If they think it's a lost cause - if the numbers are too far below target - they'll pull the plug.

There were a good number of live service games that are ending their run, but that doesn't mean that the model is failing. Just look at the longtime franchises that have been successful live services for years, and are continuing to sustain themselves year over year:

Call of Duty

Grand Theft Auto Online

FIFA

Madden

The Sims

League of Legend

World of Warcraft

Elden Ring

Assassin's Creed

Pokemon

Destiny

Apex Legends

CS:GO

Hearthstone

Clash

Genshin Impact

... etc.

Live service games being a strong business model doesn't mean that everyone who tries their hand at it will succeed. It means that the rewards are great if the game can manage to reach sustainability. Unfortunately, not all games will reach that point. It is an unfortunate reality.

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[nielsmichiels]

Phil Spencer Said "Microsoft May Exit Gaming Business If Game Pass Growth Doesn't Increase Enough by 2027" In Leaked Email

........Makes so much more sense now on why all of a sudden they went on a spending spree. It's a hail mary. They know even with the studios they had they couldn't produce anything interesting. So they bought out everything remotely interesting. (Also helped that the publishers besides activision were in not so well financial times)

Phill is desperate. He sold the Microsoft board on gamepass, he probably promissed them the world in subscriptions. And after seeing only 25 mil/30 mil people buying into gamepass that must have seemed like a future failure. They need more PC gamers biting into the gamepass lure. Only, they're not idiots. And the playstation crowd has been fine with Sony's output of good exclusives. And most people are loyal to the platform they already have good experiences with. I don't think we're going to see a mass migration over to xbox because of their ownership of Cod, Elder scrolls, Doom, Fallout, etc, etc.

Ofcourse there are going to be people that will buy an xbox for the next elder scrolls/fallout. But not Cod. And even then it probably would be a second hand console or a massively discounted one. Microsoft probably isn't going to quit gaming in 2027, but they probably boot out Phill and try to get their vision of "enough profits" (it's never enough for Microsoft) in another more proven way. And i hope that's the case because a future where games are a service sounds like hell to me.

[schnuron]

Live service games I like atm, even though I'm not a fan of the idea, but whatever.

[katarasmomsnecklace]

GUYS PLEASE SUPPORT ROSS SCOTT/ACCURSED FARMS HE IS ATTEMPTING TO TAKE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST UBISOFT AND GAMES RELYING ON A CENTRAL SERVER

https://www.accursedfarms.com/

This is his website please please watch the video

It should be illegal to require that any device or software connect to the internet just to run. I shouldn't need to log in with microsoft to open any of their programs on my local computer. All games should be playable without access to an online server. All media you pay for should be downloadable to local disk as a raw file and if they don't like that because they know you'll share it and upload it, tough shit. They took your money already, they'll live.

[tigerbears]

You may have seen a post about this a month or two ago, but if your new I have a question.

Do you care about video preservation?

WATCH THIS VIDEO PLEASE!

Basically, this dude (Ross) is launching a campaign to try and shut down the destruction of always online games by targeting the shutdown of "The Crew".

I think the video explains it well enough, but most of it is to direct you to this website that shows you what to do.

Decisions are limited depending where you live/if you own The Crew, but the least you can do is spread the word to people who do own The Crew.

Now I'm going to copy and paste the expected counter arguments from my last post.

"Oh, but you can't expect the company to run the servers forever."

Your right, that's not what Ross is arguing for. He's arguing that Ubisoft (and any other company that cant run the servers forever) either patch the game so it can run offline/run servers locally, or release the server software.

"But I don't care about The Crew."

This isn't about just The Crew. If this campaign is successful, then it could set a president to save all online only games in the future.

"But I don't own The Crew."

Then reblog this post so someone who does can read it.

[shesmore-shoebill]

"I had choice paralysis :(" is a KILLER line.

He's such a comedic powerhouse, I'm glad more people are getting exposed to him :'D

[crithitcentral]

All Hail Live Service Gaming, the Profitable Nuisance

Facebook X Reddit Pinterest Tumblr Companies need to be profitable, so they all look toward new avenues to increase revenue…but what happens when everyone wants the same piece of live service the pie? 95. What’s the significance of that number, you ask? We’ll talk about it in a moment, but we need to talk about the large, dollar covered elephant in the room: live service gaming. If the…

[comradcat]

Gamer says Ubisoft execs need to get comfortable with "nobody buying your games".

Ubisoft exec needs to get comfortable with "Not Having Any Skin"

[curlyparmesan]

Oh my gosh this makes me so upset, has Ubisoft removed their Contact Us button?? It's not there for me.

[exxos-von-steamboldt]

(via Dead Game News: Early plans for stopping companies from destroying games - YouTube)