RIP. I hope the levels were backed up.

  • @MrRawRats
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    618 months ago

    I really hope that governments, especially the EU, recognise the isse server shutdowns and games being lost to history poses. It should be illegal for companies to make your already purchased games unplayable if not community hosted alternatives exist.

    On that note it should also be fully legal to emulate and freely distribute any game that isn’t on sale anymore. Years of cultural history are being destroyed for corporate profit.

    • lad
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      98 months ago

      What any corporation hears:

      [some noise] for corporate profit

    • @Moghul
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      68 months ago

      I don’t really expect a business to be forced to run a game in perpetuity, but at least they shouldn’t be allowed to C&D you from doing it if they aren’t.

      • @TwilightVulpine
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        28 months ago

        They would never have such expectation if they simply allowed players to host it to begin with. This used to be the norm, until companies figured out that it’s easier to control, monetize and force obsolescence to push players into a newer product if they are the only ones hosting servers.

        • @Moghul
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          38 months ago

          I’m a developer. It’s work to do anything, code doesn’t grow on the LLM tree yet. That’s a feature that would have to be implemented. Anything you ask the business to put effort in is a negative to the cause (and the cause is good), something for the businesses to latch onto to stop the law from changing.

          The best argument you can make is ‘let us figure it out, just don’t sue us’. Anything else you get is a blessing.

          • @TwilightVulpine
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            08 months ago

            It’s work to do anything, but we routinely see small indie studios managing to release player-hosted games just fine, while large studios don’t bother. Even though it also costs them more to run all the servers on their own. So I’m not so sure it’s just a matter of saving costs.

    • Omega
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      48 months ago

      I agree. Hell, older games could be put on digital stores right now. The PS3 had a ton of PS1 emulated classics, and even then there were a bunch left off for unknown (or licensing) reason.