“Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed”. As reported by Polygon, that’s an argument put forth by a new lawsuit against Ubisoft, filed by two Californian players of The Crew. They’re suing the company in a proposed class action lawsuit over shutting down the racing game’s servers, rendering it unplayable.
Ubisoft pulled the ol’ snippy Johnson on The Crew’s server wires back in March, effectively killing the online-only game. The following month, it started disappearing from owner’s Ubisoft Connect libraries. In response, YouTuber Ross Scott started a Stop Killing Games initiative, petitioning France’s Directorate General For Competition, Consumer Affairs And Fraud Protection (DGCCRF) to investigate.
I still fondly remember how Spellbreak just dropped the tools to run dedicated servers when they shut down. I don’t think forcing companies to run servers forever is tenable, and slapping an expiration date on the games is less helpful than it seems. Would be nice to enforce distributing those tools on shutdown, but that seems like a difficult fight considering what right to repair looks like.
The oldie judges need some analogies they can relate to, nothing wrong with that.
At least let people run their own servers. What fucking scum bags, man.
But how else will they sell you the same ‘remastered’ game 10 years from now?
Think of the corporations!
Now I’m picturing a video game version of the Disney Vault. “Play now through the end of the year for just $129.99* before GTA 9 goes back in the Vault for another decade! *Not including Microtransactions, Online Pass, BattlePass, Totally-Not-A-Lootboxes, or Megalodon Cards”
If they could, they would. But a lot of the time, they don’t even bother to keep the source code of the games that they make. It’s estimated that more than 50% of all games are lost to history because the companies that made them never kept the source code or a copy.
I remember there being a little scandal a few years ago when a remaster of a game came out and it still had the cracker’s logo in it from the pirated copy they used for the source code.
Piracy is preservation.
I mean they essentially already released it with The Crew 2. How else would they sell copies to the people who played the first?
I hope Ubisoft loses.
I always hope that Ubisoft loses.
First off, I support both this campaign and linking to it. More awareness is always good.
However, as Ross himself posted, the problem with this comparison is that the “Stop Killing Games” campaign is aiming to end the tradition of simply turning off game servers. This Californian lawsuit, though not a bad thing, is very likely to simply change the labeling of games, which doesn’t help the end goal of Stop Killing Games.
I want both to succeed and am not attempting to attack your post, just provide clarity.
For more context: https://youtu.be/sitLQg02Mn4
IMO if every such game came with a large “Playable until [Date]” sticker, a lot more people would care about preserving them. And just the market pressure may save a lot of games.
I’d also probably care a lot less about buying them.
That seems like an optimistic but reasonable take.
I feel like Ubisoft is like a European EA. But somehow worse.
“Why is EA the most hated American game company? Because Ubisoft is based in France.”
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Wow, why the hate sir?
The French are renowned for their cuisine, but Ubisoft doesn’t know how to cook.
I agree about Ubisoft. But them being French has nothing to do about why they are a terrible company (nowadays). I juste wanted to point that.
Comedy. English “hate” on the French much like the scandinavians “hate” on each other
Not just the english
Because they don’t know any French people.
Have you smelled a Frenchman?
Only thing that smells bad around here is you.
leave it to the French to not know a joke when they see one
I’m not French?
Ubisoft pulled the ol’ snippy Johnson
They… Circumcised it?
The analogy makes no sense.
Your pinball machine keeps working until it breaks, relying only on electricity you provide.
A server-based computer game relies on running it on a server you aren’t paying the upkeep on.If you buy a game that relies on servers that don’t belong to you, you should expect this to be a temporary lease, not something you can expect to use forever.
Of course, the language in the store’s UI needs to match that. You can’t “buy” a server-reliant game.What you say makes sense for a multiplayer-only game! But the game has a full single player campaign. There is no technical reason to remove access to that part. That part can be kept working without incurring recurring costs.
With games people used to setup their own servers. (And we liked it that way. Way more sense of a community.) So that could be an option. Allow people to run their own servers again.
The analogy makes perfect sense if it manages to effectively communicate the issue to a judge or jury in a way they understand.
