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EA Shutting Down Video Game Servers Prematurely
Spacezilla writes "EA is dropping the bomb on a number of their video game servers, shutting down the online fun for many of their Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 games. Not only is the inclusion of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles odd, the date the games were released is even more surprising. Yes, Madden 07 and 08 are included in the shutdown... but Madden 09 on all consoles as well?"
That's like a mugger leaving a card thanking you for your custom and asking you to use his services again.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
From what I understand, I thought each of these games on consoles, that one of the players will be the 'server' - and that the role of the EA server is matchmaking etc, but clarification would be cool.
I'm pretty certain that in all cases none of the consoles involved is acting as a server. If one was than that player could have a significant advantage due to relative latency issues. Also having a console act as a server means having to deal with NAT, firewalls and other routing/network issues - the only guaranteed way for all the consoles to see the server being if the server is public (i.e. not on a console on someone's home ISP connection) or for a public server to act as a relay for those that can't connect directly.
If I may defend EA on one point, they do actually make it very clear they will shut down the service anytime they feel like it. In fact I think it's on the back of the game boxes as well. This isn't a surprise. They did this with their PC versions for some time.
This why people shouldn't buy their games. There is no need for EA to be the middle man in online gaming but they do it purely to have control. They don't need you playing Madden 08 year after year. They need you to buy every version. Quite frankly I'm surprised they don't shut the servers down for the previous version the day the new version is released. It probably will get to that point.
Our company has provided commercial game server management services for almost 10 years for a large ISP client in Australia. We have watched games rise and fall over this entire time. And the games with dedicated server software - games like Quake, which came out in 1996 - are still just as playable today as they were back then (often more so thanks to enhanced community-created features).
There are a few exceptions to that - AvP2 ran into problems recently when they shut down the master server/s. But a community project has worked around this.
We recently published a guide - the Mammoth Dedicated Server Guide - for game developers and publishers trying to explain to them why they should release dedicated server software (inspired in no small part by Modern Warfare 2's lack of dedicated server). We're hoping to make more people aware of it, and more importantly, more gamers aware of the issues surrounding games without dedicated servers (such as this story!!!!), so that when they're choosing what games to spend money on, they can show more discrimination.
Pee on code, we don't want the code, we want the specs. Give us the specifications of how the client and server communicate and we'll do the rest... when it's worth it. Besides, the code is theirs, but it's reasonable for the specs to be ours (perhaps charging a reasonable cost for distribution.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Good points, and I guess that is why other game vendors (Valve) offer dedicated servers for download. You can install those on some rented server at an ISP which has a much better internet connection than at your home. This way, the game vendor has to support only the matchmaking service which is presumably much cheaper to run - Valve still supports Half-Life 1 under Steam which is 10 years old. The obvious downside is that you pay for the game server. But I still like this model better than having my games killed after a year.
EA could do this too of course.
C - the footgun of programming languages
"I don't see any reason that they have to physically decommission or repurpose anything in this day & age."
Money.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
"Yes, Madden 07 and 08 are included in the shutdown... but Madden 09 on all consoles as well"
The economy blows, so to the average guy, is it really worth $50 to upgrade to 10 or is 09 good enough as it is?
It just boils down to money. Plain and simple. Not even the cost of running the servers, but forcing everyone that thought Madden 09 was just fine for their needs to go out and pickup Madden 10.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
BNET-D started because several individuals had banned CD-Keys or wished to play with pirated versions of Blizzards games.
As I understand it, the bnetd developers contacted Blizzard to ask how to verify CD keys, and when Blizzard refused to cooperate, the bnetd developers continued without the feature.
(soapbox alert) So why even play these games at all? What do you get after an hour of playing video games, besides a headache and high blood pressure?
Troll.
Why not go play an instrument, or play sports for real, or do something to improve yourself or the rest of the human race?
I have a game console and a mountain bike. My friend the football coach plays Madden. Grow up already.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some weeks ago, there were some heated discussions here and elsewhere about COD4 Modern Warfare 2 and the decision NOT to include the capability to create dedicated servers for online play. There was a great deal of anger from some COD4 fans who had found that the LAN play was the most exciting part of the COD4 experience.
The reaction from the MW2 fanboy community was "What could possibly go wrong?".
Well, here's your answer.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is probably just a ploy to kill off the second hand and discounted games market. Only people who pay full price for the latest update get to play online.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you buy their games you deserve nothing less.
No, you still deserve better. However, you should also have known better.
I never understood why people play soccer games anyways. Why people watch soccer is already mysterious enough to me, but remotely understandable; but why the hell would you play a game which imitates something you could easily do with a bunch of friends (or even strangers) somewhere outside, for cheap? I'm not a big soccer player, but I sure know that regardless of how bad I am, I'm gonna have more fun playing *actual* soccer than some strange video game copy of it.
Wow, where do you live? Terrific weather year-round, eh? And the days are always long enough that after you get home from work there's still plenty of daylight left for your soccer game! And all those strangers you pick up for your soccer games are really friendly and never care when you dork out and let the other team win.
Even forgetting the fact that it sometimes isn't (for most people) more fun to play soccer in the real than to play a computer game, I'd just guess that the answer to your question is "A lot of people are quite different than you, and by the time you become an adult this shouldn't surprise you in the least".
one more reason to avoid EA games.
One more reason to avoid any game that depends on its publisher's servers. If I want to play Quake online I still can, and that came out well over ten years ago.
Free Martian Whores!
(AFAIK, the 1.24 patch for Warcraft 3, which was released last year, was a change of the API of its scripting engine to block security holes caused by malicious maps, not just small tweaks. Who else does that for six-year-old games?)
Not to rain on your Blizzard-worshiping parade, but I'm pretty sure that if they'd released any other games in that time besides WoW and were not still selling six-to-eleven year old games at 6-month-old game prices (WC3, SC, and Diablo 2 Battle Chests, still going for 39.99).
And people still buy them, so of course they have to keep them patched. There's no altruism or fan loyalty there. They've managed to keep sales channels for old games open to a degree that would make Nintendo blush.
Bingo! Give that man a cigar! Publishers tried to claim that we wanted dedicated servers so we could run pirate games, but now we see what happens when you do not have that ability: totally broken games that are only as useful as the publishers allow. I can still whip out my copy of Freelancer or Mechwarrior 4 and find folks to play against. Hell Freelancer still has some pretty decently sized communities built around huge mods that give me dozens of new systems to explore and pillage, and all for $0.00!
So while I still buy the occasional EA game when it is in the bargain bin (last was the MoH 10th anniversary) I avoid anything new from EA and look at anything by them as most likely broken by design. Dedicated servers and mods is what got me into PC gaming in the first place, and the amount of extra value I have gotten from even budget titles thanks to mods and communities have made PC games much more of a "bang for my buck" than the consoles. EA has frankly always been a bunch of douchebags and this latest move just simply proves what we have known for years. The new slogan at EA ought to be "EA: We're the Symantec of gaming!"
But I did notice that all the games were sports titles, and sadly EA could put out "shitty sports game wrapped in used condoms 2010" and the sports nuts would buy it. I went to school with a guy that went so far as to have a deal with the local Gamestop to have EVERY EA sports game for every machine he owned (PSP, PS2, PS3) delivered to his house on release day and charged to his CC, just so he would have them waiting for him on release day when he got off work. As long as it has the latest rosters they will buy it whether it is actually any good or not. So sorry EA sports nuts, this is a case of reaping what you've sown. You should have bought Sega Sports and demanded competition instead of just buying Madden no matter if it was any good or not.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That same argument can be made about the vast majority of realistic video games.
FPS? Go join the military. Guitar Hero? Join a band. Fighting game? Go take MMA classes. Madden? Go play Football. Soccer game? Go outside and play soccer.
Naturally, if you give it more than the most superficial consideration - you'd be able to see that there is a world of difference between turning on a game and pressing 'play' and doing it in real life. You also make the incorrect assumption that everyone who enjoys video games is physically able to participate in the real-world physical version.
I can turn on FIFA 09 and play for 30 minutes after work. I'd be hard pressed to organize a game of soccer with 22 of my friends. I'd be even more hard pressed to play a full season of soccer with the World Cup as my goal.
First, the in-game players are designed to emulate the abilities of real world, *professional* players. 99.9999% of the population cannot play on that level. Second, there is dramatically different levels of risk associated with the two tasks. Playing soccer in real life is far more dangerous than on the video game. I broke my arm playing soccer, I've never done that playing a video game. Third, you've got logistic issues.....you need a place to play, you need goals, you need nets, you need gear, you should really have a ref. Those things aren't free. And if you want to have any sort of structure - with teams and scores - you'll need insurance.
I played on a local Rugby team around here for a season a few years after college. It was fun - but we were part of a league and the dues to cover the insurance, pay the ref, and hold a field were not cheap. And that's not addressing the costs of the uniform, the gear, nor the travel (nor the liquor afterwords, but that's a different story).
Bottom line is - you are talking about two things that are completely different. They aren't mutually exclusive. They are only superficially related. Not liking a type of video game is fine. Liking a real-world equivalent is fine. But advocating that the 'real world' version is a good replacement for the video game really misses the point of video games.
Bingo. I refuse to buy games that require online activation for this very reason. The idiots who don't get why online activation is bad say "Oh, well they're a big company, they'll never go out of business and even if they did, they'd release a patch to remove it beforehand". Always stay away from letting a company control your property.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
You're paying $50 per game when each has a full-length campaign (according to Blizzard). This is not nearly as bad as you're thinking. You're implying that it's as if a normal-length RTS was split into thirds and each sold at full price, but that's not the case at all.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard