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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?"
but my buddy who is still semi-involved in the BNET-D legal debacle can use this type of thing in that court case.
I for one think the whole company run server idea is a good one, but I think they should release code for every game as well for this very reason. Custom servers were half the fun of old Unreal Tournament games, and I know a lot of people who are into custom Enemy Territory servers.
Remember, the reason BNET-D started to begin with is Bizzards servers sucked back in the day, as far as I'm concerned this sort of bull shit justifies that sort of thing.
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Surely it is not beyond the resources of EA to buy a server farm and run virtualized instances of game servers on demand. If a game becomes less popular, the VMs timeout and shutdown. If it's very popular more instances get spawned. I don't see any reason that they have to physically decommission or repurpose anything in this day & age.
Its a short sited probably ultimately self defeating goal. I was listening to PBS business report just last night and they were interviewing some economics professors who were discussing how the move to always maximize share holder value has not actually lead to better share holder returns over the longer time period of the past two decades.
They also pointed out one company P&G pretty well stayed on the build new business and protect the customers perception of value, noting that it outperformed the market over those two decades. Now obviously you'd need to go through alot more data to reach sound conclusions.
I do think there is enough evidence out there that a longer term view eventually yeilds better returns. We should try and break the 18mo CEO cycle.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Blizzard could have provided a simple TCP/IP-based API for them to call to verify a key. Then Blizzard could keep all the details secret, and the bnetd folks could still build in key verification.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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.
4x4 Evo2 came out 10 years ago and uses private servers. But they publisher let the community take them over and it still works. But EA doesn't understand that kind of loyalty, and would never do it. It is why they will never get my money.
EA was never great, even back then. What made EA huge is they were simply "good" games, and they could raise enough money to buy out all of their competition.
This gave EA yet more leverage with retail... and when all the indie retail shops and smaller chains folded leaving pretty much just GameSpot... well, that pretty much killed off everything else in the ecosystem. Trip Hawkins was a total douche, and set the stage for who EA is today.
EA is like a corporate amoeba, with all the powers of Microsoft and Monsanto rolled into one. I'm honestly curious why EA hasn't just put out their own hardware platform, but the answer is probably because they don't "need" to, and they're much more powerful controlling all of the platforms from behind the scenes.
EA is pretty much the reason I have AVOIDED consoles, and always stuck with PC games, where you have many more choices. I did get a PS3, mainly for Blu-Ray and as a media center.
Someone gave me a steering wheel and pedal set as a gift, so I bought NASCAR 09 for the PS3.
Here's what I expect of any game: that it will be frozen in time, and obviously not contain 2010 players cars, or information.
Putting the "year" in the title should simply designate what year or version I bought... just like say Microsoft Word or Gentoo versions.
What I did NOT expect is that EA had a remote doomsday switch for these games, so they can kill off the old version.
If that's the case (and it looks like NASCAR 09 is scheduled for termination in Europe) I'm seriously fucking pissed.
We all say "boycott XXX" and "I'll never buy from XXX", but when a cool game comes out memories get short.
But if you shell out a ton of money for a game, it's YOURS.
They can call it "taking down the servers", but I call it theft and when my game stops working, EA will have burned me in a way that I can't EVER forget.