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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?"
Find this maddening.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Perhaps they will release the next version as Madden 0x10 so it will be good until 2016?
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
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.
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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I remember back in the early eighties EA used to release some great games.
Anyone remember Skyfox, Pinball Construction Set, The Bard's Tale series and Racing Destruction Set?
All they seem to do now is publish endless sports titles and I imagine the licensing fees must be huge.
Maybe it is a "Good Thing" they are shutting down the services for these titles - one less reason to buy them.
The decision seems to be mainly the Sports Division of EA hopefully this decision won't start affecting other games genres.
Games affected:
February 2, 2010 Online Service Shutdown
* UEFA Champions League 07 PC and x360
* Facebreaker x360 and PS3
* Fantasy Football 09 x360 and PS3
* FIFA 07 PSP, PS2, PC
* Fight Night Round 3 PS2
* Madden 08 Wii
* Madden 08 PC
* Madden 09 Xbox1
* Madden 09 Wii and PSP
* March Madness 07 x360
* NBA 07 PSP, x360
* NBA 08 PS2, PSP, Wii
* NBA 09 Wii - Europe only
* NBA Street (2007) PS3 and x360
* NCAA Football 08 PS2
* NCAA Football 09 PS2
* NASCAR 08 PS2
* NASCAR 09 PS2
* NASCAR 09 PS3 and x360 - Europe Only
* NFL Tour PS3 and x360
* NHL 07 PSP and x360
* NHL 08 PC
* Tiger Woods 07 PC
* Madden 09 x360 and PS3
* Madden 07 Xbox 360
Suddenly, a lot of used games just lost some value.
The back of the box clearly states(in small print) that the online service is only provided for 1 year from release date. The fact that they've lasted this long is just a bonus. I could understand if people were bitching and there was no warning, but there is.
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.
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.
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
"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!
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.
you are wrong, most console games don't have dedicated servers, and you can host even if you are behind a nat, they probably use something like udp hole punching
you probably missed the rage of pc call of duty players that now have to use the same matchmaking system(iwnet) as console players without dedicated servers
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.'"
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
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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.
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!
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.