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Codemasters Shuts Down GRID Online Multiplayer
crookedvulture writes "This is why gamers make such a fuss about being able to host their own dedicated servers. Codemasters has shut down the online multiplayer component of three-year-old racing game GRID because a third party declined to renew its contract to host PC and PlayStation 3 servers for the game. Folks with the Xbox 360 version will still be able to play online, but Codemasters doesn't offer much in the way of an apology for everyone else. Perhaps it's time for game publishers unwilling to release dedicated servers to be required to maintain their own multiplayer servers for a set number of years after a title's launch."
It will be a matter of time until someone creates a patch to allow people to connect to other servers... If other games, such as MC/Terraria, can become popular while requiring people to host their own server then I do not see why not.
They are not the company they used to have been. Where are the code-masters that made the Dizzy games and other good classics? All they have been doing recently is milking the late Colin McRaes name and making sub par racing games. I'm not surprised they got lulzseced.
They are usually abandoned. I know in the case of Call of Duty, after a new release in the line comes out, exploits stop being patched in the predecessors. This happens in many other games as well the servers are left on, but are never patched or touched again.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Well, that $5 a month finally gets me SOMETHING over PSN and Steam.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Perhaps it's time for game publishers unwilling to release dedicated servers to be required to maintain their own multiplayer servers for a set number of years after a title's launch.
How about... no?
.. with DRM and intellectual property these companies will get what they want because the theory of educated discriminating buyer is incorrect, and also is not how human beings work. Free market theory is based on a misunderstanding of human beings and human reason. The whole idea of "Freely chosen" transactions is a myth because advertising, ignorance and propaganda.
As we've clearly seen people won't defend their rights because the informed are outnumbered by the uninformed, incompetent and illiterate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
Can someonen go after them for false advertising? It says it's a multiplayer game right there on the box. How long does that obligate them to back up that claim?
Sounds like a good thing if you don't do it like "Alien vs Predator" where it's bloody annoying to find anyone to connect to. You've got a lot of servers to choose from in friendly match, all with 1-3 players, and it takes forever for any game to start.
Ranked matches are even more annoying where you're stuck in a queue for a very long time until someone starts a server, and if the guy running the server isn't winning near the end of the match he'll just leave, and everyone is forced out.
Seems like making a good multiplayer is hard.
I actually have GRID for PS3. Too bad I didn't get to play online.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
...I'm sure a sequel is just around the corner. So you'll still be able to play online just as soon as you fork over another $50/$60 for Grid II!
They've already thought of this. Many of them have wording somewhere to the effect that it is a single player game and multiplayer is just a bonus thrown in. So when the multiplayer is killed off, the gamer hasn't actually lost the game. Never mind that is why the game was actually purchased.
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online... it wasn't that good in online mode so I am not surprised that they are ditching it. Having something that works well has a lot of maintenance and running costs and is generally a money drain on the game. Having low numbers of players will make the economics even more poignant to that fact.
And to everyone thinking that you want to run a server at home... no really you don't... seriously you do not have time for it unless you actually get payed for it.
I need to look into this further, but I may be able to provide a solution. GameRanger has "rescued" many other orphaned multiplayer PC games in the past.
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
How about just not buying games that don't state how long they will run their multiplayer servers.
It's a game, no one is going to be harmed because idiot consumers keep buying crap. So why regulate that aspect of it? If the players actually give a shit they won't buy games which don't have such a guarantee (or player runnable dedicated servers) and companies not offering them will go broke.
There have been plenty of games I wanted to play but didn't buy (or pirate for the people assuming that) because I didn't like something about it - the required net connection DRM* of Ruse being the prime recentish example (man I loved that in beta).
And you know what, my life really hasn't suffered for not being able to play a few particular video games.
* I don't actually care too much about DRM in general - just the stuff that makes things needlessly difficult for me.
When I read that I thought 3 years would be fair. Then I realized TFA says its a 3 year old game. Yeah it sucks, and the company should make it right, but I think 3 years is about right. If I was running the company I would bring up a server or release the server software. I wish Sony would do this with SWG pre fail version.
GRID PC is a really nice game but it's one of the games which were abandoned the moment they went gold. Very little support was given, the developer and publisher kept promising patches and fixes that they never delivered, so it comes as no surprise that multiplayer servers had such short lifespan, actually it's 2 years more than i would give it. And it isn't really big loss, because the multiplayer was broken from start, it was really painful to navigate through the menu system to connect to a server, and when you did, often the request would just time out and you'd be thrown at the beggining of the whole process. Ranked servers sometimes counted your progress, sometimes not, no idea why. On servers with enabled player collisions, half of the people would try to grief by driving in opposite way, trying to crash other players, on servers with collisions off cheating was widespread, in every race there was always someone using speed hacks where you would see the cars simply teleporting long distances forward. There was very little point to multiplayer, so everybody playing it pretty much just stick with the singleplayer mode which was really nice.
People who like this sort of sig will find this the sort of sig they like.
and they wonder why we pirate games......
I only buy MP games that also support local servers. If you buy ones that only support MP through someone else's server, then you are voting for a world where your MP functionality can be taken from you at any time.
So, what I take from this is that almost all new online games should be hosted on the Cloud purely for the sake of scaling. Dormant user's account information can be backed up and offlined, while the number of game servers is dynamically lowered. The operating costs scale along with the activity/interest in the game, and at some point (hopefully) the ROI would be enough to float some server instances when the game becomes niche/obsolete.
I played Asheron's Call 1 for about 6 years, the core technology was MS SQL. I had always wished they had a way to scale the number of servers dynamically so stupid shit like "portal storms" wouldn't happen. (200 people max per sub-server, anything more and the main server would randomly teleport people out of that sub-server)
I see no reason a similar solution wouldn't also be applicable to more modern online games.
Perhaps it's time for game publishers unwilling to release dedicated servers to be required to maintain their own multiplayer servers for a set number of years after a title's launch.
Why make this editorial statement? The consumer has a choice whether to buy or not to buy the game. Based on their experience with this game, I'm sure gamers will be less likely to buy Codemasters' games in the future knowing server support might be dropped within a few years. That's the consumer's choice, though. That's better than someone (probably government, but the author doesn't say) requiring publishers to support their games for a length of time.
The first thing I thought when I read this was: "This will probably be true for all games in a few years. It's too bad that the market will never correct this because people do not consider this kind of thing when buying games." Then I realized that this is the first thing I think about when I buy a multiplayer game, and that this is one of the main reasons that I play indie games instead of mainstream games. Unlike most Slashdotters, I do not think that I am smarter than everyone else (though I seem to think that I am more self-aware than most Slashdotters), so market pressure may indeed cause publishers to include dedicated servers. It depends on whether the long-term sales increase from providing a dedicated server will trump the cost savings from administering a huge monolithic server at the publisher's expense. Wait a second, I just realized that running a proprietary server at the publisher's expense will both cost them money AND hurt sales. As I said, I don't think that I am smarter than everyone else, but this one seems pretty simple to me.
When the last xbox360 dies, so does all the games released to it. RIP
So, if people are so angry, they should organize more. Organizing is the skill required in the game called "make it change". For example, games can be made based on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system. Gamers have to be better organized in getting control of their code, having a group that organizes contract negotioations between users and companies, etc. Enough foolin' around, time to get some swords and guns and change things. Or pens and keyboards, whatever works best.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
It is good for a really nice arcade racer. The only knock against it is the painfully long load times entering AND exiting a race. There is just not much on the market that directly competes. The GT5/Forza are too sim for a lot of people and other franchises have some sort of gimmick. I haven't played it in a long time due to the fore mentioned load times though. Online will not be missed by me.
... my Quakeworld and Quake 3 Painkeep servers still chug along after 13 years.
Does hamachi and other vpn solutions still work?
You guys really have saved a lot of less popular games from the oblivion of closed main servers along with X-link Kai, and others. I'm not a grid player or a racing fan, and haven't used Gameranger in a few years, but it is an unappreciated service than deserves gamer's thanks. Mac gamers and uncommon title-obsessed fans should be especially thankful.
this is why i have no problem with people hacking consoles; and feel ashamed of microsoft for being so diligent in stopping the activity. stop being from copying games... enable all other activities.... besides, dicking with games in ways not intended is one of the best motivators for people (read: kids) to get into technology.
Do you have an old desktop or laptop and can spare $10/month for power? Congratulations, you too can have a game server at your house.
It costs more than $10 per month for power. It can also cost several times that for an upgrade from residential Internet access to business class Internet access so that your ISP doesn't kickban you from its network for "running a server" in violation of its acceptable use policy. It can also be fairly expensive if you happen to live in an area with a low monthly data transfer cap.
Besides, why let end users run a dedicated server when you can sell them the sequel?
How about just not buying games that don't state how long they will run their multiplayer servers.
That is equivalent to not buying any multiplayer games at all.
No, it's equivalent to not buying any multiplayer games that need a server. Case in point: Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Brawl is multiplayer, and it doesn't need a server. How does this work?
Most TF2 servers are run by the community, and if Valve ever decides to stop supporting it the community can carry on hosting servers.
How would the community host copy authentication servers? Currently, Valve hosts those as part of the Steam service.
It's only most console games (and shitty PC games without dedicated server binaries available to the public) which have this problem.
Most console games that I've played that support Internet multiplayer also support same-screen multiplayer. This includes Amplitude, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and a couple Dance Dance Revolution games. I'll grant that Animal Crossing: City Folk is an exception.
I don't think we need legislation to protect gamers, we just need to start voting with our wallets. When it comes to MMOs that fold like APB, Hellgate or Auto Assault I'm not sure what the solution would be, but we can't expect companies who go under to keep supporting their games.
The one redeeming quality of Mercenaries 2 is that it has co-op, and it was actually pretty fun.
EA had it up cheaply a couple of months ago and I was about to pick up a couple of copies until I saw that they had shut down multiplayer. All they would have needed to do is let the players host their own servers.
This will be the ultimate fate of every game that makes you phone home or lacks dedicated servers. Want to play Neverwinter Nights/NWN2 with a friend? Tough. The master server went down.
when you bought the game. The contract says, "In purchasing this game, I will be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ready to bend over and spread my ass cheeks and take the full length and girth of whatever appendage they insert at a moments notice and at the whim of the corporate owners of this game."
People never learn: corporations want your money, they don't care whether or not you have fun, or whether or not you are entertained. They don't give a crap about quality, no matter how much lip service they pay it. They only care about the stock price going up at the end of the financial quarter, and the patent laws and DRM and copyrights and EULA contracts are a means to this end, and you were stupid enough to agree.
If you are so concerned about being treated fairly, then you should spend more money supporting open source software and hardware. "Oh, but open source games suck." That's you're own damn fault -- that's what you get for helping to make the gaming industry the multi-billion-dollar buttfucking machine that it is.
That's the last Codemasters game I'm buying.
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
Codemasters has really lost a ton of their fan base recently...Mainly due to screwing up the Operation Flashpoint franchise. Even their multiplayer servers for OP:Dragon Rising were completely buggy and they never did get a patch to fix it. Now the next installment is coming out with a metascore of 63....WOW!!
What happened to you guys. The first Operation Flashpoint was so ahead of its time and a great game.
Some people never learn...no matter how many times something happens to them.
You ISP will never notice a game server, trust me.
Even if an ISP doesn't notice a bandwidth increase, it may notice the incoming connections, and if you're behind a neighborhood-size NAT, they just won't connect.
GRID PC servers saved by GameRanger