Slashdot Mirror
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 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?
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!
Even code masters have bosses :/
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
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.
t
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.
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.
On the other hand, who do you think is all-knowledgable enough to make all those decisions for us ? Some government agency ? Companies ? The church ?
The free market was never advocated as an instantaneously perfect solution to all problems. It probably is the overall best one in the long run. The one issue is ensuring the market remains free, and neither sellers nor buyers take advantage of relative strength by changing contracts terms unilaterally. OK, That's 2 issues, there may be more.
I'm wondering if this one does not fall into the "false advertising" category. Are they still selling the game with "online" on he box ? What are reasonable expectations of a game's useful life ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I must have missed the part where the still working XBOX 360 version doesn't have DRM?
The problem is the free market is an abstraction, the real issue is that money buys laws so corporations can redefine reality to suit their liking at the whim of our corrupt system.
The government is just an abstract term, the problem is _ideology of the people themselves_ in business and government who subscribe to this procorporate cocksucking. Has nothing to do with some abstract bogey man.
Unfortunately there are right and wrong answers to these questions. First - people should be able to own their software #1, #2 any software that is broken/disabled/jacked like these guys just did get sued or have their rights to their properties revoked as some kind of penalty. Playing legal footsie and buying laws is the real issue which has nothing to do with anti-government american ideology and more to do with the ideology of the people who come to inhabit these institutions.
Problem is everyone thinks there opinion/interests when corporations don't really even deserve a seat at the table because of the millions of times more power and influence they have then the average person. There are tonnes of academics/philosophers that could easily deal with these issues in a fair way that doesn't deny the rights of creative people but at the same doesn't deny the customers rights at the same time. Problem is corporations and greedy game makers want to have their cake and eat it to.
Yeah, seconded. As a wonderful example of this...
Like most games, the Colin McRae Rally series include cheat codes. Sometimes it's fun to play with these cheats -- the PSone version had the cheatcode "blancmange", which turned your chosen car into a large, lime-green jelly. In some ways it was more fun to play with the cheats than without!
Codemasters decided to capitalise on this.
By generating a random "installation key" every time you install the game, and generate the cheat codes from that key. To get the cheat codes, you have to call a premium rate phone line (£2/minute if memory serves, minimum call length 5 minutes). If you reinstall the game or want to install it on your laptop... you get to pay again.
The words "taking the piss" spring to mind.
So your solution is committees of academics/philosophers ? You do realize those same academics have shown they'll take big corps' money (I'm sure philosophers would too, if anybody offered). Ever heard of Lyssenko ?
Your solution lacks a big element: accountability. I'm assuming you're young, possibly still a student, with faith in god-like infallible father figures. There are nowhere near enough of those. The next best solution is elected politicians.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Some point to Mr. McRaes death as the turning point, but instead I point towards Codemasters' purchase by an equity group just a few months earlier as the beginning of the end.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Experts in the field is who I would listen to advice from. In this case people who have been gaming for years and have seen and understand why this practice is bad for consumers. They also have a solution that was often practiced in days of yore. Release the software that is necessary to use the product that has been purchased.
Supposedly there is some kind of representational democracy in the united states. Perhaps that should be put to use? Do you not think most people will agree that once a product is purchased it should continue to function without the grace of the producer?
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.
Who gets to select the experts, and boot them ?
Do they have to say "this is bad for the game's buyers" (do you need to be an expert for that ? on the other hand, your definition of "experts" seems to be "gamers", which is more than iffy) Or judge whether or not customers were mislead ? place a x-year hosting minimum on all games offering online play (I assume that means a bunch of money in escrow pre game launch, so all games with not that much money not launched ? isn't that worse for customers ?) what about patches/fixes ? mandatory too ? should that cover all software, or just online ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
That should be skewed by when the last unit was officially sold. Someone who bought the game 12 months ago has had considerably less time to use that part of it then someone who bought it on release day.
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.
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.
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.
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