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EA Ending Online Support For Dozens of Games
Last month Gamespy announced it would be shutting down at the end of May. Many game makers relied upon Gamespy for all of the multiplayer and online services related to their games, and there was a scramble to transition those games away from Gamespy. Now, Electronic Arts has decided it's not worth the trouble for older titles. They're terminating online support for a huge number of games. The game list includes: Battlefield 2, Crysis 1 & 2, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, and Star Wars: Battlefront 1 & 2. EA said, "As games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles to a level - typically fewer than 1 per cent of all peak online players across all EA titles - where it's no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running."
damn EA.. i hate you
Well then can we get the code for the server-side so we can run our own private servers to play the games we bought?
No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
There's nothing stopping third-party support for online services, which is what Battlefront 2 is transitioning to.
That's why non-MMO multiplayer games should always allow users to run their own servers. I still play the original Unreal and Quake 3 online because of this.
When you "buy" an online game, you're really just paying to use it until the company gets tired of it.
I prefer games I can keep playing without needing anyone's permission or intervention.
If you're upset by this, you can only blame yourself. You knew you had no control over the game servers to begin with, and that EA could care less about games that no longer provide them steady revenue. You want control over your online multiplayer experience, buy a game where you can run your own server.
Back when I was playing the Mass Effect series I needed support on a couple of occasions.
I attempted in vain to get assistance via the legitimate support channels.
I quickly found out their "support" isn't worth the time and effort and I was got more help via forums, etc;
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Can I still play Skate or Die on my C64?
Mostly random stuff.
They should have to provide some way where customers of those games can still play. Otherwise If there was no life span in the EULA I should be able to get my money back.
The official servers for at least Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 have been offline since last year, so this recent announcement won't impact them. Community run servers have taken over for those games (e.g. http://www.nwnlist.com./
"Thank you for playing our fine line of rental games. If you wish to continue playing, please upgrade to our latest game and continue paying your subscription fees in a timely manner."
--Regards,
Electronic Asshats
Good people go to bed earlier.
"As games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles to a level - typically fewer than 1 per cent of all peak online players across all EA titles
So every EA online game will die when the figure on a spreadsheet drops below a certain threshold. Why not open source the server software rather than abandon it?
Trolling is a art,
I'm far from an EA fanboy. In fact, I hate them as much as the next guy, but...
How many of those games actually have a very active online community that's getting annihilated by this move?
That's right, none. Kids these days are pretty fickle and will move to the next online game and drop the last one, making it a barren wasteland online, as quickly as Carmen switched love affairs.
Ouch, there are some seminal titles in there. MOHAA is one of the most influential games I could name.
Sure - but if you call them asking for technical support, they're likely to not be too helpful.
> If they programmed it correctly
As a server admin, if this is your standard for correct server side programming, I've never seen a correctly programmed application in my entire 30 year career.
In my experience, server application migrations rarely function flawlessly across OS versions. Most of the time, major application modifications need to be made.
I agree with you on the server code, however. If they're going to abandon it, they might as well open source it.
Except that they are shutting down because gamespy is shutting down. They made the games with gamespy based matchmaking, so they would either need to change the games to use a different matchmaking service or get the source for the servers from gamespy (lol yea right).
The biggest problem I can see with running an MMO server is most people do not have the hardware or bandwidth to do it.
No they aren't stealing. They paid for the game upfront. There is no theft involved.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
...better than to buy or play and EA games. They were cool back when it was Larry Bird vs. Dr. J 1-on-1, or Pinball Construction Set. EA has sucked for so many years now, I'm baffled that any nerd or geek would ever give them money for a game. And that's WITHOUT getting in to all the labor offenses.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
As a server admin, if this is your standard for correct server side programming, I've never seen a correctly programmed application in my entire 30 year career.
It's not surprising. Programmers make lousy interfaces for customers, they make even worse interfaces for other programmers. One of the most terrifying things about moving to a new company is downloading the source tree and trying to get it to build. Sometimes you get weird things like, "did 'make' fail? Just type it again a few times until it succeeds." WTF.
It doesn't have to be that way. Maybe from win95 to win2000, where everyone finally agreed to use TCP/IP instead of IPX, but now if you limit yourself to POSIX, there should be no problem migrating server code.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sim City got the "offline" treatment (thanks to a huge backlash and insanely poor sales), but you can be sure the servers would have gotten retired within a few months of "Sim City 2015" being released.
The problem is any time "Revenue Stream" is mentioned in a corporate board room, the immediate reply is "do it and shove it down our customer's throats".
For EA, that revenue stream is in the form of yearly editions of games with few new, compelling features, other than a new price tag and servers that remain on for another year or two.
the only reason why MMO games DONT let players run their own servers is that they make no money from them. im sure blizzard wouldnt mind letting people have private servers as long as they still paid for the content and the subscription... but generally speaking, they are stealing.
You can't steal an intangible, you fucking idiot. I know that's not very diplomatic, but for fucks sakes, this is "News for Nerds", not the bloody short bus.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
If they programmed it correctly, migration to a new server would involve "rsync *.tar.gz . && tar xfz *.tar.gz" or something similar. There is no reason that needs to be complicated, so maintenance time should be minimal.
Yeah, good luck finding *anything* that's that simple.
Even moving the simplest possible website (just static files, nothing dynamic) to a new host is more work than that. (You could move the content itself with rsync or tar (though not with the command lines you gave), but the new server needs to be configured, the web server still needs to be set up, etc.)
If your definition of "programmed correctly" is that migration to a new host is as simple as you think it is, let me give you a hint ... by that definition, almost nothing of any value is programmed correctly. And modern systems, with clustered setups with failover across multiple nodes, multiple databases, connections to billing systems and the like are several orders of magnitude more complicated than you seem to think they should be.
In any event, this is moot. It's Gamespy that's shutting down, not some server that EA runs that's currently sitting under somebody's desk. In order to fix this, EA would need to dig the source for their old games out of storage, make sure they can still build it (for a game that hasn't been touched in a decade by them, this is real concern), pay a programmer to replace the bits that Gamespy uses to use something else, build it, run it through some minimal testing and release it. All this for a game that may not have made EA any money in years, and it needs to be repeated for a large number of older games.
It's a business decision. To update every game ever made by them would cost a bunch, so EA is wisely deciding to only support the more recent games or the games with sufficient demand. We could argue that they're not using the ideal criteria in deciding what should be updated, but ultimately they do have to draw the line somewhere.
My guess is that Gamespy has had very little development done in a long time and mostly just sits in a room of servers somewhere mostly running on autopilot -- costing money in hosting and power costs. I'm not sure how it is about making money -- do game publishers pay to use it? Advertising? In any event, if it's costing money but not making money, they probably told the developers if they didn't pay up they'd shut it down, and the developers didn't pay up sufficiently, so ... shut it down.
So buying a game and not continually paying the company to be able to continue playing the game is stealing?
Imagine how much I'm stealing by not buying the game in the first place! Not as in pirating it but as in refusing to deal with a game where I need to pay for a subscription just for the "privilege" of playing the game I purchased.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What a combination of naivete and FUD... the mind boggles!
First of all, the case law on this topic was in fact Blizzard v. BNetD, where Blizzard objected to people running their own servers despite the fact that there was no content or subscription associated with it. That pretty much blows your claim that "Blizzard wouldn't mind" out of the water. Second, it is entirely unreasonable, and perhaps even slanderous, to claim that "generally speaking" people must have committed copyright infringement based solely on the fact that they wanted to host their own multiplayer games!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I've seen way too many internets-enabled things get orphaned and made inoperable when various service providers decide to end support. Some not even all that old.
They either need to guarantee some period of service (which will also call attention to the fact that support will one day be lost along with the ability to use whatever program or device), or allow users some alternative for when they do retire something.
I think it is unreasonable to demand that products be supported in perpetuity, but companies need to also understand it isn't right to orphan and render software or devices unusable. They need to open it up, remove DRM with a patch, or do whatever it takes to allow products people pay for to continue to be used. Or state very clearly (not in the fine print) that said device or software will likely cease to work past some date, but is guaranteed to work until that date.
There is precedence for this in DVD digital downloads. They clearly state the download is available until some time or other, and the buyer knows when that date is (if they read the package).
Bf1942 and MOHAA DO let you run your own servers. Thats not the issue: How do you find those dedicated servers?
All of these complaint posts are ignorant. Several of the games there have no DLC (BF1942, BF2, MOHAA, etc). They also allow dedicated servers.
Would be nice if those most vocal about complaining about abuses would actually take the 3 seconds to see if an abuse is happening, but then this is the internet and ignorant outrage reigns supreme.
It could very well be the case that running a private server requires running leaked code from blizzard servers, or else reverse engineering some code (which is almost always verboten according the client EULA).
They bought EA games. Aren't there enough reasons not to buy EA already?
God spoke to me
short bus
If anybody wants to throw money at purchasing shortbus.org and repointing it at Slashdot, I'm in.
Why would you need the source code?
Even moving the simplest possible website (just static files, nothing dynamic) to a new host is more work than that. (You could move the content itself with rsync or tar (though not with the command lines you gave), but the new server needs to be configured, the web server still needs to be set up, etc.)
And how long exactly should setting up config files (etc) take?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Because SW Jedi Knight, SW Battlefront, KotOR, Crysis, Mass Effect, SimCity, The Sims, Dragon Age, and Red Alert are all fun games.
Bitch and moan about their business practices all you want, they still make games people want to play.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
I hope they don't drop support for the Adventure Construction Kit. That is the greatest game of all time.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Now that's just plainly overly generalized; "theft of services" is an entirely real thing and may not involve anything tangible; the most obvious business example is refusing to pay a consultant. In the case of private MMO servers, this isn't happening: the client, protocol, and server content are already paid for, after all, so what is done is definitely infringement, but there are definitely still kinds of intangible theft.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
The biggest problem I can see with running an MMO server is that server and game designs aren't using the optimal division of matter-energy over space-time. Network perspective can provide endpoint identity authentication; DHT can locate, subscribe to and enlist world servers; And network consensus can detect and correct game-state based "cheating" at the cost additional logic batch processing (which you're doing anyway for client side prediction). Recording signed input streams, starting state and output state snapshots and flagging them as "invalid batches" of gamestate if desynchronization occurs, and resolving conflicts and providing redundancy by multiple nodes processing the deterministic output again are all existing distributed technologies not currently leveraged by MMOs.
In other words: Most people don't have the hardware or bandwith to run the entire Folding@Home system, but they don't need to, that's not how distributed computing and decentralization works.
There are other big problems with the current business method of selling ice to eskimos: Doing a bunch of work for free and then trying to monetize that effort via selling infinitely reproducible bits. However, this being the 1st generation of the world wide information networks, the market will soon correct for this absurd lack of understanding in economics 101 (infinite supply = zero price; regardless of creation cost). You have an infinite monopoly over your effort before you expend it, not afterwards. That's why mechanics get payment agreements up front for the work they get paid for once, then they "give their work away for free" since it's already been paid for, and they don't care how many folks benefit from the labor they only do once. Since mechanics market what is actually scarce -- the ability to create new work -- they don't have to use planned obsolescence like dealerships, manufacturers, and game publishers like to do in today's unfree "free market". As more developers decide to work like the Mechanics and FLOSS devs do, the MMO problem will solve itself. I mean, who wants to put such a large chunk of their life into creating art that is needlessly doomed to die? Culture won't abide this too much longer. Think about it: Without copyright you have to create more works to make more money...
Until then, realize the truth: You can not buy a game that does not come with its server. A client is only part of the game.
I do not need some special "right" to host a game using my own equipment; that's absurd.
Besides, how is it theft? I doubt even our insane legal system considers it theft to host it yourself, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if I was wrong.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Longer than "rsync --archive --verbose /var/www/html/. new-host:/var/www/html/." takes to type.
But again, that's the extreme simple case. That'll serve you well for somebody's 1993 web site, though their "contact us!" form may require a little more work (though I do realize that this form doesn't fit into the "just static files" restriction I mentioned.)
But even back in 1993 that was simpler than most "real" services. Scott Adams gave a nice example of how people viewed complexity back in 1994 (and it's still accurate.). You can argue that anything that is complicated is not properly programmed ... and that's fine, but then again ... by that definition, the vast majority of stuff must not be properly programmed.
I don't know how complicated Gamespy's services are, I don't know how it's built. But I seriously doubt it can be replicated with a simple rsync to the new server. (Unless you rsync *everything*, and the new server has similar hardware to the old server and will sit at the same address in the same datacenter.) And of course EA doesn't even own Gamespy so they can't rsync it to begin with.
its not stealing - they paid for the game. End of story.
Now, if the company wants to host servers and let players run about using them, then there's a fair assumption they should pay for the hosting and bandwidth and server admins and support guys required to run such a thing.
If they choose to run it themselves, on a LAN for example, then they pay for the running costs themselves directly. No big deal.
The only issue I have is if a group run their own server, then its not longer a MMO, unless you redefine "Massive Multiplayer" to "Minor Fewplayer".
Now that's just plainly overly generalized; "theft of services" is an entirely real thing and may not involve anything tangible; the most obvious business example is refusing to pay a consultant. In the case of private MMO servers, this isn't happening: the client, protocol, and server content are already paid for, after all, so what is done is definitely infringement, but there are definitely still kinds of intangible theft.
Theft of service is something tangible. What are you stealing? My electric service? You're stealing my tangible electricity (try not to kill yourself if you touch it). If you steal my internet services then you are stealing the physical capacity I have to transport bits across the internet. If you copy my data, I may not be happy with you, but I still have a copy of it. I'm not saying that it should be legal to do so, I am just saying that it's not really stolen. Some other law has been broken (for instance copyright violation or unauthorized computer access).
You use google. Here is what i found with 3 seconds of googling for a game older than any of the EA titles. http://dtaskforce.forumotion.c...
Good-bye
Most MMO's these days are a service, not software. They usually don't charge you anything to download the client software. But you do have to pay, in some way, for the service they provide. And most people are willing to pay for that service, since it helps stop cheaters and gold farmers from ruining the game and since most people have neither the bandwidth nor CPU muscle to run a modern MMO.
So you're paying for the service. The same way you would pay for any other service.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Perfect example: you can still get the final update firmware flash for a USRobotics Courier. Or take ReplayTV, who lifetime-activated all devices when they shut down the servers. If you can find a place to give you the guide data, you can still run one.
Yeah, right.
All that argument does is further prove that EULAs are unconscionable.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Again, by your definition, in the real world ... almost nothing is programmed correctly.
And I imagine that Gamespy is far more than a single server. The server side is probably at least a rack of servers, with databases and who knows what else. And it's owned by a totally different company than EA, a company that wants to shut it down (probably because it doesn't make them any money) so it's not just a matter of "migrating a server".
Companies often spend weeks planning migrations of their services, and often the migration itself takes dozens of people weeks to complete. They often test their migrations on totally separate hardware just to make sure they understand all of the issues that might come up and make sure they can overcome them.
And even with all that planning and testing and redundancy ... they often still screw something up.
Blame it on being programmed poorly if you want ... but it's reality.
Even presuming you meant "isn't infringement", no, you're just wrong. The whole point of "theft of services" is precisely that *services*, the actual acts of another person (even through automated means), are being utilized. The whole point of a private MMO server is precisely that whoever is running said private MMO server is the one providing the service. Ergo, Blizzard is not providing a service and really not involved. The only argument that's ever made is usually that Blizzard or others include some sort of anti-piracy check in their code and that code will ping Blizzard's servers before running. The paradox then is, the argument is that to just use the anti-piracy check is a theft of service if one doesn't also use the rest of the service--or perhaps breach of terms of service--which is preposterous at various levels* and that bypassing the anti-piracy check by some means is conspiracy to infringe copyright and/or a DMCA violation**. Overall, to me it's clearly a level of BS as so long as the server and the client are separate programs, regardless of whether they're run on the same or separate machines, then the only statement that can be made is about compliance to a protocol of which *no one* can be said to own any more than any other language.
The overall point being is that some idea that any of it need be inherently paid for is utterly false***.
Granted, although at least in this case it's the sort of intangible that originates wholly in Blizzard's exec heads on the worth of things they envision to be worth something and a plan of how the world will make it happen. Well, if I make a car and own an oil company, I can *make* people buy my oil just because I envisioned it that way. Oil is oil and the intangible connection is not a theft of service, a breach of terms of service, tort interference, or anything else. It's just competition in action.
*You need not have ever agreed to the terms of service, using one part of a service can't reasonably require you to use another, and generally the whole point is that the service is working just as it should so there's no real reasonably legal basis to complain; just imaginary intangible presumptions on how the world works.
**Be it blocking the connection, rerouting to a dummy server that always returns a positive, or modifying the code to never perform the check. Overall, this is just a variation of the whole Activision vs Sega lawsuit and long ago the idea that you could create artificial barriers for interoperability based upon copyright was thrown since that's antithetical to what copyright is about. Put another way, anti-piracy technology is n affront to the notion that the legal system works to enforce copyright properly, so it's little wonder the courts threw out the idea. The DMCA changed that at one level, but it's rather unclear how that works since most if not all anti-piracy schemes are for use of a work and the DMCA covers copy protection schemes not use protection schemes. But, *shrug*, whatever.
***Step one, server and client are created. Step two, client/server interactions are viewed and documented, Step three, a third party uses documentation to create a legally clean server. Step four, a third party (possibly the same as step three) creates a legally clean client. This is legally clear reverse engineering 101 and is as old as the Compaq BIOS and Samba. Once a server and client clone are created, none of the original author's assets are necessarily used and hence there's no inherent need to pay the original author anything. The big stumbling block in all this is that step two is (1) very laborious, (2) in some countries it's legal to create an EULA that makes such effor
almost nothing of any value is programmed correctly
Wish I had mod points today. Best comment I've read in a while
It's truly a wonder how Enterprise can even exist... Oh, right, virtualization exists. I fucking forgot how shitty humans are.
ok, so I'm wrong about the rsync whatever; migrating a server shouldn't take long and you know it.
Actually, it does take a while in a commercial data center environment. Chances are, they're not drop-lifting the old servers because the hardware and OS are end-of-life. So now you have to:
At your typical mega corp, much of that work is handled by separate teams. It can take a couple weeks for all of them to execute their work. It isn't fast, easy or cheap.
I suspect that at this point much of the old game maintenance could be wrapped up into a single small working group (if they haven't already) so the cost should be very low. the demands upon the various servers and whatnot should also be greatly diminished along with the fact that with a combination of vastly more powerful servers available and the use of VMs should reduce the per user cost of running these servers to a tiny fraction of their original cost.
With enough squeezing they might even be able to maintain break even. But why would I suggest that this is important? On the surface it isn't probably a good business move. But dig down and I suspect that people will look at their newer online games and wonder how long they will live. This thus will reduce the value all their future products. No to mention, maintaining good will with the older product users will increase the chances of future purchases. Also I don't think that users of older games would terribly mind if in the loading screen there was an add for some similar game that came out; just as long as they didn't start playing other MBA games such as making the loading game longer to load so that you stare at the ad for longer.
But nope, some MBA twat fiddled with a spreadsheet and saw that the tiny amount of revenue lost by cutting the old games was dwarfed by their continued maintenance costs. This then made the bottom line look so much better and he dreamed about the bonus he would get for being so smart. But the problem for even this sleazy MBA was that how can he spreadsheet the lost goodwill? With the huge vagaries of the game market the reviewers, the economy, and the console climate at the time of release any goodwill factors would be very hard to measure. This does not mean they don't exist and these influences are a constant and a constant influence will trash the compound math of a company's growth. Plus they can show up at the worst times. If a company with poor relations with their customers comes out with a genuine blockbuster then it might only hurt sales a bit. But when they release a so so game it is at that point where the poor relations will be the tipping point for a huge percentage of their customers pushing that so so game into being a sales flop. As we have all seen many of the top companies have had a bad run of so so games and in many cases these bad runs have killed the companies.
Impossiroo!
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I oppose the very idea of "professional entertainment", be it musicians, athletes, actors or games programmers.
Let me get this straight: you oppose all forms of compensated entertainment? So you consume no music, no movies, no fictional books, no games of any kind (electronic or otherwise), view no works of art...nothing at all? Or do you consume these things but just presume that people should never be paid for providing them to you?
I'm not about to shill for the copyright-manipulating media conglomerates, but IMO your viewpoint is either hopelessly extreme or ridiculously hypocritical. If people choose to entertain someone else, that effort has intrinsic value. Now exactly what that value might be is debatable and purely subjective based upon the value it has to those consuming said entertainment, but it surely has value to those who consume it, otherwise they wouldn't. You pay for people to fix your food at restaurants, or to build your computer components, or any number of other trades that require someone with a particular skill to perform a particular service. Why should entertainment alone be considered a pro bono profession?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Computer game: published creative work.
Medical records: private papers.
They aren't the same thing. The only thing anyone views them as the same is the fact that a certain contingent of corporate lobbyists has convinced everyone into equating every worthless scrap of paper with something scribbled onto it as the equivalent of Dickens or Shakespeare.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You use google. Here is what i found with 3 seconds of googling for a game older than any of the EA titles. http://dtaskforce.forumotion.c...
The in-game server browser is a huge convenience, and the costs to support such old games are minimal. You could probably support the server browser for all these games on a single blade. The server browser is basically a fancy web server, taking input such as "I have a server a xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" and answering requests such as "Give me your server list". For legacy games this is probably less than a 100kb transaction. For unpopular legacy games, probably less than a 10kb transaction.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
That's why non-MMO multiplayer games should always allow users to run their own servers.
The PS2 Star Wars Battlefront games listed DO let you run your own servers, it works as follows:
1. Run dedicated software on a PC that hosts a server for PS2's.
2. Run a PS2 with the game in "Dedicated" mode. You can't play the game this way, the PS2 only serves as host in this mode.
3. Host the game on a PS2 in non-dedicated mode.
You may be thinking that if you can host the game yourself why is it shutting down? Because while you can easily host the game yourself...the server list and matchmaking is provided by Gamespy.
Since the two SWBF games support LAN play (Yes even on the PS2), I wonder if the LAN play could be tunneled.
To be honest, the case cited is the very reason I haven't given Blizzard any of my money for its more recent titles.
I know I'm just one guy who the company doesn't even notice. But the fact the company took issue with the BNetD thing and fought over it in court sent a clear signal to me that I better send my hard-earned dollars elsewhere when choosing computer game purchases for entertainment.
It simply doesn't seem like a good value proposition to pay the asking price for these games that require central servers to function, AND to know the company doesn't believe in letting 3rd. parties build or host alternate options.
I would have really liked to play Diablo 3 or Starcraft II, especially because as a Mac OS X user, my gaming options are pretty limited to begin with. But I'm not a "hard core gamer" anyway. I'm too old for that and have too many other demands on my free time. I just want to know that if I pay $40-50 for a game, I can keep it around and play it whenever I like -- even if that's a number of years after it was purchased, and won't find it's become unusable because the manufacturer decided it was time to kill it off.
Any "reasonable priced" upgrade program for original discs? That would be good. If you have paid $60 for a BF2, and BF4 is again $60, they should allow discs owners to upgrade for no more than $15. I would like to be a fan of game companies again....but they are doing exactly the opposite for a couple of bucks.
'convenience' is the compromise between functionality and ease of use (and cost). Sometimes convenience is detrimental to the function you are trying to enable. In this case, the convenience of an ingame server browser is hampered by the functional reality that game companies dont want it. As it stands now, we have an answer to your question, even if you deem it inconvenient.
Good-bye
Why did a company like LucasArts license their IP to EA instead of to a more respectable company with better labor and business practices?
I believe Maxis sold its IP for the Sim titles to EA long before EA developed the bad reputation it has today, so that's kind of understandable. But surely, there are cases where holders of IP that's desirable to obtain for video games could sell to a more ethical business.
Who pays for the patch to remove DRM? Not as simple as it may sound in most cases.
I would be of the opinion that the source code should be released if the product is discontinued so that those avid fans can use their own time to bring it back to life. This benefits the game maker by removing liability, the fans by giving them back their favorite product and the general gaming dev community by educating them on what large studios do (or did).
Didn't John Carmak do this for his games (Wolf Eistein 3D, Doom and Quake)?
Hey, we can only vote with our own money. If everyone did that, bad companies would go under or at least start listening.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
IIRC, a lot of these games DO still support LAN play - BF1942 and most C&C games - so they should still work for local games (or I suppose Hamachi etc)...
Perhaps verboten, but those terms are often unenforceable. Reverse engineering the server protocol from the client for creating a compatible server is almost certainly protected.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
BF2 64 man Karkand Infantry Only probably the best PVP game ever, and I doubt it will ever be topped on the sick trajectory PVP shooters are on.
Sad to see it go, though there is only one server left. Big E, and the Big E admins suck so it was effectively dead already anyway.
All of EA's lame COD knock offs since simply don't capture what makes multiplayer PVP intense and fun, nor does COD:
A. Teams need to be evenly balanced
B. Teams need to be in a confined space so there is immediate contact
C. Needs to be some tactics and strategy but not a lot, versus aimless COD styling circling, killing and being killed
C. Weapons need to be equal, simple, skill based. No air, no armor
D. No stupid gimmicks
E. No excessively dense, expensive graphics. Simple graphics is actually better and you aren't forced in to a constant hardware upgrade just to play games that are immensly fun even if the graphics are simple. Excessive graphics also drive up costs needlessly.
If EA had just kept fixing the bugs in BF2, spent more effort controlling hacks, did new maps occassionaly, did minimal refinements, someone like Twitch promoted a competition system around it, someone provided some professionally admin'ed servers to get away from clan based bias, it would've gone on forever like Starcraft.
@de_machina
Virtualization extends the life of a lot of applications that would otherwise need to be replaced, but once an OS vendor stops supporting an OS, even virtualization can only go so far.
They didn't pay for the right to host the game
They paid for the game, though, and there is the common law (and in some places, explicit law) known as "implied merchantability". For a game, that means I've paid for a game, and expect to be able to play it. If the game cannot be played because the merchant's servers failed, then they have violated the rights of the consumer. That's what the law says.
I'm not sure why people think games and software are special in this regard.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
... but good luck getting an analog signal for it to receive.
EA just announced in a later press release "Just stop buying our games. If it has EA on the box, DO NOT buy it. Seriously, if it's not DRM issues then it's nickel and dime DLC or we'll kill the game as soon as it's not profitable. Stay far away from our games!"
the only reason why MMO games DONT let players run their own servers is that they make no money from them. im sure blizzard wouldnt mind letting people have private servers as long as they still paid for the content and the subscription... but generally speaking, they are stealing.
You can't steal an intangible, you fucking idiot. I know that's not very diplomatic, but for fucks sakes, this is "News for Nerds", not the bloody short bus.
When you're stealing subscriptions by providing a reverse engineered private server, you sure are.
To be honest, the case cited is the very reason I haven't given Blizzard any of my money for its more recent titles.
I know I'm just one guy who the company doesn't even notice. But the fact the company took issue with the BNetD thing and fought over it in court sent a clear signal to me that I better send my hard-earned dollars elsewhere when choosing computer game purchases for entertainment.
It simply doesn't seem like a good value proposition to pay the asking price for these games that require central servers to function, AND to know the company doesn't believe in letting 3rd. parties build or host alternate options.
I would have really liked to play Diablo 3 or Starcraft II, especially because as a Mac OS X user, my gaming options are pretty limited to begin with. But I'm not a "hard core gamer" anyway. I'm too old for that and have too many other demands on my free time. I just want to know that if I pay $40-50 for a game, I can keep it around and play it whenever I like -- even if that's a number of years after it was purchased, and won't find it's become unusable because the manufacturer decided it was time to kill it off.
This article is about EA. EA (not Activision Blizzard) is removing online games. Blizzard is still supporting D2 and other games.
Both use gamespy to list their server only, not to run it.
There is a game wedge that creates a new listing service, but players have to know and install it to see others servers.
Gamespy delisted nwn2 a year ago, this isn't new news by any means.
Its all about the monthly fee and keeping you buying new games, get with it already. Or check out openMW and help.
Really? Because data theft is actually quite a big problem and is legally recognized as a form of theft.
The legal definition of theft covers making unauthorized copies of intangibles such as data, intellectual property and trade secrets.
Who pays for the patch? Nobody,because the pirates already did the work. IIRC there was a bit of a dust up a few years back when a company released their game on GOG as a DRM free download only for someone to find that the executable were just the old Razr1911 No_DVD patch.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Star Wars Battlefront 1&2 have had dedicated servers since launch as well.
I'm thinking they should be on the hook for supporting them for 95 years: the length of their copyright terms.
They opened the engine, but not the game assets.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
At least LAN still works so start hamachi and get medal of honor allied assault running.
If they don't want to support the game, They should just package the server as a closed source code and sell it to anyone who wants to support old games.
No need to scare the company by saying it needs to be free and open source.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I make a concerted effort to:
- consume no music that wasn't published freely by it's creators
- amuse myself instead by jamming with my friends, or hanging out with my friends who are jamming and aspire to nothing more
- read books that are published free of any copyright, or are no longer governed by copyright, or are available at the library
- publish my writings free of any restriction
- build software only for hire, and only on platforms that are not restricted to those who pay for a license, never for those who would profit through copyright
- avoid playing video games
- avoid television and movies that were created for profit
- purchase used clothing from boutique stores, or have clothes made for me by someone I know
- avoid purchasing anything that I've seen an advertisement for
- eat only at owner-run restaurants where I can introduce myself to the owner and the cook and get to know them
- volunteer my time to creating abundance by involving myself in urban gardens, distributing parts for RepRap's, etc
- avoid working for companies whose profits come from advertising or copyright enforcement
- never loan money at it interest, but give it away to freely to those who need and deserve it if I can afford it
- give away my material possessions when I have no further need of them, rather than selling them
Have I held to these principles like a rock? No. I'm a human trying to get by in a culture whose values are diametrically opposed to my own, and it's proving very difficult to leave, though I am trying my best to get the hell out of North America. When every scrap of material and every square foot of land is someone's private property, you have to make compromises in order to survive. But these are my principles, and I do try to live by them.
At the end of the day, I am opposed to profit, and to private property. I consider both to be crimes against mankind. Which basically puts me in opposition to every signatory to the United Nations, because private property is one of their core shared values.
I've brought a lot of good to a lot of people with my deeds and my creations, and I am not a greedy person, so even though I've made some compromises that I'm ashamed of, I feel pretty good about it all at the end of the day. I'm not God's gift to mankind, but I know I am one of the men who carries other men on his shoulders.
The point of this isn't to toot my own horn. You wouldn't recognize me on the street, what would be the point. It's to assure you that, while you may or may not agree with my views, they are GENUINE. I have been described as inspiring by people who didn't think I was within earshot, and that's all the reward I need to carry on.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Hard to measure. Yes. But that is where the fiction of the modern MBA comes from. They claim to have studied managerial accounting, etc. But the reality is that about the only thing they leave school with is a crass interpretation of the bottom line starting with their own bottom line.
If instead EA was using someone with an actual education, such as an economist then they would stand a better chance of someone who understands the difference between the micro(today's bottom line) and the macro(long term damage to the company and potentially the industry). But what I have seen in large organizations is the once you let one MBA slither in then they suddenly start replacing all the other management with MBAs (time to let the professional managers take over children) and poof you now have more TPS reports than you can shake a stick at while the company sinks into the swamp; but don't worry swamp sinking is an industry best practice.
Oh and when the company finally sinks who gets the multi million dollar retention bonuses? The engineers or whatever core employees the company must have to survive? Nope the MBAs feather their nests with any money they can get their hands on. But don't worry, that nest feathering can be supported by 8 excellent white papers.
I didn't even know EA was involved in any of the Wii RockBand servers. So much for playing online with my brother and sister in-law.
perhaps jammie thomas-rasset should have been charged with 24 counts of misdemeanor theft then.
...
As far as I know, Maxis didn't sell the Sims to EA. Maxis is a subsidiary of EA and has been since EA bought Maxis in 1997 (aprox. 3 years before The Sims was released), kinda hard to sell something to an entity that you're a part of.
Most of these games are being shut down because they relied on GameSpy's master servers and matchmaking systems, which are finally being shut down. A lot of these servers are actually fairly simple, and new master servers could be set up, but most of these games are also 10+ years old and it's not seen as worth the effort. I don't know much about the other games, but I'm fairly sure the Battlefield games all can still be played online if you know the address of the server you're trying to connect to.
Who can't spin up an Amazon instance whenever they want to play?
Hell if someone made an AMI for the particular game, it would be trivial to set up.
You could even stop paying for it when no one is playing.
Everyone wants them to open source the server code, but that's unlikely. They're EA. Would everyone be happy with a server binary? Seems like a middle-ground option..
Ok here. But what about other products that aren't easy fixes like some of the older games?
Starflight (both the original and sequel) was EA, and it was awesome.
Quite a bit more recent than PCS.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I know for fact Wolfeistein 3d full source sprites and maps was released to the public. Unfortunately only Quake 1 source code was release and I believe it was because the sprites and music wasn't theirs to release copyrights to.
What about my time?
If I did work for somebody under the agreement that they would pay me... and they decide to not pay me for the time that I've worked, aren't they stealing my time? That time is certainly not something I can get back, after all. The most I can do is hold back the work that I did as a hostage to get them to pay me, but that time is still gone. Forever.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They paid for the game, though, and there is the common law (and in some places, explicit law) known as "implied merchantability". For a game, that means I've paid for a game, and expect to be able to play it. If the game cannot be played because the merchant's servers failed, then they have violated the rights of the consumer. That's what the law says.
Right, but you then take action against the merchant. It's not a case of 'You violated my rights so I'll violate yours' because now you've both broken the law, this 'oh but he did it first' is just childish nonsense.
You can't steal an intangible
Actually you can, your rights are not tangible but you can have them taken from you.
Now about NWN and NWN2? Those have dedicated servers, but servers need to authenticate client CD key against the central server to allow it to connect. And it sounds like that central server would now be down...
Some games were not made by EA originally, but were acquired by it later - sometimes much later. Both NWN titles, for example.
Also, while many games are fun, some are unique. NWN, for example, is unique in allowing people to build extensive worlds to host their own "mini-MMO" experience in, and in providing a DM client for human-guided roleplaying experience.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think it is unreasonable to demand that products be supported in perpetuity, but companies need to also understand it isn't right to orphan and render software or devices unusable. They need to open it up, remove DRM with a patch, or do whatever it takes to allow products people pay for to continue to be used.
No, they don't need to do that. I certainly agree with you that it is preferable that they do that but the market has decided that they don't, until people start supporting companies that do it in place of companies that don't then those companies don't need to do anything.
That's the fundamental problem, you need to convince people that they should not buy from those companies but ultimately most people are fine to just upgrade when the hardware/software goes EOL. It's a similar issue with the whole DRM content thing where freedom advocates go after hardware/software/device makers when really that's attacking the problem at the middle, either convince content producers to change or convince users to change but trying to strip DRM at the distribution platform level will achieve nothing, content producers will move to different distribution platforms and people who want that content will follow.
They paid for the game, though, and there is the common law (and in some places, explicit law) known as "implied merchantability". For a game, that means I've paid for a game, and expect to be able to play it. If the game cannot be played because the merchant's servers failed, then they have violated the rights of the consumer. That's what the law says.
Right, but you then take action against the merchant. It's not a case of 'You violated my rights so I'll violate yours' because now you've both broken the law, this 'oh but he did it first' is just childish nonsense.
What the hell is that supposed to mean? I should "turn the other cheek"? I've been defrauded, but I get no recourse because that would just be "childish nonsense". I should just "take it like a man" and quit complaining about being fucked over by a lying shitbag with millions of dollars obtained by lying to their customers? Yea, I don't think so.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Exactly what it says: take action against the merchant. You stated that there is an implied merchantability law that has been violated, so take action with respect to that.
I should "turn the other cheek"? I've been defrauded, but I get no recourse because that would just be "childish nonsense". I should just "take it like a man" and quit complaining about being fucked over by a lying shitbag with millions of dollars obtained by lying to their customers? Yea, I don't think so.
No, I quite clearly said you should take action (maybe you got so angry you couldn't parse that) - but the right kind of action.
If one wants to do the hokey control-a-cable-box-via IR, I don't doubt that current cable boxes "still" have composite outputs.
I know my current Tivo has component & composite outputs, and I use them. (I also use the HDMI output of course.)
If you can run it in both dedicated or non-dedicated mode, why is dedicated mode better? Does it support more users or something?
I would bet he thinks things would be "better" outside the US because he's not only never been outside the US but he's foolish beyond measure maybe even an anarchist.
The only place you are going to get away from private property is off this planet, you might also consider that even if someone you know made your clothes the materials that went into them certainly didn't abide the values you ascribe. The same would apply to the food you eat, the transportation you use right on down to the soap and water you use to bathe. Yes, even the water isn't "free" of either ownership or any of the other "values" you claim.
Right, but you then take action against the merchant. It's not a case of 'You violated my rights so I'll violate yours' because now you've both broken the law, this 'oh but he did it first' is just childish nonsense.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
It means sue or arbitrate.
I do not need some special "right" to host a game using my own equipment; that's absurd.
The holding in the bnetd case was absurd by your definition, but it's the law.
I'm not sure why people think games and software are special in this regard.
Unlike physical goods, copies of works of authorship in digital form must be copied into a computer's memory before being used, and copyright law gives a work's author the exclusive right to authorize the making of such copies. Besides, warranties expire after several years.
amuse myself instead by jamming with my friends
Whose music do you play? If your own, how do you ensure you didn't make the same mistake as George Harrison (Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs, accidental copyright infringement)?
If you expect a single up-front fee to cover the ongoing costs of an ongoing service in perpetuity, as opposed to an ongoing fee, I guess you become a "freetard" as soon as the depreciation of your copy of the game has completed.
What is stolen is the copyright: the exclusive right to control distribution.
If it was stolen, then that means the people who 'stole' it now have the exclusive right to control distribution.
What's really being 'stolen' are people's free speech and private property rights.
If you have a problem with copyright then restrict yourself to non-copyright works instead.
Why? I don't recognize copyright law as legitimate, so I don't care.
The problem is that those who oppose copyright know that their alternative does not work so instead they just break copyright law.
Or could it be that you're so scared of finding out that copyright doesn't work that you want to keep it around without actual proof that it does work? Or did you think that there is valid scientific proof that copyright is effective, even though it's simply assumed by idiots like you that it is effective?
The standards of proof in laws and public policy are absolutely pathetic. We end up with garbage like copyright that has never been proven.
If the alternative does indeed work then you shouldn't need to worry about copyright at all.
And I don't worry about it. At all.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
A few problems:
1) Authors do not tend to work for the people who violate their copyrights.
2) The copyright violators do not actually obtain the time that they have supposedly 'stolen.'
But if, for example, EA hired people to make a game and did not pay, what you said would make slightly more sense, but because of point 2, it still wouldn't be stealing in the normal sense.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
In order for the subscriptions to be stolen, Blizzard would have had to 'own' them first.
What this really is is someone deciding to play around with the data on their *own equipment* and reverse engineer some code and even use it. To say that any of this is wrong in general is just absurd, and shows how backwards our society's thinking is.
Furthermore, people *voluntarily* decide to use these servers. Providing competition is most certainly not "stealing."
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Again, by your definition, in the real world ... almost nothing is programmed correctly.
Yes, that is an accurate assessment.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
A crappy game is a crappy game, buyer beware. But if the game is so DRM'd and requires an active service that goes belly-up so the game isn't even playable - why does everybody think the distributor gets to keep the money just because you "broke the seal" to find out you can't play the game?
Let's say I buy a car, and I drive it until it needs gas, but I find out that it takes a special patented fuel that has been discontinued by dealer's filling stations. You're saying I can't demand a refund because I've already driven the car, and you're FURTHER stating that I can't manufacture my own fuel for the car because that violates the manufacture's "intellectual property rights."
That may be legal, but it's unconscionable and immoral.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You have a valid point, but to a megacorp, that's also pocket-change, so I have a valid point, too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
But if the game is so DRM'd and requires an active service that goes belly-up so the game isn't even playable - why does everybody think the distributor gets to keep the money just because you "broke the seal" to find out you can't play the game?
Who do you think is suggesting that?
You're saying I can't demand a refund because I've already driven the car
No, I never said anything of the sort. Take a deep breath and try reading what is written and then taking some time to make sure you actually comprehend it. I don't know where you get the idea I was suggesting anything of the sort, I explicitly stated that you should take action against the merchant, which you somehow managed to not read or misinterpret so I even restated it for you that you take action against the merchant. I don't see how that can be so difficult for you to interpret.
you're FURTHER stating that I can't manufacture my own fuel for the car because that violates the manufacture's "intellectual property rights."
Yes I am stating that, because that is a fact. I'm not saying it's a great situation and I don't agree with it being right but it is a fact regardless of whether you like it or not. You disagreeing with it doesn't make it any less of a fact. Now for the third time - try to understand it this time - you should take action against the merchant for breaching the implied merchantability, if a country has such a law then it has methods for remediation and those are what you should turn to.
I explicitly stated that you should take action against the merchant
Uh-huh. good luck with that.
so I even restated it for you that you take action against the merchant
Sure. Because that always always works so well.
Should I write to my congressman about this? Oh, wait, Amazon is helping them promote national sales tax, and I didn't contribute to his campaign last year. I guess I'll have to "take action" using my own policy.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Like this one?
It must have been really hard for you when society forced you to see a Spiderman movie and then praise it on the Internet as having been so much better than those other Spiderman movies you saw.
I do visit friends, you know.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
But it's nice to know you're paying attention ;)
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Sure. Because that always always works so well.
Your reading comprehension failures are back again, did you even read the links you've posted? In the link you posted as "good luck with that", the line in the chat explicitly states that Amazon users have gotten refunds:
you: Why can Amazon users get refunds but i can't?
So that disproves your claim about Amazon and shows that it may be in their policy there but that does not override the law and clearly does not apply in the case where a product isn't fit for purpose but just exists to prevent returns if people simply change their mind. If this law of merchantability exists then that policy has no weight, as is demonstrated in that chat log.
As for the EA situation in that chat that was in relation to them having trouble coping with load, not with removing mandatory servers entirely so it is a different situation.
So as long as your friends are going against your core principles, you lead by example and join them? You're a nutter, and even you can't follow your nutty ideas.
Reverse engineering the server protocol from the client for creating a compatible server is almost certainly protected.
You missed the Blizzard v. BNETD link from the grandparent post. This ruling was a big setback:
"Outcome: The reverse engineering and emulating of the Blizzard software violated the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA. This ruling has been widely criticized as making it impossible to create new programs that interoperate with older ones and squeezing consumer choice out of the marketplace by essentially allowing companies to outlaw competitors' products that interact with their own."
To excise the Gamespy-related code?
To update/migrate to a later platform?
Most WoW private servers use a copy of the entities database which is created by ripping the game data from the official servers using a special add-on. It was this copyright infringement in particular that I was thinking of.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Do you understand that the film would never have been made at all, if lots of people hadn't been prepared to pay money to see it?
The director, actors, writers, camera people, sound recordists, SFX people, editors, distributors etc etc all need to be paid. Only amateurs do it for nothing and professionals make a superior product.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Your reading comprehension failures are back again, did you even read the links you've posted? In the link you posted as "good luck with that [gamechup.com]", the line in the chat explicitly states that Amazon users have gotten refunds:
HaHa... Hey, pot ...
Nobody got a refund from Amazon, you idiot. Didn't you read the policy link? That guy may have tried to make such a case with EA, but notice in the article comments that NOBODY got any such refund. Idiot.
If this law of merchantability exists
Where are you from Somalia, or something? What a fucking moron you are. Get out of your mom's basement and try interacting with the real world a bit.
Or, I'll just assume you're a shill for EA. It's the only explanation that makes sense. Dumbass.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Also: Seven Cities of Gold, and Music Construction Set.
Google for "Molten WoW", they rake in so much via donors that they can pay actual coders to work on the emu software. The gameplay isn't nearly as robust and they are a full expansion behind, but last I looked there were still ~20,000 people across a half-dozen servers.
Then they are in violation of their agreement. They did steal your time but there is a specific crime for that type of contract violation. It's not considered theft because you have to prove you had an agreement in order for them to be held responsible for your time. Once you show the agreement is valid, you already have them for a contract violation, which will cover your damages.
The problem is people can make 3rd party servers for the purpose of supporting an older game or giving better performance, removing the requirements for a subscription to a consoles online service etc. But they can also do it so that all the burnt copies of the game will still work without cracking (or at least making it so your cracked version isn't detected eventually). Game developers argue everyone is doing the work for the second reason and presto 3rd party servers look illegal.
Yep, dedicated lets you have more users and AI soldiers.
It doesn't take a "megacorp" to need to go to all that trouble.
Even a relatively small company is likely to go through a similar process when their entire company depends on this system and it's complicated enough to span multiple computers. They probably won't have a dedicated team for it (and note that anything that requires a dedicated team is not pocket change, even for a megacorp) but it still requires a lot of resources -- it's usually way more than just rsyncing some stuff around, though if the OS is *nix, there's likely to be some use of rsync in there somewhere.
You really don't have a valid point, as the point you're trying to make doesn't even apply to the situation we're discussing at all, because EA doesn't own Gamespy's servers. What EA would need to do here is pay programmers to pull their old game source code out of mothballs and update them to support something other than Gamespy -- and this is likely not a trivial matter at all, and needs to be repeated for each game. Games that aren't making EA more than a tiny bit of money any more.
You really don't have a valid point,
My point is that EA is incompetent. Would you like to disagree?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So what you're saying is that people who create something should donate their time and creative abilities for free.
Would you be willing to go to work tomorrow and tell your boss that you'd like to give up your paycheck, because people ought to work for free? Then what right have you to say that authors should work for free?
(Yes, I realize I'm tilting at windmills here, because the bottom line is that you want to steal people's creativity and time, and instead of just owning up to it, you want to try and justify it through some pseudo-intellectual "information wants to be free" tired old cyberpunk crap, but hey, it's worth a shot).
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
I can't comment on the other games, but as an old-time Neverwinter Nights 1 player, I can say with certainty that players can still directly connect to a player-run server if they know the IP address. What we're losing is just the ability to connect randomly to people on a service. Random players hooking up for communal play doesn't really work out that well, if the truth be told. There are a lot of play styles, tons of different ideas about how to extract fun out of a game, varying levels of maturity. Not all are compatible. Best thing to do is to look for like-minded people on forums, or try one of the persistent servers who also announce their existence on forums.
My point is that EA is incompetent. Would you like to disagree?
Nice combination of loaded question and strawman.
EA is incompetent because they didn't write Gamespy's servers for them in such a way to make them easy to migrate? Nevermind that the 1) EA didn't write them at all, and 2) the servers don't even need migrating -- the problem is that Gamespy is turning them off, presumably because they're not making them money any more.
Maybe EA made a mistake back when in actually using Gamespy ... but at the time, Gamespy was quite popular, and if this was a mistake, it was a mistake made by many companies.
These games use Gamespy's servers to find other users who want to play, then once found the computers involved talk amongst themselves. EA isn't running servers for these games that I know of, but even if they did ... Gamespy is still being used to find other users.
With Gamespy disappearing, EA can't just "migrate its servers to another host" to fix the problem. They have to update all the games and release patches, mucking with code that they haven't touched in many years. All this for a game that barely sells any copies at all any more.
In this case, I think EA is making a wise business decision. So no, in this case, EA is not incompetent.
How did this straw man get modded up?
So what you're saying is that people who create something should donate their time and creative abilities for free.
No, I'm saying that copyright infringement (or running your own servers) is not stealing. It's not even legally considered stealing.
And besides that, I never once said anyone has to work for free. Anyone can try to make money, but that doesn't mean they'll succeed. So, no, I'm not telling people they have to work for free, and to say otherwise is a mere straw man.
(Yes, I realize I'm tilting at windmills here, because the bottom line is that you want to steal people's creativity and time, and instead of just owning up to it, you want to try and justify it through some pseudo-intellectual "information wants to be free" tired old cyberpunk crap, but hey, it's worth a shot).
Yes, I realize I'm tilting at windmills here, because the bottom line is that you want to steal people's rights, and instead of just owning up to it, you want to try and justify it through some pseudo-intellectual "think of the artists" tired old emotional crap, but hey, it's worth a shot
Three issues:
1) I've never uttered the phrase "information wants to be free," because information can't want anything, so it doesn't make sense. The arguments that I make are quite different and more fleshed-out; if you think otherwise, you may need to reread my comments.
2) As I pointed out above, do not tell me what *I* believe, or else I can just as easily do the same to you.
3) That wasn't even relevant to anything; it certainly doesn't strengthen any of your arguments.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
They'd rather sue third parties who try to support it, as has happened to several reverse-engineered servers for games that the publisher stopped supporting.
Nobody got a refund from Amazon, you idiot. Didn't you read the policy link?
Curunir_wolf fails again!:
Reader Alex Gladd writes in to let us know that Amazon appears to be altering its standard downloadable game return policy when dealing with customer complaints about SimCity. After writing to Amazon through the "Contact Us" page to express his anger over the state of the game, Gladd got a reply stating, "as a standard policy, Games, Game Items, and Software Downloads are not returnable after purchase. However, because of the circumstances, I've made an exception and issued a refund in the amount of $54.99
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/ea-not-altering-return-policy-for-furious-simcity-buyers/
That guy may have tried to make such a case with EA, but notice in the article comments that NOBODY got any such refund. Idiot.
False, idiot.
Get out of your mom's basement and try interacting with the real world a bit.
That's rich, coming from the guy who can't even use Google to figure out that Amazon did issue refunds, fool.
Or, I'll just assume you're a shill for EA. It's the only explanation that makes sense.
Yes it clearly makes sense given that I suggest you make remediation through the mechanisms set out in law of merchantability in your particular country. Now what does the law in your country say about how to deal with a breach of said law?
Now before you respond take a moment to think, research and comprehend your answer before you spout a bunch more idiotic bullshit that I will immediately disprove to show you as being the idiot you are.
Ever hear of "the exception that proves the rule"? Congratulations, you found it. One single incident of one single customer claiming to get a refund for one single incident.
You're a gullible fool to think this unconfirmed anecdote from an anonymous person that Amazon would not confirm actually proves anything.
When you do manage to crawl out from your dank basement sanctuary, you should immediately find one of those "convenience stores" and buy all the scratch-off lottery tickets you can afford. There's a $100,000 prize out there waiting for you!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
EA is incompetent because they didn't write Gamespy's servers for them in such a way to make them easy to migrate? Nevermind that the 1) EA didn't write them at all, and 2) the servers don't even need migrating -- the problem is that Gamespy is turning them off, presumably because they're not making them money any more. Maybe EA made a mistake back when in actually using Gamespy ... but at the time, Gamespy was quite popular, and if this was a mistake, it was a mistake made by many companies.
Plenty of companies make mistakes, even today. I'm sure you're aware of that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Ever hear of "the exception that proves the rule"? Congratulations, you found it. One single incident of one single customer claiming to get a refund for one single incident.
Yeah you obviously don't understand what that means, you said nobody got refunds, which is false as I gave you an example of a person who got a refund and here are a couple more just to prove you wrong even more:
I got a refund for SimCity from Amazon a few days after release
Just contacted Amazon and they gave me a refund for the digital copy.
You're a gullible fool to think this unconfirmed anecdote from an anonymous person that Amazon would not confirm actually proves anything.
No there are plenty of examples but you are too braindead to just use Google. But of course you are just a corporate boot-licker and will unquestionably believe that anything written in a corporate 'policy' is gospel, go back to your corporate masters with their EULAs and policies and just do whatever they tell you you spineless weasel.
Sure, but I'm not sure that I'd call their use of Gamespy back in the day as a mistake.
Instead, it was a business decision with benefits (they don't need to roll their own and it already enjoyed a large customer base) and risks (the service might go away or be changed.)
Had they they benefits of your 20/20 hindsight, they might have made a different decision, but given the information that they had at the time ... it sounds like a good decision. And really, even if they'd known that the service was going away in 2014, they might have still made the same decision -- Gamespy served a need, and for a long while it served that need better than anything else available.
They have the code, if they can't be arsed to fix a product so they can sell it? then no money for them, oh well. And its not like the pirate scene is gonna bitch about them taking their cracks, are they?
What DOES piss me off is GOG selling completely broken games, take for instance i76...if your PC isn't a P3? Its broken, tough shit. the reason why is the dev squeezed so much cutting edge (for the time) graphics he cut corners and used the system timing as an event timer for in game events and since it was only designed for sub 1GHz single cores there are events in later missions you'll never complete because the timing is too fast even with MoSlo to pull it off.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Well then I'm confused. On one hand, you seem to be advocating for the right of people to obtain creative works produced by others without paying for them. On the other, you seem to think that for some reason, those content producers are going to keep producing content without being compensated for their time and efforts, and you think it's OK not to compensate them for their time and efforts even though they intended to be so compensated when they produced the work.
Even if they were that altruistic (some create for the love of creating, after all) there are only so many hours in the day, and if we obtain their works without paying, they're going to have to support themselves via other means, which means less time to create.
You can argue that copyright infringement isn't stealing all you want, but you and I both know that distributing or downloading content for free that is not offered for free is theft in the common parlance.
No, you are not stealing the actual work, but you are stealing the income that your receipt of the work should have generated.
In short, you are free to argue that piracy is somehow OK because you're not physically transferring goods, but you'll be wrong, and you'll be advocating for unethical behavior and are advocating for being dishonest about the ethics of that behavior.
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
Well then I'm confused. On one hand, you seem to be advocating for the right of people to obtain creative works produced by others without paying for them.
I advocate for the removal of government-enforced monopolies over ideas that infringe upon real private property and free speech rights.
Yes, their monopolies would be removed, but that does not mean they could not try to make money. Whether they succeed or fail is irrelevant.
On the other, you seem to think that for some reason, those content producers are going to keep producing content without being compensated for their time and efforts, and you think it's OK not to compensate them for their time and efforts even though they intended to be so compensated when they produced the work.
Lots of people intend to be compensated for many things. Part of running a business is accepting that you may very well fail. The free market will decide if you succeed or fail.
And I think no such thing about "content producers." I do not have an opinion of whether innovation would increase, decrease, or remain the same without copyright. The benefits of copyright has not been scientifically proven. Of course, that doesn't stop people from making baseless claims and saying that the burden of proof is on everyone else, even though they're the ones advocating that restrictions be placed on others without any proof of anything.
You can argue that copyright infringement isn't stealing all you want, but you and I both know that distributing or downloading content for free that is not offered for free is theft in the common parlance.
The "common parlance" means nothing to me. People use propaganda terms like "intellectual property" and "piracy" all the time, but I reject those. I do not care about popularity; I care about clarity and honesty.
No, you are not stealing the actual work, but you are stealing the income that your receipt of the work should have generated.
You cannot steal something that they never owned. "should have" is 100% subjective.
Copyright infringement is not even legally considered stealing. You are simply incorrect.
In short, you are free to argue that piracy is somehow OK because you're not physically transferring goods, but you'll be wrong, and you'll be advocating for unethical behavior and are advocating for being dishonest about the ethics of that behavior.
Your idea of ethics means nothing to me, and I do not care whether or not you believe in a magical moral fairy.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
They won't invest money to fix a game that won't make money. 500 players isn't enough to justify a rework. My suggestion is the best. Let the public fix it. The hardcore players will find a way to make it work again.
The FOSS model with old projects doesn't work, I could wallpaper this page with so many abandoned projects it isn't funny but like old FOSS this isn't popular enough so I can't be arsed.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.