Publishers and corpos are ruining games. Not developers.
Agreed, if anything developers are the reason games are playable!
So why is it the devs are the ones to decide to end support for a game finally killing it? All a publisher can do is delist it so it can’t be sold by them anymore, sometimes the dev can find a new publisher or reself publish if the game was good enough. But by then there would be almost no point, since there wouldn’t be any more meaningful amount of sales coming in.
They aren’t.
The developers at Ubisoft Ivory Tower
???
It isn’t the developers making those kinds of decisions. It’s the bean counters and executives.
It’s still the ones at the development studio than the publishers. Every company can have assholes….
You’re mixing game studio company and the developers working for that company.
Not everyone in a game studio is a developer
I think the world “developers” means the studios here, which is mostly because the suits who know how to extract value from stuff others create like to cosplay as experts in the industry they are leeching off of.
Look at Musk, he’s a rocket scientist / web developer / automotive engineer / civil engineer. Of course he is.
sometimes these words are used intechangeably, i think most people are aware the suits are to blame
Sometimes? A company that makes video games is literally called the developers of the game…… a game can’t be made without some company developing a game, they also have developers, as well as a host of other jobs completed by other employees, like artists, designers, actors, etc. So to not include all the others is extremely disingenuous.
In fact, an employee developer already has another term for them, programmers, so why they are trying to use another specific industry term to refer to their craft (programming) is just fucking wild.
Words have multiple meaning, developer means multiple, but a programmer trying to say a game development studio isn’t a a developer, but they are, is just pedantic as all fucking shit….
A publisher is also an entirely different company, a developer can also publish though too. Publisher and developer cannot be used interchangeably, unless they WERE both. But sometimes it’s different divisions, as in the case as Ubisoft, they have both development, and publishing studios.
It’s the developers killing off a 10 year old game when their third finally comes to steam. (Literally in the article and it’s only a couple paragraphs…)
Publishers and corpos don’t decide when to end support, that is entirely a dev decision.
So no one is immune to sucking.
What are you basing this on? Publishers fund development, and that funding dictates where development time is spent. Publishers also absolutely can decide when support ends, see WB getting ready to delist a bunch of games adult swim games published from steam. The devs have no say over that.
Not every game needs funding and lots are self published.
And how many of those devs have made their own effort to get their games back out there? Lots. Publishers only control where the game is sold. It would make zero sense for these devs to spend the money to republish on their own since they would never recoup the costs. That’s why they have been listing them for free or providing a link to download them for free. They couldn’t before since the publisher controlled sales and they could t just give it away either.
Unless the dev sold the rights to the game, the can choose to spend their own money on continuing it, why would they need external funding for that?
Yes, obviously games without publishers aren’t controlled by publishers. Even in those situations funding dictates development, because devs have to eat.
So even with funding a dev studio should have profits coming in, they can either choose to pocket all of that, or save some for literally saving their game.
So it’s the publishers fault the devs spent it all instead of using some to protect their IP? I think you’ve just shot your argument in its foot with that last comment.
So even with funding a dev studio should have profits coming in
No, the dev should have revenue coming in, revenue that pays salaries that allows them to survive. If those salaries aren’t put towards efforts that will bring in more revenue then the revenue will stop and the business will no longer be sustainable.
And if the studio doesn’t profit and have a slush fund they won’t be able to spend a little money to protect their game with their own funds… don’t spend every cent, and you would be able to use some for this good will everyone expects.
This is a circular argument that’s not going to go anywhere, everyone can be an asshole, but it’s the devs that decide if they can support the game or not. They always have a way, whether they thought ahead or not is another story entirely….
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Not all games allow for that unless there’s a private server developed for it. The idea is to require companies to provide those tools once the game is taken down.
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https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Refers to publishers, not developers
They want server based games to release individual hosting capabilities at end of life, like games used to twenty years ago.
I feel like the language they’re using (a game as a good/product) could just result in server based games being labeled a service and switching to a monthly fee model. Or setting a predetermined end of life date (changeable to extend but not shorten)?
Monthly fees and published sunsets are fine, because then customers know what they are getting in to. Selling you a single player game for 50 euro, then yanking the game away 3 months later is not.
But still, why not provide server tools?
I don’t play AAA games, but if I were you I would simply not buy games from big corps who have a long and notorious history of shutting down games. Don’t complain about bad business practice when you’re rewarding it.
The point of this campaign is not that it’s trying to stop a “bad business practice”. There’s a strong possibility that this is illegal in many countries. Just because America is a hellscape of terrible consumer protection rights doesn’t mean people in other countries don’t deserve the products they paid for.
I know that, but the title and body text of this post implies a different subject, which is what I was responding to.
That kind of reminds me of Control on the Switch; it’s a cloud based version so if the company running the hosting service closes you’re out of luck.
I’m pretty sure in the situation of The Crew there is a built in offline mode but it’s disabled.
That’s actually fantastic. I so hope they’ll be successful.
Legislate it that they have to submit the source code to the government when they release it in your market
Then when the game is shutdown the government releases the source
You can put X number of years in between
First and foremost: Maybe don’t rally this around a game where basically everyone’s response was “… that was still a thing?” and we were looking at very low (was it outright double digit?) concurrents leading up to it being killed.
That said: I also think this… completely ignores the realities of development and is dangerously close to a “lazy devs” rhetoric? The idea that devs “just” have to make an offline unlocked version before they sunset a game sounds great. Same with building out self-hosting infrastructure and… emulators for MMOs. Okay
(numbers might be slightly off, roll with me) January alone saw about as many layoffs across gaming as we had in all of 2023. The people who work in those studios don’t have time to sit down and test out some self hosting infrastructure for the game they put their heart and soul into for the past two years. They are busy frantically calling anyone they know to find leads for a job, updating their linkedin, and ripping copper out of the walls in the hopes of making rent.
We are well past the era where “Well. This was a good run but let’s quietly put down this game and get started on the next” is the norm. The reality is that you have smaller studios frantically trying to spin up two or three development pipelines to make sure they always have “a hit”. And corporate studios who fully understand that the moment they are “done” with a project they are ripe to be laid off to increase profits for that quarter.
So I can definitely see an Embracer group signing this for the PR. And, having lived similar bullshit in a different industry, I can see them using this as a weapon against the workers. “Hey guys. I know we are all down because of the announcement that all of you are gonna go fuck off and die so that I can get a bigger parachute. But we have a responsibility to our shareholders and customers to finish this one last project. So we are going to pay you an extra two or three weeks to do these tickets. And if you don’t accomplish your responsibilities we will fire you with cause and take your severance. So… get the fuck to work, I got a hooker coming at 10. Oh, and we don’t need art assets so security will come and escort Johnson out of the building. Go team!”
I dunno. On the surface… this still looks naive. But I like the spirit and do wish more games would be developed with an offline mode (even if I know, as a developer/engineer, that that just means a lot of work for minimal benefit to customers). But this REALLY feels like it is going to be right up there with the other insanity if/when people talk about “gamergate 2.0”. Like, I am getting MASSIVE Total Biscuit vibes where he is saying stuff we all are thinking but rapidly becomes a rallying cry for chuds and never does anything to really reject that.
I want to point out that the reason The Crew is being pointed out and focused specifically is because it was a large game sold to 12m people and it’s a game from France, a country with fantastic consumer protection laws.
It’s being focused because it’s the game with the best shot of having legal action success NOT because it’s the most loved game of all time.
12 million sales isn’t actually all that much relative to major games. France definitely is nice (even if the track record of EU rulings having meaningful impact is very hit or miss).
But it still undermines this as “a movement”. When the first response is “no shit that game got delisted?” you immediately give ammunition for why this is untenable.
As a formal complaint/lawsuit to bring to the government (I actually don’t know how a semi-functional government works because 'merica)? I would still be wary of something that could be deemed as “reasonable” to drop. But it is probably one of the better examples. But that is still more the kind of thing that you have people say “Wait… we are complaining about fucking The Crew?” rather than starting from that standpoint.
Why should any game (a piece of art with thousands of hours of work from developers and artists) have to ever vanish… Literally ever… I can’t think of a single reason no matter what the game is. It doesn’t matter if it was a big success or a small game on itch.
Art matters and should be preserved.
Not at all what I am arguing. I am actually all for preservation and strongly feel that all games/movies/tv/books/whatever needs to either be actively available for purchase at a reasonable price or is fair game for the Internet Archives of the world. Either get your shit together and sell it on GoG or deal with people downloading the ISOs.
But this is not that. This is “Developers need to add features in when they sunset a game”. Which is a much stronger discussion and increasingly has the issue of those developers being increasingly out of a job.
Which… is why I am very curious if even France would rule in favor of this (after the obligatory smoke break or twelve). Because yes, consumer rights are good. So are worker’s rights. And this would disproportionately impact indie devs and corporate studios being shuttered.
Which is why a game that had like ten fans might not be a good rallying cry.
As for why something might deserve to vanish? The cliche example is an actor or actress who did porn when they were just starting out and needed to make rent. Consent is incredibly murky in those situations and, if it resurfaces, tends to go really shitty, really fast. Same with directors and writers who decide “maybe that edgelord movie about how pedophilia isn’t any worse than engaging in capitalsm since you are raping people either way wasn’t the best thing to put my name on…”.
Similarly? While I wouldn’t be TOO surprised either way since he seems pretty cool during interviews, I would be shocked if Elliot Page wouldn’t prefer that Beyond Two Souls never existed considering how much sexual harassment was involved in the making of it (not to mention the anatomically accurate nude model that was clearly just for david cage to masturbate to). Yes, a large team worked hard on that and a lot of people love the game (albeit, more in a “let’s clown on this for Content” kind of way) but… yeah.
And that doesn’t even get into shit like Traci Lords’ early work that is outright illegal to possess. Preserve that shit in the Library of Congress but there is zero reason that should be publicly accessible. Is it The Guy Game or whatever that is the video game that includes underage porn?
they could release it all as-is under gpl when they sunset a game and then someone else would do all the work…
I know it makes people cranky, but look at Yuzu “becoming” Suyu. All the Suyu team really has is memes and the ability to selfhost a gitlab. They don’t have the resources to maintain or develop the emulator themselves. And it is only a matter of time until one or more yuzu “forks” become bitcoin miners that improved support for the latest Mario game or whatever. Personally? I would rather NOLF remain in limbo than for it to become synonymous with viruses and stolen crypto.
Licensing? It depends how the company handled it but it is generally “a dick move” to change the license of an existing codebase without the consent of the developers. So you either end up flattening all history (and thus, nobody gets credit for the work they did) or you need to make sure that Jeff who left the company four years ago is cool suddenly getting pinged on issues with the cape physics code he forgot about.
AND that also assumes that it used no proprietary resources. Maybe that cape physics code is REAL good and the company doesn’t want to have to throw that away when it can still give them an advantage for a new title. Or it might be as simple as depending on an internal build farm or tool. While we all make fun of them for it, there is a reason Facebook/Meta developers are fucking idiots when it comes to git. Because Sapling was designed to fit their needs and workflow and changes just enough that you can never trust a former meta dev to understand anything about VCS. But… that also becomes an issue if you are just uploading it to Microsoft’s Github.
Also: This gets into territory that even as an anonymous user I am going to tiptoe around but understand that it is not uncommon to work with vendors and other support staff who will gladly contribute essential code that you more or less have a legal department’s worth of paperwork saying you won’t share.
January alone saw about as many layoffs across gaming as we had in all of 2023.
This is what they should stop doing.
Yup. But discussions of the impact of venture capital/investors largely abandoning gaming and the importance of Week One sales don’t line up with “Fucking scammers are stealing our games and you are a traitor if you buy any game before it is 90% off on g2a” talking points.
Wheras “lazy devs don’t want to put the effort in to finish their games” is what gets you views and an army of rabid supporters.
