•  Ech   ( @ech@lemm.ee ) 
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      237 months ago

      When did it become the expected norm to receive endless updates for a one time purchase? How is that a “pump-and-dump”? Unless the game is a buggy, broken mess (and maybe it is, I’m not familiar with FC6), once the purchase is made, any additional content or service should be considered a bonus, not a mandate.

      • Seriously. I realize people have Feelings about DRM and always-online stuff, but this is an article about a game that was never especially popular or active entering maintenance mode after a couple of years.

        They aren’t shutting it down, they aren’t making it unplayable (though of course either of those things could happen at any time etc etc) - they just are no longer producing content for a game almost no one is playing anymore anyway.

      • If the game requires online features by design, then the company does have the responsibility to keep that online.

        If you don’t want to support a game for 5-10 years with online services, don’t make a game that relies on online services. It ilreally is that simple.

        • Don’t put always online DRM (if hitman servers go down, nobody can play the fully single-player game. Absolutely 0 reason to connect to the internet).

        • Don’t put online DLC verification. Use a damn code/binary file that steam can distribute theough the store.

        • if you have a multiplayer game, put an option for self-hosted game servers and LAN. Battefront 2 original is literally still going for 18 years because they were not dumbasses and made a good game with good features and custom server capability

        It really is extremely simple to not be a corrupt, money-grubbing piece of shit corpo.

        •  Ech   ( @ech@lemm.ee ) 
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          127 months ago

          Except this isn’t about DRM, or even online game servers. They literally said all of that will continue. They’re just not making DLC anymore and people are calling it a “pump-and-dump”.

      • If you buy a game and they stop updating, maintaining or even keeping the mandatory online services, the publishers are making your game worse. The quality of a digital product shouldn’t degrade over time. You should get what you paid for. It wouldn’t hurt those companies to make people able to run servers themselves.

        There really has to be some warranty for digital products, like you have for tangible products. Software companies shouldn’t be above the law.

        •  Ech   ( @ech@lemm.ee ) 
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          77 months ago

          Well neither my comment nor the article is about online services like DRM, so not sure how that’s super relevant. And fwiw, I don’t know of any product that requires free support for all time by law, physical or otherwise.

          • From the article:

            It’s also unlikely to get many more glitch or bug fixes unless something significant emerges.

            I’d bet that rather than fixing a glaring security hole they’ll just stop the online service. It would be way more beneficial at the end of online services’ lifetimes (this game is 2 years old, mind you!) to open source or at least publish the server parts of the game.

            But that would require laws which benefit the end users and not corporations, as they’ll never do it themselves if they’re not forced to.

  • Well of course, but is there anyone actually disappointed in that? After release it went completely silent around the game as if Ubisoft was ashamed of it. I think most of the people who were ever going to play it did so once in the weeks after its release and that was it then.