This should be illegal

you will own nothing and you will be happy.

This is the natural progression of the games-as-a-service model. Any game that relies on online support of some kind just to function will eventually cease like this.

Is it stupid that a vr game about a pet relies on online support to function? Absolutely. But it is what it is. Buy more offline games.

oh god this reminds me of Japanese man who married Hatsune Miku in hologram form can no longer speak to his wife of four years.

"The doting husband has gained thousands of followers on Instagram by sharing insights into his life with Miku, but things took an unexpected turn during the pandemic when Gatebox announced it was discontinuing its service for Miku."

this is why I have trust issues with proprietary software

Game preservation is dying because of DRM. You want games you can still play in 10 years, pirate that sht and donate to those keeping up the good art of game cracking. It's either that or buying remakes a decade later that are just thinly reskinned. I can live with sht like denuvo since newer games just remove it after a year and then I can buy it. Storefronts like uplay or egs that are dependent on a malignant profit only entity are at best mid-term rentals and at worst spyware you have to pay for the privilege to use.

You touch anything from Meta with a 10 foot pole, you deserve whatever comes your way.

My proposal is for a mandated label on software and hardware to indicate that it will stop working when some online service goes offline.

I've had that thought many times. I wish companies would release the source of games they discontinue instead of letting them completely die out.

This really sucks when you have to explain this kind of thing to your kids...

You don't own things anymore, you just lease them

I bought a bunch of music on Google Play Music, forgot about it. Come back a year later and it's all deleted because they shut the service down.

Archival is extremely important and one of the side effects of copyright schemes is that they limit its viability. The less access people have, the more likely some work becomes lost forever. I've seen it a few times already, with recent work, but in one or two hundred years we're talking about libraries of art that could have been preserved but are just gone.

Closed source software, that's actually distributed to people, has all kinds of problems beyond that too. Tons has been written about that, but from an artistic perspective, I think the biggest loss is that people can't legally expand the original work. Giant franchises with a central cultural presence get walled off and usually just go through a huge creative decline, which is crazy because there's millions of people preoccupied with the concepts from the franchise who are barred from using them to express themselves. With software in specific, if it's open source you can modify it, fix it, expand it, maintain it, whatever - there's all these great resources they could use, but we won't let them.

And this is why I have trust issues

It's meta lol. It's the devil.

Is this made in unity?

Pretty big assumption that you own something digital you paid for. Let's be honest, you paid for a license not a product.

Can any owner of this game tell me whether it is online only or not? Or what uses it has for an internet connection? Because back in mah dayTM© that'd be the kind of thing you'd download once and, even if the online service died, you'd still have a working program/game afterwards.

the problem is that we've allowed this to happen. all mobile games function this way, the "rug" can be pulled at any time. all that money you spent on gacha pulls, was it worth it?

the problem goes back innocuously to MMO subscriptions, i think. which had a valid reason for existing, but an MMO can be "rug pulled" at any time as well, thankfully most of the greats have stayed up (wow, ffxi, eq) but ONE DAY they will be gone forever, relegated to private servers only.

This is why I always look for cartridge-based Switch ports of games I play, so they’ll be mine long after the online play ceases, they can no longer be legally purchased and my current device reaches the end of its product life. It also helps that game cards last longer than optical discs

"don't worry, you can form a new 3-year attachment with Bogo 2 for just $29.99!"

If people stopped renting games developers would start selling them again. Until then, the incentive is for them to keep pulling this nonsense.

There's a difference between a game having online elements, such as a MMO, and games that require a connection just so they can keep charging you. Even in the first case though, you should own the client, and ideally it either has a single player mode, or the developer releases the code for a basic server when they shut it down.

Is this a Facebook game…?

In theory, Ross Scott is (or at least was) trying to get something done about this. https://youtu.be/tUAX0gnZ3Nw?si=acNlZLK8MRqKWwgh

Edit2: Jesus people, please engage with the actual argument... not some strawman argument I didn't make.

I must be missing something here.

Company buys land, designs and builds theme park
Company operates theme park.
Theme park isn't profitable.
Company closes theme park
???
Company must give away designs and schematics to theme park rides for free so people can build theme park themselves that might be in direct competition with new theme park company is trying to build???

Edit: I do think that abandonware should be opensourced at some point... but I don't understand this level of entitlement.

I'll never miss a chance to shill Ross Scotts excellent video on games as a service and how wrong it is here

My man has been personally leading the charge against this issue and has even looked into making this practice illegal

I think illegal might be a little bit too far

And this is why I only buy games that I can load on a PC and play without an internet connection.

I appreciate the sentiment around preservation, but there's an argument to be made that if you make something, you should get to decide if you want to destroy it. Banksy did something like this recently by destroying one of his pieces of art when it went up for auction.

Why should a developer be forced to forfeit their source code just because they don't want to sell their game any longer?

If people focused on DRM-free games instead, this wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Don't let Meta metastasize.

But then how can they force you to buy a new one?

Image Transcription:

A message from Meta Quest with a picture of quadrupedal orange alien with purple spots down its spine and large green eyes named Bogo from the Oculus Quest experience of the same name. Below the image is the text:

"Hi Kolorafa,

We are reaching out to let you know that Bogo will no longer be supported as of Friday, March 15, 2024. You may continue to wave at, pet, and feed Bogo on your Quest device until 11:59 PM PT on that date.

We admit we've gotten attached to the little guy too! There's still time to grab that just-slightly-out-of-reach fruit one last time. Bogo will appreciate it. And so will we. 🐾 🎆

Thanks,

The Meta Quest team"

[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]

Motor City Online all over again

wtf is this this is impossible