A New Chapter for The Fun Pimps and 7 Days to Die

[Riamus]

Well, here you're confirming to me the type of guy you are ... you'll write out the first thing that comes to mind with no "internal testing" ... if I was tossed into water, there'd be a whole host of me.

Please... no!

I bought a game called "Memories of Mars". Was a pretty cool game until about a year or 2 ago they decided to abandon the online servers and now the game is vaporware. It's literally sitting in my gaming library and I can't play it at all.

Compare that to the physical copies I still possess of the original Deus Ex and System Shock 2, both I can still drop in a cd drive and play to this day. We are indeed living in different times now.

That's not a great comparison. I can also still play those games through Steam or GOG without owning the physical copies. And if you're saying that older games don't have issues with becoming vaporware, that's also not true. There were games in the 90s that required an online connection to play and when those servers shut down, they were never updated to allow offline play. In some cases, hackers managed to change the games to allow playing them offline, and for some of them GOG or Steam has updated them to work now, but there are plenty of games that can't be played anymore even if you have a physical copy of the game and a computer old enough to be able to play them. That last part is particularly frustrating at times... There is one game I have the disk for and would love to play that just won't run correctly on a modern computer. There is another game that I played years ago and that I'd buy today but it won't run on a modern OS. Doesn't matter if you have a physical disk or you have a digital license. Any game that requires online servers that are then shut down and isn't updated to work without those servers is not going to work regardless of having a physical or digital copy of the game.

In both cases the user/player reasonably expects continued use of something they paid for.

Neither says you can use it forever. Many car parts are discontinued and although you may find alternatives, that may not always be possible for rarer cars, so when something breaks, you may have trouble fixing it. Cars are guaranteed to start falling apart and unless you can keep "updating" them so they continue to work, they will stop working even though you paid for them. A game or other software may also stop working when you update to a new computer or a new OS unless you update the game or software to work with the new system.

A game that requires an online server to function and the server is disabled will cease to work unless someone can update or change the game to work without the server. If you buy a trolley that requires an overhead electric wire to function and the city removes all of those wires, your trolley won't work anymore unless someone can update it or change it to work without the wires.

In the end, it's really not any different. It's just different terminology. You never expect something you buy to always work. You expect it to need to be replaced at some point. Doesn't matter if it's physical or digital.


---

Now, since the above comments seem to suggest I'm fine with licensing versus ownership, let me clarify that I don't like licensing. I prefer ownership and I have a lot of physical games and other software. But I also recognize that a digital license doesn't inherently make your purchase any less usable than a physically owned copy. The exception being a situation where a company that you licensed the game/software from shuts down or loses their license to allow playing/streaming/using that software or game anymore. Having a physical copy makes is possible to not get stuck in that situation. But that doesn't happen often. What are the chances Steam shuts down entirely and you lose all your games? Very low. And Steam is pretty good at making it so you can keep playing games you purchased even if Steam can no longer sell those games. You might not be able to buy it anymore, but if you own it, you can usually still play it. That can vary from game to game, but they usually do a good job with that.

I'd rather we still owned the software we buy, and I treat any software I buy as if I own it... I don't really care what the TOS or EULA says I can or can't do with a game I buy and play offline. But I appreciate the ease of getting games from Steam and GOG and elsewhere compared to how it used to be.

 

[Jost Amman]

Neither says you can use it forever. Many car parts are discontinued and although you may find alternatives, that may not always be possible for rarer cars, so when something breaks, you may have trouble fixing it. Cars are guaranteed to start falling apart and unless you can keep "updating" them so they continue to work, they will stop working even though you paid for them. A game or other software may also stop working when you update to a new computer or a new OS unless you update the game or software to work with the new system.

Again, you didn't read my reply.

Why you guys just reply to my last statement but completely miss the conversation as a whole?
If you don't know what you're replying to, simply don't reply.

In one of my first posts in this conversation I explicitly stated that sometimes you can't fully use your car (e.g. banned to circulate on some days) even IF your car is still perfectly working. You see? This makes your reply useless.

 

[Nukem_ded]

You never expect something you buy to always work

ummmmm, yes , i do

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

You're one of those conspiracy theorists who thinks AI is an alien evil entity, and not just the latest tool in the toolbox.
The problem with you guys is that you ruin also all fair criticism against future AI implementations.

Public views on AI itself vary wildly, not so much the commercialization of (and over-hype about) it. Hopefully, once the hype dies down, the tool that's been sold as a demigod that can do anything a human can do better -- especially "create" art -- will die down with it. It's already wreaking havoc in creative industries, which is kind of an oxymoron from my perspective, but there we are. I don't think concept artists and narrative designers in the video games industry, for example, have been disproportionately affected by industry layoffs for no reason. I think a good portion of CEOs think they're unnecessary because they believe AI can do what they can do, which it most emphatically cannot because it doesn't possess an imagination, and they can save costs by replacing artists and writers with AI. Things like this are bound to be widely realized at some point. Or, at least, I hope so.

A glorified search engine and repetitive task emulator is what the commercial variety is. I imagine implementations being made now in key sectors will be scaled back when CEOs begin to realize it's not the human employee replacer it's being sold as.

[removed: an increasingly off topic tangent that got into politics]

 

[Jost Amman]

A glorified search engine and repetitive task emulator is what the commercial variety is.

I agree with this.

 

[Matt115]

Interesting if next title will be more serious similiar to Blight

 

[Gamida]

Please... no!


That's not a great comparison. I can also still play those games through Steam or GOG without owning the physical copies. And if you're saying that older games don't have issues with becoming vaporware, that's also not true. There were games in the 90s that required an online connection to play and when those servers shut down, they were never updated to allow offline play. In some cases, hackers managed to change the games to allow playing them offline, and for some of them GOG or Steam has updated them to work now, but there are plenty of games that can't be played anymore even if you have a physical copy of the game and a computer old enough to be able to play them. That last part is particularly frustrating at times... There is one game I have the disk for and would love to play that just won't run correctly on a modern computer. There is another game that I played years ago and that I'd buy today but it won't run on a modern OS. Doesn't matter if you have a physical disk or you have a digital license. Any game that requires online servers that are then shut down and isn't updated to work without those servers is not going to work regardless of having a physical or digital copy of the game.


Neither says you can use it forever. Many car parts are discontinued and although you may find alternatives, that may not always be possible for rarer cars, so when something breaks, you may have trouble fixing it. Cars are guaranteed to start falling apart and unless you can keep "updating" them so they continue to work, they will stop working even though you paid for them. A game or other software may also stop working when you update to a new computer or a new OS unless you update the game or software to work with the new system.

A game that requires an online server to function and the server is disabled will cease to work unless someone can update or change the game to work without the server. If you buy a trolley that requires an overhead electric wire to function and the city removes all of those wires, your trolley won't work anymore unless someone can update it or change it to work without the wires.

In the end, it's really not any different. It's just different terminology. You never expect something you buy to always work. You expect it to need to be replaced at some point. Doesn't matter if it's physical or digital.


---

Now, since the above comments seem to suggest I'm fine with licensing versus ownership, let me clarify that I don't like licensing. I prefer ownership and I have a lot of physical games and other software. But I also recognize that a digital license doesn't inherently make your purchase any less usable than a physically owned copy. The exception being a situation where a company that you licensed the game/software from shuts down or loses their license to allow playing/streaming/using that software or game anymore. Having a physical copy makes is possible to not get stuck in that situation. But that doesn't happen often. What are the chances Steam shuts down entirely and you lose all your games? Very low. And Steam is pretty good at making it so you can keep playing games you purchased even if Steam can no longer sell those games. You might not be able to buy it anymore, but if you own it, you can usually still play it. That can vary from game to game, but they usually do a good job with that.

I'd rather we still owned the software we buy, and I treat any software I buy as if I own it... I don't really care what the TOS or EULA says I can or can't do with a game I buy and play offline. But I appreciate the ease of getting games from Steam and GOG and elsewhere compared to how it used to be.

Some of what you said in your first paragraph got me thinking.
I am in the sort of in the situation you mentioned. I do have a ton of physical copies of some game that I bought years ago. They are on 3.5 inch floppies. I think the company use to be Sierra-On-Line but was shortened to just Sierra I think.
I have copies of Kings Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest. (Yes, were lots of games called Quest back in those days)
I do have some older computers that still have the floppy drive on them but not sure if they still could play those games.
So technically I still do own the games but can't play them.
I also bought the Leisure Suit Larry series back then and have them on floppies so am in the same situation with them.
Now with LSL I did see them on steam and did purchase them again. (sadly I haven't even started a playthru yet of those)
So they were somehow able to be reworked(?) to work on modern system so I can play them on my computer.
The problem is like is mentioned. Even though they never in past and never in this day need to connect to a server for me to play, if Steam
went out of business I would lose access to them again.
This also got me wondering how it all works. If multiple gaming sites sell the game. For example if Steam, HB, etc sell the same game and Steam goes dark. Will the people who bought it from HB still be able to play and those from steam not? Even if the game could be played solo?
I am just curious how all this works.

 

[Riamus]

Some of what you said in your first paragraph got me thinking.
I am in the sort of in the situation you mentioned. I do have a ton of physical copies of some game that I bought years ago. They are on 3.5 inch floppies. I think the company use to be Sierra-On-Line but was shortened to just Sierra I think.
I have copies of Kings Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest. (Yes, were lots of games called Quest back in those days)
I do have some older computers that still have the floppy drive on them but not sure if they still could play those games.
So technically I still do own the games but can't play them.
I also bought the Leisure Suit Larry series back then and have them on floppies so am in the same situation with them.
Now with LSL I did see them on steam and did purchase them again. (sadly I haven't even started a playthru yet of those)
So they were somehow able to be reworked(?) to work on modern system so I can play them on my computer.
The problem is like is mentioned. Even though they never in past and never in this day need to connect to a server for me to play, if Steam
went out of business I would lose access to them again.
This also got me wondering how it all works. If multiple gaming sites sell the game. For example if Steam, HB, etc sell the same game and Steam goes dark. Will the people who bought it from HB still be able to play and those from steam not? Even if the game could be played solo?
I am just curious how all this works.

No, you can't play games you buy on one platform (e.g. Steam) by using another (e.g. GOG). However, if Steam were to go down, there is at least a very good chance that another company like GOG or Epic will take them over and then you'd still have access. Steam makes too much money for them to just disappear entirely. Someone would take them over. How that would end up affecting people is entirely unknown, of course.

I also have the disks for the entire Space Quest series and the Police Quest series (only up through the first SWAT). I imagine those disks are no longer readable after ~40 years since magnetic disks fail over time. But I have Space Quest on Steam and could easily get the others if I wanted them. GOG has them as well. I haven't looked into other platforms. Those games are also found on abandonware sites. I know that the Space Quest series (minus the final game in the series) worked fine using SCUMMVM years ago. The last one had problems with one scene in the beginning where the speed of a modern computer would cause it to crash and, at the time, even DOSBOX couldn't reduce the computer speed below 1%, which wasn't enough. That may have changed by now since that was probably 20+ years ago now. But Sierra games are ones that are not likely to every be unavailable... at least for a very long time. They are too popular and between SCUMMVM and DOSBOX, not to mention the online platforms like Steam and GOG, there's little chance they'll stop working. It's the lesser known games/developers that have the higher chance of disappearing.

 

[theFlu]

So technically I still do own the games but can't play them.

You have some issues there, but they're all "technical" in nature.
- Are the floppies even readable after decades
- You don't have the HW to read them
- You don't have the old HW to run the correct SW that would run the games properly
- They'd fail to run properly on new HW / SW ( => need emulators)

But no-one has flicked a switch that will make them unplayable, which is the fear with "live service" or any other form of online DRM. If I buy a physical copy and destroy it myself, I wouldn't be mad at the company. If time deletes the disk, same deal.

Will the people who bought it from HB still be able to play and those from steam not?

Depends on all kinds of things.. steam allows for license checks and connectivity features; when you lose those, a game may fail. If you have a DRM-free local copy, no-one can disable it; I don't think Humble Bundle guarantees any DRM-free-ness thou, so I don't know if that applies to them.

And like Riamus there, I don't think steam will disappear anytime soon; but I wouldn't put it past the EU to ban them before 2030 ... so other restrictions may apply

 

[Prisma501]

Time for another cutoff to a thread of its own.

 

[DocRussel]

Time for another cutoff to a thread of its own.

No kidding.

 

[meganoth]

You're so naive...

I am describing the theory to discuss whether your analogy is fitting or not. Whether any countries use their powers for the right or wrong reasons would be a political discussion and not at all applicable or allowed on this forum.

You still think the government works for "the common good"?
Really? What are you, a communist?

I guess you didn't read the part where I pointed out how laws are approved both for the cars, and the gaming industry.

What does it have to do with the topic which was companies who make their games unusable through turning off (game or DRM) servers? That is and was always possible because there are no laws that prevent it, not because there are laws specifically made to allow it. At least not any that were specifical for the games industry (if you were thinking about copyright)

The problem is not that old cars aren't up to new regulations, the point is they should have the existing cars reach the end of their life cycle naturally (or be voluntarily replaced by their owners) without forcing people to spend money they don't have just to keep "up to date" wit the latest climate change scam.

You are here postulating that whatever you bought has to reach the end of its life cycle. I.e. the law can't disadvantage you in any way using whatever was bought legally once. Which can't ever be an universal law above other rights.
If for example some substance used in food is later found to be poisonous to humans, animals, or nature, it must be possible to forbid it, even if some cook bought a years supply of it. Is that fair to that individual? No. Still necessary.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Yes. You just confused me somewhat by implying they would reissue/relabel the game after 4.0.
4.0 seems to be bandits, but the story would still be missing. So a free 5.0 seems certain and I think it will be 1-2 more before they declare the game finished.

Spoiler: Apology and reference

I'm sorry for the confusion. No I did not expect BI to prematurely change the game type.
That would be irresponsible, and would damage their and TFP's reputation. The bottom line
is profit, which is based on consumer point of view and appeal.

The 4.0 reference is meant for after conclusion of the game, meaning the last two segments
included. It's the numeric vs literal adjustments, meaning a new threat etc, literal is easier
to translate, for me.

Spoiler: Steam ID reference

The steam ID reference, was for the game itself on steam. Would the name be changed and a
new ID added, to separate availability for purchase or subscription. Because if the name
were the same, and under the 251570 and the same lookup. It would get confusing to anyone but
a new subscriber. Or would the present, 251570 be removed and replaced. That is why I wrote
like remastered versions.

The only reason it is a curiosity for me is because, of the extended length of time, that the
game was produced as a sort of completionist format. 7DTD was built as a product for a decade,
I was curious how it could be converted to a service style, without a complete rework.

Spoiler: The reason I asked about servers

If it were to shift more to a dead by daylight or fortnite format, wouldn't the player count support
on servers need to be reworked and potentially increased. From a more naive point of view, the game
has a stronger focus on single player, then coop availability, and then larger server population with
caveats. I only write this because of the Data size and transport needed, to effectively expand the
player scale supported on servers, vs cooperative interlinks.

The reason for that thought is, from what I have seen, larger player volume focused games, have
the outfits, outfit customization, additional assets and store items for sale from the beginning.

Aesthetic skins are primarily for individuality and the see me appeal. Which includes the necessity
for stronger server support, inferred. Or a potential replication of blood moons match fails, it may
not have been the only reason but lack of server support was a contributing factor, that may have made a
difference. Most of the servers that these transactions would be beneficial for are not personal servers,
because of the structure and how they are maintained. The primary server pop and hosts for this game
are personal, wouldn't a new form of checks and balances distribution system need to be designed
to make it function. Or adding company owned and run servers.

Spoiler: conclusion

I realize I am not owed an explanation of any sort. But if you don't ask, you will not know. I have gotten
more than the sum of it's parts from the game. I kept a running, log of the history of this game as the
industry progressed and changed around it. Unbiased the good the bad and the ugly. Why, initial presentation,
and being able to physically and literally through reading, experience the game, the dev interaction, forum
responses, Net perceptions, through a life cycle. Kind of like a detailed class on, what it takes both on front
and back end, to produce a game in the accelerated information age. Binary games meaning Assembly Roms,
To early exes and wads, to now, it kind of gives me snapshots, of possibilities and impossibilities. I am hoping
that the last chapter is epic and not uniformly lackluster. I am using the old form of Epic, meaning a long narrative
paralleled by the dev time, Following personal ideals vs industry standards paralleled with heroic deeds and adventures
and finally rooted in history.

 

[HB_H4wk]

Still wondering why Behavior hasn't made any announcement?

 

[Prisma501]

Still wondering why Behavior hasn't made any announcement?

No. They came to read this forum and quickly decided HELL NO! Let this negativity die on its own

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

Still wondering why Behavior hasn't made any announcement?

It has. There are just no details about the acquisition or what's to come of it because TFP and Behavior haven't completely worked those out yet. What representatives of both companies have said is TFP will continue working on finishing up the roadmap (bandits, story, etc.), then Behavior will take a more "active" role, which could mean anything.

 

[Riamus]

It has. There are just no details about the acquisition or what's to come of it because TFP and Behavior haven't completely worked those out yet. What representatives of both companies have said is TFP will continue working on finishing up the roadmap (bandits, story, etc.), then Behavior will take a more "active" role, which could mean anything.

Didn't they say only through bandits? After bandits, they'd start changing things? Maybe I'm remembering it incorrectly. So story could change from initial plans.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

Didn't they say only through bandits? After bandits, they'd start changing things? Maybe I'm remembering it incorrectly. So story could change from initial plans.

Possibly. I hadn't read that specifically. Have a source? Both mentioned sharing developers, which I assume (though you know they say about assuming) means Behavior's developers would be helping TFP finish up the roadmap at some point, then Behavior would take on a more active role in some capacity. What that means is anyone's guess.

Speculation is interesting, but we just don't know.

 

[Jost Amman]

I don't like how behavior is behaving.

 

[Riamus]

Possibly. I hadn't read that specifically. Have a source? Both mentioned sharing developers, which I assume (though you know they say about assuming) means Behavior's developers would be helping TFP finish up the roadmap at some point, then Behavior would take on a more active role in some capacity. What that means is anyone's guess.

Speculation is interesting, but we just don't know.

The quote below is from Roland about it, but I thought I saw something more concrete... probably in that referenced press release, though I don't remember where that link is.

From Behavior’s press release it looks like things are staying the same up to the Threat Update (bandits) of the original roadmap. After that, there may be changes.