Dead Game News: The Crew
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Ubisoft is shutting down The Crew. I have thoughts on this.The Crew map (JPG)https://mega.nz/file/nrISRY5J#wCxhd-d7jnfkxAwEmfXvCW_40bnBOmtbQ364IKa2JKAThe Cr...

Ross Scott talking about The Crew’s future server shutdown making the game unplayable for people who bought it or received it for free. He wants to see if a lawsuit is possible because of how fast technology is outpacing the law and needs help with who to contact.

  • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
    14·
    11 months ago

    Good luck.

    You’d need new legislation to have any legal case (for future games obviously). There aren’t laws that entitle you to access to the servers forever or for the game to work without servers.

    I’d be all for “you must release all necessary code (or at least all the technical details to replicate the interactions) to replace the server when you shut it down, or make the entire game fully playable without server interaction”, but even writing those laws in a comprehensive way would be hard, let alone getting them passed or enforcing them.

    • William@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      There’s no way a company is going to attempt to release all that information and potentially fail to release all details and set themselves up for a lawsuit. I think it’s more likely that these laws would kill server-based games if they were implemented as suggested.

      Instead, I could see that there might be a minimum server support length after the last sale of the product. Even then, service would be spotty for that time and there’d be no uptime guarantee. Fixes for problems and hacks would be incredibly slow and the game would basically be unplayable in short order, unless that guaranteed time was short, like 1 year.

      • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
        10·
        11 months ago

        Killing unnecessary always online horseshit would be a huge benefit by itself.

        Companies wouldn’t stop making multiplayer games. There’s too much money.

          • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
            3·
            11 months ago

            That’s not unnecessary?

            And it’s not remotely possible that even one game would not exist as a result of laws requiring companies provide the capability to continue to play them when they stop hosting. The burden is less than negligible compared to the revenue those games provide.

  • Captain AggravatedEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    There needs to be something done about software IP, because copyright is broken for performance-based works let alone software. Software companies want to safeguard their precious games for two human lifespans but they completely abandon them in a single digit number of years. Hell there’s software younger than me that is technically still copyrighted, but just go try to find who legally owns the rights. Find me one person who still thinks they holds the rights to a CP/M game.