I first saw that under Louis Rossmann's video and it will always ring true. I feel like it's just a matter of time as gaming gets worse and worse, and more scummy that EU will just introduce at least something that protects the customers further from this ever evolving bs.
It should be illegal for developers to suddenly revoke access and render a purchase useless. It's a grim future for the industry if this trend continues.
It's dangerous having such a sweeping statement, I think it would be detrimental to have the developer on the line for changes they can't always account for.
As an experienced developer, I know for a fact they have the software for dedicated servers sitting on a host somewhere (since that's basically what cloud-based servers run off of), all they have to do is give it away freely so people can host their own servers...but nope...this is just pure greed because server costs cut into profit. I've worked on games that cost $60 to buy and $60mil to develop, and they became unplayable only 2 years later. Don't be fooled gamers, they have the tools to release to the public to allow online-only games to be run offline or at least hosted locally, they're just being greedy and trying to cut corners. Not allowing people to play something they spent $60+ on should be considered fraud no matter how long after it's launch.
They prolly have tons of third party dependencies which disallow them from just giving it away to anyone anyway. But yes, the major cause is still greed.
To be fair, if something has been developed as an internal infrastructure-only solution, there's a decent chance that your need a lot of effort to decouple logic from some dependencies an outsider won't be able to fulfill/provide (infrastructure provisioning logic, poorly implemented security, whatever other local idiosyncracy). But yes, they SHOULD be able to do that.
I think one of the main reasons why Ubisoft (and other devs who follow the same idea) is doing this is that it's afraid that, with the number of players who love these games, if made playable offline, would still thrive through some way, especially with modding, and that their new titles would potentially lose those gamers who would've bought said new titles instead if the players aren't still playing their older ones.
@@bas919With what's happening with Payday, it's a rightful fear. But instead of going out of their way to make a better product, they instead opted to make a deliberately worse product and restrict access to their actually good products. Its all about control.
I mean they are objectively right, you bought a license and agreed with the EULA, so you consented to what ever shenanigans they pull, don’t like it don’t buy it. You can always find a way to pirate it and mod an offline mode/custom servers.
I've been saying it for years. It needs to be fully illegal to use language like "purchase" or "buy" when you're paying for a temporary, revokable license to download and play something. Either game stores need to make it abundantly clear that what you're buying isn't the game, or they need to make it clear that you're spending $60 to lease it.
I would also argue that if they take down the game or servers for any reason, you're entitled to your money back, regardless of how much time you played it because they're essentially recalling the product you paid for.
As a dev, there is no reason why a game should be always online if it's a single player. It's essentially making people pay for a live service that they aren't interested in. And the worst part is that their rationale is that they're trying to keep piracy in check, which is absolute bs. If someone wants to pirate a game, they will figure a way to do it. As an indie dev I believe that if a consumer wants to support you, even if they pirate it first, they will do so at some point.
It's pretty messed up when companies use the anti-piracy excuse for going online-only. A: It's essentially punishing the paying consumer for the acts of piracy and B: I find a lot of these "online-only" games have some form of microtransactions, or otherwise similarly aggressive monetisation models in place.
I pirate it first if there's no demo, play it for how long it takes to get a feel, delete it, and wait for the price point I feel it's worth. I am morally in the right.
@@jayonnaise6105 definitely. Ultimately it's more of a money thing than a anti-piracy thing. But they want to pretend that it isn't and think that we're dumb enough to buy the excuse
@@kgonepostl that's fair, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. As a dev, if I don't offer a demo, I wouldn't be super upset if someone pirated my game, because in the long run, if my game is good enough, I probably have a customer, and they'll probably spread the word to their friends.
Personally id never pirate an indie game. Theres a difference between downloading a game by a big company like Nintendo or Sony, possibly from years ago, and downloading a pretty obscure indie game that the dev only asks £10 for, and needs that money to stay affloat.
This is why people like Louis Rossmann are right. We don't own shit anymore, we just rent it for however long it exists. The average consumer isn't interested in repairing their devices, or preserving their video games and movies, but there are more and more people every day who think this practice is inherently anti-consumer and are coming around to our side. What we need is a lawsuit against a large company to create precedent for legislation to occur where when an online-only game is shut down, either an offline mode is released as a final patch, or server tools are released that will allow the end user to foot that bill themselves. You cannot tell me this cannot happen. Private servers for games like Need for Speed World exist, for fucks sake.
I can agree to this. Make the companies actually have to let you own what you bought even in online or offline shit. I remember I had dragon age origins on my ps3. First game I ever bought dlc for. Dropped 70 to 90 dollars for all the dlc. Come 5 years later. Had corruption happen to my system and had to factory reset, went to start dragon age origins. Had the hard disc but the dlcs I couldn't get back cause the servers were down. So I can't play dragon age origins with all the dlc I paid for ever again, cause they shut it down and made it all on PC. Which still bugs on the dlc shit. So that taught me to never buy online shit again.
This is why piracy is needed and should never go away, because they keep preserving our games. What these companies are doing should be illegal, why aren't there rules for this. If I buy a game, I should be able to play it whenever I feel like it.
Same here, though. Ubisoft is just an absolute disaster nowadays. These companies are going to get bankrupt and will fail their purchases. You're right it should be illegal.
I don't think piracy will go away for a very very long time. Not because stealing is some kind of unavoidable thing. More that it is a symptom of a dysfunctional system creating problems for people which leads them to such things. And I don't think humanity is ever going to manage to become functional in the far future let alone the near. Too many of us are short sighted, selfish, overly prideful, arrogant, insecure, etc. the list goes on, for us to reach a point where we can minimize such problems with each other to a point that will get rid of things like piracy completely. I just don't see it happening until we change so much that we might not even consider us being human anymore at that point.
Certain pirate sites have an insane catalogue of games that are not being sold anymore or are otherwise forgotten. Piracy is not necessarily negative in every sense, most pirate sites don't remove games from their catalogue and imo that's where the true value of this site lies.
“You will own nothing and you will be happy” This type of stuff has me cherishing a lot of the physical media from my childhood. Like I can’t imagine all the amazing games I grew up playing since the PS2 being completely wiped out and unplayable. Straight up robbery from these companies.
I will get a pirate copy of the games i already own so they can't steal from me. And /I/ will be happy. I would fucking die over the principle of the concept. Buying something and it being taken away buy the one who sold it is theft.
Scott Ross from Accursed Farms was talking Games as a service is a scam years ago, and The Crew was one of his examples. He was looking into the legality of it, but hit a dead end back then. If anybody can pick up where he failed, I am certain he would be thrilled to help.
Thanks for talking about this, Muta. What's sad to me personally is how people just brush it off with "just play the new game". People just don't see any differences between car games and assume they're all the same. The first Crew game was a lot more similar to something like Need for Speed with police and illegal street racing. The vibe and content is just different and it's sad we will lose it forever next year.
Exactly it’s like me and motorsport 3 which I can still play on the 360 if that was online only I wouldn’t be able to play it and people would be like “just play the new forza” and while the concept is the same they are different games with different tracks and different steering and different car classes so I would want to play fm3 which luckily I can unlike crew 1
Well if you wanted to make a retrospective on it this is the last chance it seems. I'd be interested in waching it. Looks way more interesting of a game than the soulles Crew 2.
I'm sure an underground fan community will eventually reverse engineer some new servers to connect to and make it accessible again but yeah, this BS of just shutting games down and forcing them unplayable after people paid for them needs to stop.
IMO it should be a legal requirement to provide an offline-mode patch, release the server software so people can run their own servers, or release the source files so the community can make the necessary changes to keep the game playable.
Nah, just the offline mode patch. The devs should have to put in the work to make the game playable when they shut down the online aspect, it shouldn't be down to the players, especially when not everyone is gonna know how to do it.
There is zero chance of ever having a legal requirement to give out source code. I also dont see how you would ever get an always online game to be illegal in anyway, or to force a developer to put more work into a product. They could just not have the money. The only thing I can think of is consumer protection on a product. IE, if you take the product I bought from you away, you have to give me a refund. Now... games lose value steeply overtime.... so something like that wouldnt be on a full market value... but the concept that a developer might have to issue refunds might be enough to encourage the ability to make an offline patch... or keep a server running.
This wouldn’t work. A law mandating companies give source code to consumers would break all kinds of other rules. You might be able to get a law where if an online game gets shut down, you are entitled to a partial or maybe full refund. Sort of like what Stadia did
Ross Scott has been beating the drum about this type of nonsense for at least 8 years now. He even did a video on The Crew 5 years ago, where he mentioned that this game would eventually die, because it was connected to a central server. 4 years ago, he put out a video detailing why the whole "games as a service" practice is essentially fraud. All the while, people were arguing against him. Nowadays, people are waking up to how wrong and stupid this all is, but many more are still too used to this as "normal". We need a whole lot more well known gamers on TH-cam to bring awareness to what's going on with the games industry. It can't just be one lone voice out in the wilderness. So I'm glad you're at least doing your best to get the word out.
How is it fraud? You buy the game that you KNOW is online only, meaning server support eventually ends. And the terms of service say explicitly that you are "licensing" the product, not owning and they can shut it down or ban you at any time for any reason.
It's not fraud. Read Steam's EULA, they literally tell you that you are basically renting the stuff you pay for without any guarantees. People calling stuff fraud when they don't even read a single warning are morons. If Steam goes under tomorrow you lose all your purchases and there is NOTHING you can do about it.
@@soliitudegaming7275a terms of service has no legal binding that like you buying a car paying it off completely then the dealership coming to you taking the car back and going "well it says we can do this in the TOS."
@@BioticEmu I hope you realize how silly that sounded. One is a physical object, another is a digital license. It is actually legally binding, do your research. The steam subscriber agreement binds you to "licensing" products, not owning them. Steam LEGALLY has the right to remove any product from your account and ban you at will. Educate yourself before making comparisons that are easily debunked.
I've been angry at the entire "Games As A Service" model for a while now. EA in particular has also been pretty awful with this. I'm going to continue to call every single live service game "planned obsolescence games" and spread that anger for this model of *destroying games that people purchased after the fact.* Because that's what this is. It's planned obsolescence to intentionally design something that will stop functioning either after a certain amount of time, or after the person who sold it decides to remotely break it. Also, Ross Scott has a fantastic video on the subject and I highly recommend watching Accursed Farms' "Games as a service is fraud" video.
John Romero, the creator of Doom, along with his co-creator John Carmack, said in an interview last week that it's a shame games are not freely put out as shareware. Doom was intentionally made shareware because Romero saw potential in what modders can do. I think game companies should release their games as shareware the instant they announce shutting down servers or discontinuing sales of said game.
Gamers are the only consumers that can get shafted consistently and rather than come together, fight amongst each other for the right to dislike a game or practice a game company does
We should be able to I don't know how to tho. This is possibly the SCUMMIEST MOVE A GAME COMPANY CAN MAKE and they've tried to do it before with assasins creed 2
@@almightysamwhich4203And Assassin's Creed 3. Apparently they can just take what people paid real money for away with no consequences and we have to be okay with it? What a joke. I'll never buy another Ubisoft game for as long as I'm alive.
@rdgrdmedflde4710 I think us gamers should band together and start a class action lawsuit against ubisoft because this is not only against the law it sets a dangerous predecent that this is okay
@@almightysamwhich4203 It isn't against the law in the slightest. When you buy these types of games, you buy a license to play said game. At no point do you own it.
@@rdgrdmedflde4710 When you buy a washing machine or TV and it breaks after about 5 or 10 years, obviously well out of any warranty period...do you complain then or do you go out and buy a new one? When you purchase a ticket to see a movie and you watch that film, enjoy it (hopefully) then go home, or do you then expect that you can go to that cinema at any point in time for all eternity to watch that film again? Same with sports...you pay to watch a game and when it's over you have had your money's worth of entertainment; you don't get to come along next week for free. In the early days of gaming in arcades your time with the game for the money you paid lasted as long as you could play it before dying/losing. Games had continue options as long as you put another coin in...and Gauntlet allowed players to buy as much HP and time as they could afford as long as you kept pumping coins into it...probably the first pay to win game. Games as lasting products only became a thing with the home market...and is an exception rather than the norm when it comes to Entertainment if you actually think about it. It's only surprise the industry hasn't realised this before. It is not in their interest to continue to maintain support of older products and services when not really any other company or industry does either.
MGS Master Collection is video game preservation. All of you cried about it. They're literally the best way to play MGS 2 and 3 because perfect emulation of those games don't exist and never have.
@MrOnay-px1jx The MGS Master Collection versions on 2 and 3 are the best versions. Multiple things have been corrected. For example, the codec call pauses in 2 are fixed. Snakes' red dot sight in cut scenes has been fixed. The addition of the original MGS 1 game saves dialog is included. You can say emulation can improve the graphics, sure. However, the Master Collection was never a remaster. The graphics are supposed to be the originals. Hence, GAME PRESERVATION. There isn't an emulation of MGS 2 or 3 that's better than this collection. There are issues that aren't present in this Collection. Inferior versions with a upgraded look.
@@DoctorDoom84 it's not better graphics, the emulated versions have better texture resolution. And actual multidirectional analog controls instead of 8d movement. Without even mentioning all the audio issues
@MrOnay-px1jx You don't realize that you're praising the emulation because of features never intended for the original product in exchange for technical issues never present in the original games. PS2 emulation is great but not perfect in 2023. Perfect PS2 emulation is a internet myth. Doesn't exist. You see the emulation enhancements and completely disregard the technical issues.
I KNEW HE WAS GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE CREW 2, I KNEW IT!! THANK YOU MUTA. This ABSOLUTELY needs to be addressed so these people can stop paying for this only online games!!
The only reason they do this is so you're forced to move on and buy the new stuff. It should be criminal (reminds me of when Apple pushes updates to older devices and they take a crap soon after)
True it needs to happen to pressure these big companies to do the right thing, not to mention the amount of people who likely payed the full 60 dollar price tag on The Crew would be in the Millions which adding things up can be outrageous and count as a Scam due to the Millions lost, it's about the same as someone coming over to your house and trashing your copy of The Crew and maybe your hardware, giving off the vibe of Book Burning, which isn't a good look for a big company like Ubisoft or the other large living rejects we call Game Publishers that participate in these scandalous practices.
No it won't because they're going to get fined pocket change. It's the cost of "doing business". It doesn't eat into their profits so why do I care? Every time I see game company lawsuits and most of the time the settlement is just a few mil.
I became acutely aware of this danger back in 1999-2001. A friend got me into a pair of online games, and although I wasn't that into either of them, I was quite shocked when one of them (the one I preferred) got permanently shut down after not even TWO YEARS. Granted it was free to play (and I don't _think_ it had any microtransactions), but still. Good lesson to learn that early. Since then I have avoided online-only games like the plague, even if they are free, because I don't want to get attached. The second even more egregious issue though, is when OFFLINE games are delisted from digital storefronts (a lesson I learned multiple times over in the PS3 era), and even worse, when digital purchases can no longer be redownload (a lesson many people learned during the Wii U and 3DS era, as well as from Sony's recent removal of thousands of movies). For these reasons, I always strongly discourage anyone from ever buying digital content, unless they are the type of person who is extremely fickle and quickly moves on to other things, never to revisit it and therefore treats it like a rental. But even then, I strongly discourage them from paying FULL purchase price.
In case of some games, I can understand why offline games are taken down. The main reason is licensed music and/or vehicles. The prices of these licenses can get very high and after 10 years, you'd simply bleed money by paying the licenses because the game won't be selling that well anymore. The good part is that, in this scenario, you should not feel bad for pirating the game anymore since there will be literally no other way to get it.
I did a research paper on DRM back in my senior year of high school. The fact that software companies are allowed to sell products and decide whenever they want to completely deny you access to all of its content is sickening. It’s a total disrespect and violation to basic consumer laws but is viewed differently in the eyes of the court system simply because the products being sold are “digital” and are labeled as a “service”. Discs and keys are essentially sold to customers merely as access points for these services; however, the content within the service is owned and managed by the respective software company.
The storefronts that we bought the software licenses from are SERVICES, but the software licenses themselves are GOODS, that's the part that everyone misses.
The last straw for me with buying games was when I did a fresh install of Windows and downloaded a bunch of legally purchased games from my steam account that I planned on playing over time. One afternoon, my internet went out, so I figured I'd load up RE4 Remake to kill some time. But because I hadn't launched the game yet, I wasn't allowed to play it. The game spat out an error about being unable to contact the Denuvo servers and wouldn't let me use software I legally paid for. It's absolute bullshit.
And this is why piracy will never cease to exist. As Lord Gaben said: "it's not an issue of price, it's an issue of service" and said service has become worse and worse over time. Piracy is the only legit way to _actually_ own a lot software/games these days. Though I will say GOG with their DRM-free stuff is a good step in the right direction.
Perhaps another angle is piracy exists for older games precisely because companies don't see value in investing to keep those games alive, but also not in pursuing the legal cases needed to take pirated versions down. Companies turning a blind eye to piracy is actually an acknowledgement that they don't really mind others doing it.
Muta mentioned 'reliving memories'. Here's your message to Ubisoft: We choose to invest our time as gamers making memories we will be able to relive, so these online only trash titles will never get a purchase from us. There ya go Ubisoft. Can't relive your 'wonderful memories of the crew' if you never made them to begin with. All their titles they've got announced in the pipeline don't interest me mainly because I don't trust them to make a good game worth my time. I hope no one buys this company and it dies real fast, so the industry learns this is not ok. Games like SOAPBOX/FiveM to name a few are what the community of gamers want. Fix the supply if you want our money.
You really want to put that kind of trust into the same consumers that caused this bs in the first place? Not to mention running a triple a server is expensive af. I don't want games to go from "you can only play on our servers" to "you can only play if you pay donate to my paetron."
This game taught me a lot on corpo-speak & false promises, I was extremely hyped for the crew back when it was originally announced and released. The thought of an MMO open world racing game akin to Drift City was something I really wanted, and who knows, maybe I did have some unrealistic expectations. But the game came out with online only component tied to it, only to discover that its not an MMO and only 7 other players can show up next to you at any given moment. And guess what, for the first 3 months that online component didn't even work and you could not matchmake for races. And DESPITE all that, I still think it was an excellent game to just drop in and cruise around the USA with a lot of cool ideas and car modding. I no longer preorder games and very cautions to anything that is being hyped by major devs, and I owe my thanks to the Crew for that.
Would love to see a video about what can be done to fight against this sort of practice. Since I believe that most people (including myself) are illiterate when it comes to legal stuff. It's insane that this kind of thing keeps happening. And I'm sure a lot of people would like to put a stop to it, but have no idea how. Voting with your wallet doesn't feel enough anymore..
I remember a couple years ago when my brother and I went to Gamestop to trade in a bunch of old Wii shovelware for a couple new games. He ended up picking Battleborn, only to discover the servers had been shut down months, if not years ago. I still haven't forgiven that Gamestop location for selling us a game that was literally unplayable
Ross Scott of Accursed Farms predicted that this game had a life span, based on other Ubisoft titles being delisted in the past, of about 8 years. He was off by 2 years, but that doesn't make the anger of seeing this game being taken behind the shed any less bitter. All that work in designing systems and creating art assets, gone with a push of a button.
Got into the conversation with my brother where I said it was BS that it will be unplayable and he told me “just play the crew 2” that’s really not the point. Thanks for talking about this
I appreciate the passion that Muta has when it comes to this topic. How about this though? If the game companies do not add an offline patch to a game they are planning to shut down, how about giving us gamers our goddamn money back. Damn scummy game companies and their exit scamming practices.Great video as always Muta. Keep up the fight, my friend.
People need to stop playing and buying console games that are on the ps store or require a connection. People always on their knees for developers like ea and Ubisoft.
@@COWP TBF most games don't have a online only requirement its actually a very small subset of games that have it be that way. So people who like EA and Ubi are probably doing it because they have some very solid SP titles so some are gonna be inclined to have a soft spot for them. But I do agree nothing is stopping them from just keeping the game on steam and releasing the dedicated server tools for free. Or why not use Steam works integration if you have it on steam? The modern day is not exactly hurting in the economic options department saying you need to shut down for money is a skill issue and is also greedy, and scummy if your doing it to a payed for product.
@@COWP They can still sell you a disc that pretty much only serves as the cd-key and majority of the game is downloaded or in some cases drm and other stuff can still lock you out of the game/disc.
I hope no one genuinely thought they were being serious. Unless it’s said by some indie developer or developer with a clear proven track record of genuinely being passionate about the games they make, then no one should believe whatever a company says a game means a lot to them. Because often times it’s just PR talk
The Crew is such a banger. Probably the last good racing title with a good story and cutscenes. How that needs to be online is beyond me. I have my physical copy. I played this game so much on XB1. And I'm going to play it right now.
My favourite game developer is Cyan, the guys who made Myst. Not just because I enjoy their games, but because of their behaviour. After Uru, Myst's spin-off MMO, failed to turn a profit, and got batted around from publisher to publisher, Cyan didn't just let it die. They knew a lot of Myst fans still played it and treated it as a social hub. They reacquired the full rights to the game - which must have been insanely expensive - and then they released the source code, for free, for both the client and server, and then they _also_ hosted an official server, funded entirely by fan donations. That official server occasionally receives updates, as Cyan add cherry-picked community-made content. This is how you keep an unprofitable but beloved game alive for its fans. It doesn't have to be expensive. Heck, the fans are happy to cover the costs themselves. It just takes a small initial time investment and minimal effort to process donations and keep the server running. And even if a publisher didn't do that, releasing the source code costs basically nothing, and enables fans to host their own unofficial servers. But publishers are usually allergic to letting anyone else anywhere near their assets, even if they're never going to use them again. They don't want us playing old games. They prefer for old games to die, so that we have no choice but to buy their new games. Except for one thing: I help to crowdfund every single new Cyan game. And I haven't bought a single Ubisoft game since 2012.
@@humanbean3 Absolutely agree with your sentiments. Back then, games were made by gamers, for gamers. Not by businessmen for investors and shareholders. You're remembering the right Myst, though it was published by Broderbund, not Sierra. The Myst series were singleplayer immersive adventure games, a genre which Cyan still specialise in to this day. Uru was created as an MMO set in the same universe.
there should be laws against this kind of stuff, example: if any company that have online only entertainment and shut it down years later, that company is forced by law to refund 100% of everyone's money
While I agree, if they shut down, it's most likely they don't even have money to sustain themselves. So refund us with what money? They couldn't handle the 60 bucks we individually paid.
I think they do have a law, any such game offline for 5 months or more is open game to being cracked open without any legal ramifications for preservation.
And even more ironic is that if you patch it with an offline patch on a game that you yourself bought, it would be piracy and a break of contract/tos and they could go after you legally. Likely they would dmca any offline patch to make sure the game gets buried deep.
This is why I'm starting to rebuild and make my retro collection stronger. We can play these older games seemingly forever if we just preserve them for future generations. And this is a huge reason why I don't get very many modern games anymore. I don't feel like I own them when I can have the game revoked from me at literally any given moment.
This very reason: of having something you paid for be essentially revoked by greedy megacorps that stick to the phrase “yOu’lL oWN nOthInG. aNd yOu’LL bE hApPy!!” This is why I buy physical games. At least I own a game rather than an admission ticket.
Collection is great, but in 50 years from now, you'll be rotting in a ground and all those games you've collected will be in landfill with seagulls defecating on it.
I hate games being held hostage by company wallets. The needless point of slapping in servers to a game that doesn't even need online functions is just predatory and feels done so that they can later down the line force a future purchase. I'm with you on the state of this crap, and I notice more and more companies joining in on the problem. This, and the fact many companies want to go digital only with releases, are the reason I feel consumer protection laws on entertainment need to exist.....
Sad thing is, the companies made a somewhat strong case about Always-Online being harder to pirate. So they claim it as a copyright security method. Instead of developing good products people want to buy, they hide behind shitty made up reasons that drain the userbase out of their money. I'm dead sure, the bubble in gamedev will crumble soon, and I hate that many will lose their jobs and there will be chaos, but the fat cats will be just fine, sitting in their suits rubbing down another greasy pig to fatten for their next decade of dishonest and ethically questionable schemes. Vampire Survivors proved that people WILL BUY GAMES THAT ARE FUN. Larian proved it this year very significantly as well. That's as broad of a range one can go - 1 man Indie to a AAA quality product that Shames the AAA industry in quality and approachability for the common gamer who never even played a CRPG before. If anything, I'd be very interested in making a policy of "defunct" games going into a game repository for everyone to access. Same as books. Nintendo do their stupid shit constantly and consistently. I think it hasn't been a year since 2010 or even earlier that I haven't heard about some random Nintendo fit about someone "enjoying their games wrong". And I am not much of a nintendo fan, or even enjoyer overall - it was not something I grew up with, and my interests lie elsewhere, but even without looking for news about the company, you get these delusional scandals and threats from Nintendo with and to their fans. It's baffling.
This video needs to go viral! This situation is why I wait and get games like this for cheap. Years ago I got The Crew bundled with Steep for $10 on PSN, that means I only paid $5 for both games and I love The Crew, it's bull that they don't flip the offline switch on.
A Dev on Twitter said that companies often release a game that requires a DAY ONE PATCH on purpose. So even people that buy physical copies of a game are boned. Because they still depend on a digital patch to play a game.
this is so true. I have just finished playing tomb raider 2013, which is a decade old by now and I had a blast, being able to revisit these games is what makes pc gaming interessting in the first place instead of being vendor locked like on consoles. The online only landscape truly sucks for everything that is more than pure multiplayer
crazy, I was just ust looking at Tomb Raider today and I couldn't figure out which one was the Best to download and play now that several if not all of them are on Gamepass and apparently they all have like 1000+ 5 star reviews... which is rare to see on autistic Xbox reviews.(Which one to quickly play from fear that I'd never get to play it.... ever. Once it gets put on sale one last time for $5.99, or thrown in with all 4-5 TR games in a bundle called "Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition" before getting removed from the M$/Xbox store + Steam permanently.
This is why I absolutely refuse to buy anything that's online only or has no physical release or has DRM built into it. In fact, I've stopped buying closed source games and will not ever again, and have not bought a game in nearly 20 years now. Maybe my viewpoint is extreme, but as a developer, I think all games should be open source allowing the users to maintain the games themselves should the company ever go bankrupt. If a developer has a donate button on their page and releases a game as open source that I enjoy and play, I'll donate to their project, but it doesn't have to solely be a voluntary donation method for them to make money. If they sell the game assets as a zipped package, I'd happily buy such a game given that the engine is open. I and others just need to convince game developers to go that route.
Things like this evil is so dishonorable. I do not know how they are not being sued or held legally accountable in prison for literally scamming, false advertising, and stealing from innocent people.
@@bargaintuesday812 So if Amazon Prime Video advertised that if you buy a movie/show from them, it's yours to own and keep forever. Then they suddenly remove the content from their service, you lose access to it and are not entitled to a refund for the product. You believe that's not false advertising?
Make a petition for people to stop buying Ubisoft. Of course that's an unachievable goal but that would be just for visibility and to have fun. "Sign this petition to stop people from buying games from Ubisoft" I'd sign that.
Ross from Accursed Farms is currently planning to take legal action against the practice of destroyng games like that. You should really give a shoutout to him and draw attention to his cause because it could make some HUGE legal waves in the gaming industry so this practice can finally DIE.
After thousands of hours put into School of Dragons, it was abruptly shut down in the middle of summer 2023 without providing an offline mode for loyal players (despite it being an option when the game was still running) There seriously needs to be more guidelines for game companies to prevent them from scamming their users so easily.
The official reddit page for the crew now has a petition pinned for ubisoft to make an offline patch. Its absurd to think that we are basically at the mercy of developers to be able to play a game we paid money for. Hopefully something will change in the future.
I feel a similar sentiment about my Steam Library. One day, on a whim I looked into my games and found the "licenses" to my games. they're only good for something like 99 years from the dates of purchase, which means, that there will one day be a time where I cannot pass down the games I paid for with my money to my own family. Granted, it's not like its an heirloom, but still...
Thats the advantage of GoG. You can download the offline installers and they'll with you till the end of time. Granted because of that policy there's a lot of games that don't end up there (notably a LOT of games by Japanese companies like Square enix)
Thank you for covering this Muta! I bought this game at launch on the PS4 and really like this project's plot and open-world activites compared to many racing games coming out nowadays. I don't understand why wouldn't they add the offline mode in the first place. This actually makes me fear certain Need for Speed Titles like NFS Rivals and NFS 2015 since those games are also online only, it's only a matter of time for EA to pull the plug on those games, people can't play them no more, and players wasted money on those purchases.
The last true way to preserve games was in the 360 and ps3 era. Most games had an online base but internet at the time was still hard to obtain so most games were designed with offline. Test drive unlimited or halo are great examples of this. And some communities have went as far as creating their own servers to preserve online too
Waiting to see if Muta covers something that is in Sony's "Software Usage Terms" from the UK. (saw one TH-camr mention it today and wanted to fact check it myself since no source was posted) Section 7 talks about resale and how "only authorized companies" can resell PHYSICAL games. Cause that is such a great precedence to come in the future. /s Word for word: 7.1. You must not resell either disc-based games or digital games, unless expressly authorised by us and, if the publisher is another company, additionally by the publisher.
I loved this game, and it is so enfuriating because of the online only. Thank you Mutahar for being a voice that represents me and my thoughts about this.
As a big fan of the game, thank you much for covering this Also there's a community of fans called The Crew Unlimited, they're gonna try to bring an offline mode to the game, there's also a petition going on it has over 1000 signatures
I miss the old days when physical games were booming, you actually owned them, they cost around £20, you could trade in your old ones for store credit or cash and buy preowned ones.
3:18 I 100% agree with Muta on this one. I swear this is on my top 5 list of most infuriating behaviors from consumerist dented people. These people are literally paypigs for big companies, I legitimately wonder if they get a sexual rush from paypiggin' like this.
I really hope the term "PayPig" will pick up. Since "Whale" is clearly not derogatory enough for the lowest common denominator to understand how these companies see them.
Hear me out though, I don't think it is on the developer to make their game archivable, for example you can't expect an artist to make sure all his materials hold up after 100 years of sitting out in the air right? I think obfuscating an offline mode should be illegal but being forced to give it a certain life span, no, that seems unreasonable.
thats why you HAVE to buy physical and/or crack your games. it should be a moral obligation at this point....cause devs and publishers don't give a fck about us except our money
These companies pulling this shit is the reason people pirate. Piracy is a service issue, not a price issue. When you pay $60 for a game you "purchased" with the reasonable expectation that you can play it as long as you have the game, and when that game gets revoked cuz the company cannot be bothered to maintain it anymore; this is the exact reason why people pirate.
So I developed and self-published a game on the PlayStation Vita called Among The Stars. Beyond my control, the game was removed from the store and pulled from all download lists. I'll tell you right now that only 27 people purchased it. Did anyone know it exists? What if you want to play it now? (Side note: I was contacted by a publisher after its delisting to get it published again, and have a PS4 port, and I still have the files on my computer.)
Unpopular opinion: Video games should be respected and preserved just like we respect and preserve any other arts; literary art, paintings, films, statues and so on.
The fact that this is considered an "unpopular opinion" and isn't just common sense says a lot about the human race, especially the newer generation of gamers that grew up being screwed by these companies and essentially thank them for it.
Oh god no, they've been doing this since the glory days of Facebook gaming. The minute they decided that an online flash game or mobile game wasn't making enough cash, they'd pull it. I doubt many of them made it past 2 years. It's one of 3 reasons I decide not to play a game the moment I know Ubisoft is attached.
@@LikaLaruku Based, I respect that, although they're are a lot of good games that are attached to Ubisoft, you're losing out imo but at least try it through privacy if it the game has your interest at one point🤷
They don't give a shit dude. You're talking about a company that decided to push NFTs despite gamers screaming at them to not go near them. Not to mention the outcry from gamers about the monetization of the Assassin's Creed games (and many others) that have fallen completely on deaf ears.
People aren’t going to appreciate physical media til it’s gone. You’re 100% right we need to preserve physical media, screw the dummies they don’t see it.
@@spechar Well thats why you dont have physical versions of things that can only be played online like MMOs. So why you did this is beyond me. Its like you set yourself up for this to happen.
It's not about physical media. We don't really need it anymorr, we just need drmless and offline versions of software or video or music. Like games on GOG, I have my local library if gog installers which I can record on CD or some thumb drive if I would like so.
I've only just learned about this just now when I noticed the game greyed out in my library. You are 100% right.What Ubisoft have done here is SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE, and basically theft.
There a community of fans called The Crew Unlimited, they're gonna try to bring an offline mode to the game, there's also a petition going on it has over 1000 signatures
It needs to become law that for always online games when the dev/publisher decides it's time for them to stop providing their services, they allow you to use your own services, that means they need to make it so you can host the game on yours or someone else's server or they allow offline play.
I completely agree, the whole online only stuff is not only a crap practice but also it literally inspires me to hack to get the game and all its files.
This was the first game my son really connected with. Going to make sure we hit a few of the races before it goes offline. Unfortunate, as it's a game that could've absolutely worked without the online servers.
he should be talking to their Parents because in the US we pay 10x more than other developed nations for births and rank like 38th in infant mortality.
man, i still remember being so devastated when i found out Darkspore, the game 10-ish year old me loved to try out, had its servers shut down and effectively having a game my mom gifted me being essentially useless
I really, really hate the idea of online only games and servers that shut down after not even a decade, like, if you have a game that's got an online component, that's fine, but when that goes away, you should still be able to play the game whenever you want and I don't think anyone's asking a lot by wanting that?
Same. I've got thousands of hours across every TC game and I'm so bummed TC1 is being shut down. I still play it quite a bit across all my platforms and I definitely think it's better than TC2.
this is basically the meme where credit card declines and the vendor takes away your service, like where mr crabs presses a button and the fish customer gets the tv pulled from his eyes
Two words, private server. it sucks that when a game goes offline it's up to the community to revive the game, so if it really has to shut down devs and more so companies should absolutely release the code to run your own server, but money is money and most companies love money more then reputation.
This is why, for years, I've been saying that there needs to be a non-profit whose sole purpose is archiving games in a playable state, who have enough of a reputation that game studios will sign a pledge and promotion to donate source code, binaries & assets for the sole purpose of continuing a games viability after its developer no longer supports it. Obviously it would require protection, but hey, just set up a procedure to send the relevant stuff after every patch, and the foundation will put it on secure media and put it into a protected safe. The aim would be that, when the game shuts down, this charity can get a developer to go through the stuff and do whatever is needed to get it functioning... ideally by just configuring a docker image with the server binaries, configuring some settings, and maybe compiling an updated client to point to a different sets of servers. It would cost these mega companies almost nothing (just add a few more bullet points to walk through every time they release something), and it would do so damn much for later generations. Key is to put the power in the consumers hands: I buy only online games which respect ownership without a clock. That way, if the company ever stops uploading their data to the foundation in question, they can not only be called out on it, but also lose the benefit of asshole moves like these that are pure capitalist greed at work.
from the perspective of a company, the worst part is that closed online games do not generate any money, but if you patch an offline mode after they close the servers you can still generate some revenue, maybe brief sales but still money
You got it backwards. The newer, not so good game isn't selling well enought because people are still buying and playing the older better game. So to maximize the profit from the newer game we have shut down its predecessor
I've been saying this same thing for the last couple years, especially when it comes to live service games. The push towards digital games gets all sorts of push back with people saying "you don't own your games!" "The publisher is going to steal your games one day!' Then as soon as they're done yelling about how digital games are theft, they go back to playing their physical copy of Destiny 2. I never hear anyone say that shit about online games. People just keep throwing their money into these live service games. There are people who spent a fortune in Avengers, Knockout City, and (soon to be) Suicide Squad only to have the game taken from them. All that time, gone, all that money, gone. People have to vote with their wallets. Don't even buy games like that in the first place, let alone spend money on microtransactions. If people stop buying a type of game, the industry will change, but you have to make it change.
Every time something like this happens I'm reminded of the saying "If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing"
Damn straight.
Amen to that!
That's really a saying? I'm glad it's going around. I just saw it in another thread and liked how catchy it was.
10000% agreed comrade, not let a corporation get the best of us, my country even pirated alot of things since the 1980s and today due to Sanctions
I first saw that under Louis Rossmann's video and it will always ring true. I feel like it's just a matter of time as gaming gets worse and worse, and more scummy that EU will just introduce at least something that protects the customers further from this ever evolving bs.
It should be illegal for developers to suddenly revoke access and render a purchase useless. It's a grim future for the industry if this trend continues.
how dare they use a 25 cent Slot
Time to sue
It's dangerous having such a sweeping statement, I think it would be detrimental to have the developer on the line for changes they can't always account for.
@@BAGG8BAGGif the company hasn’t shut down, unless I am given my money back, the game should still be there.
If it happens I'll probably not buy XD it won't last.
As an experienced developer, I know for a fact they have the software for dedicated servers sitting on a host somewhere (since that's basically what cloud-based servers run off of), all they have to do is give it away freely so people can host their own servers...but nope...this is just pure greed because server costs cut into profit. I've worked on games that cost $60 to buy and $60mil to develop, and they became unplayable only 2 years later. Don't be fooled gamers, they have the tools to release to the public to allow online-only games to be run offline or at least hosted locally, they're just being greedy and trying to cut corners. Not allowing people to play something they spent $60+ on should be considered fraud no matter how long after it's launch.
what games have you worked on? just curious
They prolly have tons of third party dependencies which disallow them from just giving it away to anyone anyway. But yes, the major cause is still greed.
To be fair, if something has been developed as an internal infrastructure-only solution, there's a decent chance that your need a lot of effort to decouple logic from some dependencies an outsider won't be able to fulfill/provide (infrastructure provisioning logic, poorly implemented security, whatever other local idiosyncracy). But yes, they SHOULD be able to do that.
I think one of the main reasons why Ubisoft (and other devs who follow the same idea) is doing this is that it's afraid that, with the number of players who love these games, if made playable offline, would still thrive through some way, especially with modding, and that their new titles would potentially lose those gamers who would've bought said new titles instead if the players aren't still playing their older ones.
@@bas919With what's happening with Payday, it's a rightful fear.
But instead of going out of their way to make a better product, they instead opted to make a deliberately worse product and restrict access to their actually good products.
Its all about control.
Listening to people defend a company stealing $60 is wild.
I mean they are objectively right, you bought a license and agreed with the EULA, so you consented to what ever shenanigans they pull, don’t like it don’t buy it.
You can always find a way to pirate it and mod an offline mode/custom servers.
@@Nyver253 like I said, wild. Nice defense though, lick that boot 🤣
I'm absence of religion people have given their love and devotion to CORPORATIONS and BRANDS
Shit is wild bro
@@Nyver253
“Don’t like it don’t buy it”
Did you miss the part where people liked it and bought it, only for it to be taken away without compensation?
@@Nyver253 A lot of garbage written in EULA's won't hold up in court
Hot take: If you buy a physical game, you should be able to play it forever.
Hotter take: If you buy any game, you should be able to play it forever.
Not that hot
Yeah that’s not a hot take, that’s called common sense
hotter take: how do you plan on running the server
@@WayStedYou most games don't NEED online to play them~
I've been saying it for years. It needs to be fully illegal to use language like "purchase" or "buy" when you're paying for a temporary, revokable license to download and play something. Either game stores need to make it abundantly clear that what you're buying isn't the game, or they need to make it clear that you're spending $60 to lease it.
If I am leasing a game then I should be able to sub lease it to other people.
Exactly. And what about in game purchases? Also a lease?
@@Viper-yv8twmakes sense that it would be. Or call it "additional lease option" 😂
I would also argue that if they take down the game or servers for any reason, you're entitled to your money back, regardless of how much time you played it because they're essentially recalling the product you paid for.
I 1000% agree, something has to give.
As a dev, there is no reason why a game should be always online if it's a single player. It's essentially making people pay for a live service that they aren't interested in. And the worst part is that their rationale is that they're trying to keep piracy in check, which is absolute bs. If someone wants to pirate a game, they will figure a way to do it. As an indie dev I believe that if a consumer wants to support you, even if they pirate it first, they will do so at some point.
It's pretty messed up when companies use the anti-piracy excuse for going online-only. A: It's essentially punishing the paying consumer for the acts of piracy and B: I find a lot of these "online-only" games have some form of microtransactions, or otherwise similarly aggressive monetisation models in place.
I pirate it first if there's no demo, play it for how long it takes to get a feel, delete it, and wait for the price point I feel it's worth. I am morally in the right.
@@jayonnaise6105 definitely. Ultimately it's more of a money thing than a anti-piracy thing. But they want to pretend that it isn't and think that we're dumb enough to buy the excuse
@@kgonepostl that's fair, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. As a dev, if I don't offer a demo, I wouldn't be super upset if someone pirated my game, because in the long run, if my game is good enough, I probably have a customer, and they'll probably spread the word to their friends.
Personally id never pirate an indie game. Theres a difference between downloading a game by a big company like Nintendo or Sony, possibly from years ago, and downloading a pretty obscure indie game that the dev only asks £10 for, and needs that money to stay affloat.
this is so fucked up in so many levels. thank you for speaking up, Muta. Gaming just simply will never be the same
2:38
2:39
This is why people like Louis Rossmann are right. We don't own shit anymore, we just rent it for however long it exists. The average consumer isn't interested in repairing their devices, or preserving their video games and movies, but there are more and more people every day who think this practice is inherently anti-consumer and are coming around to our side. What we need is a lawsuit against a large company to create precedent for legislation to occur where when an online-only game is shut down, either an offline mode is released as a final patch, or server tools are released that will allow the end user to foot that bill themselves.
You cannot tell me this cannot happen. Private servers for games like Need for Speed World exist, for fucks sake.
I can agree to this. Make the companies actually have to let you own what you bought even in online or offline shit. I remember I had dragon age origins on my ps3. First game I ever bought dlc for. Dropped 70 to 90 dollars for all the dlc. Come 5 years later. Had corruption happen to my system and had to factory reset, went to start dragon age origins. Had the hard disc but the dlcs I couldn't get back cause the servers were down. So I can't play dragon age origins with all the dlc I paid for ever again, cause they shut it down and made it all on PC. Which still bugs on the dlc shit. So that taught me to never buy online shit again.
Goonna like that we pay for subscription based everything, like groceries, take-out, music, tv, and now gaming. What a time to be alive huh folks?
"You will own nothing, you will eat ze bugs, and you will be happy"
It's absolutely true. Because when you buy a game, you are actually only buying a license to play the game, you don't own the gsme
I'm sorry, this is capitalism
This is why piracy is needed and should never go away, because they keep preserving our games. What these companies are doing should be illegal, why aren't there rules for this. If I buy a game, I should be able to play it whenever I feel like it.
If companies weren’t so trash, then there would be no need for piracy.
Same here, though. Ubisoft is just an absolute disaster nowadays. These companies are going to get bankrupt and will fail their purchases. You're right it should be illegal.
The Crew is a server based game and phones home. Good luck.
I don't think piracy will go away for a very very long time. Not because stealing is some kind of unavoidable thing. More that it is a symptom of a dysfunctional system creating problems for people which leads them to such things. And I don't think humanity is ever going to manage to become functional in the far future let alone the near. Too many of us are short sighted, selfish, overly prideful, arrogant, insecure, etc. the list goes on, for us to reach a point where we can minimize such problems with each other to a point that will get rid of things like piracy completely. I just don't see it happening until we change so much that we might not even consider us being human anymore at that point.
Certain pirate sites have an insane catalogue of games that are not being sold anymore or are otherwise forgotten. Piracy is not necessarily negative in every sense, most pirate sites don't remove games from their catalogue and imo that's where the true value of this site lies.
“You will own nothing and you will be happy”
This type of stuff has me cherishing a lot of the physical media from my childhood. Like I can’t imagine all the amazing games I grew up playing since the PS2 being completely wiped out and unplayable. Straight up robbery from these companies.
A highway robbery I may add.
Didn't know you were a gamer
I will get a pirate copy of the games i already own so they can't steal from me. And /I/ will be happy. I would fucking die over the principle of the concept. Buying something and it being taken away buy the one who sold it is theft.
ohhhh grow up nobody plays older games plus it’s better on emulation. See you in the MetaVerse once you escape the matrix
@@ArmedandDangerous918 Yeah, you go stay in the metaverse then.
I agree completely.
I hate 'digital only' anything. It's really only renting, not owning if you can't have it physically, and play it off line.
Scott Ross from Accursed Farms was talking Games as a service is a scam years ago, and The Crew was one of his examples.
He was looking into the legality of it, but hit a dead end back then. If anybody can pick up where he failed, I am certain he would be thrilled to help.
this ^^^
Ross is based
Bassed accursed farm viewer
Yea hes been advocating for these companies doing the bare minimum in preserving their games for a while now. Great guy and a great channel!
I love ross. That guy is a treasure to the gaming community.
Thanks for talking about this, Muta. What's sad to me personally is how people just brush it off with "just play the new game". People just don't see any differences between car games and assume they're all the same. The first Crew game was a lot more similar to something like Need for Speed with police and illegal street racing. The vibe and content is just different and it's sad we will lose it forever next year.
Exactly it’s like me and motorsport 3 which I can still play on the 360 if that was online only I wouldn’t be able to play it and people would be like “just play the new forza” and while the concept is the same they are different games with different tracks and different steering and different car classes so I would want to play fm3 which luckily I can unlike crew 1
well said
Well if you wanted to make a retrospective on it this is the last chance it seems. I'd be interested in waching it. Looks way more interesting of a game than the soulles Crew 2.
@WhisptrzHeat Roblox heat isn't really a problem compared to the flag in your pfp
I'm sure an underground fan community will eventually reverse engineer some new servers to connect to and make it accessible again but yeah, this BS of just shutting games down and forcing them unplayable after people paid for them needs to stop.
IMO it should be a legal requirement to provide an offline-mode patch, release the server software so people can run their own servers, or release the source files so the community can make the necessary changes to keep the game playable.
Nah, just the offline mode patch. The devs should have to put in the work to make the game playable when they shut down the online aspect, it shouldn't be down to the players, especially when not everyone is gonna know how to do it.
LAN needs to come back.
There is zero chance of ever having a legal requirement to give out source code. I also dont see how you would ever get an always online game to be illegal in anyway, or to force a developer to put more work into a product. They could just not have the money. The only thing I can think of is consumer protection on a product. IE, if you take the product I bought from you away, you have to give me a refund. Now... games lose value steeply overtime.... so something like that wouldnt be on a full market value... but the concept that a developer might have to issue refunds might be enough to encourage the ability to make an offline patch... or keep a server running.
Its bad enough when an online company gets sold off and everything has been vandalized.
This wouldn’t work. A law mandating companies give source code to consumers would break all kinds of other rules.
You might be able to get a law where if an online game gets shut down, you are entitled to a partial or maybe full refund. Sort of like what Stadia did
The fact that my PHYSICAL copy of this game is going to be completely useless after this month is crazy to me.
April 1st. Its here. Almost felt like a joke.
Ross Scott has been beating the drum about this type of nonsense for at least 8 years now. He even did a video on The Crew 5 years ago, where he mentioned that this game would eventually die, because it was connected to a central server. 4 years ago, he put out a video detailing why the whole "games as a service" practice is essentially fraud. All the while, people were arguing against him. Nowadays, people are waking up to how wrong and stupid this all is, but many more are still too used to this as "normal". We need a whole lot more well known gamers on TH-cam to bring awareness to what's going on with the games industry. It can't just be one lone voice out in the wilderness. So I'm glad you're at least doing your best to get the word out.
How is it fraud?
You buy the game that you KNOW is online only, meaning server support eventually ends. And the terms of service say explicitly that you are "licensing" the product, not owning and they can shut it down or ban you at any time for any reason.
It's not fraud. Read Steam's EULA, they literally tell you that you are basically renting the stuff you pay for without any guarantees. People calling stuff fraud when they don't even read a single warning are morons. If Steam goes under tomorrow you lose all your purchases and there is NOTHING you can do about it.
@@soliitudegaming7275nobody wants that bs
@@soliitudegaming7275a terms of service has no legal binding that like you buying a car paying it off completely then the dealership coming to you taking the car back and going "well it says we can do this in the TOS."
@@BioticEmu I hope you realize how silly that sounded. One is a physical object, another is a digital license. It is actually legally binding, do your research. The steam subscriber agreement binds you to "licensing" products, not owning them. Steam LEGALLY has the right to remove any product from your account and ban you at will. Educate yourself before making comparisons that are easily debunked.
I've been angry at the entire "Games As A Service" model for a while now. EA in particular has also been pretty awful with this. I'm going to continue to call every single live service game "planned obsolescence games" and spread that anger for this model of *destroying games that people purchased after the fact.* Because that's what this is. It's planned obsolescence to intentionally design something that will stop functioning either after a certain amount of time, or after the person who sold it decides to remotely break it.
Also, Ross Scott has a fantastic video on the subject and I highly recommend watching Accursed Farms' "Games as a service is fraud" video.
The same man who also did Freeman’s Mind. Also a good thing they did, too.
If it shuts down within 5 years that's a planned EXEC_TION.
(Censored due to auto-filter exec_ting my comment.)
John Romero, the creator of Doom, along with his co-creator John Carmack, said in an interview last week that it's a shame games are not freely put out as shareware. Doom was intentionally made shareware because Romero saw potential in what modders can do. I think game companies should release their games as shareware the instant they announce shutting down servers or discontinuing sales of said game.
And now doom is playable everywhere
Gamers are the only consumers that can get shafted consistently and rather than come together, fight amongst each other for the right to dislike a game or practice a game company does
if you seriously think its only gamers, Im sorry for you
@@troll_486 laughs in cars
Serious question: can we as gamers bring a class action to these big publishers? This feels almost the same as the right to repair arguments
We should be able to I don't know how to tho. This is possibly the SCUMMIEST MOVE A GAME COMPANY CAN MAKE and they've tried to do it before with assasins creed 2
@@almightysamwhich4203And Assassin's Creed 3. Apparently they can just take what people paid real money for away with no consequences and we have to be okay with it? What a joke. I'll never buy another Ubisoft game for as long as I'm alive.
@rdgrdmedflde4710 I think us gamers should band together and start a class action lawsuit against ubisoft because this is not only against the law it sets a dangerous predecent that this is okay
@@almightysamwhich4203 It isn't against the law in the slightest. When you buy these types of games, you buy a license to play said game. At no point do you own it.
@@rdgrdmedflde4710 When you buy a washing machine or TV and it breaks after about 5 or 10 years, obviously well out of any warranty period...do you complain then or do you go out and buy a new one? When you purchase a ticket to see a movie and you watch that film, enjoy it (hopefully) then go home, or do you then expect that you can go to that cinema at any point in time for all eternity to watch that film again? Same with sports...you pay to watch a game and when it's over you have had your money's worth of entertainment; you don't get to come along next week for free.
In the early days of gaming in arcades your time with the game for the money you paid lasted as long as you could play it before dying/losing. Games had continue options as long as you put another coin in...and Gauntlet allowed players to buy as much HP and time as they could afford as long as you kept pumping coins into it...probably the first pay to win game.
Games as lasting products only became a thing with the home market...and is an exception rather than the norm when it comes to Entertainment if you actually think about it. It's only surprise the industry hasn't realised this before. It is not in their interest to continue to maintain support of older products and services when not really any other company or industry does either.
When things like these happen, piracy literally becomes the only option and the only way to preserve a game.
MGS Master Collection is video game preservation. All of you cried about it. They're literally the best way to play MGS 2 and 3 because perfect emulation of those games don't exist and never have.
@@DoctorDoom84after how many years and of how poor quality? PS2 and ps3 emulators are miles beyond the mgs collection
@MrOnay-px1jx The MGS Master Collection versions on 2 and 3 are the best versions. Multiple things have been corrected. For example, the codec call pauses in 2 are fixed. Snakes' red dot sight in cut scenes has been fixed. The addition of the original MGS 1 game saves dialog is included.
You can say emulation can improve the graphics, sure. However, the Master Collection was never a remaster. The graphics are supposed to be the originals. Hence, GAME PRESERVATION. There isn't an emulation of MGS 2 or 3 that's better than this collection. There are issues that aren't present in this Collection. Inferior versions with a upgraded look.
@@DoctorDoom84 it's not better graphics, the emulated versions have better texture resolution. And actual multidirectional analog controls instead of 8d movement. Without even mentioning all the audio issues
@MrOnay-px1jx You don't realize that you're praising the emulation because of features never intended for the original product in exchange for technical issues never present in the original games.
PS2 emulation is great but not perfect in 2023. Perfect PS2 emulation is a internet myth. Doesn't exist. You see the emulation enhancements and completely disregard the technical issues.
I KNEW HE WAS GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE CREW 2, I KNEW IT!! THANK YOU MUTA. This ABSOLUTELY needs to be addressed so these people can stop paying for this only online games!!
the crew 1 you mean?
@@WayStedYou he talked about both of them
but the first game is the one that is shutting down servers and causing the issues for now @@oost_javeln
@@WayStedYouwhooops 😅, yea I meant crew 1 too. Even their latest game motorfest, but yeah.
this is not the first time ubisoft pulled this sort of crap
The only reason they do this is so you're forced to move on and buy the new stuff. It should be criminal (reminds me of when Apple pushes updates to older devices and they take a crap soon after)
That was settled in a class action lawsuit, gaming is gonna need it’s own class action lawsuit soon with the direction it’s going
Until a legitmate lawsuit is brought to their doorstep and a precedent is made companies will continue these anti-consumer practices.
True it needs to happen to pressure these big companies to do the right thing, not to mention the amount of people who likely payed the full 60 dollar price tag on The Crew would be in the Millions which adding things up can be outrageous and count as a Scam due to the Millions lost, it's about the same as someone coming over to your house and trashing your copy of The Crew and maybe your hardware, giving off the vibe of Book Burning, which isn't a good look for a big company like Ubisoft or the other large living rejects we call Game Publishers that participate in these scandalous practices.
Battlefield 2042
No it won't because they're going to get fined pocket change. It's the cost of "doing business". It doesn't eat into their profits so why do I care? Every time I see game company lawsuits and most of the time the settlement is just a few mil.
I became acutely aware of this danger back in 1999-2001. A friend got me into a pair of online games, and although I wasn't that into either of them, I was quite shocked when one of them (the one I preferred) got permanently shut down after not even TWO YEARS. Granted it was free to play (and I don't _think_ it had any microtransactions), but still. Good lesson to learn that early. Since then I have avoided online-only games like the plague, even if they are free, because I don't want to get attached.
The second even more egregious issue though, is when OFFLINE games are delisted from digital storefronts (a lesson I learned multiple times over in the PS3 era), and even worse, when digital purchases can no longer be redownload (a lesson many people learned during the Wii U and 3DS era, as well as from Sony's recent removal of thousands of movies). For these reasons, I always strongly discourage anyone from ever buying digital content, unless they are the type of person who is extremely fickle and quickly moves on to other things, never to revisit it and therefore treats it like a rental. But even then, I strongly discourage them from paying FULL purchase price.
Wait, I can't redownload the stuff I bought on my Wii U/ 3DS?
Shit, time to look into emulators.
was it HoN? oh wait that was 2009
Shattered Galaxy and Elemental Saga, both by Nexon. Elemental Saga was the one that vanished one day.@@angel_of_rust
What were the games?
In case of some games, I can understand why offline games are taken down. The main reason is licensed music and/or vehicles. The prices of these licenses can get very high and after 10 years, you'd simply bleed money by paying the licenses because the game won't be selling that well anymore. The good part is that, in this scenario, you should not feel bad for pirating the game anymore since there will be literally no other way to get it.
I did a research paper on DRM back in my senior year of high school. The fact that software companies are allowed to sell products and decide whenever they want to completely deny you access to all of its content is sickening.
It’s a total disrespect and violation to basic consumer laws but is viewed differently in the eyes of the court system simply because the products being sold are “digital” and are labeled as a “service”. Discs and keys are essentially sold to customers merely as access points for these services; however, the content within the service is owned and managed by the respective software company.
Hah... Interesting, is it really the word "service" that allows them to get away with it? Really puts the whole "live service" trend into perspective.
The storefronts that we bought the software licenses from are SERVICES, but the software licenses themselves are GOODS, that's the part that everyone misses.
The last straw for me with buying games was when I did a fresh install of Windows and downloaded a bunch of legally purchased games from my steam account that I planned on playing over time. One afternoon, my internet went out, so I figured I'd load up RE4 Remake to kill some time. But because I hadn't launched the game yet, I wasn't allowed to play it. The game spat out an error about being unable to contact the Denuvo servers and wouldn't let me use software I legally paid for. It's absolute bullshit.
Ubisoft goes Steamworks bye bye, always on DRM
afaik they have yet to really test their whole eula of not owning it when you buy a physical copy in a court of law..
And this is why piracy will never cease to exist. As Lord Gaben said: "it's not an issue of price, it's an issue of service" and said service has become worse and worse over time.
Piracy is the only legit way to _actually_ own a lot software/games these days. Though I will say GOG with their DRM-free stuff is a good step in the right direction.
Put another way, piracy only exists because of scummy companies
Perhaps another angle is piracy exists for older games precisely because companies don't see value in investing to keep those games alive, but also not in pursuing the legal cases needed to take pirated versions down. Companies turning a blind eye to piracy is actually an acknowledgement that they don't really mind others doing it.
i gotta hurry up and get on GOG
Devs should give players the ability to self host if they choose to not pay/host their games own servers, dedicated servers should be essential
At least it sounds like The Crew might be saved by modders who can enable that online mode
Muta mentioned 'reliving memories'. Here's your message to Ubisoft: We choose to invest our time as gamers making memories we will be able to relive, so these online only trash titles will never get a purchase from us. There ya go Ubisoft. Can't relive your 'wonderful memories of the crew' if you never made them to begin with.
All their titles they've got announced in the pipeline don't interest me mainly because I don't trust them to make a good game worth my time. I hope no one buys this company and it dies real fast, so the industry learns this is not ok.
Games like SOAPBOX/FiveM to name a few are what the community of gamers want. Fix the supply if you want our money.
You really want to put that kind of trust into the same consumers that caused this bs in the first place? Not to mention running a triple a server is expensive af. I don't want games to go from "you can only play on our servers" to "you can only play if you pay donate to my paetron."
@@that_deadeyegamer7920 there's literally tools on steam that let you host a dedicated server for some games, both indie and triple A so 🤷♀️
This game taught me a lot on corpo-speak & false promises, I was extremely hyped for the crew back when it was originally announced and released.
The thought of an MMO open world racing game akin to Drift City was something I really wanted, and who knows, maybe I did have some unrealistic expectations.
But the game came out with online only component tied to it, only to discover that its not an MMO and only 7 other players can show up next to you at any given moment.
And guess what, for the first 3 months that online component didn't even work and you could not matchmake for races.
And DESPITE all that, I still think it was an excellent game to just drop in and cruise around the USA with a lot of cool ideas and car modding.
I no longer preorder games and very cautions to anything that is being hyped by major devs, and I owe my thanks to the Crew for that.
All abandonware should be required to be open sourced
Would love to see a video about what can be done to fight against this sort of practice. Since I believe that most people (including myself) are illiterate when it comes to legal stuff. It's insane that this kind of thing keeps happening. And I'm sure a lot of people would like to put a stop to it, but have no idea how. Voting with your wallet doesn't feel enough anymore..
Look up Ross Scott’s video on the crew. He’s setting up a class action lawsuit to try to stop games from being destroyed.
Ubisoft being anti-consumer. I'm shocked and amazed.
In other news, water is still wet.
I remember a couple years ago when my brother and I went to Gamestop to trade in a bunch of old Wii shovelware for a couple new games. He ended up picking Battleborn, only to discover the servers had been shut down months, if not years ago. I still haven't forgiven that Gamestop location for selling us a game that was literally unplayable
Ross Scott of Accursed Farms predicted that this game had a life span, based on other Ubisoft titles being delisted in the past, of about 8 years. He was off by 2 years, but that doesn't make the anger of seeing this game being taken behind the shed any less bitter. All that work in designing systems and creating art assets, gone with a push of a button.
'the anger... Any less bitter' that's not a saying. It's either 'the anger any less worse' or 'the feelings any less bitter'. You're welcome.
@@zeraora2607It doesn’t have to be a saying to be true. Nothing he said was incorrect
@@zeraora2607what a tool.
Got into the conversation with my brother where I said it was BS that it will be unplayable and he told me “just play the crew 2” that’s really not the point. Thanks for talking about this
The crew made my entire childhood. Honestly really sad to see it go
Muta I’m glad you’re pushing for this so many people seem to be shilling for the industry on the contrary
I appreciate the passion that Muta has when it comes to this topic. How about this though? If the game companies do not add an offline patch to a game they are planning to shut down, how about giving us gamers our goddamn money back. Damn scummy game companies and their exit scamming practices.Great video as always Muta. Keep up the fight, my friend.
2:38
2:39
@@lonely_7891😂
Modding community for games like New Vegas makes me come back to it time and time again, showing the beauty of offline games.
we always love to see game services pulling our property from their services.
I wonder when the division 1 when will be pulled offline
People need to stop playing and buying console games that are on the ps store or require a connection. People always on their knees for developers like ea and Ubisoft.
@@COWP TBF most games don't have a online only requirement its actually a very small subset of games that have it be that way. So people who like EA and Ubi are probably doing it because they have some very solid SP titles so some are gonna be inclined to have a soft spot for them. But I do agree nothing is stopping them from just keeping the game on steam and releasing the dedicated server tools for free. Or why not use Steam works integration if you have it on steam? The modern day is not exactly hurting in the economic options department saying you need to shut down for money is a skill issue and is also greedy, and scummy if your doing it to a payed for product.
it actually isnt our property. its literally in the TOS that 0 people read lol
@@COWP They can still sell you a disc that pretty much only serves as the cd-key and majority of the game is downloaded or in some cases drm and other stuff can still lock you out of the game/disc.
ill never forget the disappointment when i told my friends about game ownership and they said that it just doesn't matter😞😞
The irony is that they talked about how much The Crew means to them and then proceed to do fuck all to preserve it.
Its the same thing when we go to a website and it says "We respect your privacy..." while proceeding to invade it as much as they can.
They literally ended the post by advertising the crew motorfest hoonigan update
Pulling a Respawn Entertainment
I hope no one genuinely thought they were being serious. Unless it’s said by some indie developer or developer with a clear proven track record of genuinely being passionate about the games they make, then no one should believe whatever a company says a game means a lot to them. Because often times it’s just PR talk
These games only mean anything to them while they are profitable.
The Crew is such a banger. Probably the last good racing title with a good story and cutscenes. How that needs to be online is beyond me.
I have my physical copy. I played this game so much on XB1. And I'm going to play it right now.
Enjoy last few moments of the game and cherish those memories forever
If we're reaching the point where we no longer own the things we pay for. Then why should we pay for them in first place?
That's a 2030 plan I keep hearing about
You will own nothing and you will be happy.
@@Corvid- That day is unfortunate coming sooner rather than later!
@@mexicanprime106 It'll be here my friend
hear me out tho piracy + Online fix
My favourite game developer is Cyan, the guys who made Myst. Not just because I enjoy their games, but because of their behaviour. After Uru, Myst's spin-off MMO, failed to turn a profit, and got batted around from publisher to publisher, Cyan didn't just let it die. They knew a lot of Myst fans still played it and treated it as a social hub. They reacquired the full rights to the game - which must have been insanely expensive - and then they released the source code, for free, for both the client and server, and then they _also_ hosted an official server, funded entirely by fan donations. That official server occasionally receives updates, as Cyan add cherry-picked community-made content.
This is how you keep an unprofitable but beloved game alive for its fans. It doesn't have to be expensive. Heck, the fans are happy to cover the costs themselves. It just takes a small initial time investment and minimal effort to process donations and keep the server running.
And even if a publisher didn't do that, releasing the source code costs basically nothing, and enables fans to host their own unofficial servers. But publishers are usually allergic to letting anyone else anywhere near their assets, even if they're never going to use them again. They don't want us playing old games. They prefer for old games to die, so that we have no choice but to buy their new games.
Except for one thing: I help to crowdfund every single new Cyan game. And I haven't bought a single Ubisoft game since 2012.
@@humanbean3 Absolutely agree with your sentiments. Back then, games were made by gamers, for gamers. Not by businessmen for investors and shareholders.
You're remembering the right Myst, though it was published by Broderbund, not Sierra. The Myst series were singleplayer immersive adventure games, a genre which Cyan still specialise in to this day. Uru was created as an MMO set in the same universe.
there should be laws against this kind of stuff, example: if any company that have online only entertainment and shut it down years later, that company is forced by law to refund 100% of everyone's money
Nothing else to say, write it down!!!!!
While I agree, if they shut down, it's most likely they don't even have money to sustain themselves.
So refund us with what money? They couldn't handle the 60 bucks we individually paid.
Refunds won’t work, what they can do is open source.
I think they do have a law, any such game offline for 5 months or more is open game to being cracked open without any legal ramifications for preservation.
We need someone like rossman but in gaming, someone in America who brave enough to mention this in hearing even sue the gaming company for this.
MUTA!!!!!!
Ross scott of Accursed Farms is attempting this
And even more ironic is that if you patch it with an offline patch on a game that you yourself bought, it would be piracy and a break of contract/tos and they could go after you legally. Likely they would dmca any offline patch to make sure the game gets buried deep.
Such a sad society we live in.
This is why I'm starting to rebuild and make my retro collection stronger. We can play these older games seemingly forever if we just preserve them for future generations.
And this is a huge reason why I don't get very many modern games anymore. I don't feel like I own them when I can have the game revoked from me at literally any given moment.
This very reason: of having something you paid for be essentially revoked by greedy megacorps that stick to the phrase “yOu’lL oWN nOthInG. aNd yOu’LL bE hApPy!!” This is why I buy physical games. At least I own a game rather than an admission ticket.
It's a garbage reality we are living in with games being able to be taken away at a moments notice.
Collection is great, but in 50 years from now, you'll be rotting in a ground and all those games you've collected will be in landfill with seagulls defecating on it.
@@JayShootHer that or a relative or stranger will pawn them off.
I do have a Wii U, but present me is so glad that I held onto it and my Wii game discs. No company can take those away from me
I hate games being held hostage by company wallets. The needless point of slapping in servers to a game that doesn't even need online functions is just predatory and feels done so that they can later down the line force a future purchase.
I'm with you on the state of this crap, and I notice more and more companies joining in on the problem. This, and the fact many companies want to go digital only with releases, are the reason I feel consumer protection laws on entertainment need to exist.....
At best, it’s extortion. At worst, they’re just straight up scamming.
Sad thing is, the companies made a somewhat strong case about Always-Online being harder to pirate. So they claim it as a copyright security method. Instead of developing good products people want to buy, they hide behind shitty made up reasons that drain the userbase out of their money. I'm dead sure, the bubble in gamedev will crumble soon, and I hate that many will lose their jobs and there will be chaos, but the fat cats will be just fine, sitting in their suits rubbing down another greasy pig to fatten for their next decade of dishonest and ethically questionable schemes.
Vampire Survivors proved that people WILL BUY GAMES THAT ARE FUN. Larian proved it this year very significantly as well. That's as broad of a range one can go - 1 man Indie to a AAA quality product that Shames the AAA industry in quality and approachability for the common gamer who never even played a CRPG before.
If anything, I'd be very interested in making a policy of "defunct" games going into a game repository for everyone to access. Same as books. Nintendo do their stupid shit constantly and consistently. I think it hasn't been a year since 2010 or even earlier that I haven't heard about some random Nintendo fit about someone "enjoying their games wrong". And I am not much of a nintendo fan, or even enjoyer overall - it was not something I grew up with, and my interests lie elsewhere, but even without looking for news about the company, you get these delusional scandals and threats from Nintendo with and to their fans. It's baffling.
If an online only game is discontinued, they should be legally forced to release server packs
This video needs to go viral! This situation is why I wait and get games like this for cheap. Years ago I got The Crew bundled with Steep for $10 on PSN, that means I only paid $5 for both games and I love The Crew, it's bull that they don't flip the offline switch on.
A Dev on Twitter said that companies often release a game that requires a DAY ONE PATCH on purpose.
So even people that buy physical copies of a game are boned. Because they still depend on a digital patch to play a game.
this is so true. I have just finished playing tomb raider 2013, which is a decade old by now and I had a blast, being able to revisit these games is what makes pc gaming interessting in the first place instead of being vendor locked like on consoles.
The online only landscape truly sucks for everything that is more than pure multiplayer
crazy, I was just ust looking at Tomb Raider today and I couldn't figure out which one was the Best to download and play now that several if not all of them are on Gamepass and apparently they all have like 1000+ 5 star reviews... which is rare to see on autistic Xbox reviews.(Which one to quickly play from fear that I'd never get to play it.... ever. Once it gets put on sale one last time for $5.99, or thrown in with all 4-5 TR games in a bundle called "Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition" before getting removed from the M$/Xbox store + Steam permanently.
This is why I absolutely refuse to buy anything that's online only or has no physical release or has DRM built into it. In fact, I've stopped buying closed source games and will not ever again, and have not bought a game in nearly 20 years now. Maybe my viewpoint is extreme, but as a developer, I think all games should be open source allowing the users to maintain the games themselves should the company ever go bankrupt. If a developer has a donate button on their page and releases a game as open source that I enjoy and play, I'll donate to their project, but it doesn't have to solely be a voluntary donation method for them to make money. If they sell the game assets as a zipped package, I'd happily buy such a game given that the engine is open. I and others just need to convince game developers to go that route.
Things like this evil is so dishonorable. I do not know how they are not being sued or held legally accountable in prison for literally scamming, false advertising, and stealing from innocent people.
Because they didn't do any of those things.
With any online game only product. You signed an agreement to terms of service. Which includes the fact that they can deny you services.
Blame malicious lobbying
@@bargaintuesday812 So if Amazon Prime Video advertised that if you buy a movie/show from them, it's yours to own and keep forever. Then they suddenly remove the content from their service, you lose access to it and are not entitled to a refund for the product. You believe that's not false advertising?
@@bargaintuesday812 You will own nothing and be happy.
This is why just owning physical games isn't preservation anymore. Arbitrary online servers are an inevitable and unnecessary disaster.
I'd definitely sign a petition or something for there to be a legal requirement for an offline mode to avoid situations like this!
Make a petition for people to stop buying Ubisoft.
Of course that's an unachievable goal but that would be just for visibility and to have fun.
"Sign this petition to stop people from buying games from Ubisoft" I'd sign that.
Ross from Accursed Farms is currently planning to take legal action against the practice of destroyng games like that. You should really give a shoutout to him and draw attention to his cause because it could make some HUGE legal waves in the gaming industry so this practice can finally DIE.
After thousands of hours put into School of Dragons, it was abruptly shut down in the middle of summer 2023 without providing an offline mode for loyal players (despite it being an option when the game was still running)
There seriously needs to be more guidelines for game companies to prevent them from scamming their users so easily.
The official reddit page for the crew now has a petition pinned for ubisoft to make an offline patch. Its absurd to think that we are basically at the mercy of developers to be able to play a game we paid money for. Hopefully something will change in the future.
A reddit petition, that'll show 'em.
I feel a similar sentiment about my Steam Library.
One day, on a whim I looked into my games and found the "licenses" to my games. they're only good for something like 99 years from the dates of purchase, which means, that there will one day be a time where I cannot pass down the games I paid for with my money to my own family. Granted, it's not like its an heirloom, but still...
Physical media needs to make a comeback. Nobody can take my PS2 library away from me. Except a burglar, I guess.
@@dang.9209 I'm gonna steal your ps2 games 😈
@@dang.9209 to be fair they're not gonna work in 99 years either
Thats the advantage of GoG. You can download the offline installers and they'll with you till the end of time. Granted because of that policy there's a lot of games that don't end up there (notably a LOT of games by Japanese companies like Square enix)
@@dang.9209but the discs will degrade as well. So unless you pull the data from the disc, those games will be lost to time as well.
Thank you for covering this Muta! I bought this game at launch on the PS4 and really like this project's plot and open-world activites compared to many racing games coming out nowadays. I don't understand why wouldn't they add the offline mode in the first place. This actually makes me fear certain Need for Speed Titles like NFS Rivals and NFS 2015 since those games are also online only, it's only a matter of time for EA to pull the plug on those games, people can't play them no more, and players wasted money on those purchases.
Dude I am still playing games from the 80s. Thank you GOG for making this possible.
The last true way to preserve games was in the 360 and ps3 era. Most games had an online base but internet at the time was still hard to obtain so most games were designed with offline. Test drive unlimited or halo are great examples of this. And some communities have went as far as creating their own servers to preserve online too
Waiting to see if Muta covers something that is in Sony's "Software Usage Terms" from the UK. (saw one TH-camr mention it today and wanted to fact check it myself since no source was posted)
Section 7 talks about resale and how "only authorized companies" can resell PHYSICAL games. Cause that is such a great precedence to come in the future. /s
Word for word:
7.1. You must not resell either disc-based games or digital games, unless expressly authorised by us and, if the publisher is another company, additionally by the publisher.
Ross Scott of AcursedFarms is trying to build a class action lawsuit against Ubi for The Crew. Would be good to make a follow up for more exposure.
at this point everything is a scam nowadays
Good old capitalism and monopolies
For real!
Am I a scam? Are you a scam? I'm am now questioning what people are considered living scams now, thank you for this deep insight.
@@humzahrashid6736 No, you're a bot
@@seedypr6479 No, you're a TH-cam commenter.
I loved this game, and it is so enfuriating because of the online only. Thank you Mutahar for being a voice that represents me and my thoughts about this.
This does make me feel scammed.
the sequels are the worse lmao
Piracy is becoming more and more justified!
Online-only makes pirating harder too
the worst part is that people PAY for these kind of games. Once it's gone your money is too
Gamers will always be the biggest threat to gaming itself, so many gamers allow so much bullshit and scummy business practices it’s absurd.
As a big fan of the game, thank you much for covering this
Also there's a community of fans called The Crew Unlimited, they're gonna try to bring an offline mode to the game, there's also a petition going on it has over 1000 signatures
Amen!
I miss the old days when physical games were booming, you actually owned them, they cost around £20, you could trade in your old ones for store credit or cash and buy preowned ones.
Yes
This is why Emulation is important to the industry. Preservation. Not just piracy. Live service games are a bane on the industry.
3:18 I 100% agree with Muta on this one. I swear this is on my top 5 list of most infuriating behaviors from consumerist dented people. These people are literally paypigs for big companies, I legitimately wonder if they get a sexual rush from paypiggin' like this.
"R**e my wallet harder, Daddy!" - Random Paypig
I really hope the term "PayPig" will pick up. Since "Whale" is clearly not derogatory enough for the lowest common denominator to understand how these companies see them.
Hear me out though, I don't think it is on the developer to make their game archivable, for example you can't expect an artist to make sure all his materials hold up after 100 years of sitting out in the air right?
I think obfuscating an offline mode should be illegal but being forced to give it a certain life span, no, that seems unreasonable.
You literally cannot access your purchased digital games without an internet connection. Truly bringing the "you'll own nothing" to fruition
Hah, seriously true
This is why you indulge in piracy
thats why you HAVE to buy physical and/or crack your games.
it should be a moral obligation at this point....cause devs and publishers don't give a fck about us except our money
Xbox I think lets you access your games offline(if downloaded), unlike ps. Not defending them or anything just pointing it out
In this case, since it's an online only game, physical copies will soon become fancy coasters
Ubisoft cries and cries about pirates while being one of the largest reasons they exist
These companies pulling this shit is the reason people pirate. Piracy is a service issue, not a price issue. When you pay $60 for a game you "purchased" with the reasonable expectation that you can play it as long as you have the game, and when that game gets revoked cuz the company cannot be bothered to maintain it anymore; this is the exact reason why people pirate.
So I developed and self-published a game on the PlayStation Vita called Among The Stars. Beyond my control, the game was removed from the store and pulled from all download lists. I'll tell you right now that only 27 people purchased it. Did anyone know it exists? What if you want to play it now? (Side note: I was contacted by a publisher after its delisting to get it published again, and have a PS4 port, and I still have the files on my computer.)
what kind of game was it?
Unpopular opinion: Video games should be respected and preserved just like we respect and preserve any other arts; literary art, paintings, films, statues and so on.
The fact that this is considered an "unpopular opinion" and isn't just common sense says a lot about the human race, especially the newer generation of gamers that grew up being screwed by these companies and essentially thank them for it.
I hope Ubisoft gets a wake-up call about how terribly they are operating with this constantly online stuff
Oh god no, they've been doing this since the glory days of Facebook gaming. The minute they decided that an online flash game or mobile game wasn't making enough cash, they'd pull it. I doubt many of them made it past 2 years. It's one of 3 reasons I decide not to play a game the moment I know Ubisoft is attached.
@@LikaLaruku Based, I respect that, although they're are a lot of good games that are attached to Ubisoft, you're losing out imo but at least try it through privacy if it the game has your interest at one point🤷
Considering no one is buying their shitty games, that should be very soon.
They don't give a shit dude. You're talking about a company that decided to push NFTs despite gamers screaming at them to not go near them. Not to mention the outcry from gamers about the monetization of the Assassin's Creed games (and many others) that have fallen completely on deaf ears.
People aren’t going to appreciate physical media til it’s gone. You’re 100% right we need to preserve physical media, screw the dummies they don’t see it.
What would physical media help if there servers aren't up anymore? I have some physical media of old MMOs, still can't play them.
@@spechar Well thats why you dont have physical versions of things that can only be played online like MMOs.
So why you did this is beyond me. Its like you set yourself up for this to happen.
It's not about physical media. We don't really need it anymorr, we just need drmless and offline versions of software or video or music. Like games on GOG, I have my local library if gog installers which I can record on CD or some thumb drive if I would like so.
@@Draconic_Incenerator
Then why are we talking then?
This game is online only, so as you said, you set yourself up.
@@dimitrifake53 Yes it was released online only, but as shown it does have offline options.
So this isnt 100% true.
I've only just learned about this just now when I noticed the game greyed out in my library. You are 100% right.What Ubisoft have done here is SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE, and basically theft.
"Online only" was the worst thing to happen to games.
There a community of fans called The Crew Unlimited, they're gonna try to bring an offline mode to the game, there's also a petition going on it has over 1000 signatures
It needs to become law that for always online games when the dev/publisher decides it's time for them to stop providing their services, they allow you to use your own services, that means they need to make it so you can host the game on yours or someone else's server or they allow offline play.
I completely agree, the whole online only stuff is not only a crap practice but also it literally inspires me to hack to get the game and all its files.
This was the first game my son really connected with. Going to make sure we hit a few of the races before it goes offline. Unfortunate, as it's a game that could've absolutely worked without the online servers.
archive a download and the hex edit, et voilá!
@@glebglub I'm gonna need a link to a guide aimed at dummies
@@lilpenguin092I second on this. I pay too much for this crap!
Muta sneaking into a Maternity Ward and screaming thru a glass window at newborns: YOU ARE BEING SCAMMED!😱
he should be talking to their Parents because in the US we pay 10x more than other developed nations for births and rank like 38th in infant mortality.
"GET OUT BEFORE YOU HAVE TO PAY TAXES"
what?@WhisptrzHeat
man, i still remember being so devastated when i found out Darkspore, the game 10-ish year old me loved to try out, had its servers shut down and effectively having a game my mom gifted me being essentially useless
I really, really hate the idea of online only games and servers that shut down after not even a decade, like, if you have a game that's got an online component, that's fine, but when that goes away, you should still be able to play the game whenever you want and I don't think anyone's asking a lot by wanting that?
Ive put roughly 800 hours in this game i loved this game
Im glad you made this video honestly
Same. I've got thousands of hours across every TC game and I'm so bummed TC1 is being shut down. I still play it quite a bit across all my platforms and I definitely think it's better than TC2.
Reminds me of Monster Hunter on PS2. Suddenly went offline and came to realise this a few months too late.
Remember this. If a game is online only when it has no discernable reason to be, its 99% of the time due to the DRM they put in it.
We need more channels talking about this. Sad times.
this is basically the meme where credit card declines and the vendor takes away your service, like where mr crabs presses a button and the fish customer gets the tv pulled from his eyes
Two words, private server. it sucks that when a game goes offline it's up to the community to revive the game, so if it really has to shut down devs and more so companies should absolutely release the code to run your own server, but money is money and most companies love money more then reputation.
This is why, for years, I've been saying that there needs to be a non-profit whose sole purpose is archiving games in a playable state, who have enough of a reputation that game studios will sign a pledge and promotion to donate source code, binaries & assets for the sole purpose of continuing a games viability after its developer no longer supports it. Obviously it would require protection, but hey, just set up a procedure to send the relevant stuff after every patch, and the foundation will put it on secure media and put it into a protected safe. The aim would be that, when the game shuts down, this charity can get a developer to go through the stuff and do whatever is needed to get it functioning... ideally by just configuring a docker image with the server binaries, configuring some settings, and maybe compiling an updated client to point to a different sets of servers.
It would cost these mega companies almost nothing (just add a few more bullet points to walk through every time they release something), and it would do so damn much for later generations.
Key is to put the power in the consumers hands: I buy only online games which respect ownership without a clock. That way, if the company ever stops uploading their data to the foundation in question, they can not only be called out on it, but also lose the benefit of asshole moves like these that are pure capitalist greed at work.
from the perspective of a company, the worst part is that closed online games do not generate any money, but if you patch an offline mode after they close the servers you can still generate some revenue, maybe brief sales but still money
You got it backwards. The newer, not so good game isn't selling well enought because people are still buying and playing the older better game. So to maximize the profit from the newer game we have shut down its predecessor
Still a scam.
I've been saying this same thing for the last couple years, especially when it comes to live service games. The push towards digital games gets all sorts of push back with people saying "you don't own your games!" "The publisher is going to steal your games one day!' Then as soon as they're done yelling about how digital games are theft, they go back to playing their physical copy of Destiny 2. I never hear anyone say that shit about online games. People just keep throwing their money into these live service games. There are people who spent a fortune in Avengers, Knockout City, and (soon to be) Suicide Squad only to have the game taken from them. All that time, gone, all that money, gone. People have to vote with their wallets. Don't even buy games like that in the first place, let alone spend money on microtransactions. If people stop buying a type of game, the industry will change, but you have to make it change.