melkathi Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 <disclaimer> I am not a lawyer </disclaimer> To me it is a bit like the different approach to garbage in different countries. In Germany, you pay for your garbage weight allowance. It is your garbage. You have your own bin. You have a padlock on the bin so no neighbour can sneak their garbage into yours and have you pay for it. In Greece, you do not have your own bin. You dump the garbage (ideally) in the city's garbage bins. You pay the city tax based on the square meters of your home, and the amount of actual garbage you produce is irrelevant. As a result though in Germany, throwing something in the garbage does not automatically relinquish ownership. In Greece it does. Taking this to gaming, does a permanent shut down of servers allow for the argument the company is relinquishing it's financial interests in the specific title and therefor a non-profit, community run server or a community coded removal of the always online system should be allowed? 1 1 Unobtrusively informing you about my new ebook (which you should feel free to read and shower with praise). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoraptor Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 (edited) 1 hour ago, BruceVC said: In other words if there is an online gaming service that is losing money is the legislation going to say " you cant shutdown the gaming servers " ? End of the day, if you enter into a contract in any other field and find you're losing money you can't arbitrarily decide to cancel the contract, with no consequences. If your options are literally literally shutting down a server or going bankrupt... your company is figuratively literally in the crapper already. Otherwise you're just trying to dodge obligations that you don't think you should fulfill because now they're costing you money- and often trying to get people to buy [sportsgame_currentyear] instead of playing [sportsgame_currentyear--] they'd otherwise be perfectly happy with. Software companies have got away with a load of crap you wouldn't get away with if you were selling sandwiches, beds, cars or even service contracts like catering or cleaning just because it's software. So your Suicide Squad game released 3 months ago as a GaaS and sold appallingly? Tough noogies, that's the risk you take as a company, Warners. It costs you money to run the servers for the 27 people playing it you say? That's the risk you take. You can tell how hard up WBD is, Dave Zaslav only took home 300mn in pay and stock options over the past three years, wonder how many servers even 1% of that would keep running... [yes, I know it isn't shut down, yet] Edited May 7 by Zoraptor 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mamoulian War Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 5 hours ago, BruceVC said: Specifically around what they mean by " When these are shut down, games can be left unplayable" Heroes of Might and Magic 6 comes to me immediately as a first example, of what they are talking about 1 Sent from my Stone Tablet, using Chisel-a-Talk 2000BC. My youtube channel: MamoulianFH Latest Let's Play Tales of Arise (completed) Latest Bossfight Compilation Dark Souls Remastered - New Game (completed) Let's Play/AAR Europa Universalis 1: Austria Grand Campaign (completed) Let's Play/AAR Europa Universalis 2: Xhosa Grand Campaign (completed) My PS Platinums and 100% - 29 games so far (my PSN profile) 1) God of War III - PS3 - 24+ hours 2) Final Fantasy XIII - PS3 - 130+ hours 3) White Knight Chronicles International Edition - PS3 - 525+ hours 4) Hyperdimension Neptunia - PS3 - 80+ hours 5) Final Fantasy XIII-2 - PS3 - 200+ hours 6) Tales of Xillia - PS3 - 135+ hours 7) Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 - PS3 - 152+ hours 8.) Grand Turismo 6 - PS3 - 81+ hours (including Senna Master DLC) 9) Demon's Souls - PS3 - 197+ hours 10) Tales of Graces f - PS3 - 337+ hours 11) Star Ocean: The Last Hope International - PS3 - 750+ hours 12) Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII - PS3 - 127+ hours 13) Soulcalibur V - PS3 - 73+ hours 14) Gran Turismo 5 - PS3 - 600+ hours 15) Tales of Xillia 2 - PS3 - 302+ hours 16) Mortal Kombat XL - PS4 - 95+ hours 17) Project CARS Game of the Year Edition - PS4 - 120+ hours 18) Dark Souls - PS3 - 197+ hours 19) Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory - PS3 - 238+ hours 20) Final Fantasy Type-0 - PS4 - 58+ hours 21) Journey - PS4 - 9+ hours 22) Dark Souls II - PS3 - 210+ hours 23) Fairy Fencer F - PS3 - 215+ hours 24) Megadimension Neptunia VII - PS4 - 160 hours 25) Super Neptunia RPG - PS4 - 44+ hours 26) Journey - PS3 - 22+ hours 27) Final Fantasy XV - PS4 - 263+ hours (including all DLCs) 28) Tales of Arise - PS4 - 111+ hours 29) Dark Souls: Remastered - PS4 - 121+ hours Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azdeus Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said: Heroes of Might and Magic 6 comes to me immediately as a first example, of what they are talking about The debacle around The Crew comes to mind. Also, might aswell drop this; https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ Short version Long version; Spoiler 3 Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. - H.L. Mencken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mkreku Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 Xbox shuts down a bunch of game studios: https://www.eurogamer.net/xbox-shuts-slew-of-bethesda-studios-including-redfall-hi-fi-rush-developers So.. how long do you think Obsidian and inXile will last? Not exactly the cashcows Microsofts shareholders demand from them.. 3 Swedes, go to: Spel2, for the latest game reviews in swedish! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sven_ Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 (edited) MS going to close down Tango Softworks and Arkane Austin TX. WolfEye have set up their first ever offices in Austin TX just last year. That's the new studio by Arkane's founder Raf Colantonio, which already has quite an illustrious roster for people familiar. Any bets accepted there's more ex-Arkanes going to pop up in there? Every ending is a new beginning. Also, before anybody speculates: The dichotomy between Austin and Lyon has never existed like that. Arkane have never been a company of two studios. Rather a studio of two locations, with people moving between them as well (see Harvey Smith moving over to Lyon to direct Dishonored 2 and then going back). That's firstly a misconception that Colantonio himself has corrected multiple times. Secondly, if Lyon weren't working on a rather popular IP as we speak (Blade), I could imagine MS pulling the plug on them too. If Blade is gonna bomb... edit: Dang, @mkreku beat me to it. Edited May 7 by Sven_ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hurlshort Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 37 minutes ago, mkreku said: Xbox shuts down a bunch of game studios: https://www.eurogamer.net/xbox-shuts-slew-of-bethesda-studios-including-redfall-hi-fi-rush-developers So.. how long do you think Obsidian and inXile will last? Not exactly the cashcows Microsofts shareholders demand from them.. This is probably wishful thinking, but Microsoft probably bought Bethesda for the Bethesda, not necessarily all of the other developer's Bethesda owned. They wanted the big IP's that Bethesda has. Obsidian and inXile are separate deals. It looks a lot worse if they go in and shutter them. But yeah, if Avowed or Outer Worlds 2 doesn't hit sales expectations, it could be very bad. So make sure to buy a copy and leave it running all day long to help them out. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilloutman Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 Sorry Obs, but I am not really interested in first person games so until we get another TTRPG from you no money from me 2 2 I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. I'm the kinda guy that likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs with the side-order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal? I've SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiene" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sven_ Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 (edited) If Obsidian eventually gets shut down too at some point, I'm hoping for somebody to mod the **** out of The Outer Worlds. We've shut down the best. Now try the rest. At Microsoft, we cut corners so you don't have to. Who, who, whoa, it's Spencer's! Edited May 7 by Sven_ 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoonDing Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 You have to be realistic about these things. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melkathi Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 The reality is, people being realistic about things is the reason we can't have nice things Unobtrusively informing you about my new ebook (which you should feel free to read and shower with praise). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wormerine Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 4 hours ago, mkreku said: Xbox shuts down a bunch of game studios: https://www.eurogamer.net/xbox-shuts-slew-of-bethesda-studios-including-redfall-hi-fi-rush-developers So.. how long do you think Obsidian and inXile will last? Not exactly the cashcows Microsofts shareholders demand from them.. Ouch. Austin Texas being shut down is not surprising - I would mourn it as they create one of my fav game out of Arcanes output (Prey!), but allegiedly Redfall already drove most of that team away. Tango Gameworks though.... that's surprising. Hi-Fi Rush was the best thing XBOX released so far. Unless a lot of developers went after Shinji Makami when he left the studio, or something. Well, Grounded has been doing shockingly well, and Pentiment was super low budget. We will see how Avowed and Outer Worlds2 will do (not feeling great about Avowed so far...!). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sven_ Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 (edited) 2 hours ago, HoonDing said: You have to be realistic about these things. I'll bite. Avowed underperforming = realistic. The Outer Worlds 2 doing the same = realistic. Obsidian being turned into Bethsoft junior / Fallout game factory liners = a possibilty. At least they'd be working on an IP they like, hey. In particular considering how freakishly long it takes to churn out these games these days -- and that delivering BIG IP blockbuster product corporations care about becomes slower and slower a process. Who was Football World Champion back when the last Dragon Age released? On which console did the last GTA game first release? When did the last Elder Scrolls main game come out, discounting re-releases? Does anybody even remember the last Mass Effect, for that matter? If you can positively answer these, chances are, you're a pretty old fart. Edited May 7 by Sven_ 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoraptor Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 4 hours ago, Hurlshort said: This is probably wishful thinking, but Microsoft probably bought Bethesda for the Bethesda, not necessarily all of the other developer's Bethesda owned. Long history of this happening. Recent example: Embracer. Older example: EA's Bioware deal also included Pandemic Studios, which they obviously wouldn't have bought if it wasn't a bundle deal since they closed it down in the first major round of layoffs post acquisition. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hurlshort Posted May 7 Share Posted May 7 51 minutes ago, Sven_ said: I'll bite. Avowed underperforming = realistic. The Outer Worlds 2 doing the same = realistic. Obsidian being turned into Bethsoft junior / Fallout game factory liners = a possibilty. At least they'd be working on an IP they like, hey. Heh, kind of an interesting theory to think that if Obsidian struggles to make it with their own IP's, they will just end up churning out Fallout side games. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'd feel bad for Obsidian, but I would love to have more of their Fallouts too. Problem is they would probably lose their writing talent that separates them from the chuff. Tim Cain already seems to be semi-retired as he develops his youtube following. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted May 9 Share Posted May 9 Random interruption of gaming news... continued here “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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