Live-service is killing video game conservation

From Xfire: "Video games used to be forever - now seasons come and go, with entire chunks of even the most popular games gone without trace."

[moriarty1889]

Good points and very true. Good article.

[Flawlessmic]

Yea killing that and gaming itself.

Live service games, devs and players need to find a ditch and die in it before they ruin gaming any further.

[annoyedgamer]

The problem here is the creators of these services know idiots will buy it. The buyers deserve some of even more of the blame.

[kayoss]

i 100% agree. ill push it even further. ill say buyers are 100% to blame. They can offer services and Microtransactions all they want, thats their right. But its the buyers who are enabling this practice.

[Noskypeno]

I'm just sick of living in this generation. I hate how it just takes an allegation to ruin a man like Johnny Depp, I hate how a random average girl can make a million a year stripping naked on the computer or farting in a jar, making the average female overvaluing themselves and pricing the average guy out. I hate how a crappy clip art can be as valuable as a painting that took talent to make. Im just waiting for the guy to say "you just don't understand rich people culture".

@kayoss, if these devs had any integrity they would stick to what they do best and not listen to whatever is trendy. "The CEO is making sacrifices, he sacrificed his ability to buy a 500 ft yacht and settled for a 300 ft yacht".

[NickN]

"all because remaster culture has conditioned them into expecting to be able to sell that old game to you again."

*GTA V has entered the arena*

[Germaximus]

lol Skyrim

[staticall]

If GTA V has only entered the arena, then Resident Evil 4 is the final boss probably

[isarai]

So are broken games that are fixed with patches. Once those update servers are gone, so are those games....for good

[Zhipp]

Definitive edition releases usually contain the patched version of the game.

[Nyxus]

Digital only as well. The best way to have preservation is to have both a physical as a digital version of a game.

[CrimsonWing69]

I just hate the model, period. What it comes off to me is that they do the bare minimum and sell you a game at full price with the promise of seasonal content to make the game a “full game” eventually. Then they litter it to the brim with micro-transactions and design the game to make those MTs almost a must buy if you value your time. I have yet to play a GaaS game that is legit good and isn’t an MMO.

The disturbing thing is the corporate greed. All of this stems from the mobile gaming market where people spend billions on MTs. Now, publishers are hellbent on transitioning a similar model into hardcore gaming.

After Avengers I swear Square made a statement where they were done with GaaS games moving forward or it said something like they’d reconsider thinking about the model. Then they literally put out a statement where they believe this is the future of gaming and are committed to GaaS games and now we have Babylon and Chocobo GP… I hope to god it bites them in the ass.

[sourOG]

Do we want to conserve service games?

[JEECE]

I think the idea is that there is some good content that will be lost. I haven't played Destiny 2, but apparently there are some pretty good campaigns that have been part of it, but you can't just buy the game and play them. Not all of them are accessible even now, and certainly won't be later.

[sourOG]

They could conserve it if they wanted to though. They don’t delete the campaigns, they are on storage somewhere. It’s just not up to a third party to conserve it, it’s up to bungie. And if they don’t care why should we?

[Silly gameAr]

I miss the days where we would get full games. DLC was bad enough, but now with live service, we're not even getting half of the game anymore. We're getting content that should already be in the game spoon fed to us for a price. Look at how live service killed Battlefield games.

They need to stop trying to treat full priced games like they're free to play games. That isn't helping anyone, and only hurting our hobby.

[z2g]

And streaming killed cds and cds killed tapes and tapes killed 8 tracks and 8 tracks killed vinyl and so on.

The thing this article doesn’t take into account is that not every game is a live service and even live service games could still have historical versions of every season they offer.

This feels more like a fear of change. The very thing younger generations get on to boomers about and so on.

Hard shrug on this one.

[ScootaKuH]

Yup. It's of course good for the companies but it's not good for the consumer

[senorfartcushion]

It’s killing video games full stop

[Snakeeater25]

Don’t buy it

[Harryvok]

Maybe those types of game just aren't worth preserving?

[aaronaton]

There is more money to be made and lost now than ever in the video game industry, so the lizard men in there lovely suits are here to stay ***Sony 1st party studios and Kojima productions not included***.

[franwex]

Well, they are relevant due to the money they bring in. Let’s stop for a second and ask ourselves if we have contributed to this. Have any in you bought a battle pass? Are we the problem or the solution?

[nibblo]

Does anyone really want to "conserve" games like Destiny 2 and Fortnite? Mostly kids play these games and they like the live service approach as it makes them less boring. I have nephews in their early mid teens and they find static single player games incredibly boring but they love Fortnite, Destiny 2, CoD. Personally I don't play live service games like Fortnite so I don't care if they are conserved or not and neither do the player base that are playing them so I don't see what the problem is unless it's the all games will be live service in a few years argument which I don't see ever happening.

[lio_convoy]

In 20 years only a handful of people will play or care about any of these games. In 50 years even less will. But (and the most important part of all of this), read the fine print on your shiny new game. You are not the owner of the game. That's true for both online and offline games. You've just paid for a license to play it on a certain machine. And that license is only good under certain situations. Let's be real here. You can lie publicly on the internet, but you know the truth in your own mind. It's all about piracy. Not so called game conservation. It's about finding ways to play something outside of the legally allowed way. (Going back to that license thing again.) Because let's face it, in 10-20 years the PS5 will be a dinosaur, kind of like how the PS3 is now. How many people still play their PS3's? How relevant is it and any games on it today? It probably caters to like 0.5% of the community, if that. But the want to pirate those games is still out there. There's no need to "preserve" these games. They're games, not high art. And if someone finds a way to save the code, well that'll appeal to a very tiny fraction of the community, such a small number that it really doesn't matter. Of you don't like the way a game is made, then speak up with your wallet.

[Gameseeker_Frampt]

Why does everything have to be preserved? This reminds me of tourists who go places and record everything they see so they "can remember" and their entire trip ends up being an experience behind a lens instead of enjoying the place that they are in. Impermanence does not make something bad. Plays and concerts are impermanent - does the author think they should be done away with because future generations are deprived of their experience? Are they hurting the preservation of movies and albums?