If you buy the argument, you obviously never gamed during the 90's during the heyday of level editors, free maps and mods over IPX emulators like Kali and kahn.
It's not utter nonsense, DRM is literally taking files of the game hostage. Go load up overwatch and disable the network card, Go load up quake 3 or Unreal tournament 2004.
You can still play Quake 3 and UT2004, you'll notice a big fat error in overwatch because it is logging you into a server required for it to function.
Go get never winter nights released in 2002, compared against the "f2p" (aka stolen rpg rebadged an f2p mmo during develpment).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/704450/Neverwinter_Nights...
The original neverwinters had game tools and you could run your own server, vs neverwinter the "f2p mmo" version (aka moniker for the game moving to server locked game).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/109600/Neverwinter/
Any gamer in the 90's was expecting more dedicated servers, level editing tools with PC games.
Leauge of legends and DOTA 2 would have been fully single player RTS games with multiplayer.
So no you and anyone who believes like you is willfully ignorant that we now live in a PC game dystopia. Whereas before League of legends and DOTA 2 would have been coded like Quake 3, Unreal tournament 2004, and warcraft 3, you own the game and can play it multiplayer if necessary without a third party.
Diablo 2 we owned it --> Diablo 3 blizzard owns it and can now shut it down
Quake 3 we owned it --> Quake champions bethesda owns it and can shut it down.
So no, we've gone backwards in time to mainframe and dumb client model of computing because of the average gamer being computer illiterate and not seeing the writing on the wall.
So no they were not fundamentally a new "genre" that was what marketing and PR flackeys hoped people like you would buy. Note that private servers prove you incorrect, aka that there exist private servers for Ultima online and World of warcraft, demonstrate tehy would have just been Role playing games with shards players controlled, there was no need for companies to conrol them or the monthly fee.
Overwatch is a case in point that you are incorrect, since it's just a multiplayer fps, why is there no level editors, tools, open file specs and GTKRadiant? OH yeah thats right they wanted to lock down the code from a server in their office to resell skins that are sitting on encrypted files already on your machine setting a programming flag to display, when you've "earned" them via the stupid leveling system or gambled for them using their lootbox system.
Disallowing players from enjoying a game without paying doesn't work for everyone, but the network effects of multiplayer games virtually assures an increase in sales once your game passes a threshold of popularity.
The tradeoff, however, is that this won't work for small and niche games. For players to convert to purchasers the value must appear sufficient, and a multiplayer game with no players has little value.
There is a reason and it's a darned good one: piracy. It was well discussed on professional game development sites in the '90s and '00s; building a online game or game with a large online component meant that it was immune to being pirated.
This is not a good reason at all, especially from the consumer's perspective.
The correct term is "fraud". Just because copyright trolls misuse words that way doesn't mean we should sink to their level.
Why would i "thank" someone that puts unnecessary restrictions on how i can use the program i paid them money for?
> neither immoral
I see it as very immoral to deny me access and control to the software i paid for, especially when that happens because the developer treating me in a guilty-by-default way for something they have no idea if i'll do or not.
It's a game. No one is forcing you to play it.
> No one is forcing you to play it.
That has nothing to do with whether the product is moral.
You could thank them for writing the program for you in the first place, if they didn't then you'd have to do it yourself.
Eve Online is a good example of this.
League of legends and DOTA 2 were just real time strategy games that have been coded to use the mainframe model, instead of the locally run application model like quake 3 and Unreal tournament.
That was the whole plan for all new PC games. Think about this - league of legends makes pure profit selling flags to display skins that are already on kids machines because we know how computers work. That was the end game for the game indsutry to resell the same game assets like skins and characters over and over at insane margins.
That's exactly what we got with lootboxes and mobile - aka a platform that is completley locked down and there is no software ownership. Go to google and select images, and put in "mobile game revenue 2019" or any other year just prior to this one. Then compare it to PC or console game revenue. The software industry is obsessed with locking down the PC because they see the mad profits from mobile. That's why we got drm in windows 10...
It's all been slowly building from early succeses of walled gardens like mmo's and steam in 2004, to fully server locked multiplayer games that companies control like league and dota 2. To mobile gacha games that sell gambling for pokemon like characters to kids for sick profits without the kids getting any ownership of the software they are paying for.
That is why PC RPG's were rebadged mmo's, so that they could use it as a battering ram to change game culture. It's all about profits for these game companies, they wanted control of the software to put microtransactions in them. Notice after Valve, EA and activision got control of the software, they immediately shoved microtransactions into games.
You don't have to deal with lootboxes or MTX if you own the game outright. MMO's were part of the long term war on software ownership on the PC. To not see that and think they are special because you have very powerful feelings for these games, means you're ignoring the overwhelming evidence that the game industry was successful in changing public opinion regarding game ownership. AKA got you to see software as a service as "OK" and that's all they needed to get their foot in the door to take control of the software, once they got a generation of kids that's ok buying software they don't control - the skies the limit at abusive microtransactions, lootboxes and in game stores.
That also means level editing, free maps and mods need to be scaled back because it interferes with profits.
MMO's argument for online portions of their service were based around that scale. There are plenty of online only games, loot boxes, microtransactions that can happen outside of MMO/RPG style games, some existed before MMO's even took off.
To ignore the fact that MMO's absolutely do need more hardware and need to be split between client and server shows a clear lack of understanding or knowledge about client-server models, large multiplayer games and development.
MMO = marketing term for computer program instructions
Is there any reason as a gamer for any program to be split between two computers when companies goals are to maximize profit, not produce the best games?
So no I understand perfectly well. The fact that private servers exist for world of warcraft and ultima online demonstrates your comment as a farce.
You could argue even a game like Minecraft (which is not totally DRM free) includes the server code, so players (and companies) can setup servers as they please.
The only reason I can see for a game to not include the server-side code is to hold the users hostage.
5-10 years from now, nobody will be able to play these games because the servers will be discontinued. We effectively "rent" them because of this.
I downed your post because resorting to personal insults is against HN's guidelines.
To your point, there exists MMOs that are validly massively multiplayer, online games. There are also many games that didn't need to be architected as an MMO and, from a cynical viewpoint, that could be seen as a land-grab taking control away from the consumer.
You have glossed over a lot of other facts in your pursuit of black-and-white here. For example, Quake 3 and UT2004 had CD Keys. Likewise in regards to Steam, it's not that there are zero benefits to that delivery mechanism over how things were beforehand. Automated install and patching is a far cry from the messing each person had to do previously.
It's certainly debatable whether these things are a net positive or negative, and IMO it's becoming increasingly a negative as time moves on.