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Comment by baroffoos | Hacker News Reader

This is something I think we have been hit hard by with video games. The first wave of online enabled games has now had their servers shut down and the games rendered unplayable. One of my favorite childhood games from about 2006 (Viva Pinata) is now unplayable on windows because it used Games for Windows Live which has now shut down. The game is basically entirely offline and single player but is now unusable unless you use the xbox 360 version which works fine because it could be used entirely offline.

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Yes, that's the primary reason why I stopped playing most new games. I value the ability to fire up games that I bought 20 years ago (and I do this regularly), and I'm not willing to invest in any that depend on external services.

Same here. I even make a point to grab a cracked copy of any game I buy on steam so that if the service goes under, or they decide to remove it from my library (like when amazon secretly removed copies of "1984" from people's kindles) I'll still have access to the games I paid for.

That goes double for games that come with obnoxious required software like uplay, origin, denuvo, etc.

Check out Good Ol' Games, which includes modern gems like Witcher 3, Hollow Knight, Factorio, Stardew Valley, Indivisible.

Everything on GoG is DRM-free, simple .exe installers that should work without any servers.

Oh, yeah, GOG has quite a lot of my money!

I think a lot of these games are actually drm free on steam as well, gog just only lists drm free games so you can be sure its safe to buy.

I often run games outside of steam so I can let my bf use steam family share at the same time.

You are correct. Being on steam doesn't necessarily mean that a game has DRM. It's up to a game developer to implement steam's DRM or not. Check out the big list of DRM-free steam games:

https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games...

GoG also provides prebuilt DOSboxes and configurations to allow me to easily run older games, and games on Linux (I only use Linux at home, so that's a big win).

I'm not a fan of Steam, so that's not a real alternative for me.

GoG is run by the developers of Witcher, CD Projekt Red, they are eating their own dogfood.

I really hope someone is maintaining a list somewhere of games we've lost because of DRM or just short sighted design like in the case of Missing (https://www.amazon.com/Missing-PC/dp/B000271MCG) which was dependent on websites and email accounts that the company is either no longer around to maintain or no longer feels it worth maintaining.

Maybe, broadly speaking, that's just the way life is. Things exist for awhile and then they don't. Bands eventually stop touring and seeing them live is a thing of the past. The character of your city is likely quite different as compared to a generation ago. That amazing restaurant went out of business. If those servers were still up, would there be anyone on them to play against?

I can still play all of my c64 games and will be able to in 20 years. Some game I buy today not so much.

I don't expect a band to live forever to keep doing live shows, but if I buy their CD I don't expect someone to break into my home and take it at any point in the future, but plenty of people have lost their music because of shitty DRM schemes and for those who are entirely dependent on streaming their music they will very likely not be able to find some of their favorite songs later, especially for more obscure stuff. I'm glad that I was able to pass some of my favorite games and music and books to the next generation and that they can pass them on to their kids. My collection of favorites will outlive many of the new things they enjoy today.

Maybe that's how people think life is. It didn't used to be like that. It used to be better.

The 7" I bought when I was 10 still plays. So do the tapes I copied in school, though I've moved on from tape. The flacs and mp3s will be around as long as I have a server. I can still play Morrowind - I don't need a server up, and most -not all - online games spoil the game by being online. Quite happy with a LAN mode to play with partner or kids, or ad-hoc server mode to play WAN with friends.

Most online games have been updated so they aren't remotely the same game as they were - especially for things like MMOs, Spotify is an ephemeral radio station, Netflix is reducing what they have every month. Whether it's down to company closing, getting bored of keeping service up for an old game, or stopping your monthly sub, the rate of attrition is frightening.

>If those servers were still up, would there be anyone on them to play against?

It was a single player game. There was never anyone to play against. The online aspects were for DRM only.

I think this happened to many early movies. There are many lost films where we only have written descriptions and still images left. A whole system for film archiving was put in place to prevent this from happening as it was deemed too important to be left into hands of producers. I believe in order to put something out nowdays you are required to provide a copy to archive. Not sure if it is world wide requirement or local though.

Not just online games. Imagine if tomorrow Steam shuts down, you can bet we will lose access to thousands of games forever (as in, some of them are not actively maintained out of Steam anywhere).

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