For example I never played Diablo 3, not even in a friend house or a demo (if there is one, I never checked). Ditto for Sim City 5, despite me being a huge fan of Sim City 4.
I nagged EA to let me fix SimCity 4 bugs, but they didn't help.
I found some former employees and nagged them about stuff, interestingly instead the result was being informed they were trying to organize the release of EASTL, so I nagged EA about THAT instead, and kept talking to the employees. That part DID work.
https://github.com/electronicarts/EASTL
Even with that I still couldn't figure out how to make a patch for SC4 though. (I want to patch out RDTSC, that is the source of many, many of its bugs. SimCity 4 uses RDTSC to count cycles, that is what RDTSC was supposed to do when originally released, but Intel later changed it to count time instead of cycles, SC4 crashes on modern machines for example is because of that).
And the issue applies to other games and intermittent play too.
A lot of the existing infrastructure is very poorly maintained but due to Telstra being privatised back in the 90's but still owning the infrastructure (Under their Wholesale division) the government essentially still has to pay them a fuckton of money to put any new cables in the ground using "Their" conduits.
Rupert Murdoch (who owns Foxtel and a large number of newspapers) is highly right-wing and heavily supported the right-wing government. That government has been changed out since then, but we're left with the lasting effects of their decisions.
I just spent the last month in Colorado mountains doing web development without an internet connection (I walked to the nearest spot on occasion for email). We do exist.
In 2019, cumulative PSPS time was nearly one week (though I logged it at the time I forget the exact number now, something like 150ish hours).
For clarity: living outside SV, my ISP is Comcast (Xfinity).
EDIT: I'd like to add that phone tethering isn't a great fallback (though it's better than nothing), as literally everyone begins using their cell connection for everything which causes the latency to be very high and the speed to be frustratingly low.
Except if every game pulled this crap, then you wouldn't be able to play anything while your internet is down.
When you buy DRM'ed media, you are merely renting it for an unspecified duration.
* If the current IP owner didn't make a mess of the remastering process (in an aesthetic or technical sense)
* If the remaster is free of defects that make the game unplayable for seasoned users of that game
* If you have the target platfrom of choice that the remaster targets.
In other words, you would have to be very lucky.
Being able to play a game in 10 years, play it offline, or sell it would always be surprising to me. So I wouldn't assume those things to be possible when I buy it.
That obviously makes fewer products worth buying, which saves me money. But quite often both for games and othewr media I come to the conclusion "Yes, I'm happy to pay $60 to play this for 2 weeks even if I never play it again". So long as that's the calculation, there is rarely any disappointment.
10 years passing in the real world shouldn't mean anything to a medium that's frozen in time (like all fiction is). It's still possible to play N64 cartridges, watch VHS tapes, read books. Until they fall apart, that's how long you've got to enjoy them, but they won't do so quickly if you take great care of them. You will be able to pass them on as heirlooms or co-experience them with your descendants. It's a treasured, very human activity. If we don't have memories AND something to care for in the present, what do we even live for? It's not enough to live in the present, we must remain in touch with our heritage.
No, I mean I think that's a shame - but I just factor it into the equation.
I'm not describing what's acceptable, I'm describing what I think I'm getting for my money, which can be a factor in whether I decide to purchase something at all, or whether I'm happy/disappointed with it. So if I buy a AAA game now for $80 I'll be happy if I can run it at all for 5 years. If that isn't enough for me to buy it, I won't.
There of course is a secondary question here too: should I buy these games even though I'm then contributing to this poor state of affairs when I buy DRM games rather than voting with my wallet? I don't consider that (Although I'd avoid e.g. buying the Oculus heeadset because of the Facebook thing, but that's a whole different level of evil and also affects me personally more).
> It's still possible to play N64 cartridges, watch VHS tapes, read book
And there are probably tons of things from the period after those (2000-2020) that are forever lost because their DRM servers are dead etc. And tbh. it doesn't make me even a little bit sad.