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Comment by deadbeeves | Hacker News Reader

I think stuu99 is off-base in several of their points, but there's no denying that certain games have been online'd purely as a means of copy protection. Diablo 3 is a great example. It's a game that's perfectly enjoyable in single player, but they specifically moved parts off onto a remote server to prevent you from giving copies to your friends. They could have just as easily (in fact, probably more so) put everything the single player mode needs in the executable and required a login for multiplayer, as was done for Diablo 2, but they didn't. Even if you have no intention of playing online, you don't have option not to connect to Blizzard.

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Can't you use the auction house from single-player? If so, this is part of my point. This isn't some grand conspiracy to limit ownership of games. This is the kind of thing that more people want. They want the interconnectedness and that is an understated part of why gaming has been taking off as of the last decade.

There are a lot of things that are designed to limit how you can use your software, but gaming is one of the places that companies genuinely don't have to do that because the features that necessitate limiting how you use said software (eg. introducing anti-cheats and forcing you to be online) is stuff that people actually want.

I'm not saying players in general don't want those features. I'm saying companies are taking advantage of that fact in order to require connectivity.

I never played Diablo 3 (because it's online-only) so I honestly don't know if the auction house is available on single player or not, but I'm going to assume that it is. OK. What if I have no interest in the auction house? What if I'm somewhat interested in it, but would much rather not be forced to connect to any service in order to play and consider not using the auction house a fair trade? It would be trivial to design the game so that it only connects when you try to use the auction house and to remain offline otherwise. In fact such an implementation is much simpler than to arbitrarily move critical components of the game onto a remote server. The only reason to do that for an optionally single player game is copy protection.

So yes, people nowadays expect online features, but this is a fact that's convenient for companies. And no, it's not a conspiracy. A conspiracy is an agreement between parties to perform an illicit act. What we have here is various separate parties independently converging on the idea that eroding private property rights (namely, your ability to play the games you bought unimpeded by any external factors) ensures future profits. If you haven't seen it, I recommend Ross Scott's series on dead games, to see how destructive this practice is.

I mean, I know it's convenient for companies, but there are other ways to look at this, namely that it obsoletes actual DRM and provides you with something in return, which DRM doesn't. Or, to say it another way, there are worse fates.

That being said, even now, there are few genuinely single-player games that require an online connection to play. It's not a fast-growing trend by any means and, thus, not a threat. People love to bandy Diablo 3 about, but the thing is that it's the only game that they can reasonably bandy about and that was released 10 years ago in May. Or, to say it another way, if you're going to complain about something, maybe you'd better keep your references up to date.

Most games these days are on Steam. You can trivially make any game that uses only Steam's DRM playable without Steam and even trivially remove SteamStub. That emulator that I mentioned even lets you play "online" with friends via P2P, sans Steam or any third-party server. Is it entirely legal? No, but neither is making old games that forced you to keep the CD in the drive that new computers no longer have playable without the CD. Or, to say it another way, if you're so committed to that ideal, why aren't you doing what you can to make it possible to stay committed to that ideal?

>People love to bandy Diablo 3 about, but the thing is that it's the only game that they can reasonably bandy about and that was released 10 years ago in May.

Hardly. Diablo 3 is probably the most famous example (partly because it's so popular, partly because it's direct predecessor didn't have an always-online requirement), but hardly the only one. Google "online only single player game" and you're bound to find a list.

>making old games that forced you to keep the CD in the drive that new computers no longer have playable without the CD.

If I have a disc or any other physical item I can at least take measures to protect it. I could conceivably put the console with the disc inside it in a closet, come back in thirty years, and play the game. I could back it up and wait for someone to make an emulator for the console. If the game needs a remote server to be up to run, there is nothing I can do to ensure I can continue playing the game in the future (other than painstakingly reverse-engineer the server). That's difference between owning something and not: control.

> Hardly. Diablo 3 is probably the most famous example (partly because it's so popular, partly because it's direct predecessor didn't have an always-online requirement), but hardly the only one. Google "online only single player game" and you're bound to find a list.

If this is that big of an issue, shouldn't you already know the examples and be able to list them off?

> If I have a disc or any other physical item I can at least take measures to protect it. I could conceivably put the console with the disc inside it in a closet, come back in thirty years, and play the game. I could back it up and wait for someone to make an emulator for the console. If the game needs a remote server to be up to run, there is nothing I can do to ensure I can continue playing the game in the future (other than painstakingly reverse-engineer the server). That's difference between owning something and not: control.

Ah, yes, so instead of waiting for someone to reverse engineer the server, you're waiting for someone to reverse engineer the console so that it remains playable in perpetuity. That's definitely different.

I can list the two I've played: Elite Dangerous and Planetary Annihilation. Another one I can name is The Crew. Yes, there's not that many, but I never said it was a huge problem, I just responded to your assertion that the only reason such games are online only is because of what players want. That's plainly false.

>Ah, yes, so instead of waiting for someone to reverse engineer the server, you're waiting for someone to reverse engineer the console so that it remains playable in perpetuity. That's definitely different.

You're responding to a specific example rather than the underlying point. That point being: when you own something you're free to do with it as you please. You don't need to ask for permission to read a book you own, although you do need to physically have the book on you to do so, and it needs to be intact enough that you can understand what's printed on it. A PlayStation game on a CD follows those same rules. Always online games don't.

> I can list the two I've played: Elite Dangerous and Planetary Annihilation. Another one I can name is The Crew.

I don't know enough about Planetary Annihilation, but Elite: Dangerous and The Crew were definitively designed to instance you to make it feel like things were going on around you. The only functional difference between them and MMOs is the amount of players you see at once. They were made to be played online, allowing you to seamlessly move from going it alone to playing with others. This goes back to my "people want the interconnectedness" point. Allowing you to instance yourself out doesn't change that.

> You're responding to a specific example rather than the underlying point.

No, you're missing my point entirely, which is that there's a maintenance cost to perpetuity. It's just placed somewhere else in this case.

Elite Dangerous has a multiplayer mode, but also a single player mode. Single player is single player, there's no reason to be connected, other than to make sure the player has not done something naughty with their copy.

>No, you're missing my point entirely, which is that there's a maintenance cost to perpetuity. It's just placed somewhere else in this case.

And what you're missing is that "perpetuity" is a lie. In practice most online games don't even to ten years before the developers shut their servers down permanently. If you really love Elite and you think it's the best game ever, you can take measures to continue playing it today, 38 years after it came out. Do you think Elite Dangerous will continue being profitable for another 30 years?

> And what you're missing is that "perpetuity" is a lie.

You are now actively misrepresenting my point, which was that someone is going to have to reverse engineer something in order to maintain software. Disks don't last forever. They rot. Your copy of whatever in your PS2 for 30 years will potentially not come out unscathed. Other media has its own issues. PC games from that era simultaneously are getting harder to run and have their own DRMs that need removed.

Emulators are the only future-proof solution and they will undoubtedly need to be ported to new architectures in the future. The maintenance cost is somewhere. In this case, it's in removing ore reverse engineering the online-only components. You don't even have to reverse engineer everything - just enough to get it running. Look at Teknoparrot. Multiple games only barely work because they don't emulate the entire multiplayer backend.

This isn't an insurmountable task and you weren't about to be the one writing a PS2 emulator, so I'm not sure why you're so insistent that it's different. For you, anyways.

Yes, all physical objects degrade with time. Different pieces of software can change in incompatible ways. This is all well-known. That doesn't change the fact that if the only way your property can stop functioning is if it breaks down at the software or hardware level, it will likely continue working for a longer time than if it additionally needs someone else to continue powering a server somewhere.

>I think stuu99 is off-base in several of their point

Then you're going to have to answer: why did we lose dedicated servers in fps and LAN in modern games like starcraft 2, and many others.

Things that used to come inside the game, Descent 1-3, Warcraft 1-3, Diablo 1-2, quake 1-3 Doom 1-3.

All those games had multiplayer built into their exe's. So you have a lot of explainig to do why multiplayer networking has been ripped out of games like

Transformers FoC (an unreal engine game)

https://imgur.com/oWeY5Ps

And games like Ridge racer unbounded

https://steamcommunity.com/app/202310/discussions/0/61282346...

Games from pre-steam era, multiplayer still work because they were embedded inside the exe. So you have a lot of explaining to do claiming "your mmo's" are special and I'm wrong, the easiest explanation is mmo's are just stolen PC games and they've been ripping out networking code once they realized you were computer illiterate/irrational to an insane degree in 97 with the advent of ultima online, lineage, everquest, guild war 1, asherons call and wow.

FoC is an unreal engine game, so why would we need to sign in to a remote computer to play multiplayer, when unreal 1, UT2003, UT2004, didn't require that? Or could it be those were all honestly coded local applications before the mmo-backend apocalypse infected all of gaming.

You're responding to an argument I did not make. I specifically agreed with you that certain games have been crippled as a means of copy protection. Please try to read more carefully.

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