The future of always online games...

What do you think is going to happen when servers eventually get shut down for games like Destiny, Diablo III or Need for Speed? Will the games be patched so they can function without an internet connection? Will they just become a paper weight?

What do you think?

Most of them will just become completely unplayable, I imagine. Companies like EA are too anti consumer to bother patching them with offline modes. I hope hackers and modders can come up with something in that scenario.

The physical copies will make great coasters. They don't care enough about the players to add anything down the road.

They will go the way of the Do do, unless somebody sets up servers for them like it has been done to PS2 and Xbox games.

John Riccitiello proposed we would be paying for bullets. He is probably right.

When popularity dips, they will die or be re-branded with a new business model.

They will either be coasters when the servers get shut down or be coasters with empty servers running like Titanfall.

They'll just go down, which sucks.

I'm playing The Crew at the moment, and this game is great, aside from the fact that it's always online. At least you can pause a race, as opposed to Need for Speed.

This is why I never buy always online games, I'd rather own my game than be worried it'll end up becoming entirely unplayable no matter what I do.

See here is the weird thing, I would purchase a game like WoW, or Guild Wars with the expectation and understanding that the game exists because of an online infrastructure, that's the only way it can work and will at one point have to be shutdown. Games like Destiny, Need for Speed and Diablo III though, they don't need an online infrastructure to work at a core single player level, it just blows my mind how this has become a thing and honestly it's likely trials for future games where they can shut one down to force you to upgrade to the next game.

Look at MLB the Show, they shutdown the network for the game from the previous year so people who want to play online have to move to the newest version, it's insanity.

Not sure what Diablo 3 is doing on that list. I can play my PS4 version just fine offline.

PC version requires authentication, also lol @ Diablo on a console...

It's actually a lot of fun playing it in local co op, even on consoles. Read the review for the one on PS4 and XB1, works great with a controller.

Local co op>online any way you try to spin it.

Truth.

Cant say I care enough either way. Once I finish a game it is done and put away. The only older games I play are on emulators. The online thing only affects collectors and people without internet. I doubt in 10 years I'd want to fire up Destiny when no one is playing anymore.

Play them while they're relevant, don't let them sit in your backlist indefinitely.

HOPEFULLY, with the ability to do virtual servers with companies renting out servers/networks on the fly from third parties, gaming companies might not require the ability to manage their own servers for individual games and instead can just utilize a virtual server network when its needed for any number of games.

Anyhow, I'm less worried about servers being shut down these days than people just stop playing these games online first, what good is online if nobody sticks around to play the MP features.

@nyadc: mlb simply doesnt make enough money. If they sole cod numbers then mlb the show 2010s servers would still be up lol

@nyadc: but yea this always online trend is definitely scary. But hey its evoulutions nature to get better and worse at the same time , as time itself continues.

I thought this was well known and we already have tons of historical precedent.

They have no future.

NBA 2K prints money and they shut down the servers for those after a year. They want people to buy the new versions. Has nothing to do with server money.

Yep. I have three copies of Diablo 3 on PC LAN in my home for my various gaming PCs (always tied to Blizzard's DRM). I beat it and had fun, but I wished the whole time I didn't have to deal with Blizzard DRM and wished I didn't have to buy three copies to do local co op.

Had I known I could have waited for a DRM free console version of Diablo 3 with added local 4 player co op, I would have waited, but Blizzard were reluctant to announce the eventual console port (all we had was rumors). Of course, I lived in the time when we had rumors for Diablo 2 ports to console, and that Diablo 2 port never came to be, so I wasn't about to miss out on Diablo 3 (although, it didn't blow me away as I expected either). The end result is that I only have multiple copies of Diablo 2 PC for various home PCs I have because I love co op, although I have Diablo 1 on PC and the later released console port (couch co-op FTW!). I also have three unsellable copies of DRM filled Diablo 3 on PC, yay.

When the console versions released for Diablo 3, I jumped. Local co-op being added in is an instant win, a feature completely missing in the PC version.

They won't work unless communities make their own servers. Who cares? 10 years from now I'm not going to want to play old online games

@SolidTy: not only that but imo a loot grind game like Diablo is just more fun to play from the couch with a controller. The console ports of that game are excellent

@mems_1224: Definitely true from my experience.

I really don't think I'll care enough about Destiny or Diablo 3 when their servers shut down ten years from now.

They will be paper weight for sure. EA don't give a shit and the day the PS4 will be retro, no one will be able to play those online only games ... and they have so much update that those poor kids or adults will have to deal with glitchs and bugs ...

Maybe one day someone will dig up thousand of copies of those game that are now unplayable just like they did with ET a few years ago. But ine our case it wont even works

@NathanDrakeSwag: You got me there. Never looked at it that way. 2k does use wayyy more server hosting resources tho. If that fully makes sense lol. Havent played the show in a while but im sure the servers arent nearly as exspensive to maintain. So i wouldnt be surprised if the show switches to atleast 2 year long servers tho , with the ridiculous cod sells in mind tho. Witch will never happen. So this is all just blabber in the 1st place lol smart business move. But finding a way to not completely turn the servers off would be smarter.

This is why i dont really play online-focused games.

You have to feel sorry for the kids playing these games now, and try to do "nostalgia" in 20 years with them.

Fun game, more so then the new NFS.

Even Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash is more fun than the new NFS.

Not taking anything away from The Crew, I just don't like the new NFS :p

Trust me, pre-Wild Run The Crew is just poopoo even compared to the new NFS.

The new NFS is suffering from "nostalgia", which i'm a victim of it.

I hear it's quite enjoyable on PS4.

for people like him who probably doesn't have a real life friend...... having online.... well you get my point

diablo 3 can be played offline for consoles.

Well that escalated quickly.

lolz

There are 2 sides to Diablo 3 DRM, PC version gets all the seasons, leaderboards etc multiplayer features, which would be totally pointless to have on consoles because what's the point when people just edit the crap out of their characters? Personally I would not have played PC version as long as I did if it wasn't online only.

I'm okay with online only games when it actually benefits the game like D3

I love revisiting game. If a game is good or has an interesting story, or a setting worth re-exploring I'll surely come back to it one day.

There are games I've played countless times over: Donkey Kong Country 2, Max Payne, Half Life, Age of Empîres, ... and online games where I have found many years worth of enjoyment. Way too many too list.

Games are worth staying alive longer than 2 years. Games are worth having a legacy.

And developers that take passion in their work will want their game to played many years down the road too. The developers of Half Life still have their games be talked about, even if the last entry was 8 years ago. Counter Strike, a mod from 99, is still one of the most popular games on steam to this day...
So always online can piss right the **** off! It hampers the true creatorship of the developers and kills the legacy of the game.

Gamers and developers should decide how long a game's life is supposed to be. Not crappy market schemes.

The reason why i won't touch online only games

By the time those games get their servers shut down, the player count will be too small and insignificant to matter anyways. Only online MP games probably won't have longevity when there's so many more and new ones coming right after.

Thank you, I will never forget the first time I played an EA game and it gave me an abrasive message basically stating "you bought the game but we own the licensing and you will use it how we tell you. If you have a problem then DEAL"

Remember that time the ESA opposed a motion to make circumvention of DRM for the purposes of preservation legal?
Publishers would rather old games die and never be playable again, because they want you to buy and play new games which make them money. Publishers will eventually shut these games down, communities may or may not find a way to circumvent DRM.

With BF1942 it was apparently no more complicated than setting up a new master server and redirecting to it. That game is over a decade old though.

I don't expect to play the same game for 30 years so I don't care. If I really really wanted to there is emulation for that. Not sure why people care so much

Buying games like those, a gamer must accept one day the game wont be playable any more.

For those saying that the game becomes unplayable...what about posterity? Does that mean future generations will never be able to experience these games as they were intended?

I can see it going that direction, at which point I will bow out and stick with all the platforms before it. Still thousands of games already out that I'd like to play at some point.

I think we'll see consumer protection laws requiring the companies to release the executeables and server binaries to the public once they shut their official servers down.

Always online isn't going anywhere and it's going to become the norm soon. People are going to have to accept that. It's a brilliant form of DRM and a lot of games are built around the idea of multiplayer and connectivity. Persistent online servers open up a lot of gameplay options that would not work in a traditional, client setting.

Because always online isn't going anywhere and will be the norm, we'll see a change in how companies have to handle the servers. That's why I say they'll be required to release the server binaries so that people can run their own server.

It was just made into law (I think) that companies cannot shut down 3rd party master servers for games that they no longer provide a master server for. The company isn't required to maintain a master server for their game but they also cannot shut down others created after they stopped support.

Pretty much how I see it. One of the reasons I've amassed a large collection of physical games and systems over the years.

I've been considering where gaming is going for generations now, and I don't like where things are heading. Seems like these corporations are taking more and more away from the consumer, all while charging more at the same time. If Microsoft had actually gotten away with what they had intended to do all along, this slippery slope would be much farther along than it actually is right now.

At this point, I'm not even sure about next gen. We could see a full removal of physical media, and worse yet, all streaming content to ensure maximum DRM to impose on what this industry hates most: the consumer.

They will be dead you won't be able to play them anymore

Also Rainbow Six Siege, playing terrorist hunt solo is impossible without server connection.

It's going to suck damn hard when they close every server.

I don't buy those games so it doesn't matter.