> I feel like that list is a bit misleading and your comment ignores how the PC gaming community always wanted to run their own dedicated servers and games not allowing to do so often got a lot of flack.
I was responding to the parents assertion that server software shipped with games 10-12 years ago, I did a google search for "games shipped in 2008" (to be charitable and check the oldest games) and I took the first online capable games that were available on PC with no cherry picking.
Whether they got flack or not is irrelevant, the vocal minority, especially in PC gaming is very dangerous. To give an example we got a lot of feedback on our game that we needed a dedicated PVP mode, so we spent a year (and many multiple millions of euros) making it, and never achieved anything over 100 concurrent players. It was well marketed, and you could say it's "not good", but our evidence shows that nobody even tried it enough to determine it's not good.
> Call of Duty games come to mind and afaik Battlefield games used to have that option too until EA changed it to “You can rent servers from us!”.
renting servers from us(tm) is decidedly _not_ a server package that you host yourself, although it's paid for, I'm not sure if it covers the costs of running. I think it probably doesn't given the fact that this isn't an option anymore.
There's a small irony here because if it's expensive, less people will buy it, which means maintaining the software that lets you do it becomes more expensive because it's not amortised among lots of people and so it gets even more expensive. (in a death spiral kind of way).
Regardless; your comment talks exclusively about PC titles, but the majority of AAA titles that have server backends are cross platform. I think this is part of the problem when talking about games in general. The PC guys like games tailored to their platform and really despise (or generally dislike) console players and how they interact with games.
I can't say it's unfair but if we were to sell only on PC, releasing a server package and making directory services, we would not have covered the cost of making the game by even a third. And I know that because we have pretty decent consumer market knowledge, it's a requisite.
> I did a google search for "games shipped in 2008" (to be charitable and check the oldest games)
In 2008, I was playing (typical example among others) Warcraft 3, which shipped in 2004 (and FWIW supports LAN play, without any server at all, as the third item on the main menu). I suspect this may explain some of your confusion (ie, at any given point in time, most software in use shipped before that point in time). No comment on the object-level argument though; I don't like online play in the first place.
Sorry, I think we somehow ended up talking passed each other.
Parent said that "if we go back 10-12 years and games had dedicated server software", tried to find some examples games that are of similar deployment to mine (IE; multi-platform AAA games with network play) to see if that assertion held true.
It seems like, aside from Valves games (which exist on XBox afaik) most do not offer a dedicated server software.
If we go far enough back (2004) then there's only the Xbox which had network capability, meaning that there's not so many networked games that work multi-platform.
I think it's inferred but when I say "cross platform" I mean Windows and whatever the presiding consoles are.
> Sorry, I think we somehow ended up talking passed each other.
I think so, yes.
> "if we go back 10-12 years and games had dedicated server software"
Assertion was specifically PC games, and I read it to mean games that people (PC users) 10-12 years ago were playing (regardless of whether console ports existed, or when they came out), which I think was the intended interpretation.
From what you've said, it sounds like the addition of network functionality to consoles was contemporaneous with PC games losing working peer/private-server functionality, which seems in line with cwhiz's position, if not their timeline.
> I think it's inferred but when I say "cross platform" I mean Windows and whatever the presiding consoles are.
I vehemently disagree with this, but I think it's mostly a difference of terminology, so I'm disinclined to argue it versus just ad-hocing around the problem[0].
I'm a huge linux enthusiast, so I share your dislike of "cross-platform" meaning consoles and Windows. I couldn't think of a better terminology though.
Linux (plus other unix and unix-like) exclusive here; I actually don't mind "cross-platform" for "console A or console B", but describing a mouse-and-keyboard game as "cross-platform" implies it works on other mouse-and-keyboard platforms, which in practice amounts to either OSX (which... sucks, basically) or unix (linux/bsd/etc tend to be compatible enough that you can get anything from one working on another with enough hammering).
> I couldn't think of a better terminology though.
Well "games that run on both PC and console" works, but it's a bit unwieldy.
> I was responding to the parents assertion that server software shipped with games 10-12 years ago
Fair enough, I guess the 10-12 year timeframe isn't far enough in the past. Tho I do remember official servers for L4D2 being a thing, in addition to the ability for players to run their own, on their own hardware.
> Whether they got flack or not is irrelevant, the vocal minority, especially in PC gaming is very dangerous.
It wasn't a "vocal minority" when the change happened because the community hosting servers themselves used to be the norm before companies stopped shipping dedicated server software with their games.
In that context, the flack was well deserved as we can now see the impact it had on the overall gaming landscape, namely: Taking away the players ability to run their own servers, which means players are now at the mercy of the company to decide when a multiplayer-only game will stop being playable.
That wasn't an issue when dedicated server software was commonly shipped with games, back then players could just set up a server on their own hardware, extending the life of the game way past official support, and allowing them to keep playing the game they paid money for.
> renting servers from us(tm) is decidedly _not_ a server package that you host yourself, although it's paid for, I'm not sure if it covers the costs of running.
But that wasn't the point, the point there is that while technically players can now still get "their own servers" these are not actually "their own servers", they are still at the mercy of the company supporting the game and actually offering that option, while at the same time giving players zero ability to customize the hardware and more advanced server settings.
It's the gaming equivalent of "outsourcing into the cloud instead of running your own hardware".
> Regardless; your comment talks exclusively about PC titles, but the majority of AAA titles that have server backends are cross platform.
My comment is specifically talking about the time when games would still ship with their own dedicated server software so players could set them up on their own hardware.
Which has by now pretty much died out because the closest thing to that which still exists is the EA variant of "We can rent you the server, but you still can't use your own hardware".
> I can't say it's unfair but if we were to sell only on PC, releasing a server package and making directory services, we would not have covered the cost of making the game by even a third.
As a consumer I consider it very unfair, particularly in the context that for quite a while it worked quite well, it was the de-facto way how multiplayer was facilitated.
Which by now has been completely replaced with "games as a service" and P2P based matchmaking, where publishers have the ultimate say how long you are allowed to play the game, even when players would be willing to pay for the server and the bandwidth themselves.
Why take that option away? Why put these artificial expiration dates on the games? It's just a very extreme change, particularly considering that to this day one can still find privately hosted servers for all kinds of games from 20 years ago.
This works because the dedicated server software wasn't "locked away", as such these games had their life extended by decades. Something that will be utterly impossible with the vast majority of modern releases where the dedicated servers are pretty much in their own little "walled garden" as to best facilitate MTX and have the ability to just shut the game down once it ain't considered profitable anymore or the publisher wants to force the player base into the newest release of the franchise.
Nobody is arguing that companies should pay for servers indefinitely, all that people are asking for is the ability to run their own servers as not to have their games artificially made obsolete when the publisher decides to shut down all the official servers.
I was responding to the parents assertion that server software shipped with games 10-12 years ago, I did a google search for "games shipped in 2008" (to be charitable and check the oldest games) and I took the first online capable games that were available on PC with no cherry picking.
Whether they got flack or not is irrelevant, the vocal minority, especially in PC gaming is very dangerous. To give an example we got a lot of feedback on our game that we needed a dedicated PVP mode, so we spent a year (and many multiple millions of euros) making it, and never achieved anything over 100 concurrent players. It was well marketed, and you could say it's "not good", but our evidence shows that nobody even tried it enough to determine it's not good.
> Call of Duty games come to mind and afaik Battlefield games used to have that option too until EA changed it to “You can rent servers from us!”.
renting servers from us(tm) is decidedly _not_ a server package that you host yourself, although it's paid for, I'm not sure if it covers the costs of running. I think it probably doesn't given the fact that this isn't an option anymore.
There's a small irony here because if it's expensive, less people will buy it, which means maintaining the software that lets you do it becomes more expensive because it's not amortised among lots of people and so it gets even more expensive. (in a death spiral kind of way).
Regardless; your comment talks exclusively about PC titles, but the majority of AAA titles that have server backends are cross platform. I think this is part of the problem when talking about games in general. The PC guys like games tailored to their platform and really despise (or generally dislike) console players and how they interact with games.
I can't say it's unfair but if we were to sell only on PC, releasing a server package and making directory services, we would not have covered the cost of making the game by even a third. And I know that because we have pretty decent consumer market knowledge, it's a requisite.