6d ago

Will all these multiplayer games being released without support for LAN or hosting our own servers no longer be multiplayer when the company shuts down the servers?

Seems like there's going to be a point where people are noticing the games they spent money on don't work as they should anymore because the servers get shut down.

How would you feel if most of the multiplayer games you spent money on suddenly stopped being multiplayer because the business decided it's not worthwhile for them to keep the servers running?

19 comments

Thought that was just stat quo since call of duty or madden started pumping out annual games. I never checked but I assume I can't boot up Madden 2011 and still find servers to play on.
- Which is a shame.
  I'll always be able to play World at War multiplayer because it supports LAN and player-hosted servers.
  I don't know if the newer ones support LAN or hosting our own servers, but if they don't then it would mean we're essentially renting access to the game's multiplayer features.
  It really means we're going backwards just to make businesses richer than us even richer at our expense.
- They've been putting out annual releases for a long time, and Call of Duty used to still have LAN. It doesn't look like Madden ever had LAN, from a quick search of the old covers, which would list the features the game supported, but it was pretty common even in console games back then.
  
  Can confirm, I remember when Madden introduced online multiplayer, and there was a small kerfuffle because there was no way to bypass their servers. I remember having the conversation with my buddies that it didn't matter, because we would all prefer to play together on the couch in the same room, and playing strangers on the internet didn't sound appealing.
  
  Yeah, I’ve never played Madden online. That’s very much a couch game to me still. Not that I’ve played it much in years. I picked up my first copy in over a decade a couple years ago when it was on sale at the end of the season.

19 comments