Castle Magus

"Video Games Europe, an industry lobby group, is now lobbying against the Stop Killing Games movement. I think we're stirring up the hive."

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I (usually) watch these things, but I don't usually post them here, but this time, I just wanted to make a comment in response to something he showed in the video. He's talking, here, about all the "complexities" of making an online-only game that simply are not needed anymore once the game has reached the end of its life and has been (in an ideal world) simply released into the wild, rather than removed and destroyed forever, and there's a big list of "Examples of microservices NOT NEEDED for an end-of-life copy of a game." I'm just going to transcribe that list here. (pre-post EDIT) And boy did that take far longer than I was anticipating going into it, whew. (/pre-post EDIT)

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( Massive bullet point list behind cut (seriously, you don't really need to look at this shit if you don't want to) )

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That's probably not even close to everything on the full list. That's just what was scrolled on the screen in this video. (Also, my only real concern was making sure I didn't fuck up the formatting/nesting/look of the list [which I did a couple times and had to fix during the creation of this post], so if there were any typos made during the process of transcribing the actual list items that weren't in the list as shown in the Youtube video, then that is my fault, and I'll fix it if I notice it, but I don't really give much of a fuck anymore, either way.)

My comment is simply this: I don't need any of that shit at all, ever in any video game I play (or if that shit is in games I play or have played in the past [e.g. No Man's Sky, Minecraft, Star Trek Online, The Secret World, etc.], it doesn't directly affect me, because I ignore/don't use any of it as best as I am able, and if I must use/interact with such shit, I do so only extremely grudgingly). I don't care if the game is at "end-of-life" or if it's a newly bought game that only just released today (not that I buy games on release day anymore, of course). That is a big, huge, colossal part of why I don't play online-only games at all, to begin with. I simply don't play games that have that shit in them and avoid like the plague games that do have that shit in them (and I know about it). That is all. Simple as that.

So if, as Video Games Europe claims, "[the proposals put forward by Stop Killing Games] would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create" by, presumably, not having all that stupid, worthless horseshit in them (or by having to turn off/remove all that stupid, worthless horseshit when such a game reaches "end-of-life"), even if that was true, which it almost assuredly is not (as Ross himself states), then my only response is this:

FUCKING GOOD. KILL THAT SHIT FOREVER, AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED.

The modern AAA video game industry, in a nutshell.

The sooner this lumbering beast topples into a tar pit and goes extinct, the better.

Also, on a more specific note, god how sick and tired I am of even hearing the term "extraction shooter."

No real comment on this one. The tags below are pretty much the gist of the topics this clip was about.

(Also, this is yet another "the 'diablo iii' and 'asinine anti-singleplayer trend' tags are serving as the de facto 'blizzard sucks' and 'asinine anti-offline trend' tags, respectively" post.)

I just want to say again that the first of the only two things I know about this game is that it has a custom PS5 controller skin. The other thing I know about this game, as of the above video, is that it is apparently some ugly "hero shooter" game that I will never play and never would have played, even if it had been marketed well, because I simply do not touch multiplayer-only dogshit like this or Overwatch or Team Fortress or <insert flavor-of-the-month multiplayer-only dogshit game here>.

(EDIT) And now this is also a Mord's post my comments post. (/EDIT)

Thanks, Sony, for giving me yet another reason to never buy this game, on Steam or PS5 or anywhere else. Not that I would have bought it to start with, mind you, since it's a multiplayer only[1] "live service" game. Fuck to hell forever with that asinine horseshit. About the only thing they could do that would be even worse than this would be to add in Denuvo after the fact.

I mean, hell, even ignoring the facts that (1) I had no interest in this game to start with, and (2) I even have a PSN account already[2], and (3) I've bought games on Steam in the past that required a third-party account, I still think it's terrible, just on general principles, for them to add this shit in after the fact.

I don't mind watching other chucklefucks play it, because it's funny (more because of the chucklefucks than because of the game itself), but that's about it.

[1] - Or, at the very least, it's a game where you still must be online even to (try to) play it """""singleplayer/solo."""""

[2] - Well, I had one a decade ago, though I haven't tried to log into it at all since then... *pause to check* ...yeah, it's still there, though I had to reset my password in order to access it. I set up 2-factor authentication on it, as well, which I hadn't done before, so I guess it was a good thing I bothered to try it, regardless. And now, back to forgetting that I have a PSN account that I'll probably never use for anything again. In the increasingly unlikely event that I ever do buy another Sony console at some point, at least it should be there, for what little that's worth.

Full headline, due to PC Gamer's typically garrulous headlines that don't fit in Dreamwidth's subject field: "Gamers seek legal win that would stop developers from rendering online games unplayable: 'It is an assault on both consumer rights and preservation of media'"

"The organizer of 'Stop Killing Games' hopes to get France and other governments to examine the legality of live service shutdowns."

I'd prefer the modern video game industry to just stop making "live service" "games" in the first place, but I wish these guys the best of luck with the already existing horseshit. If they can get governments to crack down on this, then more power to them, I guess. I'm not going to be holding my breath with this one, though.

There are some pretty misguided, unsound takes down in the comments under the article (from, probably, industry reputation management drones), too.

(In the case of this specific The Crew game, I don't give a fuck about it and won't lose a wink of sleep when it goes away forever, because I don't even care that much about offline singleplayer racing games, let alone online shit, but that's just me. I still don't like that it's going away, though, just on general principle, even if I personally never played it and never would play it. Also, I don't see why anyone at all should be interested in Ubisoft's new online-only shit racing game, The Crew: Motorfest or whatever, because we'll be seeing this exact same thing happening again in 10 years or so with that one, too.)

Also, welcome to the new "to hell with live service games" tag. There's a fair bit of overlap with other tags, but whatever.

Full headline, because PC Gamer loves being verbose with their headlines: "Helldivers 2 players find creative ways to punish toxic hosts: 'I ran with your super samples to the edge of the mission area, and kept on running'"

To put it succinctly: this article, and the comments under this article, demonstrate yet more reasons why I have no interest in playing Helldivers 2 (or any other, similar, flavor-of-the-month, multiplayer-only video game).

Real headline, which wouldn't fit in the Dreamwidth subject field because of course it wouldn't: "EA and a studio reportedly invested $125 million making a new singleplayer IP with zero microtransactions, no grind, a shorter running time, and guess what: 'No one bought it'"

I simply decided to replace that headline with a slightly shorter, more accurate alternative.

Also, this here article is the first time I've ever heard of this game, so it looks like all that money EA spent on advertising this crap was well spent. *eye roll* And as one of the comments mentions, Immortals of Aveum is one of the most generic, banal titles for a video game that I've heard in a while. To me, it just conjures images of garbage-tier MOBA games like Defense of the Ancients or League of Legends or whatever. *shrug*

Of course, the biggest reason this game didn't sell well is almost assuredly due to the very simple fact that it was a game that was published by Electronic Arts. You know, a publisher that has been notoriously anti-singleplayer for over a decade now. Why should anyone trust them to publish a singleplayer game that is actually worth a damn? You reap what you sow, EA.

"Several live service and online games had to close their doors this year."

Seriously, how many books, movies, TV shows, songs, paintings, etc., once they have been created and released, have you ever heard of having to "close their doors" or "shut down"? A TV show being canceled after only a season or whatever is the only thing that comes close, but even then, it's not like the season that was already released suddenly disappears forever, the way this fucking "live service video game" shit does. It's goddamn asinine.

Normal, real-ass video games simply don't need to "shut down," once they're released. Even if you may have to resort to playing them "any way you can," as SNES Drunk would say, you can still fucking play them. You won't even be able to do that much with these online only pieces of shit, though. Maybe, just maybe, they can stop with this "live service" shit and get back to making normal, real-ass video games. Yeah, right, fat chance of that. Thank goodness for the sensible few (though fewer with every passing year) who do still make normal, real-ass video games.

Honestly, though, in the case of these particular games mentioned in the article... nothing of value was lost, simply by virtue of them being "games as a service" to start with. Nothing of value as far as I am concerned, anyway, as I never touched and never would have touched them with a ten-foot pole at all, explicitly because of their very nature as "live service" shit. That doesn't mean I'm not still going to rant about the fact that such things exist in the first place, because they're all going to "close their doors" sooner or later. Every last fucking one of them.

Link to comic.

Well... I mean... the actual problem there is that you're playing Diablo IV in the first place. *shrug*

Also, it's kind of funny (weird funny, not ha ha funny), because last time, they were mocking gamers who complained about this stuff. Now, they're complaining about this stuff. Go figure.

(Yet another "'diablo iii' tag is my de facto 'blizzard sucks' tag" and "I wish I'd called it 'asinine anti-offline trend' instead of 'asinine anti-singleplayer trend' but oh well" type of post.)