EA Shutting Down Video Game Servers Prematurely 341
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the sixty-dollar-yearly-fee dept.
from the sixty-dollar-yearly-fee dept.
Spacezilla writes "EA is dropping the bomb on a number of their video game servers, shutting down the online fun for many of their Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 games. Not only is the inclusion of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles odd, the date the games were released is even more surprising. Yes, Madden 07 and 08 are included in the shutdown... but Madden 09 on all consoles as well?"
I know this is EA and not Blizzard, (Score:5, Interesting)
but my buddy who is still semi-involved in the BNET-D [wikipedia.org] legal debacle can use this type of thing in that court case.
I for one think the whole company run server idea is a good one, but I think they should release code for every game as well for this very reason. Custom servers were half the fun of old Unreal Tournament games, and I know a lot of people who are into custom Enemy Territory servers.
Remember, the reason BNET-D started to begin with is Bizzards servers sucked back in the day, as far as I'm concerned this sort of bull shit justifies that sort of thing.
Why the need to shut down anything (Score:5, Interesting)
Luckily for us (Score:3, Interesting)
Odd? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
Its a short sited probably ultimately self defeating goal. I was listening to PBS business report just last night and they were interviewing some economics professors who were discussing how the move to always maximize share holder value has not actually lead to better share holder returns over the longer time period of the past two decades.
They also pointed out one company P&G pretty well stayed on the build new business and protect the customers perception of value, noting that it outperformed the market over those two decades. Now obviously you'd need to go through alot more data to reach sound conclusions.
I do think there is enough evidence out there that a longer term view eventually yeilds better returns. We should try and break the 18mo CEO cycle.
Re:So the rule is (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Money, Money, and Money. (Score:2, Interesting)
I've owned every Madden since 06 on the Xbox360 and a few on the GameCube
One question, WHY? Are the new releases *that* different from the old? Shelling out money to EA like that is what has encouraged then to keep shovelling out essentially the same crap - often even worse because of the corners cut to do so for cheap - year after year.
I'm glad to hear you've broken the cycle, but I do have to wonder why you bought into it in the first place? Note that I'm not much of a "madden" fan so perhaps it's just something beyond my understanding, the various releases haven't seemed that different to me overall with the exception of better graphics over time.
Re:Blizzard didn't cooperate (Score:4, Interesting)
Blizzard could have provided a simple TCP/IP-based API for them to call to verify a key. Then Blizzard could keep all the details secret, and the bnetd folks could still build in key verification.
Re:2009 was last year, move with the times (Score:4, Interesting)
one more reason to avoid EA games.
One more reason to avoid any game that depends on its publisher's servers. If I want to play Quake online I still can, and that came out well over ten years ago.
4x4 Evo2 came out 10 years ago and uses private servers. But they publisher let the community take them over and it still works. But EA doesn't understand that kind of loyalty, and would never do it. It is why they will never get my money.
Re:What Happened? (Score:4, Interesting)
EA was never great, even back then. What made EA huge is they were simply "good" games, and they could raise enough money to buy out all of their competition.
This gave EA yet more leverage with retail... and when all the indie retail shops and smaller chains folded leaving pretty much just GameSpot... well, that pretty much killed off everything else in the ecosystem. Trip Hawkins was a total douche, and set the stage for who EA is today.
EA is like a corporate amoeba, with all the powers of Microsoft and Monsanto rolled into one. I'm honestly curious why EA hasn't just put out their own hardware platform, but the answer is probably because they don't "need" to, and they're much more powerful controlling all of the platforms from behind the scenes.
EA is pretty much the reason I have AVOIDED consoles, and always stuck with PC games, where you have many more choices. I did get a PS3, mainly for Blu-Ray and as a media center.
Someone gave me a steering wheel and pedal set as a gift, so I bought NASCAR 09 for the PS3.
Here's what I expect of any game: that it will be frozen in time, and obviously not contain 2010 players cars, or information.
Putting the "year" in the title should simply designate what year or version I bought... just like say Microsoft Word or Gentoo versions.
What I did NOT expect is that EA had a remote doomsday switch for these games, so they can kill off the old version.
If that's the case (and it looks like NASCAR 09 is scheduled for termination in Europe) I'm seriously fucking pissed.
We all say "boycott XXX" and "I'll never buy from XXX", but when a cool game comes out memories get short.
But if you shell out a ton of money for a game, it's YOURS.
They can call it "taking down the servers", but I call it theft and when my game stops working, EA will have burned me in a way that I can't EVER forget.
Re:Money, Money, and Money. (Score:1, Interesting)
Its double - low-triple digits tops. Everyone has migrated to 2010, the same thing happens every year, and these announcements have come out like clock work. If no one is online and the server goes down, does it make a sound? (Aside from all the angst heard around here).
Posting anon for obvious reasons.
Re:Money, Money, and Money. (Score:3, Interesting)
People say "$60 for a new roster", not realizing that accurate portrayal of the players and stats is probably the #2 reason people buy these games. I don't play sports games since NFL blitz, but if I was going to buy NCAA 10 I would want my school's players and stats to be represented, otherwise why even bother, just make a robot space football game.
I know sports is antithetical to most slashdotters but a lot of people into sports enjoy the stats, enough so that a lot of them are into fantasy football. While I'm sure they could put out a roster update for $20 they seem to get enough people who are perfectly willing to spend $60