Codemasters Shuts Down GRID Online Multiplayer 162
crookedvulture writes "This is why gamers make such a fuss about being able to host their own dedicated servers. Codemasters has shut down the online multiplayer component of three-year-old racing game GRID because a third party declined to renew its contract to host PC and PlayStation 3 servers for the game. Folks with the Xbox 360 version will still be able to play online, but Codemasters doesn't offer much in the way of an apology for everyone else. Perhaps it's time for game publishers unwilling to release dedicated servers to be required to maintain their own multiplayer servers for a set number of years after a title's launch."
Even if they aren't taking offline... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I must have missed the part where Call of Duty was actually patching the exploits.
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there damn well is, if the game uses an automated matchmaker the servers should be run by the company, this way a lag switch only accomplishes lagging yourself
alternatively if the publisher continues to feel the need to rip off players by making them host their own games but giving them no control of the hosting or which server to connect to, monitor aggregate average lag and frequency of lag spikes compared to lag immed
Re:Even if they aren't taking offline... (Score:5, Interesting)
Punkbuster-type services and exploit patches are useful and absolutely necessary but the easiest way to avoid those problems is to get familiar with a clan or group that has their own servers and admin's that are there frequently enough to do something about it. Even with a game that is frequently updated, the exploits will never cease. Like for instance, throwing c4 30 feet in bad company 2... That's an actively patched game and that exploit has been around for at least 6 months...
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The only people who stop playing on servers with active (not "thin-skinned") administration are cheaters and lamers. Having run gaming servers for over 15 years, populations come from having a great environment to play in. Most hardcore players hate cheaters and don't want to be trolled by a 12 year old when playing their favourite game.
Someone getting kick/banned with a reason is usually followed by "lol" or "idiot" on most actively admined servers. I can't say I've ever seen someone emo fit and/or rage qu
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thick skinned admins don't tolerate cheaters either.. but they do tolerate the culture of the game they're running. in the communities I gamed in, pretty much all the players were thick skinned too. this allowed trash talk and good humor as well as the culling of emo whiners.
At least I know why I'm paying for on Live now (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that $5 a month finally gets me SOMETHING over PSN and Steam.
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That's because MS is hosting the servers. Of course, when MS feels like they don't want to host them anymore, they will go away, like with Shadowrun.
M$ is NOT hosting any servers. 360 games are P2P, MS simply flips a bit on matchmaking service and delists games so players lose option of connecting with other players.
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More regulation? (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps it's time for game publishers unwilling to release dedicated servers to be required to maintain their own multiplayer servers for a set number of years after a title's launch.
How about... no?
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So release the server software to the public and be done with it. That used to be very common, the problem is game companies would rather force people to upgrade.
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While there should be some limits on the length of applicability of this, I don't see why they shouldn't be required to release the server code so their existing players can host it somewhere or perhaps offer a partial refund for those who are still actively playing the game.
Or they could simply be made
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They have, by failure to act in setting up an alternative or allowing their users to do so without beaching the click-wrap license, deliberately made their product unfit for the purpose it was sold for.
Is this ignoring their EULA which disclaims them from the very thing you are whining about?
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Is this ignoring their EULA which disclaims them from the very thing you are whining about?
Most clauses like that are not enforceable. There are some rights and expectations in consumer protection law that can not be waived in small print that way.
Of course this will vary from territory to territory so what is enforceable via EULA in yours may not be in mine, and you might have different statutory rights to start with. The overall legal status of click-wrap EULAs is a big fat grey area in most places too - in many cases they are not worth the paper they are not written on.
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Agreed. Stupidest idea today. Ok, this is the only slashdot story I read today so far, but...
It's ridiculous to require a company to maintain servers at their own expense, for no reason other than some players are upset about a GAME. What, we set up the federal department of games who send goons after companies who start to run low on cash? Get a life kids!
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I fail to see why this is ridiculous? After all, I have bought and paid for a product, even one which may still be available in stores, bargain bins, Steam or something, and then the developer decides to not support a major component of said product?
What about you purchasing a car, and after 4 years, the car vendor simply stops producing spare parts for your car, because you can upgrade to a new car instead.
If you do this, release the dedicated servers, and let the community decide when the game should die
False Advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would respond to that with "The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999"
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/2083/schedule/2/made [legislation.gov.uk]
SCHEDULE 2
INDICATIVE AND NON-EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF TERMS WHICH MAY BE REGARDED AS UNFAIR
[...]
(c)making an agreement binding on the consumer whereas provision of services by the seller or supplier is subject to a condition whose realisation depends on his own will alone;
(d)permitting the seller or supplier to retain sums paid by the consumer where the latter decides n
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In the UK, a product generally has to work for 6 years (with exceptions for some things that just wear out), so they could probably be sued there - quite easy to do in the small claims court.
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5 years?
Are you 10?
I still play doom 2 online. I play 20+ year old games on my android phone via emulators.
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Yes. (Score:2)
It is good for a really nice arcade racer. The only knock against it is the painfully long load times entering AND exiting a race. There is just not much on the market that directly competes. The GT5/Forza are too sim for a lot of people and other franchises have some sort of gimmick. I haven't played it in a long time due to the fore mentioned load times though. Online will not be missed by me.
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In this case, there's no Grid 2 to chase players onto. Disappointing, really, I'd love to see one, and Dirt 3 doesn't count as a Grid sequel.
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I don't understand what you mean. I still play Battlefield 2. There are actually a lot of servers still online and lots that are full as well. Not like Battlefield 2142 where there's maybe one full server.
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They aren't legally responsible for updating out of date boxes at retail vendors now.
This has a corollary: they are legally responsible for updating the description on digital game stores that they publish on.
Anyone know if the Steam game page for this game is advertising multiplayer?
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As of this post, yes it is.
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Well, just look at it.
Can't, steampowered.com is blocked where I work.
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2. Codemasters, the company that developed the game is a UK company and this is taking place worldwide.
3. That's not what I'm suggesting they should do.
Kibu.com: Did they charge money for their service? If not, of course no one sued them for stopping service because there would literally be $0.00 in damages.
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First of all, please stop suggesting that you understand what I want or what I think, you've been wrong both times and I've already corrected you on it once. I don't really care which side would win such a case because I have no interest in playing the game, it's just raised a legal question that I found interesting. I don't think that the company should be forced to fund the service until they go bankrupt. Believe it or not, there are other possible remedies to the solution. They could refund part of
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Host own servers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like a good thing if you don't do it like "Alien vs Predator" where it's bloody annoying to find anyone to connect to. You've got a lot of servers to choose from in friendly match, all with 1-3 players, and it takes forever for any game to start.
Ranked matches are even more annoying where you're stuck in a queue for a very long time until someone starts a server, and if the guy running the server isn't winning near the end of the match he'll just leave, and everyone is forced out.
Seems like making a good multiplayer is hard.
I actually have GRID for PS3. Too bad I didn't get to play online.
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What game companies need to do is do it in stages:
Stage 1: This lasts from mid beta until about a month after the game is released. Have a bunch of servers spun up ready to handle the capacity.
Stage 2: This lasts from a month to a year. Resize the servers to what load the players are doing.
Stage 3: A year to two years: Publish the API the game uses for the servers, as well as skeleton source code for servers. Patch the game with the option to use third party servers.
Stage 4: 2-3 years out from game
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So long as the API is published, I don't see why games companies should have to publish source code - there can be some very nice stuff in that there source code that they don't want competitors to see (such as large realm balancing across physical nodes etc - don't want to give the competition a heads up on how you manage to maintain the loads that you do).
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Bingo. If the game company has the same API, then the backend code of load distribution can remain unpublished, while an implementation can be handed out that would work well on a single box.
Maybe this could be a niche for a dedicated business -- a company whose job it is to have servers for nonsupported games, perhaps with a small subscription fee to keep the lights on. This way, if someone wants to play a game long since not supported, but still quite playable (NWN 1 comes to mind), support is still aro
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Stage 3: A year to two years: Publish the API the game uses for the servers
But would the console makers even let the video game publisher do this? I was under the impression that such APIs necessarily contained trade secrets of the console makers.
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Good point. I'm coming from a desktop computer point of view.
Because of this, perhaps the only real alternative for consoles is a third company (charging some type of nominal fee to keep their servers online) that will keep the API a trade secret even when the game moves off. The console users connect to that third party, who connects them to the private servers with the same API the PC games would use. It adds one step, but it solves this issue.
Not to worry.... (Score:3)
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Pretty sure Grid 2 was out ages ago.
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Having played GRiD and DiRT (Score:2)
online... it wasn't that good in online mode so I am not surprised that they are ditching it. Having something that works well has a lot of maintenance and running costs and is generally a money drain on the game. Having low numbers of players will make the economics even more poignant to that fact.
And to everyone thinking that you want to run a server at home... no really you don't... seriously you do not have time for it unless you actually get payed for it.
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Yes, you do want to host your own game servers. I did it for years, CS, Ghost Recon, etc. Once the machine is setup there is no work to it. It can go down for patches whenever since no one is paying. Nothing like the PITA of dealing with paying customers.
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What time and expense?
Do you have an old desktop or laptop and can spare $10/month for power? Congratulations, you too can have a game server at your house. Laptops are really great for this because they use relatively little power and lots of people either have old ones or one with a broken screen can be had for a song.
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What time and expense?
Don't tell me, tell the GP.
"Running a server" in home ISPs' AUP (Score:2)
Do you have an old desktop or laptop and can spare $10/month for power? Congratulations, you too can have a game server at your house.
It costs more than $10 per month for power. It can also cost several times that for an upgrade from residential Internet access to business class Internet access so that your ISP doesn't kickban you from its network for "running a server" in violation of its acceptable use policy. It can also be fairly expensive if you happen to live in an area with a low monthly data transfer cap.
Besides, why let end users run a dedicated server when you can sell them the sequel?
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How much more at most what $30?
You ISP will never notice a game server, trust me.
Quotas won't enter into it, game servers are not shipping much data around, they can't or performance would suck.
The only valid point you make is the greed one.
Neighborhood-size NAT (Score:2)
You ISP will never notice a game server, trust me.
Even if an ISP doesn't notice a bandwidth increase, it may notice the incoming connections, and if you're behind a neighborhood-size NAT, they just won't connect.
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If you ISP NATs find a new one. NAT breaks the internet.
That has nothing to do with hosting a gameserver or not.
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If you ISP NATs find a new one.
If all ISPs serving your city NAT find a new one. That's how it is in some parts of the world.
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I used to host game servers for clans - back for CS and the likes .. i never did mind it really - always got enough donations to cover hardware and colo costs.. but then i pawned off the in game management off on someone else.. i never had to field/deal with the actual end users.. just got to play with people i knew and let them deal with the other players..
and if there was a game worth doing it - AND i had the TIME to PLAY i'd do it again.. but getting older and having a kid.. time for games just d
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Considering your UID, you 'lived' on the internet during the time when everyone ran their own servers.. how can you say stuff like this?
May have a solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
I need to look into this further, but I may be able to provide a solution. GameRanger has "rescued" many other orphaned multiplayer PC games in the past.
Mod parent up (Score:2)
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Success! Just added support for GRID on GameRanger. This won't help the unfortunate PS3 souls, but will at least help out the PC players.
Or perhaps (Score:2)
How about just not buying games that don't state how long they will run their multiplayer servers.
It's a game, no one is going to be harmed because idiot consumers keep buying crap. So why regulate that aspect of it? If the players actually give a shit they won't buy games which don't have such a guarantee (or player runnable d
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How about just not buying games that don't state how long they will run their multiplayer servers.
That is equivalent to not buying any multiplayer games at all.
Same screen multiplayer (Score:2)
How about just not buying games that don't state how long they will run their multiplayer servers.
That is equivalent to not buying any multiplayer games at all.
No, it's equivalent to not buying any multiplayer games that need a server. Case in point: Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Brawl is multiplayer, and it doesn't need a server. How does this work?
Copy authentication servers (Score:2)
Most TF2 servers are run by the community, and if Valve ever decides to stop supporting it the community can carry on hosting servers.
How would the community host copy authentication servers? Currently, Valve hosts those as part of the Steam service.
It's only most console games (and shitty PC games without dedicated server binaries available to the public) which have this problem.
Most console games that I've played that support Internet multiplayer also support same-screen multiplayer. This includes Amplitude, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and a couple Dance Dance Revolution games. I'll grant that Animal Crossing: City Folk is an exception.
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You're mixing up two different issues here. If Valve stops hosting TF2 servers, people will still be able to play TF2.
Steam is another thing... If Steam is no longer supported, this will affect all Steam games including single-player. This would be an issue with a gaming platform and not with ceasing support for a specific game, so it's not what was being discussed here.
Not surprised (Score:2)
GRID PC is a really nice game but it's one of the games which were abandoned the moment they went gold. Very little support was given, the developer and publisher kept promising patches and fixes that they never delivered, so it comes as no surprise that multiplayer servers had such short lifespan, actually it's 2 years more than i would give it. And it isn't really big loss, because the multiplayer was broken from start, it was really painful to navigate through the menu system to connect to a server, and
Had the same problem with Mercenaries 2 (Score:2)
EA had it up cheaply a couple of months ago and I was about to pick up a couple of copies until I saw that they had shut down multiplayer. All they would have needed to do is let the players host their own servers.
This will be the ultimate fate of every game that makes you phone home or lacks dedicated servers. Want to play Neverwinter Nights/NWN2 with a friend? Tough. The master server went down.
Goodbye Codemasters (Score:2)
That's the last Codemasters game I'm buying.
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Yeah, seconded. As a wonderful example of this...
Like most games, the Colin McRae Rally series include cheat codes. Sometimes it's fun to play with these cheats -- the PSone version had the cheatcode "blancmange", which turned your chosen car into a large, lime-green jelly. In some ways it was more fun to play with the cheats than without!
Codemasters decided to capitalise on this.
By generating a random "installation key" every time you install the game, and generate the cheat codes from that key. To get the
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Some point to Mr. McRaes death as the turning point, but instead I point towards Codemasters' purchase by an equity group just a few months earlier as the beginning of the end.
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On the other hand, who do you think is all-knowledgable enough to make all those decisions for us ? Some government agency ? Companies ? The church ?
The free market was never advocated as an instantaneously perfect solution to all problems. It probably is the overall best one in the long run. The one issue is ensuring the market remains free, and neither sellers nor buyers take advantage of relative strength by changing contracts terms unilaterally. OK, That's 2 issues, there may be more.
I'm wondering if th
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The problem is the free market is an abstraction, the real issue is that money buys laws so corporations can redefine reality to suit their liking at the whim of our corrupt system.
The government is just an abstract term, the problem is _ideology of the people themselves_ in business and government who subscribe to this procorporate cocksucking. Has nothing to do with some abstract bogey man.
Unfortunately there are right and wrong answers to these questions. First - people should be able to own their sof
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So your solution is committees of academics/philosophers ? You do realize those same academics have shown they'll take big corps' money (I'm sure philosophers would too, if anybody offered). Ever heard of Lyssenko ?
Your solution lacks a big element: accountability. I'm assuming you're young, possibly still a student, with faith in god-like infallible father figures. There are nowhere near enough of those. The next best solution is elected politicians.
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Who gets to select the experts, and boot them ?
Do they have to say "this is bad for the game's buyers" (do you need to be an expert for that ? on the other hand, your definition of "experts" seems to be "gamers", which is more than iffy) Or judge whether or not customers were mislead ? place a x-year hosting minimum on all games offering online play (I assume that means a bunch of money in escrow pre game launch, so all games with not that much money not launched ? isn't that worse for customers ?) what ab
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What enormous cost? They already have game server software, just not released to the public. The client should have been designed with this in mind from the word go. The fanbase would be happy to get a dedicated server at all, much less be looking for support.
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Let me ask a question then: What platform are their dedicated servers running on? Are you assuming it's the same platform as your client? That's not a valid assumption.
No, but it's not necessarily an unreasonable one.
What if the dedicated servers are running Linux
That's no big deal; Linux software can be run on a lot of platforms, OSX and Cygwin included, provided the source is also released.
or Mac OS or OS/2?
Just how likely would you say that is? Mac isn't beyond the realms of possibility but OS/2? Who still uses that in production environments?
What if they're designed for systems with no less than 24GB of RAM?
Then it was badly written and the source code might well be necessary.
Without facts you have no way to base your assertion that an end-user -can- run a dedicated server for this game. It might be impossible without significant change to the code.
Discussions tend to be pretty dull when all parties have all the facts; assumptions are nearly always needed at some point.
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Our Siemens PBX switches run on OS/2. Thankfully it is 2.1, but still pretty bad.
Unfortunately, they are looking at replacing them with Cisco VOIP, which is hilariously insecure. I'd rather have those non-network attached OS/2 boxes than a VOIP product from a company known for their terrible software. And of course the expense of replacing every single phone in the company (~5k phones) with a new Cisco VOIP phone.
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Why can't I expect free online play forever? I have it with many other older games.
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If it's popular enough you can, because someone always figures out how to get around any roadblocks to 3rd party servers, and then keeps them running forever. Hell, you can still play the original Tribes, and official servers haven't been up for that in years.
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Gamers, get angry? Gamers, get organized. (Score:2)
So, if people are so angry, they should organize more. Organizing is the skill required in the game called "make it change". For example, games can be made based on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system [wikipedia.org]. Gamers have to be better organized in getting control of their code, having a group that organizes contract negotioations between users and companies, etc. Enough foolin' around, time to get some swords and guns and change things. Or pens and keyboards, whatever works best.
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I think the solution is to require software companies to put their code into escrow.
The instant they stop supporting it, the code in escrow is released to the public.
They get copyright protection and control over their game as long as they give it attention, when they don't give it any attention, they relinquish control.
Everyone wins. They get the protection of copyright (which when used fairly ISN'T a bad thing, but its invariably abused), and we get to know we're not buying something that the vendor can
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I think the solution is to require software companies to put their code into escrow.
Seems fair to me, but in the current legal system, that code is company property- period. It could only come about if some users organization had some power, leverage of some kind, to negoriate. Things can be achieved in negotiation of contracts, but only if users are more organized and can orient behavior of large numbers of users. Users associations should have a ratings system for different games, companies, and software contracts. Software distribution systems, website reviews. Participating more act
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Not gonna happen.
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I support this 100%, but there is a flaw. They'd just come up with some way of 'supporting' the game without really doing anything.
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I purchased it for the driving. The career mode is fun. I think I tried multiplayer one time, then went right back to career mode. It's fun enough even just racing against the clock in most driving games.
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Yeah, it's an awful model for FPS games. Just for this particular game, doesn't really make a difference IMO. Same with games like Gran Turismo 5. I wouldn't care if there was no online multiplayer.
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