Sony To Delete Virtual Goods 171
New submitter dommer2029 writes "A few years back, Sony bought up a small company running an online collectible card game called Star Chamber: The Harbinger Saga. Two days ago, they announced that the servers will be shutting down on March 29, 2012. All of our virtual collectible cards? Poof. It's not surprising — the user base is small and dwindling — but it's proof that any server-based digital goods you 'own' can vanish on a corporation's whim."
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Informative)
Big companies are too stupid to be evil. I used to work for Sun and I work for a large-ish one right now, and I can tell you the admin and marketing staff in them are sometimes borderline retarded. Just a few weeks ago, some marketing dumbass renamed our product from what it's always been (internally and to our clients) to a name that's not only incomprehensible, but doesn't say anything about what our product does. Trust me, they're not evil, just really fucking stupid.
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)
I don't like Sony any more than most people here, but let's face it. Online game servers shutting down are bound to happen eventually. Accordingly, it's implied that purchases made in virtual worlds won't last beyond the life of the world itself. There's no need to spin this story into Sony taking candy from babies.
Translation (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What did you think was going to happen? (Score:4, Informative)
The same thing that will happen to any "cloud" service. Think of this as an early warning about the future of the "cloud". If you are wise, keep personal copies locally, and use the cloud for extra backup or convenient access. Otherwise when someone else's server goes down for whatever reason (leap day, no profits, etc.), you are fucked.
Previous SOE Virtual Good Shutdowns (Score:3, Informative)