Epic Is Cutting the Servers For 17 Older Online Games (kotaku.com) 85
Fortnite developer Epic Games announced today that it will no longer provide online service or servers for 17 older games, including six from the Unreal series dating back as far as 1998, and it will end access to some additional games entirely. The shutdowns are already starting to be enacted, but won't be completed until January 24, 2023. Kotaku reports: According to its announcement blog post, Epic described its decision to quit servicing some online games as part of its move toward "solely [supporting] Epic Online Services with its unified friends system, voice chat features, parental controls, and parental verification features." The full list of affected games is as follows: 1000 Tiny Claws, Dance Central 1, Dance Central 2, Dance Central 3, Green Day: Rock Band, Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess, Rock Band 1, Rock Band 2, Rock Band 3, The Beatles: Rock Band, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, Unreal Gold, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal Tournament 3, and Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition.
And the last Band-Aid: though you can play those previous games if you own them, Epic is performing a few total shutdowns. Players will lose access to the following titles on their specified removal dates: Battle Breakers (December 30), Unreal Tournament: Alpha (January 24), Rock Band Blitz (January 24), Rock Band Companion (January 24), and SingSpace (January 24).
And the last Band-Aid: though you can play those previous games if you own them, Epic is performing a few total shutdowns. Players will lose access to the following titles on their specified removal dates: Battle Breakers (December 30), Unreal Tournament: Alpha (January 24), Rock Band Blitz (January 24), Rock Band Companion (January 24), and SingSpace (January 24).
Grassroots version (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if they will allow users to run their own grassroots version for those that want to still play these old games.
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what the F does that mean????
you mean - run their own servers????
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Sure. It does require that Epic hands out the server software though (unless some developers are willing to recreate it as open source).
Valve is almost there, most of the server software for their games is already available to users. The only thing that is still missing is the matchmaking, that still runs on Valve's servers.
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Sure. It does require that Epic hands out the server software though (unless some developers are willing to recreate it as open source).
Valve is almost there, most of the server software for their games is already available to users. The only thing that is still missing is the matchmaking, that still runs on Valve's servers.
It doesn't matter for console users unless you are playing via LAN. Most consoles block personal servers.
Xbox even blocks external minecraft servers that are using their own server software. In order to get around it, you have to do silly DNS tricks to make it think the external server is on your lan.
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Thanks for that information. I never bothered with consoles myself, so I'm mostly unaware of Xbox specifics
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I wonder if they will allow users to run their own grassroots version for those that want to still play these old games.
I doubt it.
TL;DR version - there is no money to be made by Epic in that idea
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I wonder if they will allow users to run their own grassroots version for those that want to still play these old games.
I doubt it.
TL;DR version - there is no money to be made by Epic in that idea
And when there is no money to be lost due to abandonment, what says Capitalism then? I'd love to hear that excuse.
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I wonder if they will allow users to run their own grassroots version for those that want to still play these old games.
I doubt it.
TL;DR version - there is no money to be made by Epic in that idea
And when there is no money to be lost due to abandonment, what says Capitalism then? I'd love to hear that excuse.
Once the revenue from those games gets small enough it's better to repurpose their servers and other efforts to maintain the game to higher margin products. Just because they make some money doesn't mean it's worth keeping them around.
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It's not even repurpose the servers, unless the architecture is cloudy. It's throw them on a pallet and surplus them (saves disposal costs) because they're old.
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After shredding the drives.
But yes, old servers are literally not worth running or repurposing because their performance per watt and performance per U of rack space just isn't worth supporting. Power and space ain't cheap. Servers are.
Accounting has loooooooong ago depreciated those servers off the books.
Re:Grassroots version (Score:5, Insightful)
And when there is no money to be lost due to abandonment, what says Capitalism then? I'd love to hear that excuse.
Capitalism says GFY, and also buy our new game.
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Capitalism says everyone who plays the old game isn't motivated to buy the new one. You are not going to buy a new hammer for me as long as that old hammer works.
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And when there is no money to be lost due to abandonment, what says Capitalism then? I'd love to hear that excuse.
Last time I hopped on UT2004 on-line, about a year ago, there were maybe 20 people playing. So, capitalism says that's not a good place to be spending resources.
Capitalism also says there are literally *thousands* of other games you can play, because game creation has a low bar of entry (besides knowledge and effort) and there is no regulation screwing it up.
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Odds are they no longer have the source or original design docs and 99.99999% likely don't have anyone on staff now who knows any of that stuff.
And releasing the binaries is probably useless too. Quite likely a bunch of hard coded shit in them that won't run on another environment. The game world is the least "professional" software development vertical. It's all about throwing shit out there in time for Christmas release and patch later.
Re:Grassroots version (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually think they might well have a legal responsibility, although a thoroughly untested one.
One thing that really bugs me with this whole "We are killing your game completely because of retiring servers thing, is many counties like my own have essentially a lifetime guarantee law. While its understood some things degrade, a product cant just die because the manufacturer decides a functional product cant work anymore. At that point the product isnt fit for purpose *by design*. Unless its made very clear at the point of purchase that you'll only get to have 5 years of use out of the product, it would appear that the manufacturers of these games have a legal duty to refund if they retire the services IF they hadnt make it clear (and by clear I mean, right there in the sales test not packed in some eula. Judges here, and the EU tend to consider that kind of fineprint deceptive and thus invalid. Ie can a "reasonable person" be expected to know it.) And pertinantly any legal systems ESPECIALLY dislike a manufacturer bricking a product and providing no way to fix it.
This would be to stop, say, apple sending out a "BRICK" message to all iphones over a certain age without providing a method to unbrick it that doesnt cost unreasonable money.
Thus the easy way out would be to make sure single player games are available unlocked before retirement and multiplayer games have server software made available for people to host their own.
Again, it hasn't been tested in any court, but I've certainly think it ought be. Mindyou EA would be well screwed if such a ruling was ever made. Which would be a good thing. Bricking singe player games by retirng authentication servers is a repugnant practice.
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This not purely a product, but a bundle of a product and a service. Unfortunately, I know no country having updated their consumer legislation to apply proper consumer protection and marked safeguards for such bundles.
Bundling service with a physical product is not entirely new, but it spread into areas it was not initially envisioned like games.
On could expect lots of improvements in that matter, like having it clear up-front about the bundling, specific conditions for the service and the product (like ret
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If the service only serves for authentication, such as in single player games, it does not serve the customer at all. I wonder if the courts would consider that sort of bundling legal.
Perhaps we will see a lawsuit at some point. There are some consumer protection agencies that tend to sue over widespread problems, and I think switching off authentication servers for digital goods is common enough to count.
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While its understood some things degrade, a product cant just die because the manufacturer decides a functional product cant work anymore. At that point the product isnt fit for purpose *by design*.
Hmm, let's see.
"unified friends system, voice chat features, parental controls, and parental verification features."
I don't know if you'd call it "by design", but someone deemed all that bullshit necessary for future games.
Apparently we weren't thinking of the children enough when we refused to check ID before allowing them to engage in the dangerous world of rocket-powered tiny dancing Beatles monsters.
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Licensed, not sold. I guess that what they will use to get out it.
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They'd have a great defense in court.
The operating systems these games were made for are long since deprecated and unsupported so the games that run on them can't be expected to continue to function either.
I'll bet your typical jury could give a damn about your 17 year old game running on an OS Microsoft stopped supporting years earlier. If you can't sue Microsoft how can you sue the companies making games for those same dead systems?
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Runs great on Linux though.
During Covid I become a borderline addict, UT2004 and UT3 .... played everyday for 9 months.
UT2004 runs on Linux without emulation. Out of the box. DVD install. Then online patching.
UT3 you need simple Wine and that runs perfectly.
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Ok, fair point well taken. I'd dismiss wine but ut2004 sounds solid. I was unaware, thanks.
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If you think about it, for a very long time the whole software industry has revolved around, "It works until it doesn't." My big beef with games is not that they work temporarily, but that there's no guarantee how long they will work. I can't determine the value of a game and what I should pay if I don't know how long it will be supported.
It's like renting something and not being told when you have to return it; the company just busts down your door and takes it back when they feel like it. They can term
Re:Grassroots version (Score:5, Informative)
For Unreal, UT, UT2003, and UT2004 there are alternative master servers:
https://www.oldunreal.com/wiki... [oldunreal.com]
http://beta.openspy.net/en/how... [openspy.net]
Re:Grassroots version (Score:4, Informative)
I checked the OpenSpy code concerning the CDKey check, and it will always return APPROVED:
https://github.com/chc/openspy... [github.com]
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Unreal is alive and well after 24 years! There's even new patches and enhancements created by the community and now a native Linux server.
The bummer is if you install off your old CD, the as-configured master servers are dead. It's a shame they don't have some kind of redirect.
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I dunno how I did it .. but was connecting through servers and playing online. I bought ebay DVDs!
Always thought they were private servers operated by veterans. never anything official.
Can't remember the steps, but made it work on Linux and was having heaps of fun.
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I have to admit, Unreal Tournament is one of the first and few commercial games where the copy protection was removed.
At one point, one of the update patches removed the CD-ROM check and let you run the game stand-alone without a No-CD crack. I noticed immediately, and was very impressed.
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So in this particular case probably not much to worry about.
However that was from a time where publishers and developers hadn't realized how much monetization potential there was in competitive multiplayer. So the same is generally not true for modern games, of course with exceptions.
There we can only hope that they'll provide us with dedicated private server options before they pull the plug. But i
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So in this particular case probably not much to worry about.
However that was from a time where publishers and developers hadn't realized how much monetization potential there was in competitive multiplayer. So the same is generally not true for modern games, of course with exceptions.
Not quite. Monetization has little to do with who provides the servers. The reality is the world demanded more than just a basic server running where anyone can join. Those were not really all that fun days where you had a list of server, you picked one, started playing, and all of a sudden 5 people all from a common clan joined and fucked over everyone who was there for fun.
The death of the private server was driven by intelligent matchmaking and an emphasis on regional low latency services and a desire fo
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I mean sure, the fractured community will reduce total player numbers as everything gets more complicated, like people having to install something like a 3rd party server browser. But it'll keep things alive similar to before control was taken away from the players under the guise of anti-cheat, matchmaking
Open solution (Score:2)
I understand that we can't expect unlimited support for a game. If there is no enough people, it's a total loss for the company.
BUT, there is a compromise. Open the source code and/or allow private servers.
That should be an option for every multiplayer, specially MMO games. Of course, this option could be close if the central servers are available, as a source of revenue. Specially in the golden era of the game.
But all games reach their limit. Turn open, players could extend the live of the game for some de
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Open the source code
Revealing how badly written these games are (and they are, because insane deadlines) would damage the company's image.
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I doubt that.
We have been having Crappy software for decades. I would say for the past 50+ years.
If the software is well written, optimized, easy to read, and has proper documentation. Then the chances are it is just a small piece of software that does a simple task. As software gets more complex, things get less optimized and more bad coding stuff happens, because we as humans are not really meant for such builds, so we need to work as a group to break out the tasks, and economics, means we have a limite
Re:Open solution (Score:5, Informative)
This is why UNIX has stayed together so well. Historically, UNIX was made around text parsing, storing config information in text, and keeping things as simple and separated as possible. Why have a large program when one can pipe several small, well-debugged/tested ones together?
Of course, complexity has gone up, especially with DEs, but even now, that KISS philosophy is still core to UNIX, for the most part.
Coding quality has changed as well. The fact that many developers have their jobs hinge on the LoC metric just ensures that code is going to be sub-par at best, horri-bad at worst. Security is pretty much set to the side because "security has no ROI", and developers will get outsourced if they don't get the deliverables for the SCRUM master, while a security breach that causes massive legal issues, a dev has tons of insulation between them and that incident.
In the past (80s and early 1990s), it used to be that daemons running as root and the SUID parts of programs had source code always going with it, just for security reasons, so people could be confident that anything that runs elevated is vetted. Linux and Jolitz's 386BSD helped on this front because the entire OS's source code was not just available, but freely modifiable and transferable. This is probably one of the reasons that UNIX has had a good reputation for security. Contrast that with software companies trying to move as much into the cloud as possible to hide their innermost workings, because if the source code, or binaries never leave the company, it can be horribly insecure, and if there is a breach, it can be easily papered over, and blame shifted to something else.
tl;dr, it might be good for people to reconsider paying scalper prices for that shiny new console... because all those expensive games + DLC will not be sticking around, and sometime, maybe 20, perhaps even five years down the line, one might want to play a game they liked in the past... but can't because the servers are gone, and the game logic existed solely on those servers, so there is no way to ever make an emulated game without pretty much guessing what made the system tick, and running the risk of being un-existed by DMCA takedowns.
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Boy I strongly agree with this.
For a long time I refrained from playing games that that didn't have a dedicated server component.
You can still find all variations, and versions, of Quake and Unreal Tournament servers all over the net- and those servers get used.
Even Quake Live has a dedicated server component.
It would be a dream for me to have a quality AAA MMO released that allowed you to run your own server.
Once can dream right?
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As utopian as this take is, it isn't grounded in reality. In this case, Epic most probably has code which is licensed and can't be open-sourced, for a multitude of reasons
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It seems most of the game servers are available (at least for the important games like UT). For the rest, I'm assuming things like the Rock Band and derivatives, they'd run into licensing issues, and that the code without the music is useless. There are already open source alternatives for people that really are still interested in the genre, I don't see a major loss for gamers.
How long should it be? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a good question. When a game includes no ability to be played in the absence of the server, what is the "contract" you buy for your $60 in a single-purchase scenario? Games with periodic subscriptions offer a more honest transaction - pay as you go, with the understanding that some day the lights will be turned off. I actually think the players of Diablo III would have a more firm objection than, say, World of Warcraft.
The "right" thing to do (already pointed out) would be to release the reigns and let others serve it. But some companies get caught in the middle of a battle they don't want to have. If you fail to protect your trademark, it can be lost. So if you want to continue with the IP, giving up the tech of the current iteration and permitting dissemination might be hugely problematic.
I'm a cost/benefit kind of guy. Outside of MMOs, the single series I played more than any other was Diablo. Adding up all the costs from the original release through to the most recent expansion - and, in fact, prepayment of D4 - and dividing by the number of hours of play I received... well... it's getting pretty close to a penny an hour.
If the servers were all shut off tonight, I got an unbelievable deal on entertainment, and I would be satisfied.
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When a game includes no ability to be played in the absence of the server, what is the "contract" you buy for your $60 in a single-purchase scenario?
I'm not following your rationale in this sentence. Single purchase in particular on physical support has been how the things have worked for very long and what you buy is well established. You acquire a non-exclusive licence to play the game, watch the movie or play the music in the context of a private home, for as long as the physical support is not damaged, and you can transmit this right to others by gift, sale or inheritance of the physical support.
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I'm too stupid forget my comment! I just black out on the word "no", I think I read "an". I'll mod you up you elsewhere as apology.
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That's okay. Easy miss. Somebody else nitpicked me for using "reign" instead of "rein". I'm less happy with him.
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But some companies get caught in the middle of a battle they don't want to have. If you fail to protect your trademark, it can be lost. So if you want to continue with the IP, giving up the tech of the current iteration and permitting dissemination might be hugely problematic.
Letting others run your server software, even letting them modify it under some FOSS license, does in no way constitute a failure to protect the trademark. All of that sounds like an excuse.
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My legal background is in patents not trademark but there is some overlap in IP law.
I suggest you discuss with your trademark lawyer before releasing your software to the public. There are right ways and wrong ways to do these things. One gets you what you want, the other gets your trademark value destroyed.
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Fundamentally, if you were allowed to make a sold product useless by withholding an online component, that would render all sorts of consumer protection moot. The product must be able to perform at least its primary function without the online component or you must keep providing the online component until the last of the products has ceased to work.
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If it is sold to customers under the pretense of buy once, own and play forever, rather than subscription based, then the company should be forced to run the servers forever. Otherwise, they should refund all buyers when they turn of their servers.
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"Reasonable person" (Score:2)
Lets do a wildly and thoroughly incorrect application of another legal tenet, the "reasonable person test". Would a reasonable person expect that a company would maintain a service - any service - in perpetuity and under all circumstances? Well, no. I don't expect that, and I would hope that nobody does.It doesn't happen for $40,000 cars, it won't happen for $60 games.
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It should be for as long as they promised to run it.
If you don't like it, then don't buy it; if you feel really strongly about it, lobby against proprietary software, but GLWT.
As long as we're going to have such a thing, the owners should have the right to take their ball and go home any time (unless they made promises otherwise.)
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what is the "contract" you buy for your $60 in a single-purchase scenario?
Nothing.
Typically, there are NO obligations whatsoever on the side of the game company. What you pay for is essentially a copy of the game that doesn't come with a potential piracy lawsuits AND THAT'S ALL.
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It's a good question. When a game includes no ability to be played in the absence of the server, what is the "contract" you buy for your $60 in a single-purchase scenario? Games with periodic subscriptions offer a more honest transaction - pay as you go, with the understanding that some day the lights will be turned off. I actually think the players of Diablo III would have a more firm objection than, say, World of Warcraft.
The "right" thing to do (already pointed out) would be to release the reigns and let others serve it. But some companies get caught in the middle of a battle they don't want to have. If you fail to protect your trademark, it can be lost. So if you want to continue with the IP, giving up the tech of the current iteration and permitting dissemination might be hugely problematic.
The problem is, if people keep playing Call of Crap: Modern Snorefare 15, they aren't buying Call of Crap: Modern Snorefare 17 and it's myriad of DLCs, loot boxes and other pay2win schemes. That's money lost according to the publishers.
As a gamer, the "right" thing to do is not to buy these games. Spend money on better games or at least publishers who stick around for a few years. One reason I fell out of multiplayer gaming was the way players were ignored by the big publishers (although the main reason
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As a gamer, the "right" thing to do is not to buy these games.
Huh? When did gaming become about some philosophical quest. As a gamer the only "right" thing to do is wonder if the amount of money you are investing in your form of entertainment is worth it.
As it stands games are about the cheapest form of entertainment you can have beyond watching whatever is available on free to air television (assuming that still exists). If something is entertaining enough to pay for is the only thing relevant, and while you call it "Call of Crap" the 277,881 people currently playing
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When a game includes no ability to be played in the absence of the server, what is the "contract" you buy for your $60 in a single-purchase scenario?
You get a license to use the game client, and some customer support.
Games with periodic subscriptions offer a more honest transaction - pay as you go, with the understanding that some day the lights will be turned off. I actually think the players of Diablo III would have a more firm objection than, say, World of Warcraft.
Neither player has a right to complain about the ToS to which they agreed unless they are anticompetitive. You don't have a right to force them to keep running the server forever unless they promised to do so, and you don't have a right to the server program. You get to keep your license to the now-probably-worthless client, though. Sadly the license usually doesn't allow you to use the assets for anything other than play on official server
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"The right thing to do is to know the difference between "rein" and "reign" and not use either word until you do."
The "right" thing would be for you fuck off.
I agree with the rest of your post.
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The reign in Spein falls meignly on the pleins.
Obligatory (Score:1)
Anybody still playing these games? (Score:2)
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It might come as a surprise to some, but at least two of these games (Unreal/Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament/Unreal Tournament GOTY), and possibly more, are still played by many people, both offline and online. And more, Epic Games released the sources of both these games to a group of fans (under a NDA, of course) with the permission to patch the games for compatibility with newer systems and previously unsupported OSes. Both games now have brand new patches, despite them being more than two decades old.
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For those here objecting to the servers being shut down. Do YOU still play any of these games?
There are usually more players playing UT2004 than are playing Marvel's Avengers.
Re: Anybody still playing these games? (Score:3)
So how much are those in game items worth now (Score:2)
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Gotta agree! My PlayStore purchase on various 'forever-licensed' and 'supported' simulated pinball machine's won't work anymore with recent Android releases, never-mind my skill with virtual machine emulators, desire, etc. Given my finances vs. original purchase outlay vs. desire to own pinball machine simulations to let off steam while waiting for compiles, deployments, etc., I'm not a happy customer as time has passed.
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This was and is my primary reason to not purchase in game items or characters for that matter. When someone else controls the physical game and shuts it down that is many lost hours for some folks.
You have to consider in game purchases no different than putting quarters in Pac-Man. Its a expense purchase, not a capital purchase. Its used and consumed. If you look at it in that light and then ask yourself "Is $5 too much for a few hours of enjoyment?" then you should not buy said in game item.
Why not jsut micro-hose these? (Score:1)
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(That hardware left unchecked, can last for 50 ish years)
True as that may be, I think that's a relatively-bad idea. The server software needs to run on an OS, which still needs patches and updates. When UT2004 was released, Debian was on it's "Sarge" release, v.3.1. It required 128MB of RAM for the server components and a GUI, so a first-gen, base model Raspberry Pi would provide green pastures of system resources. Debian 12 requires 768MB of RAM for a cli-only install; it would require some massive reworking to fit on the same hardware. Over time, the referenced
The Unreal Tournament Alpha Story Is Sad (Score:2)
I've been a big UT fan for years, and the alpha really showed promise. It had a mode somewhat similar to American football, which was particularly unique and interesting. Its business model was particularly awesome: the base game was free, and users could submit maps and mods and other add-ons, either for free or to sell where the dev would get a cut.
Sadly, the game didn't gain a whole lot of traction and it never really left alpha status. The game was clearly a tech demo intended to be a framework for othe
QuakeWorld Still Runs, RIght? (Score:2)
Old stuff (Score:2)
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Old games are alive and well on consoles too.
https://insignia.live/games/IG... [insignia.live]
This must qualify (Score:2)
as Epic fail. Maybe not now, but definitely in January 2023.
On the other hand... (Score:2)
https://insignia.live/games/IG... [insignia.live]
If you shut off servers, you make them open source (Score:1)