This should be illegal, companies should be forced to open-source games (or at least provide the code to people who bought it) if they decide to discontinue it, so people can preserve it on their own.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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It's the designs and schematics part that makes them equivalent.
It still doesn't seem entirely equivalent to me. We're not talking about them giving out the source code. We're talking about how shit it is that something like software already installed on your computer just no longer will work.
Or let's use your analogy; why not just abandon the facility instead of shutting it down and chasing everyone away?
Like, don't get me wrong. I understand that this is the nature about always online stuff and that it can always be closed down like a theme park, but I feel the conversation is more about "why did they design this like a theme park without an abandonment clause instead of a shut-down clause. Historically, most other theme parks have been fine with being abandoned"
And I mean, I'll agree with you that it's nothing new, we saw it with Overwatch 1 and countless others, but I feel it's a conversation one should be able to have without it being dismissed?
(I may have read too much into your comment, but it felt like it was dismissing it as a non-issue since theme parks work like this, when this is not a theme park)
After reading the rest of your comment, you are reading the wrong thing from it, the physical parts of the amusement park would be the extant binaries you already have. They still run the same as they did before, but without maintenance they will deteriorate and become non-functional or only partially operational. In an online system there are server bits that might not be available to the end user and those pieces also need an operator.
To make a slightly more specific analogy, with a water park we could imagine a separate water treatment facility that would need to be run to keep the water in the water park safe. That treatment facility could also have plans and schematics.
The actual facilities in these cases are not independently valuable in the software case. It's the plans and schematics (the source code) that has value... but in both cases you only need the facilities and operators/maintenance to allow people to attend the water park/play the game.
Could the game company also give away a physical treatment plants so that an independent organization could buy their own servers and run their own game servers so that they could still play in their own private water parks? Sure.
Should they? Maybe. But it's specifically the entitlement to the plans/schematics that gets me...
I understand the point now. Thank you! Good explanation!