Games

My personal favorite is the "companies are obligated to support it forever, or open source the server software hosted by a third party, hosting paid for up front for at least a year."

They get to keep my money forever don't they?

I'd tie its length to copyright length. Maybe they would fight Disney when they try to raise it again.

I just expect a popup in the game which says something like "Could not connect to server, some multiplayer features will be unavailable. Continue offline?"

Or, maybe don’t force online requirement, and allow p2p. Or, better yet, open source the server now that it’s shut down and release a patch to specify where to connect.

Imagine buying a T-shirt, and the manufacturer, without your prior knowledge or consent, could somehow render your shirt unwearable -- that's effectively what's happening here. The only "gray area" might be that ultimately you don't own a copy of the game anyway (since digital copies are effectively leased -- a whole other issue unto itself), but regardless: more power to this lawsuit. Seriously shady shit getting tacitly accepted lately.

Yeah, no one is arguing games shouldn't have online, just that they continue to work after the devs are done with them, have an End of Life plan like the late Avengers game, or the gacha Megaman X Dive that got an offline version sold on steam and consoles.

He's rather critical of the game. He just really hates when games are lost forever.

Seems more to do with the way things line up--it's a perfect example of a physical and digital game getting permanently shut down without any sort of refund or compensation to the buyers of the game. It sounds like it's about setting precedent so people will have a better idea of how this kinda stuff is going to work in the future.

He just likes driving around and nothing more, it's his podcast/tourism game, but also the perfect one since it happened after he started this fight for preservation and it's not sold as service but as a product, unlike MMOs.

Also NAL, but it seems like they aren't arguing for server functionality but rather just the ability to play offline at all, which opens up the third option of requiring games to be patched to remove sever requirements if being shut down, in any case this will be a fascinating case to follow, and I hope they go through with the lawsuit.

This is why his videos about this issue are great, he dismantles every single argument against it like "just buy physical", The Crew has physical versions, they won't work just like the digital one.

It's because MMOs were sold as subscriptions (most of the time) so they're legally covered in being allowed to end their service. The crew however was sold as a full game with no subscription. They didn't make it clear that the game could cease to exist even though you paid for it outright.

Sadly, I feel like a lawsuit line this won't have the benefit we're all hoping for (open sourcing on closure of services) but will instead just make all subsequent games free-to-play, which would make them more exempt to the same scrutiny. And we're already seemingly heading that way too, warts and all.

Horizon can be played offline. When Microsoft bites the dust, I can still pop in a Forza horizon 2 DVD into my 360 and play it.

You just made it look even worse for Ubisoft since the first 3 Horizon games work offline and everyone that bought them can still play it just fine, you just can't buy them right now.