Yeah, with the Steam Deck being as good and cheap as it is, consoles hardly even have the "cheaper" justification anymore. Now it's just the artificial exclusives.
It existed and was popular and then poof…it’s gone. That model is kind of dead unless you count battle passes, which are optional…unlike a wow subscription.
Technically speaking, it's more of online gaming growing around it than it disappearing per-say. Although total subscriber count is always a speculation nowadays, there is prently of evidence of it still retaining 50-70% of peak subscriber count from 2010.
But online gaming became so accessible and widespread that WoW turned from a worldwide phenomenon to a somewhat niche game compared to mainstream MOBA and FPS games.
Just stop paying for it. After just a few weeks you'll realize it was a silly addiction. There's lots of great games that don't require a subscription.
There's a lot of gamers in this thread too young to remember how overloaded and miserable the free console game servers were.
Microsoft was like "chuck us like ~$5 per month and we will put up enough servers so the games are actually playable". At the time, it was the best deal available for console gaming.
Honestly an argument could be made it was the most economical way to play online, in general, at the time. The console cost was subsidized, and the online servers were arguably at-cost, and you really only needed to buy one copy of Halo to join the fun.
There are more costs than just servers. I'm just saying, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be part of the upfront price of the game, though, and I agree with you.
Idk. I was always a PC gamer, and think the old, often modded, independently run servers were much more fun than the soul-less matchmaking I see on most modern games. It was fun to play UT2004, and join a server where the arena was someone's bedroom and all the sound effects were ripped from The Simpsons; or to jump into a clan's open server and shit-talk them while they dominate me, or to join a server run by Beyond Unreal's community, where the mods used were voted on by the community beforehand, IIRC. Good times.
I was always a PC gamer, and think the old, often modded, independently run servers were much more fun than the soul-less matchmaking I see on most modern games.
Absolutely. If one was lucky enough to have a buddy with a server setup, that was by far the coolest option.
Very true. These things do still exist for a lot of games. It lost popularity a lot on CS due to the incessant need for "competitive" matchmaking, but they are still out there. Rust is a good game for heavily modded servers (if you like the game concept in the first place) and I think Arma (which a bit more niche) is basically all community servers, ranging from in depth military reality to role playing much more mundane stuff.
There's still yet another side to it. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is still around today. Boot it up, and try joining a game. Five hours later, the mods finish loading, and you get a splash screen full of ads before you begin playing with bots.
At the time, it felt like there were a lot of hobbyists willing to shell out cash to run their servers, but ensuring you got a fair game low on mods was often more trouble than it was worth. I'm even a little bit grateful that Team Fortress 2 started hosting their own, even if they failed to fix the bot situations.
It's not a matter of age. You can play for free on PC now and it's a better experience in many regards. There are also older games (even on console) where you could connect directly to a user through IP address or phone number and those will work to this day. Consoles are the domain of companies that want to have their little walled garden so they can overcharge for things like this.
It's totally a matter of age. Kids these days have no idea how good they have it, and don't realize they need to get off my lawn. Shakes cain in the air /s
I'ma be the devil's advocate - even if they were free, eventually someone would have made it a subscription-based model since PSN servers cost money. Sure, it's not a lot of money, but it's money.
I'm not so sure. Steam servers also cost money. They make way more money from their cut of sales. On console the same thing happens. If not requiring the subscription gets more users, then you make more money by not having it.
They aren't charging because it costs money to run. They're charging because it's more profitable.
I agree, and I think we're actually just saying the same thing - the managers and stuff at (insert big name console manufacturer here) saw the loss by server money (which is, yes, very little money in the grand scheme) and then decided "let's purge that cost too and get 500000% profit on that section as well". Hence, the current state of affairs.
I really don't think the cost of running it was even considered. It's just an excuse some people make to justify paying for it. I've never seen anything from MS or Sony saying it. It has nothing to do with it. It's just an extra thing they can charge for. The fact some people do try to justify it with "server costs" is sad. Every multiplayer game should be a subscription if that were the case, since they need to pay for their servers, but people wouldn't make an excuse for them. The fact the console users want to justify using a console sucks.
I should clarify: console users want to justify paying for a service that shouldn't be required to pay for (a second time). It's just that using a console requires it (unless you play single-player only), so it ruins the whole console, in my opinion.
How are the high seas for gaming nowadays? I know it used to be pretty hit and miss before since many titles didn't work properly, crashed and had no support for updates without downloading a new copy.
I feel like it's two separate markets that are forced to share the same big tent known as "gaming".
I never play AAA games. I'm not on some moral crusade, they just don't appeal. I do not have the twitch reflexes for FPS, but smaller devs tend to make the sort of gameplay I like.
Right now the only indy game I can think of that's truly competitive is Battlebit, and that's only because everyone hates what became of Battlefield. Otherwise it's just me and what feels like a half dozen other weirdos out here trying to build a bakery so we can feed pie to harpies, while 90% of the world is playing COD like it's their job. It's two vastly different people who do not have the same needs, is what I'm saying.
So maybe people need to deal with that and stop honking the "play indy" horn so much. If that was the solution, people would already be on it.
personally AAA games don't appeal to me most of the time. Spare for a few titles that are on my wishlist like Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring (for the reasons explained below) I don't plan on buying any in the foreseeable future.
Most AAA games are plagued by the money curse - devs don't get the freedom to do what they want to do, they are made to create what will make money. Innovation is a risk and will be shut down by the money men unless your name is big enough to sell copies on its own. Sure not all triple A will turn out to be bad or meh, but they are pricey and often so, so, bloated. I was on the fence with Starfield, DIYed myself a demo and that thing was like 95GB with nothing to show for it.
So glad I bought a Steam Deck. Playing games on the couch with friends who each brought their own controller, easily connecting and combining PS4, PS5, Xbox and Nintendo controllers to play together feels surreal and like living in the future of gaming. Never buying another console or their subscriptions ever again.
Yeah? Who pays for the servers that run your matches?
It may be unpopular to hear, but game prices don't completely cover the cost of development and definitely don't cover server operation costs every month.
And if devs raised prices, you'd be complaining about that too.
Not always. It feels like it's pretty often I hear about an indie MP game concept I like, but due to low popularity, the servers were taken offline.
Granted, that'd be an issue anytime it's unpopular, but at least a game with 2-digit playership can still just have some friends in the last remaining server.
You don't need to pay for your own dedicated server on PC either. You can do that for free, on your own computer, in your own house. Somehow game companies managed to convince people that all this has to be paid for. It's just rent seeking behavior.
I don't think it was the games companies that convinced people. There's always been a demand. There's a hell of a lot of games server hosting companies out there making money.
Yeah, you can host a game of CS for your friends, but do you really want to host a 200 player Rust server that needs 24/7 uptime on your home PC?
Would you rather have an unstable dedicated server running on someone's home PC, or a stable paid for server that is up 24/7? It's always been possible to run your own dedicated servers, but 3rd party hosting has always been there too, for good reason.
game prices don't completely cover the cost of development and definitely don't cover server operation costs every month.
Nope.
while it might be true for small independent game developers
it's totally false for big company, like MS
just a fifth of the profit they paid to shareholders is enough to run good server for like five years
Games from big companies, except the games that went flop, or F2P games, or the game that purposefully sell at low price in order to sell other forms of microtransactions, then most games are profitable
they don't have to rely on monthly subscription to be profitable
but the problem for them is "the profit is not high enough" and that's why they do this
just a fifth of the profit they paid to shareholders is enough to run good server for like five years
Xbox doesn't make nearly that much profit compared to MS as a whole. And the cost of building and running a low latency, graphically powerfull data centre in every major region is actually massive.
Then consider that the subscription not only pays for the data centre but also pays the game devs themselves, then you'll see they're not actually money grubbing super villains for this.
The cost is minimal. There's a reason why it's still free on PC. Additionally, you could offer a free option by letting users host their own servers, but that would go against the walled garden bullshit that lets them charge so much for such a cheap service. In fact, I don't know if it's changed since the earlier days, but many console games had games hosted on user consoles anyway, it's just the initial matchmaking which uses the company's servers.
While this is true, the chances of it happening is pretty rare. Just because you have my IP doesn't mean much. Sure you can scan for stuff like open ports and you can easily ddos in a lot of cases, but running a program on another players computer takes a lot more work.
Yeah, well this is partly why PCs don’t get all the games. Uniform hardware of the consoles and subscriptions to access online play makes them a lot more attractive. Less dev cost, more $. E: plus consoles cost less than a good gaming PC, so that means more players to buy more games.
They’re just rehashed and reskinned SOSDD. Same franchises been around forever, it’s too much of a gamble to risk big on something new. Starfield, for example, is proof enough.
I think this is getting less true, and especially with Game Pass and now Sony putting a lot of first party titles on PC, I'm hard pressed to think of a AAA game that isn't available, or won't be if I don't mind waiting a 6 months.
I’d always been a PC gamer and didn’t really get into console multiplayer games ever. It wasn’t until my young son started growing up and getting into gaming that we started looking at doing multiplayer games on consoles. I was appalled by this whole dumb subscription model for playing multiplayer on games that you already bought over the internet (which you’ve also already paid money to your ISP for). Having played years of online gaming for free, the idea of having to pay to play is just mind-boggling to me (though I’ll allow for MMORPGs and some other types of games, that’s understandable).
The worst offender is/was Gears of War, which requires you to sign up for the Xbox game pass in order to play Horde mode, which is just a goddamn couch co-op mode where you play against waves of cpu opponents. It was fucking free in GoW2, literally no internet required, but then suddenly these bastards required you to subscribe to their dumb fucking gaming service just for the privilege of playing against the computer. When I complained about it, people acted like I was entitled or stuck up for expecting it to be free. Just absolute bullshit.
Gears of War (2006) also required the sub to play online but didn't actually have dedicated servers, which for a twitch reflex shooter game meant the host always had an advantage no matter how good your connection was. It became really apparent with one of the tiny dlc maps Raven Down where the words "host shotgun advantage" were often heard.
World of Warcraft ushered in the "games as a service" model, not the "pay to access online features" model. Warcraft doesn't charge you for accessing the internet on your computer.
If WOW was available on console, you'd be paying Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo as well as Blizzard. That's the difference. They are similar, but WOW didn't cause consoles to go pay only for online games.
Subscription based games existed well before WoW was a thing. Ultima Online and EverQuest were well established to name the two biggest of the time. There's also a massive difference between a handful of players on a short lived instance of a game and the requirements for an MMORPG.
Xbox live subscription, existed before WoW. All it really did (Xbox Live) gave you the ability to use your console to play with other people online. Halo was still P2P hosted by other players. You posted a subscription to do what Steam and Battle.Net already did, for free.
But you seem to have a real hatred for WoW for some reason. You've made 2 posts defending Microsoft by eluding towards WoW... Can I guess your an Xbox gamer in your mid-late 20s?
Bethesda brought microtransactions with horse armor.
Microsoft did online subscriptions for online functionality on consoles. I don't know why you think it's silly, they were the first to do it. If things had gone different, it could have been Sega.
No what I think is silly is the suggestion that somehow being first to the punch makes them responsible... It's not like the other console makers went "Well, that's just silly, we don't need the infinite cash flow that this brings in! That's nonsense."
What you hate is capitalism, Microsoft is just a name.
WoW actually runs servers that cost money and that's a core part of how the game works. While I'm sure XBL does in some small fashion as well, it doesn't seem to be wholly necessary to the experience, hence I can play online games from my PC for free just fine. There is no reason why merely to use any game online, I should have to pay.
I didn't mind paying for a subscription for wow back in the day when they constantly added patches and content for no added cost. I don't know if Microsoft continually added more value for your subscription.
I mean subscription gaming properly started on the PC with MMOs
-and I say this as a mainly PC gamer. I remember thinking how insane it was that my friend paid monthly to play the new Warcraft game..this of course before I understood what server costs were
To be fair, running servers for MMOs wasn't cheap. Network cost alone could be quite high, not to mention the storage and backup they'd have to keep rolling in order to ensure small blackouts or crashes didn't doom months of player progress.
That's completely different from what microsoft offered with the xbox, which was effectively a master lobby server to find matches. Little processing and networking needed.
I have no problem subscribing for a (good) MMO. The extreme development times, investments and high performance servers as well as (somewhat) frequent content updates as well as long lifespan makes the subscription worth it.
But when a subscription provides nothing else than access to simple features or low-performnace/unoptimized servers then I cannot understand why it would be needed. Sure there are operating costs but today you can literally just do peer to peer hosting. No need for devs to host anything. And with full control of their consoles they could even validate the clients creating the lobbies. The added cost for online gaming is the worst scam Microsoft invented.
They provided years of content, dedicated support and actively stopped glitches and hacking. Paying for solid service and no hackers can be beneficial.
I can’t go back to consoles lol. I do so many other things on my PC and it just also happens to be great for running games. And you can play damn near anything you want. I setup Dolphin the other day just so I could play through SSX Tricky. I regularly play through Star Fox 64 or Streets of Rage. My friends and I will still randomly do a run through of L4D2. And then we can still play whatever modern games we want. Can’t do all that on a console.
Not during the PS2 era. FF11, EverQuest Adventures, THPS, MGSO1, Splinter Cell Mercs vs Spies... Quite possibly the best era of online console gaming, IMO.
To be fair, didn't all of those have publisher-run infrastructure to make it work? There wasn't a "Sony Online" presence like there was for the PS3 and later.
They had DNAS about a year into the life of the online services, which acted as a middleman and DRM. Those were run by Sony themselves.
Even now, don't publishers and developers handle everything for their own servers once the Microsoft or Sony servers pass them off to the game itself? Most of the games I have for PS right now just use bullshit P2P systems; me or some other player are basically hosting the server in those cases, and I still have to pay extra for it.
Also I just thought about how totally F2P games like Rocket League and Fortnite do not actually require the PS+, Nintendo Online or Xbox Gold (or whatever it's called these days) subscription to play.
It's not like Microsoft invented the idea of a paid online gaming service with Live. Total Entertainment Network for PCs and Sega MegaNet for consoles came out well ahead of it.
It would have never lasted or been as good. P2P has plenty of issues. And servers would eventually need to be paid for. This would just lead to higher priced games, game specific subscriptions, ad funded online gaming or worse micro transaction per game.
If they're running infrastructure that hosts game servers, while keeping all that standardized and cheat-free, that might be a bargain at $15/mo or whatever it costs. But if they're just providing match-making, listing game servers, all while hosting matches on consoles, they're just taking your money.
They've always run the infrastructure to have voice chat parties, host your screenshots/video clips and run moderation for accounts and games within the infrastructure. Cheat-free is a high bar, but its going to be less likely on an Xbox Live only game than on a user hosted server inside a PC game.
That makes sense. I forgot about voice, and the global moderation/banning features are a decent feature for something that everyone else would have to solve (with varying efficacy).
I still remember my first online console gaming experience… Alien Front Online on the Dreamcast. Still not sure how that was an actual thing at that point - the controller even had a little mic module that would slip in where the memory cards went.
Just looked it up - I’m shocked it came out almost 2 full years before Xbox live…
I'm old enough to remember free online gaming that required you to dial into the phone number of the server with your modem. It was a wonderful and glorious time.
I'm old enough to remember a time when you did actually have to pay extra to play games online through services like HEAT and TEN. That shit didn't last long at all, though. Was mostly in the transitory state between when multiplayer was LAN only and the introduction of TCP/IP internet play. I had to use these for Shadow Warrior and Duke3D. Before that, CompuServe (the ISP that introduced me to the internet) also had games that had a separate charge in addition to the service itself, such as the original Neverwinter Nights (not the Bioware game).
One of my favorite stories from those days was trying to get Doom set up to play head-to-head via modem with a friend of ours. We had all kinds of trouble getting it to work, and I swear at some point we actually heard our friends voice coming through the computer speaker or somewhere from the computer! Lol
You used to be able to upgrade your entire gold subscription to gamepass by just paying for a month of gamepass. I know of people that bought multiple years of gold while they were on sale then bought a month of gamepass and boom, multiple years of gamepass for a low price.
I'm not sure if they still do that upgrading thing anymore
I feel like that was a great scheme to both lock a bunch if people into years of gamepass really early on and bump up their numbers, at the same time as rewarding the loyal Xbox Live subscribers who got a great deal out of it. Win - win.
Yeah, I pulled some loophole with gold and live and conversion a few years ago, and it's absolutely been worth it. The titles I played alone covered the cost of it all, especially because I played games I otherwise wouldn't have. The game where you drive trucks in mud? Not on my shopping list. But for "free"? I'm in, let's waste some time.
Tbh, I'm not only blaming those corps but also the whalers for enabling it. It could have died but people funded it and now here we are. I mean paying subs for servers made sense, then they did game pass, microtransactions and all other stuff, and now it's unplayable for me. Solo games on consoles, and multiple players on PC only if they're worth it. Even with some trash games like CoD, I miss them when they weren't subscription based. I bought CoD Vanguard out of nostalgic and it didn't even take me a week to get turned off by game pass. I regretted it, I tried to have it refunded but I played a bit too longer past refund period.
It sucks so bad. I'm glad I kept my old consoles like n64, ps2, ps3, wii, wii u, GBA SP, DS etc. I still get hooked playing those old games.
I got switch, but only for zelda games, thankfully they haven't mess with those type of games... So far...
I believe it was Adobe with their CC software (photoshop, flash etc). Everone was talking how revolutionary it was and how it'll change software selling forever.
the worst part about it is that their software is a requirement for creative arts if you want to be hired by someone. Sure a freelancer can use whatever they want but if you want to get hired you better know photoshop, after effects, and premiere pro or you're dead to employers
Both Xbox and PSN had to start offering extra bonuses to stop people from having that "Hey, wait..." moment. For a lot of people, the free games were the whole cake, not the cherry on top.
Paying to play exclusives online is fair game, servers need funding and all, but the fact that you need to pay for online games of third party devs who won't see anything from the extra expense is bull.
The lack of self awareness is amazing. Yep, fuck Microsoft! How dare they make a product that the gaming community chose to support instead of buying competing products! Shame on THEM for making the thing YOU voluntarily paid for!
I had the dilemma of being a hardcore PC gamer for 15 years now but ever since I got my home theater setup I cannot justify using a PC in place of the PS5. The PS5 brings loads of convenience, easy of use and compatibility to my setup. HDR support is hit and miss, you can't easily wake the PC from sleep with a controller, no HDMI CEC, and the list goes on. The tradeoff of a less performant console outweighs the cons of a PC for my use case.
I use my Steam Deck for home theater stuff, I don't game from my couch much though - super prefer mouse and keyboard. Steam Deck with a gyro-mouse remote and a full keyboard on the back is pretty awesome for browsing YouTube or watching movies
yeah console is definitely more convenient re pick up and go. But for quality gaming the PC is superior by far. I personally have both a 4080ti and a PS5 and i almost never turn on ps5 anymore, Media is watched via a Firestick Stick in TV....i should probably sell the PS5.
I've researched it a fair bit and for the same price you will never get the same performance on a PC as on a ps5. The issue is that games are highly optimised for the one platform and not optimised for Pc.
On paper the raw specs may be better, but in reality the console almost always performs better.
there are plenty of sites with benchmarks showing a 1080ti outperforming a ps5 in gaming. the cost of a pc with this setup must be close to a ps5 now? maybe not i haven't actually looked :). But yes dollar for dollar you'll probs get best performance from a ps5 if buying current components. If budget is an issue ps5 is definitely a better option.
Then why doesn't steam on PC charge a monthly fee to use it's many extensive services? Just because they've given a reason for charging for something, doesn't mean we need to accept it blindly.
Because Steam wants your business. They offer their services in exchange for you buying more games on their platform. Initially they made these services for their own in-house developed games on the platform.
The consoles that had online functionality before the Xbox didn't charge for it, with the exception of SEGA Genesis' system that worked through your cable TV provider back in the 90's (and was so niche, not many people outside Japan had it). The Dreamcast and PS2 both managed to have online services similar to what Xbox provided, and they were completely free of charge.
I don't think they were similar at all. I loved the Dreamcast, but being able to play laggy games of Chu Chu Rocket on dial-up is not really a comparison to the dedicated servers, closed moderated ecosystem with chat/friends etc. that MS created. And that's just comparing to the early iterations of Xbox Live.
Its funny that people are like "look at PC gaming its so free" while paying to host their own servers for individual games, partying up in Discord Nitro and buying battle passes for games they already bought for full price.
No, but what's funny, is that you think these are good examples to make your point. A low amount of gamers actually hosts their own paid servers. Nitro is completely optional and, matter of fact, I don't know a single person who uses it. Battle passes aren't PC exclusive and you don't have to purchase a single one to game normally.
So you're unsurprisingly just making points out of thin air! There's so many advantages consoles have compared to PC gaming, but you just wanted to shit on a freshly made bed, didn't you?
It was mostly a tongue in cheek comment. But hey because there's all these other not quite as successful paid services and no-one you know uses them, therefore they are less valuable, we shouldn't be mad about those ones right?
Yes, but it's not so ubiquitous that having to host your own server is a legitimate concern for the average PC gamer, and the case of there still being off8cal servers which are a viable option for people who don't want to host their own.
You started your comment with "Microsoft didn't invent the subscription model though lol" which sounds a lot like you're trying to disprove something that nobody said. I don't know how you meant it, but that's how it sounds.
In 2002? What other major online network was popular at the time? I remember failed attempts in the PC space (TEN comes to mind), PS2 was free to play online, as was Battle.net. Sega and Nintendo didn't have any major presence here, either.
It's entirely fair and accurate to say Microsoft popularized online gaming subscription services. It just wasn't a big thing before XBox Live came along.
You mean the popular MMO that launched 2 years after Xbox live? But yes, subscription based games did exist but there were no successful general online services yet, live was literally the first one.
Damn, you're right. I could have sworn wow came out earlier than that and xbox live was late 00s, but it was on the first one.
Also having a pain finding the date of the original wow stress test (I was sure I participated in that in fall 2002, but that doesn't seem realistic given the release date a year and a half later, though now that I think if it, that does line up with some other memories). All I get when searching are references to the more recent wow classic stress test dates.
Starting before March 2004, Blizzard started signing up Closed Beta Test testers from an unknown pool of people using an undisclosed method of selection. The Closed Beta Trial ran for about 7 months ending in more widely available stress test and then an open beta before final release around the end of November 2004.
That's what happens for old games that lose dev hosted servers and matchmaking. If online playing was locked behind a subscription, it would be treated as if it was no longer available.
However, it would be a lot harder for me to get my friend group to try new games if it took any modding.
Traditionally, we the players paid for the servers. If it was a server browser game like counter strike, the various clans would pay for their own servers.
Companies that sold gaming servers would also host some as an advertisement of how good their servers were
You need some entry point into a peer-to-peer network in order to make connections with peers. This often takes the form of a central server. In theory you can do have it be a bit more decentralized and have an initial list of peers to try to connect to who can then communicate about other peers, but you still need this initial entry point which is a potential point of failure long term, and I don’t think any games actually do this?
So… Technically speaking, in order to reliably connect peers most games are going to rely on a central server, which does technically cost some money to run, though it should be much cheaper to host than a proper game server which will actually be running the game and physics and stuff server side. With older games like quake you could easily connect to a server even without the master server (though you wouldn’t be able to use the server browser) and it was not terribly difficult to replace the master server with an alternative one.
Even in P2P you'll still need someone to go tell you what other IP addresses are in the group that you're trying to join. And you have to know the IP address of that someone. You're not going to scan the entire Internet to figure out who all else is attempting to play the exact same game as you, that would take literal days every time (assuming you rule out anyone IPv6, if you include them that suddenly becomes millions of years).
Even in P2P you will need to hit a commonly known and trusted resource to tell you what other IP addresses you need to go talk to.
Yeah, P2P is not free because you need an entry point to the network… It is vastly cheaper to host a peer discovery server than a game server, so it’s not completely unreasonable to expect it to be covered by the cost of the game… But it is technically unsustainable in the long run as it is an ongoing cost. Per user, especially across a platforms like Xbox live and PSN I suspect it’s like… ridiculously cheap to run per year?
Such a lame argument. 1) so you're suggesting they don't make money by selling the game? 2) you don't think gamers wouldn't prefer to host servers themselves if they had the option?
No it didn't, and we still have user servers for some games. Such games typically have a few official servers run by the developer, with tons of community servers with a wide variety of gameplay.
The reason we don't have them as much anymore is purely corporate greed. It's the same reason most games don't have mods, even though they stole their most popular gameplay modes from them.
We did, indeed. This is the entire reason for centralized servers existing. It turns out that trying to find the right server for a death match in Doom on a third party site wasn't as fun as it sounds.
Sorry but what did "we" specifically move away from? Because user hosted servers are very much still a thing for a lot of games and none of the problems you mentioned are really inherent to the concept. Web technology and integration was just a lot... less mature in the nineties.
Like I said I don't really share that experience. To my knowledge user hosted servers are still a thing. Your claim lacks supporting evidence. Or even an argument beyond "old games old" really, because user hosted servers don't equate having to use third-party websites anymore for most games.
Back in the 90s, no one could afford a good computer that could run a game and serve it's users.
It's 30 years later and today, most people have a phone that's hundreds of times more powerful. Not only that, many people now have dedicated Internet that is, again, hundreds of times faster than what most people who had computers in the 90s.
It's even easier than ever to stand up a server with docker containers, which was not even possible back then. Virtual systems was still a niche development and was at least a few years away from regular use.
You are right that back then, it sucked ass. But today, it's more possible than ever.
You are right that back then, it sucked ass. But today, it’s more possible than ever.
Right but this means that it was not, in fact, random acts of greed but rather offering services people want that made the switch happen, which is the topic of discussion here
No, that isn't what happened. User run servers, particularly dedicated servers hosted by proper hosting companies, got good before they were taken away. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Counterstrike 1.6, then all the Source games, hell even early EA's Battlefield and Call of Duty had user servers. Communities formed on these servers along with innovative gameplay modes - I know this first hand running Counterstrike surf servers in the 00's.
They also had mods. Valve hired the developers of the Counterstrike mod to help make source, and EA hired the developers of the BF1942 mod Desert Combat to make Battlefield 2. Then Activision stole the zombie mod from COD modders and then locked away modding so they could sell maps (which modders had been making for free, with better quality). EA followed suit not long after.
It was around this time that user servers started to be prohibited in new games. It was part of the same greed, with servers it gives the publisher more control - you'll have to buy the new game to keep playing if they switch the servers off.
User servers being taken away was a business decision, it did not happen because the concept was flawed.
CoD 4 didn't come out in the late 90's. We didn't move away from dedicated servers, the dev's disabled that option going forward and not because it sucked ass, but because people who did not pay for the game could connect to private servers.
CoD didn't but Team Fortress Classic did, and helped popularize the dedicated server trend
Devs disabled it in modern games for a variety of reasons, and fighting piracy was indeed one of them.
If your problem is that you want to be able to pirate games, though, you should know that's not a winning argument and will never happen. No company is going to voluntarily support you pirating their software
See if a very popular game came in the late 00's had user ran servers we didn't actually move away from them in the late 90s even if there were games in the late 90s that did not have user servers.
With no user ran servers it's not only pirates who cannot play multiplayer games but even paying customers when the developer decides it's not worth it anymore.
See if a very popular game came in the late 00’s had user ran servers we didn’t actually move away from them in the late 90s even if there were games in the late 90s that did not have user servers.
We did if it isn't common. "Moving away" very specifically is a term used when something isn't abandoned outright but is much less common than before
With no user ran servers it’s not only pirates who cannot play multiplayer games but even paying customers when the developer decides it’s not worth it anymore.
Yeah I'm not wholly in support of this, I'm just explaining how we got here. That seems to upset people quite a bit for reasons I cannot understand.
Then let us run private servers. It use to be that I could buy a copy of Unreal Tournament or Quake and the server hosting software would either come with the game or could be downloaded elsewhere for free. I could then run the server on my own computer and internet connect or buy server space from a third party.
Big mistake. Seriously, Lemmy has this weird thing about not paying for anything. From music, movies to games. From being a massive open source community you'd expect them to understand things are not free.
Imagine buying a game, then buying a subscription to play it online, only for the company to drop support for the game and because they never released the server software, you just own dead software now. I'm fine with buying software to support the devs, but it sucks that you can't play disconnected games because some suit wanted to maximize profits.
Yep. I’ve noticed a lot of people on this site find the tiniest reason to try and justify their pirating and why they’re totally not stealing (or, if they are, it’s always morally justified, somehow). Not saying there aren’t times where piracy is justified (DRM, anyone?), but it’s certainly a lot less than this site would have you believe.
I know you're getting down voted into oblivion (or at least as much as one can on Lemmy), but you're 100% correct. For a social media platform dominated by nerds who worship Linux, there are a lot of people here who seemingly don't understand how networking and servers actually work.
For someone so confident, you don't seem to know how business works. They aren't charging a subscription to pay for servers exactly, that's just an excuse. They charge because it's the most profitable option. They take a cut of game sales, which more than makes up for server costs.
Game companies have to pay to host the servers for their games and they usually don't charge a subscription. If they did people would avoid their games. Console developers can because (they think) you don't have a choice. If the subscription cost them customers, they'd stop doing it.
Steam has to host the same servers they do. Steam doesn't have a subscription though. They just take a portion of sales, like console manufacturers also do, to pay for it. If that's possible, clearly a subscription isn't required.
"Imagine paying for the internet twice." -PC Gamers
Yeah, with the Steam Deck being as good and cheap as it is, consoles hardly even have the "cheaper" justification anymore. Now it's just the artificial exclusives.
Both Microsoft and Sony have started releasing their stuff on PC (DRM-free in Sony's case.) Even the exclusives are becoming less of an issue now.
Truth. I've been enjoying those.
Yes, World of Warcraft never existed.
It existed and was popular and then poof…it’s gone. That model is kind of dead unless you count battle passes, which are optional…unlike a wow subscription.
Technically speaking, it's more of online gaming growing around it than it disappearing per-say. Although total subscriber count is always a speculation nowadays, there is prently of evidence of it still retaining 50-70% of peak subscriber count from 2010.
But online gaming became so accessible and widespread that WoW turned from a worldwide phenomenon to a somewhat niche game compared to mainstream MOBA and FPS games.
Just stop paying for it. After just a few weeks you'll realize it was a silly addiction. There's lots of great games that don't require a subscription.
I did exactly this and now I'm addicted to two new games that have no fees!
Now I'm addicted to drugs and alcohol!
Now I'm addicted to staying away from such fees, it's great!
Some people have friends they wanna play with. Or so I hear.
They aren't your friends and it won't bother you after a few weeks of detox.
PC, steam deck
There's a lot of gamers in this thread too young to remember how overloaded and miserable the free console game servers were.
Microsoft was like "chuck us like ~$5 per month and we will put up enough servers so the games are actually playable". At the time, it was the best deal available for console gaming.
Honestly an argument could be made it was the most economical way to play online, in general, at the time. The console cost was subsidized, and the online servers were arguably at-cost, and you really only needed to buy one copy of Halo to join the fun.
Yeah but they don't run the servers anymore. So I don't know what I'm paying for really.
Some (Nintendo) even like using P2P instead of dedicated servers. Which makes it even crazier to pay for online.
When I pay for a game access to the whole game should be included and it is on PC (don't bring up DLCs and all that).
There are more costs than just servers. I'm just saying, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be part of the upfront price of the game, though, and I agree with you.
Access to a router somewhere, apparently.
Idk. I was always a PC gamer, and think the old, often modded, independently run servers were much more fun than the soul-less matchmaking I see on most modern games. It was fun to play UT2004, and join a server where the arena was someone's bedroom and all the sound effects were ripped from The Simpsons; or to jump into a clan's open server and shit-talk them while they dominate me, or to join a server run by Beyond Unreal's community, where the mods used were voted on by the community beforehand, IIRC. Good times.
Absolutely. If one was lucky enough to have a buddy with a server setup, that was by far the coolest option.
Very true. These things do still exist for a lot of games. It lost popularity a lot on CS due to the incessant need for "competitive" matchmaking, but they are still out there. Rust is a good game for heavily modded servers (if you like the game concept in the first place) and I think Arma (which a bit more niche) is basically all community servers, ranging from in depth military reality to role playing much more mundane stuff.
There's still yet another side to it. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is still around today. Boot it up, and try joining a game. Five hours later, the mods finish loading, and you get a splash screen full of ads before you begin playing with bots.
At the time, it felt like there were a lot of hobbyists willing to shell out cash to run their servers, but ensuring you got a fair game low on mods was often more trouble than it was worth. I'm even a little bit grateful that Team Fortress 2 started hosting their own, even if they failed to fix the bot situations.
And this is why it was successful and still exists to this day.
excuse the fist shaking at the cloud
Kids these days literally want everything for free and don't care that microtransactions and other monetization has pervaded every aspect of games.
Horse armour, man. Never forget the horse armour. Kids these days love horse armour.
It's not a matter of age. You can play for free on PC now and it's a better experience in many regards. There are also older games (even on console) where you could connect directly to a user through IP address or phone number and those will work to this day. Consoles are the domain of companies that want to have their little walled garden so they can overcharge for things like this.
It's totally a matter of age. Kids these days have no idea how good they have it, and don't realize they need to get off my lawn. Shakes cain in the air /s
I'ma be the devil's advocate - even if they were free, eventually someone would have made it a subscription-based model since PSN servers cost money. Sure, it's not a lot of money, but it's money.
I'm not so sure. Steam servers also cost money. They make way more money from their cut of sales. On console the same thing happens. If not requiring the subscription gets more users, then you make more money by not having it.
They aren't charging because it costs money to run. They're charging because it's more profitable.
I agree, and I think we're actually just saying the same thing - the managers and stuff at (insert big name console manufacturer here) saw the loss by server money (which is, yes, very little money in the grand scheme) and then decided "let's purge that cost too and get 500000% profit on that section as well". Hence, the current state of affairs.
I really don't think the cost of running it was even considered. It's just an excuse some people make to justify paying for it. I've never seen anything from MS or Sony saying it. It has nothing to do with it. It's just an extra thing they can charge for. The fact some people do try to justify it with "server costs" is sad. Every multiplayer game should be a subscription if that were the case, since they need to pay for their servers, but people wouldn't make an excuse for them. The fact the console users want to justify using a console sucks.
...
Well that escalated quickly.
I should clarify: console users want to justify paying for a service that shouldn't be required to pay for (a second time). It's just that using a console requires it (unless you play single-player only), so it ruins the whole console, in my opinion.
I love paying for nintendo online so I can play splatoon 3 which runs on fucking p2p
Nintendo really did decide to jump on the Xbox Live band- wagon without really implementing any of the perks.
Marketplaces are always a game of chicken. If a company thinks they can charge more for less they will; they just need another company to do it first
Stop preordering, support Indi games.
This isn't hard guys.
And raise the flag ⚓
How are the high seas for gaming nowadays? I know it used to be pretty hit and miss before since many titles didn't work properly, crashed and had no support for updates without downloading a new copy.
Updates are still not worked out but most games work fine if you get a nice repack like dodi or fitgirl. Never had issues with those
I've never seen piracy as doing a lot to support indie games.
Generally, your principles should be more about who you'd like to build up than tear down.
Why not both? Also, piracy isn't really so much about tearing down, it's more about the freedom to share.
I'm not sure what Xbox Live has to do with pre-ordering. These days if you have Game Pass you're technically supporting a whole host of indies.
Problem is many indi games just don't have the same appeal as AAA games. There are a few gems but I need to be in the mood.
I feel like it's two separate markets that are forced to share the same big tent known as "gaming".
I never play AAA games. I'm not on some moral crusade, they just don't appeal. I do not have the twitch reflexes for FPS, but smaller devs tend to make the sort of gameplay I like.
Right now the only indy game I can think of that's truly competitive is Battlebit, and that's only because everyone hates what became of Battlefield. Otherwise it's just me and what feels like a half dozen other weirdos out here trying to build a bakery so we can feed pie to harpies, while 90% of the world is playing COD like it's their job. It's two vastly different people who do not have the same needs, is what I'm saying.
So maybe people need to deal with that and stop honking the "play indy" horn so much. If that was the solution, people would already be on it.
Yea I don't play FPS games either. I enjoy the narrative story experiences like Horizon Dawn, The Last Of Us, Alan Wake, etc.
personally AAA games don't appeal to me most of the time. Spare for a few titles that are on my wishlist like Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring (for the reasons explained below) I don't plan on buying any in the foreseeable future.
Most AAA games are plagued by the money curse - devs don't get the freedom to do what they want to do, they are made to create what will make money. Innovation is a risk and will be shut down by the money men unless your name is big enough to sell copies on its own. Sure not all triple A will turn out to be bad or meh, but they are pricey and often so, so, bloated. I was on the fence with Starfield, DIYed myself a demo and that thing was like 95GB with nothing to show for it.
So glad I bought a Steam Deck. Playing games on the couch with friends who each brought their own controller, easily connecting and combining PS4, PS5, Xbox and Nintendo controllers to play together feels surreal and like living in the future of gaming. Never buying another console or their subscriptions ever again.
Yeah? Who pays for the servers that run your matches?
It may be unpopular to hear, but game prices don't completely cover the cost of development and definitely don't cover server operation costs every month.
And if devs raised prices, you'd be complaining about that too.
PC games do just fine without a subscription model (for the most part).
Not always. It feels like it's pretty often I hear about an indie MP game concept I like, but due to low popularity, the servers were taken offline.
Granted, that'd be an issue anytime it's unpopular, but at least a game with 2-digit playership can still just have some friends in the last remaining server.
You don't need dedicated servers for online multiplayer. Locally hosting games used to be the norm.
You don't need them, but it's much more desirable. A lot of PC multiplayer games run dedicated servers which someone pays for.
You don't need to pay for your own dedicated server on PC either. You can do that for free, on your own computer, in your own house. Somehow game companies managed to convince people that all this has to be paid for. It's just rent seeking behavior.
I don't think it was the games companies that convinced people. There's always been a demand. There's a hell of a lot of games server hosting companies out there making money.
Yeah, you can host a game of CS for your friends, but do you really want to host a 200 player Rust server that needs 24/7 uptime on your home PC?
Would you rather have an unstable dedicated server running on someone's home PC, or a stable paid for server that is up 24/7? It's always been possible to run your own dedicated servers, but 3rd party hosting has always been there too, for good reason.
Nope. while it might be true for small independent game developers it's totally false for big company, like MS just a fifth of the profit they paid to shareholders is enough to run good server for like five years
Games from big companies, except the games that went flop, or F2P games, or the game that purposefully sell at low price in order to sell other forms of microtransactions, then most games are profitable
they don't have to rely on monthly subscription to be profitable but the problem for them is "the profit is not high enough" and that's why they do this
just a fifth of the profit they paid to shareholders is enough to run good server for like five years
Xbox doesn't make nearly that much profit compared to MS as a whole. And the cost of building and running a low latency, graphically powerfull data centre in every major region is actually massive.
Then consider that the subscription not only pays for the data centre but also pays the game devs themselves, then you'll see they're not actually money grubbing super villains for this.
The cost is minimal. There's a reason why it's still free on PC. Additionally, you could offer a free option by letting users host their own servers, but that would go against the walled garden bullshit that lets them charge so much for such a cheap service. In fact, I don't know if it's changed since the earlier days, but many console games had games hosted on user consoles anyway, it's just the initial matchmaking which uses the company's servers.
What if the game is P2P?
I believe most of the games in the early days of Online, for consoles, were P2P (flashbacks of people shouting "host advantage!")
lost connection to local host memories from black ops 2
Insecure (you get everyone's IP addresses, if you find a vulnerability you may be able to execute code on user's computers instead of just a server)
Prone to significant lag (one person's bad internet can affect everyone).
I'm sure there's quite a bit more reasons that I can't think of now though
While this is true, the chances of it happening is pretty rare. Just because you have my IP doesn't mean much. Sure you can scan for stuff like open ports and you can easily ddos in a lot of cases, but running a program on another players computer takes a lot more work.
Search news articles for "upnp".
I don't think the plethora of tweens and overworked parents are staying on top of issues like these.
They do cover it - The only thing you're defending her are "shareholder profits".
Normalize LESS of a win for the endless growth fucks. They'll still win plenty.
What year is it for you dude
Yeah, well this is partly why PCs don’t get all the games. Uniform hardware of the consoles and subscriptions to access online play makes them a lot more attractive. Less dev cost, more $. E: plus consoles cost less than a good gaming PC, so that means more players to buy more games.
The publishers/Developers never see that online subscription money. They have to host their own servers anyways.
Ftfy.
PC gets a fuckton more games than consoles, very few games are actually console exclusive and especially exclusive to all consoles but not PC.
I don't remember the last AAA I played. They're just not good anymore
They’re just rehashed and reskinned SOSDD. Same franchises been around forever, it’s too much of a gamble to risk big on something new. Starfield, for example, is proof enough.
I think this is getting less true, and especially with Game Pass and now Sony putting a lot of first party titles on PC, I'm hard pressed to think of a AAA game that isn't available, or won't be if I don't mind waiting a 6 months.
Makes sense, they need a carrot to lure people into their walled garden.
I’d always been a PC gamer and didn’t really get into console multiplayer games ever. It wasn’t until my young son started growing up and getting into gaming that we started looking at doing multiplayer games on consoles. I was appalled by this whole dumb subscription model for playing multiplayer on games that you already bought over the internet (which you’ve also already paid money to your ISP for). Having played years of online gaming for free, the idea of having to pay to play is just mind-boggling to me (though I’ll allow for MMORPGs and some other types of games, that’s understandable).
The worst offender is/was Gears of War, which requires you to sign up for the Xbox game pass in order to play Horde mode, which is just a goddamn couch co-op mode where you play against waves of cpu opponents. It was fucking free in GoW2, literally no internet required, but then suddenly these bastards required you to subscribe to their dumb fucking gaming service just for the privilege of playing against the computer. When I complained about it, people acted like I was entitled or stuck up for expecting it to be free. Just absolute bullshit.
Gears of War (2006) also required the sub to play online but didn't actually have dedicated servers, which for a twitch reflex shooter game meant the host always had an advantage no matter how good your connection was. It became really apparent with one of the tiny dlc maps Raven Down where the words "host shotgun advantage" were often heard.
Yes, World of Warcraft certainly had nothing to do with it.
The gaming phenomena that made billions from their subscription model had absolutely no influence, whatsoever.
How could Microsoft do this?
World of Warcraft ushered in the "games as a service" model, not the "pay to access online features" model. Warcraft doesn't charge you for accessing the internet on your computer.
If WOW was available on console, you'd be paying Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo as well as Blizzard. That's the difference. They are similar, but WOW didn't cause consoles to go pay only for online games.
Subscription based games existed well before WoW was a thing. Ultima Online and EverQuest were well established to name the two biggest of the time. There's also a massive difference between a handful of players on a short lived instance of a game and the requirements for an MMORPG.
Xbox live subscription, existed before WoW. All it really did (Xbox Live) gave you the ability to use your console to play with other people online. Halo was still P2P hosted by other players. You posted a subscription to do what Steam and Battle.Net already did, for free.
But you seem to have a real hatred for WoW for some reason. You've made 2 posts defending Microsoft by eluding towards WoW... Can I guess your an Xbox gamer in your mid-late 20s?
Hatred is a strong assumption based on what I've said, especially because I'm simply using them as an example.
Acting like xbox live is the only reason online gaming costs money is silly.
Bethesda brought microtransactions with horse armor.
Microsoft did online subscriptions for online functionality on consoles. I don't know why you think it's silly, they were the first to do it. If things had gone different, it could have been Sega.
No what I think is silly is the suggestion that somehow being first to the punch makes them responsible... It's not like the other console makers went "Well, that's just silly, we don't need the infinite cash flow that this brings in! That's nonsense."
What you hate is capitalism, Microsoft is just a name.
WoW actually runs servers that cost money and that's a core part of how the game works. While I'm sure XBL does in some small fashion as well, it doesn't seem to be wholly necessary to the experience, hence I can play online games from my PC for free just fine. There is no reason why merely to use any game online, I should have to pay.
I didn't mind paying for a subscription for wow back in the day when they constantly added patches and content for no added cost. I don't know if Microsoft continually added more value for your subscription.
Don't they literally add games every week?
Steam has your back
Bless Gabe. I just got a Deck and it's just chef kiss
This has always been my sole reason for never buying a console.
I mean subscription gaming properly started on the PC with MMOs
-and I say this as a mainly PC gamer. I remember thinking how insane it was that my friend paid monthly to play the new Warcraft game..this of course before I understood what server costs were
To be fair, running servers for MMOs wasn't cheap. Network cost alone could be quite high, not to mention the storage and backup they'd have to keep rolling in order to ensure small blackouts or crashes didn't doom months of player progress.
That's completely different from what microsoft offered with the xbox, which was effectively a master lobby server to find matches. Little processing and networking needed.
This.
I have no problem subscribing for a (good) MMO. The extreme development times, investments and high performance servers as well as (somewhat) frequent content updates as well as long lifespan makes the subscription worth it.
But when a subscription provides nothing else than access to simple features or low-performnace/unoptimized servers then I cannot understand why it would be needed. Sure there are operating costs but today you can literally just do peer to peer hosting. No need for devs to host anything. And with full control of their consoles they could even validate the clients creating the lobbies. The added cost for online gaming is the worst scam Microsoft invented.
And you think it's cheap to run cloud computing data centres?
Yes, especially for a simple lobby server. Not much "computing" in that "cloud data center".
Yeah my bad. I'm dyslexic and read the "could" in the meme as "cloud" and thought it was talking about Microsoft gamepass cloud stuff.
Doesn't matter where it started the point is that most pc gaming can be done without a subscription
They provided years of content, dedicated support and actively stopped glitches and hacking. Paying for solid service and no hackers can be beneficial.
People pay it. There's yer problem.
Switched to PC gaming years ago and never looked back. Praise gaben.
I can’t go back to consoles lol. I do so many other things on my PC and it just also happens to be great for running games. And you can play damn near anything you want. I setup Dolphin the other day just so I could play through SSX Tricky. I regularly play through Star Fox 64 or Streets of Rage. My friends and I will still randomly do a run through of L4D2. And then we can still play whatever modern games we want. Can’t do all that on a console.
Get a Steam Deck or build some SteamOS machine console.
Nintendo and Sony's free options were junk. Microsoft mage a product so much better than the free alternatives that people were willing to pay for it.
Better than on pc, where it was completely free?
In many ways, yes. It was , and still is to some degree, massively more convenient for the couch gamers. That is what you pay for.
Nintendo's paid option is still garbage.
Not during the PS2 era. FF11, EverQuest Adventures, THPS, MGSO1, Splinter Cell Mercs vs Spies... Quite possibly the best era of online console gaming, IMO.
To be fair, didn't all of those have publisher-run infrastructure to make it work? There wasn't a "Sony Online" presence like there was for the PS3 and later.
They had DNAS about a year into the life of the online services, which acted as a middleman and DRM. Those were run by Sony themselves.
Even now, don't publishers and developers handle everything for their own servers once the Microsoft or Sony servers pass them off to the game itself? Most of the games I have for PS right now just use bullshit P2P systems; me or some other player are basically hosting the server in those cases, and I still have to pay extra for it.
Also I just thought about how totally F2P games like Rocket League and Fortnite do not actually require the PS+, Nintendo Online or Xbox Gold (or whatever it's called these days) subscription to play.
That's why I only buy consoles that aren't supported anymore and mod them, it's just better and cheaper.
It's not like Microsoft invented the idea of a paid online gaming service with Live. Total Entertainment Network for PCs and Sega MegaNet for consoles came out well ahead of it.
Heat.net, Mplayer, Kali, the list goes on
This unlocked some really nostalgic memories of Sony Online Entertainment for me.
It would have never lasted or been as good. P2P has plenty of issues. And servers would eventually need to be paid for. This would just lead to higher priced games, game specific subscriptions, ad funded online gaming or worse micro transaction per game.
Not an XBox or XBoL user.
If they're running infrastructure that hosts game servers, while keeping all that standardized and cheat-free, that might be a bargain at $15/mo or whatever it costs. But if they're just providing match-making, listing game servers, all while hosting matches on consoles, they're just taking your money.
it might be a bargain... but actually they're locking down hardware and software that you already paid for... so it's a ripoff, not a bargain
i'd be fine with optional using their services.
btw, the game developers run the servers anyways.
They've always run the infrastructure to have voice chat parties, host your screenshots/video clips and run moderation for accounts and games within the infrastructure. Cheat-free is a high bar, but its going to be less likely on an Xbox Live only game than on a user hosted server inside a PC game.
That makes sense. I forgot about voice, and the global moderation/banning features are a decent feature for something that everyone else would have to solve (with varying efficacy).
I still remember my first online console gaming experience… Alien Front Online on the Dreamcast. Still not sure how that was an actual thing at that point - the controller even had a little mic module that would slip in where the memory cards went.
Just looked it up - I’m shocked it came out almost 2 full years before Xbox live…
I'm old enough to remember free online gaming that required you to dial into the phone number of the server with your modem. It was a wonderful and glorious time.
I'm old enough to remember a time when you did actually have to pay extra to play games online through services like HEAT and TEN. That shit didn't last long at all, though. Was mostly in the transitory state between when multiplayer was LAN only and the introduction of TCP/IP internet play. I had to use these for Shadow Warrior and Duke3D. Before that, CompuServe (the ISP that introduced me to the internet) also had games that had a separate charge in addition to the service itself, such as the original Neverwinter Nights (not the Bioware game).
I remember having free Internet because my local library offered dialup service to everyone in the county.
It wasn't fast, but no dialup ever was.
One of my favorite stories from those days was trying to get Doom set up to play head-to-head via modem with a friend of ours. We had all kinds of trouble getting it to work, and I swear at some point we actually heard our friends voice coming through the computer speaker or somewhere from the computer! Lol
I spent $70 for 3 years of gamepass and online play. I'm more than getting my money's worth.
I think Gamepass alone is worth it
Today that’d cost you $360 & you’d have to moonwalk away.
I’m out of the loop, going by the MS site price… how’d you score that?
Hmm, CNET recommends CDKeys, I guess they’re not using stolen credit cards then. ($165 for 3yr.)
You used to be able to upgrade your entire gold subscription to gamepass by just paying for a month of gamepass. I know of people that bought multiple years of gold while they were on sale then bought a month of gamepass and boom, multiple years of gamepass for a low price.
I'm not sure if they still do that upgrading thing anymore
I feel like that was a great scheme to both lock a bunch if people into years of gamepass really early on and bump up their numbers, at the same time as rewarding the loyal Xbox Live subscribers who got a great deal out of it. Win - win.
Yeah, I pulled some loophole with gold and live and conversion a few years ago, and it's absolutely been worth it. The titles I played alone covered the cost of it all, especially because I played games I otherwise wouldn't have. The game where you drive trucks in mud? Not on my shopping list. But for "free"? I'm in, let's waste some time.
I, too, sleep in a bed, lying down.
Tbh, I'm not only blaming those corps but also the whalers for enabling it. It could have died but people funded it and now here we are. I mean paying subs for servers made sense, then they did game pass, microtransactions and all other stuff, and now it's unplayable for me. Solo games on consoles, and multiple players on PC only if they're worth it. Even with some trash games like CoD, I miss them when they weren't subscription based. I bought CoD Vanguard out of nostalgic and it didn't even take me a week to get turned off by game pass. I regretted it, I tried to have it refunded but I played a bit too longer past refund period.
It sucks so bad. I'm glad I kept my old consoles like n64, ps2, ps3, wii, wii u, GBA SP, DS etc. I still get hooked playing those old games.
I got switch, but only for zelda games, thankfully they haven't mess with those type of games... So far...
good thing sony doesnt charge to play online 👍
Unsure if sarcasm, but iirc the hacks were mostly PS3 era, I think 09/10, and you've needed psplus to play online since PS4?
If I remenber it well Apple was the first to push the monthly subscription model (not in gaming).
I believe it was Adobe with their CC software (photoshop, flash etc). Everone was talking how revolutionary it was and how it'll change software selling forever.
fuck Adobe
the worst part about it is that their software is a requirement for creative arts if you want to be hired by someone. Sure a freelancer can use whatever they want but if you want to get hired you better know photoshop, after effects, and premiere pro or you're dead to employers
correct
Not only the PCMASTERRACE doesn't pay subscription, we also got 20 great games for free over X-mas from Epic, Gog, Indigala and many more.
And if you really want a subscription, Amazon Prime gives you 5-10 games per month for free. Permanently.
The funny thing is that Microsoft also attempted to bring paid online to PC back in the GFWL days and failed.
I think most people accepted Xbox Live being paid due to the fact that online gaming on consoles wasn't all that prominent compared to PC at the time.
Both Xbox and PSN had to start offering extra bonuses to stop people from having that "Hey, wait..." moment. For a lot of people, the free games were the whole cake, not the cherry on top.
Paying to play exclusives online is fair game, servers need funding and all, but the fact that you need to pay for online games of third party devs who won't see anything from the extra expense is bull.
The lack of self awareness is amazing. Yep, fuck Microsoft! How dare they make a product that the gaming community chose to support instead of buying competing products! Shame on THEM for making the thing YOU voluntarily paid for!
We did this to ourselves. Literally.
As somebody with a PC, I don't understand this. Does this mean that console games are only subscriptions now?
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
If you want to play anything online with a console, you have to pay for a yearly subscription.
Yep, that's terrible.
even a 7 year old pc with a 1080ti outperforms a ps5. maybe time to switch.
I had the dilemma of being a hardcore PC gamer for 15 years now but ever since I got my home theater setup I cannot justify using a PC in place of the PS5. The PS5 brings loads of convenience, easy of use and compatibility to my setup. HDR support is hit and miss, you can't easily wake the PC from sleep with a controller, no HDMI CEC, and the list goes on. The tradeoff of a less performant console outweighs the cons of a PC for my use case.
I use my Steam Deck for home theater stuff, I don't game from my couch much though - super prefer mouse and keyboard. Steam Deck with a gyro-mouse remote and a full keyboard on the back is pretty awesome for browsing YouTube or watching movies
Full keyboard on the back of a deck? I am kinda new to my deck and since getting my home theater stuff setup haven't touched it much.
No, sorry, full keyboard on the back of the usb remote I use for my Steam Deck - which is docked
yeah console is definitely more convenient re pick up and go. But for quality gaming the PC is superior by far. I personally have both a 4080ti and a PS5 and i almost never turn on ps5 anymore, Media is watched via a Firestick Stick in TV....i should probably sell the PS5.
I've researched it a fair bit and for the same price you will never get the same performance on a PC as on a ps5. The issue is that games are highly optimised for the one platform and not optimised for Pc.
On paper the raw specs may be better, but in reality the console almost always performs better.
there are plenty of sites with benchmarks showing a 1080ti outperforming a ps5 in gaming. the cost of a pc with this setup must be close to a ps5 now? maybe not i haven't actually looked :). But yes dollar for dollar you'll probs get best performance from a ps5 if buying current components. If budget is an issue ps5 is definitely a better option.
its inevitable under capitalism
It honestly makes sense to pay for a service that needs maintenance in perpetuity.
Then why doesn't steam on PC charge a monthly fee to use it's many extensive services? Just because they've given a reason for charging for something, doesn't mean we need to accept it blindly.
Because Steam wants your business. They offer their services in exchange for you buying more games on their platform. Initially they made these services for their own in-house developed games on the platform.
The consoles that had online functionality before the Xbox didn't charge for it, with the exception of SEGA Genesis' system that worked through your cable TV provider back in the 90's (and was so niche, not many people outside Japan had it). The Dreamcast and PS2 both managed to have online services similar to what Xbox provided, and they were completely free of charge.
I don't think they were similar at all. I loved the Dreamcast, but being able to play laggy games of Chu Chu Rocket on dial-up is not really a comparison to the dedicated servers, closed moderated ecosystem with chat/friends etc. that MS created. And that's just comparing to the early iterations of Xbox Live.
Its funny that people are like "look at PC gaming its so free" while paying to host their own servers for individual games, partying up in Discord Nitro and buying battle passes for games they already bought for full price.
No, but what's funny, is that you think these are good examples to make your point. A low amount of gamers actually hosts their own paid servers. Nitro is completely optional and, matter of fact, I don't know a single person who uses it. Battle passes aren't PC exclusive and you don't have to purchase a single one to game normally.
So you're unsurprisingly just making points out of thin air! There's so many advantages consoles have compared to PC gaming, but you just wanted to shit on a freshly made bed, didn't you?
It was mostly a tongue in cheek comment. But hey because there's all these other not quite as successful paid services and no-one you know uses them, therefore they are less valuable, we shouldn't be mad about those ones right?
Who pays for nitro? Or battle passes for that matter?
And the only server hosting Ive ever paid for was $8 for 3 months. Thats not a big deal compared to console online prices
Wtf does nitro even give you? Discord is bloated as fuck as it is
Hosting your own servers is a niche thing nowadays, and even where that is the case there's usually official servers.
Hell I don't know a recent major PC title that even supports hosting your own servers. Not even Quake Chumpions let's you host your own servers.
Arma, counter strike, valheim, v rising, insurgency, satisfactory, battlebit. There's all sorts of multiplayer PC games that support server hosting.
Yes, but it's not so ubiquitous that having to host your own server is a legitimate concern for the average PC gamer, and the case of there still being off8cal servers which are a viable option for people who don't want to host their own.
Microsoft didn't invent the subscription model though lol
If they weren't the first to add it to games, other companies would have done it anyway
It says "popularized"
And I'm saying it was already popular
You started your comment with "Microsoft didn't invent the subscription model though lol" which sounds a lot like you're trying to disprove something that nobody said. I don't know how you meant it, but that's how it sounds.
In 2002? What other major online network was popular at the time? I remember failed attempts in the PC space (TEN comes to mind), PS2 was free to play online, as was Battle.net. Sega and Nintendo didn't have any major presence here, either.
It's entirely fair and accurate to say Microsoft popularized online gaming subscription services. It just wasn't a big thing before XBox Live came along.
I remember the Xbox 360 being the only gaming platform in that generation that charged an online subscription fee. Who else was doing it?
If by popular you mean others had attempted it and failed, sure.
Ever heard of World of Warcraft?
You mean the popular MMO that launched 2 years after Xbox live? But yes, subscription based games did exist but there were no successful general online services yet, live was literally the first one.
Damn, you're right. I could have sworn wow came out earlier than that and xbox live was late 00s, but it was on the first one.
Also having a pain finding the date of the original wow stress test (I was sure I participated in that in fall 2002, but that doesn't seem realistic given the release date a year and a half later, though now that I think if it, that does line up with some other memories). All I get when searching are references to the more recent wow classic stress test dates.
Starting before March 2004, Blizzard started signing up Closed Beta Test testers from an unknown pool of people using an undisclosed method of selection. The Closed Beta Trial ran for about 7 months ending in more widely available stress test and then an open beta before final release around the end of November 2004.
I'm all for free online console gaming, but servers and maintenance needs to get paid.
How do you think it works for PC games?
Hits a buzzer
We'd set up unofficial servers by modding the game.
That's what happens for old games that lose dev hosted servers and matchmaking. If online playing was locked behind a subscription, it would be treated as if it was no longer available.
However, it would be a lot harder for me to get my friend group to try new games if it took any modding.
That's not true though, at least for over a year now.
F2P games do not require Xbox live to play anymore.
Traditionally, we the players paid for the servers. If it was a server browser game like counter strike, the various clans would pay for their own servers. Companies that sold gaming servers would also host some as an advertisement of how good their servers were
Peer to peer?
P2P if it's free and expected to last.
If it's a separate server, I don't see that as infinitely sustainable for most companies.
Hahaha...
GTA5 is P2P with a central component.
So if R* kills the servers, your game is done for without modding.
You need some entry point into a peer-to-peer network in order to make connections with peers. This often takes the form of a central server. In theory you can do have it be a bit more decentralized and have an initial list of peers to try to connect to who can then communicate about other peers, but you still need this initial entry point which is a potential point of failure long term, and I don’t think any games actually do this?
So… Technically speaking, in order to reliably connect peers most games are going to rely on a central server, which does technically cost some money to run, though it should be much cheaper to host than a proper game server which will actually be running the game and physics and stuff server side. With older games like quake you could easily connect to a server even without the master server (though you wouldn’t be able to use the server browser) and it was not terribly difficult to replace the master server with an alternative one.
Even in P2P you'll still need someone to go tell you what other IP addresses are in the group that you're trying to join. And you have to know the IP address of that someone. You're not going to scan the entire Internet to figure out who all else is attempting to play the exact same game as you, that would take literal days every time (assuming you rule out anyone IPv6, if you include them that suddenly becomes millions of years).
Even in P2P you will need to hit a commonly known and trusted resource to tell you what other IP addresses you need to go talk to.
Yeah, P2P is not free because you need an entry point to the network… It is vastly cheaper to host a peer discovery server than a game server, so it’s not completely unreasonable to expect it to be covered by the cost of the game… But it is technically unsustainable in the long run as it is an ongoing cost. Per user, especially across a platforms like Xbox live and PSN I suspect it’s like… ridiculously cheap to run per year?
Such a lame argument. 1) so you're suggesting they don't make money by selling the game? 2) you don't think gamers wouldn't prefer to host servers themselves if they had the option?
Let the users run servers. Then, all you really need to run is a simple connection server that lets people search for game servers.
We specifically moved away from this in the late 90s because it sucked ass.
No it didn't, and we still have user servers for some games. Such games typically have a few official servers run by the developer, with tons of community servers with a wide variety of gameplay.
The reason we don't have them as much anymore is purely corporate greed. It's the same reason most games don't have mods, even though they stole their most popular gameplay modes from them.
We did, indeed. This is the entire reason for centralized servers existing. It turns out that trying to find the right server for a death match in Doom on a third party site wasn't as fun as it sounds.
Sorry but what did "we" specifically move away from? Because user hosted servers are very much still a thing for a lot of games and none of the problems you mentioned are really inherent to the concept. Web technology and integration was just a lot... less mature in the nineties.
People who were alive at the time and flocked to centralized servers. Markets respond to demand.
Like I said I don't really share that experience. To my knowledge user hosted servers are still a thing. Your claim lacks supporting evidence. Or even an argument beyond "old games old" really, because user hosted servers don't equate having to use third-party websites anymore for most games.
Back in the 90s, no one could afford a good computer that could run a game and serve it's users.
It's 30 years later and today, most people have a phone that's hundreds of times more powerful. Not only that, many people now have dedicated Internet that is, again, hundreds of times faster than what most people who had computers in the 90s.
It's even easier than ever to stand up a server with docker containers, which was not even possible back then. Virtual systems was still a niche development and was at least a few years away from regular use.
You are right that back then, it sucked ass. But today, it's more possible than ever.
Right but this means that it was not, in fact, random acts of greed but rather offering services people want that made the switch happen, which is the topic of discussion here
No, that isn't what happened. User run servers, particularly dedicated servers hosted by proper hosting companies, got good before they were taken away. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Counterstrike 1.6, then all the Source games, hell even early EA's Battlefield and Call of Duty had user servers. Communities formed on these servers along with innovative gameplay modes - I know this first hand running Counterstrike surf servers in the 00's.
They also had mods. Valve hired the developers of the Counterstrike mod to help make source, and EA hired the developers of the BF1942 mod Desert Combat to make Battlefield 2. Then Activision stole the zombie mod from COD modders and then locked away modding so they could sell maps (which modders had been making for free, with better quality). EA followed suit not long after.
It was around this time that user servers started to be prohibited in new games. It was part of the same greed, with servers it gives the publisher more control - you'll have to buy the new game to keep playing if they switch the servers off.
User servers being taken away was a business decision, it did not happen because the concept was flawed.
CoD 4 didn't come out in the late 90's. We didn't move away from dedicated servers, the dev's disabled that option going forward and not because it sucked ass, but because people who did not pay for the game could connect to private servers.
CoD didn't but Team Fortress Classic did, and helped popularize the dedicated server trend
Devs disabled it in modern games for a variety of reasons, and fighting piracy was indeed one of them.
If your problem is that you want to be able to pirate games, though, you should know that's not a winning argument and will never happen. No company is going to voluntarily support you pirating their software
See if a very popular game came in the late 00's had user ran servers we didn't actually move away from them in the late 90s even if there were games in the late 90s that did not have user servers.
With no user ran servers it's not only pirates who cannot play multiplayer games but even paying customers when the developer decides it's not worth it anymore.
We did if it isn't common. "Moving away" very specifically is a term used when something isn't abandoned outright but is much less common than before
Yeah I'm not wholly in support of this, I'm just explaining how we got here. That seems to upset people quite a bit for reasons I cannot understand.
Unless you pay them for internet bandwidth, there's no servers needed for internet access on the side of Microsoft
Then let us run private servers. It use to be that I could buy a copy of Unreal Tournament or Quake and the server hosting software would either come with the game or could be downloaded elsewhere for free. I could then run the server on my own computer and internet connect or buy server space from a third party.
Just recently Microsoft lifted the need to have a subscription to play free games though, it was always just a block.
Big mistake. Seriously, Lemmy has this weird thing about not paying for anything. From music, movies to games. From being a massive open source community you'd expect them to understand things are not free.
Imagine buying a game, then buying a subscription to play it online, only for the company to drop support for the game and because they never released the server software, you just own dead software now. I'm fine with buying software to support the devs, but it sucks that you can't play disconnected games because some suit wanted to maximize profits.
Yep. I’ve noticed a lot of people on this site find the tiniest reason to try and justify their pirating and why they’re totally not stealing (or, if they are, it’s always morally justified, somehow). Not saying there aren’t times where piracy is justified (DRM, anyone?), but it’s certainly a lot less than this site would have you believe.
I know you're getting down voted into oblivion (or at least as much as one can on Lemmy), but you're 100% correct. For a social media platform dominated by nerds who worship Linux, there are a lot of people here who seemingly don't understand how networking and servers actually work.
I feel bad for the people running the instances
For someone so confident, you don't seem to know how business works. They aren't charging a subscription to pay for servers exactly, that's just an excuse. They charge because it's the most profitable option. They take a cut of game sales, which more than makes up for server costs.
Game companies have to pay to host the servers for their games and they usually don't charge a subscription. If they did people would avoid their games. Console developers can because (they think) you don't have a choice. If the subscription cost them customers, they'd stop doing it.
Steam has to host the same servers they do. Steam doesn't have a subscription though. They just take a portion of sales, like console manufacturers also do, to pay for it. If that's possible, clearly a subscription isn't required.