Post #4079911

2026-07-17 19:14 UTC

This is just not the case. There are many reasons to have a centralized model, especially for a small studio who has to focus their efforts. If you want to have a ladder, a matchmaking system, unlockable content, or even just to guarantee a smooth user experience, then you need the server to run on your own trusted hardware. Literally no MMO could work without a centralized model. Destiny relies on this. Every competitive shooter, or extraction shooter relies on this. And when you’re a small studio, and you have “support the server that won’t be distributed publicly” and “support the server that will be distributed publicly”, one of those requires an order of magnitude more effort just for validation. When you have to crunch for a deadline, sorry, the primary user experience is going to get priority. They are doing voluntarily what I want a Stop Killing Games initiative to require from all studios: just ensure the game continues to work. Hopefully their next project isn’t built with the same naivety. You understand they’re out of business, right?

Replies (1)

@ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2026-07-17 19:41

They can have a ladder and matchmaking while still providing a server browser that goes to self-hosted servers. Even then, these are things that you set up with the assumption that your game is going to have a massive population, which is the foolish assumption all these live service games make. MMOs have been self-hosted for as long as pirates have been reverse-engineering the code. The only thing stopping it from happening more is the rights holders’ willingness to allow it. Competitive shooters started from server browsers and self-hosted servers. They are doing voluntarily what I want a Stop Killing Games initiative to require from all studios: just ensure the game continues to work. If they wait until the game is a failure and about to close shop, I have no guarantee that this update will be its fate. But let’s say I know in advance somehow that the game is going to survive the servers’ decommissioning; I still end up with all the other negative side effects of an always-online game in the interim. Server queues, downtime that I can’t do anything about, no ability to play LAN with friends in a place with lousy internet, etc. SKG is looking for a minimum of preservation that I can get behind, but I don’t think it would be enough for me as a customer unless it was never always-online. You understand they’re out of business, right? Looks like I missed it as I scrolled by a block on that page trying to recommend me other articles, as I was looking for the rest of this article.

Open ##4079910