alt Hacker NewsGaming might be unique in the sense that it's the only industry where 1) consumers make a one-time purchase of a product, but then 2) the manufacturer remains responsible for the online component.. forever? I can't think of any other examples in real life where this happens across an industry (maybe a few niche products).
Maybe this is the reason MS has been pushing Game Pass so hard, to get rid of the "purchase" part entirely.
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Any company that willfully chains a device to their cloud platform in such a way should get the same treatment, whether the cloud offering is free as in beer or paid. It's happening a lot more than you might think.
> I can't think of any other examples in real life where this happens across an industry
Vehicles? Maybe not necessarily forever, but I'd expect the large car manufacturers to all still have some level of support for a 20-year-old car...
It's more like it's the only software industry that still has a relevant amount of non-subscription based one time sales. I guess this will be the end of that.
Amazon just ended support for older Kindles. Not sure how that's any different.
Am I the only one who remembers that multiplayer was just peer to peer? Like we had multiplayer before every studio decided they wanted to host their own servers, it was just what the guy with broadband in the neighborhood ran or something my ISP provided.
The issue is nobody gets that option if the ability to run a server is made unavailable to the public.
Well I don't want the company I bought the game from to be completely in charge of the online component. If it helps them make more money then good for them but they need a winddown plan.