alt Hacker NewsI happen to be shutting down an online game right now.
https://www.tyleo.com/blog/sunsetting-rec-room-how-to-give-a...
The sad truth is that these things have high operating costs, especially if they need moderation. I would guess this bill just makes it more risky to make the games in the first place. It’s already brutally hard to make money on games.
I feel like the effect of this might just be that shutting an online game makes it more likely to take a whole company down if you have to issue refunds. Alternatively, it might push multiplayer games towards other business models like ads, free-to-play, or subscription.
Replies
pointlessone • today at 12:07 AM
What are the insurmountable obstacles to releasing the server code for the community to run?
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Sorry to hear about your situation. For the game you're shutting down online services for, forgive my nieve question but how much work is it to expose an environment variable called `GAME_SERVER_URL` and then document the API contract it expects on the other end?
Servers have a real cost, nobody is denying that, but I think the people who bought the game should have an option/alternative in case the servers are down.