this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Gaming
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I loaded up Dirt 3 a week ago and half my friends list lit me up wondering how the fuck i was running Dirt 3. (typical racing people)
This is how I found out some steam games don't exist for everyone.
Racing games are rotten with this due to licensing issues. I don't know how liberally Dirt indulges in licensing, but these games are not built to be sold forever, and that sucks. Mortal Kombat 9 is no longer available for sale, and they never said why exactly, but everyone suspects is because they lost the license to Freddy Kruger, who is a guest character in that game.
A lot of really good old movies can only be purchased on DVD because they can't license the music for streaming.
Streaming isn't even the goal I would shoot for for movies. You don't get to own a copy. There is no Steam or GOG for movies, and Hollywood likes it that way. Blu Rays and their 4K equivalent are becoming more scarce, especially as exclusivity for streaming services become where the money gets made. Piracy is going to be the only way to preserve that stuff, especially when someone like WB is the exclusive rights holder and then removes the content from their service.
Games that require active servers are also not meant to be sold forever, and imho all those games should be digital only. I wish they didn’t have discs, because as a used game buyer, I have to really hope the dude working the counter is gunna tell me the servers for the game are already shut down 6 months after release… I’ve bought 2 games with inactive servers so far. Can’t play them at all unless I find someone hosting a private server who is cool with me joining to see if I even like the game, which is wildly unlikely.
I don’t buy online games for this reason, and it’s getting harder to know which ones require online to function at all. They all say “require online for network features” but don’t specify when the whole game is network features? Minefield.
Gaming is getting so damn difficult. I miss just walking in, finding a game, buying it, and knowing it would work, even if the console isn’t hooked to Wi-Fi.
I was pretty careful with my wording. I said they weren't built to be sold forever. Maybe that's pedantic, but I'd consider it shortsighted thinking that they can't get the perpetual license to sell that game with those cars, just like I'd consider it shortsighted thinking that games are sold that require a connection to the publisher's server. In either case, it's BS.
Rhythm games too