Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end(pretendo.network)
pretendo.network
Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end
https://pretendo.network/blog/12-23-23
216 comments
Look at the one company who owns a vibrant operating system: Microsoft.
They dropped the original Xbox like a box of bricks. They shut down those old servers quite rapidly. With the Xbox 360 however, they will stop the ability to buy games on an original Xbox 360 next year. That's a long era of support!
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c...
I'm fairly convinced new credit card standards are probably what is closing down the 360 store. They're only closing down the ability to buy things. Nintendo is also shutting down the Wii U and 3DS around the same time and Sony has already stopped allowing credit cards on a PS3.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/6/22713526/sony-ps3-vita-bu...
But getting back to Microsoft, the Xbox One and the Series consoles are running the same store. The OS is for all intents and purposes exactly the same. Any 360 game that has been migrated to the new One/Series store through backwards compatibility is staying purchasable past the closure of the 360 store.
When the next round of closures comes, Microsoft won't close down a store, they'll prevent the Xbox One from accessing the store. I hope with all my might that Nintendo does the same; that the Switch OS remains their software platform and that they close access to their store, not shut it down.
They dropped the original Xbox like a box of bricks. They shut down those old servers quite rapidly. With the Xbox 360 however, they will stop the ability to buy games on an original Xbox 360 next year. That's a long era of support!
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c...
I'm fairly convinced new credit card standards are probably what is closing down the 360 store. They're only closing down the ability to buy things. Nintendo is also shutting down the Wii U and 3DS around the same time and Sony has already stopped allowing credit cards on a PS3.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/6/22713526/sony-ps3-vita-bu...
But getting back to Microsoft, the Xbox One and the Series consoles are running the same store. The OS is for all intents and purposes exactly the same. Any 360 game that has been migrated to the new One/Series store through backwards compatibility is staying purchasable past the closure of the 360 store.
When the next round of closures comes, Microsoft won't close down a store, they'll prevent the Xbox One from accessing the store. I hope with all my might that Nintendo does the same; that the Switch OS remains their software platform and that they close access to their store, not shut it down.
Looks like the Xbox 360 will get more than 18 years of online store support. That's a really long time considering it launched in 2005.
I would take 18 total years online support for the Switch. It's been out for 6 so far, so even if I "only" got 12 years out of my unit (I just bought one recently) that would be pretty good...
...but not excellent. I bought a Wii in 2008 and after a long time in storage I pulled it out again a few years ago. Since then it's been used at least once every two weeks and mostly weekly. It's 15 years old and everything including the game CDs have held up surprisingly well.
Will I want to use my Switch and the digital games I purchased, in 15 years? Can't rule it out based on past history.
Wikipedia says >132 million Switch units have shipped, and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom just launched 6 months ago. Adding it all up, shutting down the Switch backend services in even 4 or 5 years seems insane at best.
I would take 18 total years online support for the Switch. It's been out for 6 so far, so even if I "only" got 12 years out of my unit (I just bought one recently) that would be pretty good...
...but not excellent. I bought a Wii in 2008 and after a long time in storage I pulled it out again a few years ago. Since then it's been used at least once every two weeks and mostly weekly. It's 15 years old and everything including the game CDs have held up surprisingly well.
Will I want to use my Switch and the digital games I purchased, in 15 years? Can't rule it out based on past history.
Wikipedia says >132 million Switch units have shipped, and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom just launched 6 months ago. Adding it all up, shutting down the Switch backend services in even 4 or 5 years seems insane at best.
I got my original NES over 30 years ago. I had to swap a couple capacitors but still hook it up occasionally and show the kids games like Duck Hunt(required an old tv as well) and Tetris and Blaster Master. These digital games that suddenly stop working simply due to no server support is a hard pill to swallow. At that point I really think companies should be forced to release source code and keys and allow anyone who wants to offer support a chance to run the games.
The transition to not owning my own games sealed my decision to stop buying them. To me, it is insane to allow a company to determine how long I get to enjoy my purchase. More gamers need to take a stand.
Effectively Xbox 360 can have a human lifetime's worth of support because they have a jailbreak. I worry about the subsequent xbox consoles. They haven't been cracked right? They are the ones with a real ticking clock unless someone finally gets to cracking it.
I still have an Xbox 360, and as I'm not a regular gamer it's still my go-to. We maybe bought in in '06-'08. if they would shut down only services (and I could still play offline), that's totally ok for me. 15 years for a console is a long time.
Nothing approached the Kinect, Just Dance of that era just owns.
Not if you’re black
WiiU and 3DS eShops are already closed: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/... but to your point, you can still download owned games and DLC "for the foreseeable future", just purchases have been removed. You still have the option currently to migrate any leftover funds to a newer Nintendo account.
I would argue Microsoft is one of the better ones with respect to backports and longer term support.
Others (cough google cough) are on the other end of that spectrum. I would imagine Nintendo is somewhere in the middle.
That said, i still grabbed Digital copies of games. Plan is i can put multiple switches on an account and when they are traveling (ie: not connected) my kids can play games without having to cop 2 copies of every game.
Still need to get the second switch online to test this premise though.
Others (cough google cough) are on the other end of that spectrum. I would imagine Nintendo is somewhere in the middle.
That said, i still grabbed Digital copies of games. Plan is i can put multiple switches on an account and when they are traveling (ie: not connected) my kids can play games without having to cop 2 copies of every game.
Still need to get the second switch online to test this premise though.
You can only share games between accounts on your "home" switch.
Yeah. It’s gonna be two switches on a single account.
An account can only have one "primary" Switch, which is the only one that will play games without an online ownership check. Secondary switches need to be online to play games.
So you toss the “primary” in airplane mode and let the secondary check in to pass drm via hotspot when the kids are in the car.
At least that is the plan.
At least that is the plan.
I think this approach is fine as long as
* Backwards compatibility is maintained
* The company doesn't exit the console business and shut down their servers.
I'm pretty regularly playing 20+ year old games, and plan on playing them for the next 40 years. On this timescale I have serious doubts about the stability of online first platforms.
* Backwards compatibility is maintained
* The company doesn't exit the console business and shut down their servers.
I'm pretty regularly playing 20+ year old games, and plan on playing them for the next 40 years. On this timescale I have serious doubts about the stability of online first platforms.
A key detail here is that Xbox 360 online games were and are playable (as long as their individual servers are still running), while this network shutdown will disable any ability to play unmodified 3DS or WiiU games.
Fan patches and system modifications will keep things running, but I assume that the population that’s both willing and able to apply them will be sharply limited.
Fan patches and system modifications will keep things running, but I assume that the population that’s both willing and able to apply them will be sharply limited.
It's kind of crazy how Nintendo has basically thrown out their entire service for consoles multiple times and started from scratch now. Can you imagine if Xbox Live or the PSN were thrown out and replaced with an incompatible new service after a single generation of use, let alone multiple times? Even ignoring the user experience, it feels like a massive waste of engineering work, with the benefit being...not having to spend as much effort implementing the service, or recruiting the proper talent to make it good enough to last? It honestly seems like they just didn't seen a compelling reason for previous generations, which is an unfortunate lack of foresight, but I really hope they've figured it out for the Switch and won't do it again.
Lack of support for 3DS and (probably) switch means I am moving over to the Steam Deck for my next console, probably early next year. Losing my entire switch library, basically forever, when the Switch 2 (or whatever they call it) is released seems like throwing good money after bad.
Nintendo has been getting greedy in recent years with the paid rereleases and HD ports.
However they had a terrific track record on backcompat for years in the handheld space. GB -> GBC -> GBA -> DS -> 3DS, every one supporting at least one generation back's physical media. Nintendo understands the value of the Switch library and I think would be very cautious to release successor hardware that didn't play the existing titles.
However they had a terrific track record on backcompat for years in the handheld space. GB -> GBC -> GBA -> DS -> 3DS, every one supporting at least one generation back's physical media. Nintendo understands the value of the Switch library and I think would be very cautious to release successor hardware that didn't play the existing titles.
> Nintendo understands the value of the Switch library and I think would be very cautious to release successor hardware that didn't play the existing titles.
I really hope so. The switch has such a great library, it would be an absolute shame if they abandoned it all. From the rumors I've heard they're sticking to a similar platform for the next console so hopefully backwards compatibility is reasonably likely.
I really hope so. The switch has such a great library, it would be an absolute shame if they abandoned it all. From the rumors I've heard they're sticking to a similar platform for the next console so hopefully backwards compatibility is reasonably likely.
Nintendo understands, Nintendo dont care.
Ignoring the disaster that was the Virtual Boy, they had a great run.
I'm not sure I bought a single physical release on switch since I bought the console in 2019
After getting my steam deck, I stopped buying Switch games. I even re-bought a couple of favorites (Slay the Spire, Monster Train) since I find myself using the switch less and less.
The deck is similarly sized, of higher quality and power, more versatile, and just as easy to use. Plus the backbone of the deck is a long-lived downloadable game service that still has my games from over a decade ago. And of course, it's also an incredible emulation machine and a full Linux desktop.
The deck is similarly sized, of higher quality and power, more versatile, and just as easy to use. Plus the backbone of the deck is a long-lived downloadable game service that still has my games from over a decade ago. And of course, it's also an incredible emulation machine and a full Linux desktop.
The Wii was a bit of a special case for how incredibly janky it was to be trying to present a system shell without it being actually backed by a proper OS/hypervisor arrangement like the other platforms of its generation. That it was able to do paid digital games at all is kind of miraculous.
The Wii was designed with digital content delivery from the very start, from what I know.
The NAND was only 512 MB, but it was easily expanded with a memory card for downloads. The security model worked somewhat well, with jailbroken consumers having to keep an eye out for Nintendo's retaliation during the active part of the console's life. While it didn't have a hypervisor (well, it sort of did - if you squint just right, the ARM processor was a hardware bus access arbitrator that would lock you out if you were accessing things you weren't privileged enough to access), it definitely did have an OS - multiple concurrently installed copies, in fact.
IMO, there is nothing miraculous about Wii's ability to support paid digital games. We don't find it miraculous when a hypervisor-less PC can run games purchased off Steam that were downloaded to an external USB drive. Why should we think it's miraculous when a games console does something nearly identical?
The NAND was only 512 MB, but it was easily expanded with a memory card for downloads. The security model worked somewhat well, with jailbroken consumers having to keep an eye out for Nintendo's retaliation during the active part of the console's life. While it didn't have a hypervisor (well, it sort of did - if you squint just right, the ARM processor was a hardware bus access arbitrator that would lock you out if you were accessing things you weren't privileged enough to access), it definitely did have an OS - multiple concurrently installed copies, in fact.
IMO, there is nothing miraculous about Wii's ability to support paid digital games. We don't find it miraculous when a hypervisor-less PC can run games purchased off Steam that were downloaded to an external USB drive. Why should we think it's miraculous when a games console does something nearly identical?
I dunno, miraculous in 1986 maybe, but in 2006?
Sure, it was reasonable for the time given that XBLA launched two years before the Wii.
The issue was that the Wii was basically just a GameCube++ in terms of architecture, and no one would have expected a digital storefront on a platform where all the software boots bare metal.
The issue was that the Wii was basically just a GameCube++ in terms of architecture, and no one would have expected a digital storefront on a platform where all the software boots bare metal.
Do they port their old games to the new platform and then sell them?
Sometimes, but their strategy for this sort of thing is pretty inconsistent. You have stuff like the bundle of Super Mario 64/Super Mario Sunshine/Super Mario Galaxy which got ported pretty much as-is, warts and all (except for maybe the infamously misheard line in Super Mario 64 after beating Bowser), without even minor quality of life or graphical improvements, "deluxe" versions of Wii U games like Mario Kart 8 that didn't really get the time to shine due to the lackluster sales of that console, and then a sizeable but by no means exhaustive catalog of older games available only via subscription to their online service (which to its credit is very affordable at only $20/year) and aren't playable if you've been offline for more than a week.
None of this is necessarily indefensible, but it paints a very unclear picture for what to expect going forward. The hard copies of the deluxe ports will presumably always be playable on Switch hardware, but will the next generation be able to use them? Similarly, one would hope that digital-only games that are fully offline after installing like the Mario bundle would be playable on consoles they already are installed on indefinitely, but will the store shut down and make it impossible to download again on a different device if your hardware dies? Will digital purchases made for the Switch ever be available without having to purchase again on the next generation console?
As for the subscription-only online games, I don't think there's much reason to believe that anything at all will transfer over. Even being able to transfer saved games from them to a new generation console would be more than I'd expect.
None of this is necessarily indefensible, but it paints a very unclear picture for what to expect going forward. The hard copies of the deluxe ports will presumably always be playable on Switch hardware, but will the next generation be able to use them? Similarly, one would hope that digital-only games that are fully offline after installing like the Mario bundle would be playable on consoles they already are installed on indefinitely, but will the store shut down and make it impossible to download again on a different device if your hardware dies? Will digital purchases made for the Switch ever be available without having to purchase again on the next generation console?
As for the subscription-only online games, I don't think there's much reason to believe that anything at all will transfer over. Even being able to transfer saved games from them to a new generation console would be more than I'd expect.
They did do some limited patches for 3D All-Stars to offer 16:9 resolution and patched the games to show Switch controls, but yeah... it all felt a bit lacking.
I bought physical copies of my Switch games for that exact reason.
I can dump the carts somehow and play the games legally using an emulator if/when they pull the plug on it.
I can dump the carts somehow and play the games legally using an emulator if/when they pull the plug on it.
This was my tactic as well. Seeing Xbox and Playstaion making console versions without optical drives has me worried about what the future may look like.
Optical drives have been useless for ages.
Games are routinely coming out with ~60-100GB day-one updates.
Games are routinely coming out with ~60-100GB day-one updates.
And optical drives can store that comfortably.
There is no reason the entire game couldn't be on the disk and working as intended.
The reason there is such a large day one update is simply that games are released unfinished and/or untested. This isn't the fault of the medium. This is a systemic video game industry problem.
There is no reason the entire game couldn't be on the disk and working as intended.
The reason there is such a large day one update is simply that games are released unfinished and/or untested. This isn't the fault of the medium. This is a systemic video game industry problem.
(The following comment agrees with you, it is not intended as an argument against what you’re saying):
Technically being able to contain the content and actually being able to boot the game from the disc (after transferring to the console hard drive) are two separate things. Even without counting Day 1/Day 0 patches. Some games refuse to run without downloading additional content that isn’t on the disc, others require talking to a server even if you’ve just downloaded the latest updates, others. A patch to fix bugs and add content is one thing, refusing to play entirely is another.
Technically being able to contain the content and actually being able to boot the game from the disc (after transferring to the console hard drive) are two separate things. Even without counting Day 1/Day 0 patches. Some games refuse to run without downloading additional content that isn’t on the disc, others require talking to a server even if you’ve just downloaded the latest updates, others. A patch to fix bugs and add content is one thing, refusing to play entirely is another.
These are also systemic issues in the industry. Every game should be able to run with the physical media without any connection to the internet.
Underrated comment
You can do the same with the eShop versions with the advantage you keep at lest some (if not all) of the post-launch patches for the game.
I can sort of understand ending life for allowing purchasing on the platform but why would you not create servers for the new consoles in a way that allows you to continue to serve downloads or at the very least whatever licensing necessary to launch the software to old hardware?
If I buy a game I should be able to launch it and redownload it. If the above is not feasible then strip the drm at the consoles end of life and allow me to download my library and launch it indefinitely until bitrot destroys it. Absurd that we have this current system of “purchase digitally and play until the servers are shut off, which is a timeframe that is unclear”
If I buy a game I should be able to launch it and redownload it. If the above is not feasible then strip the drm at the consoles end of life and allow me to download my library and launch it indefinitely until bitrot destroys it. Absurd that we have this current system of “purchase digitally and play until the servers are shut off, which is a timeframe that is unclear”
> If I buy a game I should be able to launch it and redownload it.
unfortunately, this is not the right for which you paid, despite the fact that it is what people believe when they click purchase.
That's why i condone piracy. It enables preservation, regardless of the choice of the copyright owner.
That's why i would always want to make an offline backup of whatever i buy. It's hard to do sometimes, and the onus being on me to do it is a failing of the consumer protection laws that did not evolve with digital purchases.
unfortunately, this is not the right for which you paid, despite the fact that it is what people believe when they click purchase.
That's why i condone piracy. It enables preservation, regardless of the choice of the copyright owner.
That's why i would always want to make an offline backup of whatever i buy. It's hard to do sometimes, and the onus being on me to do it is a failing of the consumer protection laws that did not evolve with digital purchases.
Agreed and why when I do purchase I only purchase physical. The digital downloads of games I have are either games that were so hilariously cheap on sale my moral compass didn’t matter (eg marked down to sub $5) or the free downloads I get from various promotions like the epic store. I don’t pirate video games but I don’t have any qualms with someone who does given the gross anti consumer practices the industry has been getting away with for ages
Unfortunately consumers don’t seem to agree and have no problem shelling out billions of dollars for these things. The current console generation is clearly pushing hard to shift things entirely to digital; it is actually becoming difficult to purchase physical copies of games. The recent yakuza game didn’t get a physical release in the USA and I had to import a copy from play-Asia. It works fine on my us ps5 but they were clear as it’s a region 3 release any future patches/dlc/psn support may not work correctly unless I create a region 3 psn account specifically for that game. Quite a headache. Although funny enough the game itself was $10 cheaper so even with tax and shipping it worked out to be the same as if I had bought it on psn.
Unfortunately consumers don’t seem to agree and have no problem shelling out billions of dollars for these things. The current console generation is clearly pushing hard to shift things entirely to digital; it is actually becoming difficult to purchase physical copies of games. The recent yakuza game didn’t get a physical release in the USA and I had to import a copy from play-Asia. It works fine on my us ps5 but they were clear as it’s a region 3 release any future patches/dlc/psn support may not work correctly unless I create a region 3 psn account specifically for that game. Quite a headache. Although funny enough the game itself was $10 cheaper so even with tax and shipping it worked out to be the same as if I had bought it on psn.
"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing."
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/
Valve has the perfect setup right now. Your desktop, laptop, or Deck can connect to Steam.
Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11.
So not exactly perfect either as far as backward compatibility is concerned.
[1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-80...
So not exactly perfect either as far as backward compatibility is concerned.
[1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-80...
It depends on what you think of as perfect. Microsoft stopped supporting XP in like 2009 and Windows 8 in 2016. I run all my windows games on my Deck using proton. Games that ran on Windows 95 usually aren’t supported by the companies that made them decades ago but fans patch them. I got Vampire the Masquerade running on my Deck with little effort. So “perfect”? No. But functional? Absolutely.
Yeah, I played Descent (1995) yesterday on my deck without needing to do anything but invert the y-axis on the keypad (which is non-standard). Aside from that the game ran flawlessly. I’ve played a number of my childhood games on the deck and been incredibly impressed.
Wow I haven’t thought about Descent in a long time. I’m getting flashbacks. But yeah, I’m very impressed. I’m actually kind of proud they’re an American company too.
> Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11.
Why wouldn't they work well? Every time backward compatibility is mentionned, Microsoft Windows is praised as the best example of it and people brag they can still run everything they used to run in 1995.
Why wouldn't they work well? Every time backward compatibility is mentionned, Microsoft Windows is praised as the best example of it and people brag they can still run everything they used to run in 1995.
This isn't really true beyond basic Windows GUI only programs. For example, most 2D Windows games made before the mid-2000s used a rendering API called DirectDraw. On Windows 8 and newer, DirectDraw goes through some sort of fallback rendering path and these games won't run at more than around 30 FPS with bad frame timing. The same thing happened with games that used 8-bit color with hardware palettes. Windows 8 and newer will only run at 32-bit color (the "run with 256 colors" compatibility setting was changed to just put a low color filter over the system graphics), so they are broken as well.
DirectDraw is an incredibly simple API (it doesn't even have 2D primitives - just blitting rectangles of pixels from one surface to another). AFAIK the fallback is basically doing that in software - since this is plenty fast these days - and letting the compositor handle the actual screen update. There's no reason why this would result in 30 FPS even on 20-year-old hardware, and indeed I regularly play a DirectDraw game from 1999 on Win11 without such issues.
They stopped that approach after the XP release as there was increased focus on security (more compatibility hacks = more surface area), users were able to update software online, and the sheer amount of software users could run. The old hacks for classic games are still in there though.
Well, there is overhead in testing additional windows versions, the libraries you use may use only deprecated SSL versions, and one needs to be careful not to connect them to the public internet because of unpatched security issues. And it does not allow the use of new platform features…
iOS is worse: you can’t roll back iOS updates, so you need to keep one piece of hardware around for each version you test.
Microsoft has great backwards compatibility, but it isn't perfect. Those games might be coded to 1990s standards, e.g. using old graphics APIs that don't support modern GPUs.
Which ones? Apart from DOS games and windows 3.x which I would treat separatly the only graphics api I could think of was Glide for which there are modern wrappers like nglide.
Parts of DX5 and previous, such as the "retained mode", are missing from current versions of Windows entirely. Much of the remaining implementation is buggy and introduces render artifacts.
Open source projects such as dgVoodoo offer a solution to run old games, by re-implementing old DirectX and Glide on top of current DirectX [1], similar to how Wine runs DX games on Linux on top of OpenGL or Vulkan.
[1]: https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2
Open source projects such as dgVoodoo offer a solution to run old games, by re-implementing old DirectX and Glide on top of current DirectX [1], similar to how Wine runs DX games on Linux on top of OpenGL or Vulkan.
[1]: https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2
dgVoodoo2 unfortunately is not open source, and its author has stopped regular development (keeping it at small maintenance fixes) some time ago. I can only hope that projects like WineD3D for windows[1] can make up for it in the long term, but we're one breaking Directx update away from going back to the start.
[1]https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag
[1]https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag
Retained mode was deeply unpopular even back when it was supposed to be the flagship API, for good reasons (it was slow as hell), so the games that relied on it for support can literally be counted on both hands.
That aside, the only other old game API that I can think of that's gone for good is DirectPlay, which generally means no multiplayer for games that depend on it as the only option, but otherwise doesn't affect them.
That aside, the only other old game API that I can think of that's gone for good is DirectPlay, which generally means no multiplayer for games that depend on it as the only option, but otherwise doesn't affect them.
People brag about a lot of things and windows compat is better than e.g. macOS but recent windows actually can't even run a good number of other MS software of the 95 era.
Is it a Valve problem, or a Microsoft one at that point?
Nevertheless, you could still download your game and remove the thin DRM layer (tools available to do so), and then play them on your Windows<10 machines.
Valve problem. Selling merchandise you know/stated the customer can't use is negligent at best, malicious at worst.
Obligatory IANAL.
Obligatory IANAL.
Valve offers a generous refund policy. If the game doesn't work on your system, refund it.
Seems like the obligation falls on developers and studios. It’s Capcom’s responsibility to keep Street Fighter X Tekken working because Capcom is the seller. Fortunately the community usually warns buyers about abandonware and you can always get a refund.
Also if you're playing on Linux a lot of those older games run perfectly through WINE, better than they run on modern Windows.
wine is rolled into proton.
Please excuse me while I become 'that guy', but Proton is a distribution of Wine with a bunch of patches and extra components like DXVK. The vast majority of proton is unmodified wine.
“[Proton] is a collection of software and libraries combined with a patched version of Wine[….]”. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not an expert in Proton or anything. Thanks for the input though.
It’s the obligation of the developer to make sure their game runs acceptably on supported platforms and on systems that meet the stated requirements.
If Valve is offering supplemental support on top of what the developer is offering (eg: running Windows games on the Steam Deck via Proton), then its Valve’s obligation to keep things running, as the developer has never committed to keeping things running outside their supported platforms. That said, additional support from the developer (eg: Microsoft/343i for Halo, Respawn for Apex Legends) to get games running on other platforms is always appreciated.
If Valve is offering supplemental support on top of what the developer is offering (eg: running Windows games on the Steam Deck via Proton), then its Valve’s obligation to keep things running, as the developer has never committed to keeping things running outside their supported platforms. That said, additional support from the developer (eg: Microsoft/343i for Halo, Respawn for Apex Legends) to get games running on other platforms is always appreciated.
It would be ideal but it sounds like too much runaround for Valve.
[deleted]
They recently dropped support for MacOS 10.12. They're cutting it close since many Valve games only work on MacOS versions <= 10.13
Apple hasn’t support MacOS 10.12 for four years. That Steam still supports it is amazing to me.
Have you actually used steam lately? They did something to it on Mac that made it reset to the store page every time it loses focus and gains it back. Including when you try to read the code in your mail to be able to login, or when entering 3d secure codes for a purchase.
Basically you can't use it without another device to check your mail/texts.
It's been going on for at least 2 months.
Basically you can't use it without another device to check your mail/texts.
It's been going on for at least 2 months.
I use Steam regularly, I don’t game on a Mac regularly. To be fair I don’t think most people use Macs for gaming. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Apple has a tight grip on mobile gaming though, that’s a money maker for them.
> Apple has a tight grip on mobile gaming though, that’s a money maker for them.
It's not gaming if it has IAPs. I've given up on even reading about mobile "games" when they all went IAP. I'm too poor to afford that.
It's not gaming if it has IAPs. I've given up on even reading about mobile "games" when they all went IAP. I'm too poor to afford that.
I don't play many mobile games but I tested The Battle of Polytopia when it was in beta and I still play it today. So it's not a complete loss. Android has solid emulation scene though.
Isn't that out of scope of the discussion? Valve doesn't provide the online game capabilities of title and cannot guarantee you will be able to play online to all sort of old titles whose published shut down the servers.
It’s within the scope of the discussion. Nintendo should centralize its games into a single universal platform like Steam. Now that Valve has a successful handheld console it’s even more relevant than ever.
I think most nintendo users are kids and most of the games are given as gift and purchased in cartridges anyway. And people want to be able to buy and sell their games second hand. The nintendo network really is about online gaming in the context of the nintendo DS products.
Kids and adults play Nintendo games. I played them as a kid and now I play them as an adult.
I am also an adult who played Zelda today.
And I said "most", not "all".
And I said "most", not "all".
Yeah, I get what you’re saying but you’re incorrect. Kids 12 and young only make up 5% of their market. Most Switch users are 25 to 34.
Unless it’s a 32-bit Mac come January or a machine running windows < 8, in which case you’re screwed until you buy new hardware.
Which I’m fine with, but it’s not like Valve is magical somehow. If your machine isn’t still getting Chromium builds they can’t build Steam for it, you still need to buy new hardware. And the game consoles (less) often let you play old games on new hardware.
Which I’m fine with, but it’s not like Valve is magical somehow. If your machine isn’t still getting Chromium builds they can’t build Steam for it, you still need to buy new hardware. And the game consoles (less) often let you play old games on new hardware.
My Deck just runs all those old windows games using proton. I mean, Windows subsystems runs Linux. You don’t even need VMs anymore. It’s not magic it’s just portability.
Steam Deck compatibility is spotty at best for DirectX-8 games and older.
A few of those have been updated by the publisher to ship with DDrawCompat, nglide or dgvoodoo, but at large they require some tinkering to get them in a running state.
Excluding those who will never, ever work again due to copy protection systems (e.g., all those Games for Windows Live that never received a patch, those EA games still shipping with Securom) of all my games, circa 15-20% of them crash on boot. Nearly all of them are pre-Dx8 games, which basically run correctly only running on a recently unsupported configuration by steam, Windows 7 32bit.
A few of those have been updated by the publisher to ship with DDrawCompat, nglide or dgvoodoo, but at large they require some tinkering to get them in a running state.
Excluding those who will never, ever work again due to copy protection systems (e.g., all those Games for Windows Live that never received a patch, those EA games still shipping with Securom) of all my games, circa 15-20% of them crash on boot. Nearly all of them are pre-Dx8 games, which basically run correctly only running on a recently unsupported configuration by steam, Windows 7 32bit.
With a little fiddling most of those DirectX games work on the Deck. Again not perfect but absolutely functional. And never say never, fans find solutions to dead games all the time.
The majority of my steam collection is games that will not run on the steam deck or Linux. Out of 15 I have, only three works on. YMMV but doesn't look like 'all' these windows games unfortunately. May be more of an issue with the type of games I like, i.e. Civilisation, Age of Empires, etc.
Civilization and Age of Empires definitely work on Linux. Or atleast civ 5, AoE2:DE and AoE4 all work. I strongly suspect most of the other versions work as well.
I actually haven't encountered a single game that doesn't work on Linux that's available on steam. I'm sure they exist, but I personally haven't hit any.
My biggest annoyance was when I tried to play Diablo 4 and had to mess about with the Blizzard launcher. Really made me appreciate how fool proof Linux gaming has become with Steam nowadays.
I actually haven't encountered a single game that doesn't work on Linux that's available on steam. I'm sure they exist, but I personally haven't hit any.
My biggest annoyance was when I tried to play Diablo 4 and had to mess about with the Blizzard launcher. Really made me appreciate how fool proof Linux gaming has become with Steam nowadays.
I have over three hundred games purchased on Steam, Windows games, and ROMs (GB to PS3) and I’ve only experienced one or two issues and it wasn’t the Deck’s fault. I play indie games on it all the time too. Now games are being made with the Deck in mind.
Maybe try adjusting the frame rate, wattage, and/or GPU frequency.
>in which case you’re screwed until you buy new hardware.
Windows 10 runs on anything that will emit a clock signal, and Windows 11 can be forced onto hardware it doesn't officially like.
I don't like Windows 7 support being dropped either, in large part because the dropping comes due to CEF used by Steam, but it's not like the hardware concerned becomes useless with no way out.
Windows 10 runs on anything that will emit a clock signal, and Windows 11 can be forced onto hardware it doesn't officially like.
I don't like Windows 7 support being dropped either, in large part because the dropping comes due to CEF used by Steam, but it's not like the hardware concerned becomes useless with no way out.
>Windows 10 runs on anything that will emit a clock signal
It runs extremely poorly on low power hardware. Poorly enough that I consider it unusable. Windows 7 ran fine on the same hardware previously.
It runs extremely poorly on low power hardware. Poorly enough that I consider it unusable. Windows 7 ran fine on the same hardware previously.
Seeing as we're talking about games, low power hardware isn't necessarily relevant.
We’re talking about games still being playable years later though, so there is an argument that older hardware is relevant (relatively speaking, anyway).
Games built for Windows 95 not being playable because your hardware can’t efficiently run Windows 10 is a relevant discussion.
Games built for Windows 95 not being playable because your hardware can’t efficiently run Windows 10 is a relevant discussion.
This is why I don't buy a console that doesn't have a functional jailbreak/softmod.
You can't count on these companies to care about the consumer past the initial purchase. If you can jailbreak your console there are plenty of sites that preserve the released games that you can install after the online services are shut down.
You can't count on these companies to care about the consumer past the initial purchase. If you can jailbreak your console there are plenty of sites that preserve the released games that you can install after the online services are shut down.
We've moved so far into the "you won't own anything" lane that it got me thinking back to how we deal with the rest of the world.
For instance we actively dissuade people from taking photos during foreign trips or at the restaurant because they're supposed to be enjoying the experience, instead of viewing it trough a viewfinder.
We haven't reached a point yet where people are arguing they should have a copy of the tiramisu recipe and backup access to the kitchen in case the restaurant shuts down and they can't have their tiramisu anymore.
In some way, I wonder if most online games nowadays aren't closer to a tiramisu experience than something we are supposed to own. Fortnite for instance would be fundamentally about the experience of interacting with other players, the seasons system etc. and "owning" the game offline would be completely different.
I still see RPGs types of games and fully offline playable games as something that should be priced differently and have a more standard ownership model. Things like Super Mario Maker mentionned in the article would be sitting in the middle. Also preservation efforts should continue on an academic and cultural standpoint, to at least leave some trail of what was happening in the gaming world during our time.
For instance we actively dissuade people from taking photos during foreign trips or at the restaurant because they're supposed to be enjoying the experience, instead of viewing it trough a viewfinder.
We haven't reached a point yet where people are arguing they should have a copy of the tiramisu recipe and backup access to the kitchen in case the restaurant shuts down and they can't have their tiramisu anymore.
In some way, I wonder if most online games nowadays aren't closer to a tiramisu experience than something we are supposed to own. Fortnite for instance would be fundamentally about the experience of interacting with other players, the seasons system etc. and "owning" the game offline would be completely different.
I still see RPGs types of games and fully offline playable games as something that should be priced differently and have a more standard ownership model. Things like Super Mario Maker mentionned in the article would be sitting in the middle. Also preservation efforts should continue on an academic and cultural standpoint, to at least leave some trail of what was happening in the gaming world during our time.
I agree that we should think about whether or not it's better to let the past go and just enjoy experiences during their time rather than expecting them to be around forever, but I think your tiramisu example actually makes the opposite point - recipes like that are in the public domain and there will always be kitchens if you want to make one, whereas an online game server is a closed system that disappears if it's shut down. If companies would move services into the public domain when they don't want to run them any more, then the point becomes moot - if some community wants to setup their own tiramisu server to keep that cake alive, they should be allowed to.
While recipes are not copyrightable, they are not automatically public either. A restaurant can consider its recipes trade secrets, and sue any employee that discloses them and win. Even photographing the chef's recipe book or something as an outside person would be punishable via trade secret laws. Famously, Coca Cola's recipe is supposed to be a closely guarded secret, for example.
So, while of course there are many widely known and available tiramisu recipes, a specific recipe from a specific restaurant is not necessarily so. Just in passing, this is something that many people who wish for an end to software copyright forget: the alternative to copyright is not at all free public software, it is trade secret Linux "recipes".
So, while of course there are many widely known and available tiramisu recipes, a specific recipe from a specific restaurant is not necessarily so. Just in passing, this is something that many people who wish for an end to software copyright forget: the alternative to copyright is not at all free public software, it is trade secret Linux "recipes".
This is a valid point, and I agree company data should be forced to become public under specific conditions.
Now to get back to the tiramisu part, I think what makes it delicious in some restaurant is either obfuscated (e.g. the chef has a specific way to process some of the steps, or use some benign undisclosed ingredient). Or it's based on a specific ingredient that won't be available to anyone seeking it. For instance the coffee they use come from the chef's own farm, or they grind it a specific way that only works with their machinery as they haven't gone public about it.
In many ways I think the generic recipe of most games is widely available: if we gave you a team and a few billion dollars, you could probably make a generic Fortnite clone in less than a year. But would it be as good as what Epic's team is providing right now ? probably not ? (no offence)
Now to get back to the tiramisu part, I think what makes it delicious in some restaurant is either obfuscated (e.g. the chef has a specific way to process some of the steps, or use some benign undisclosed ingredient). Or it's based on a specific ingredient that won't be available to anyone seeking it. For instance the coffee they use come from the chef's own farm, or they grind it a specific way that only works with their machinery as they haven't gone public about it.
In many ways I think the generic recipe of most games is widely available: if we gave you a team and a few billion dollars, you could probably make a generic Fortnite clone in less than a year. But would it be as good as what Epic's team is providing right now ? probably not ? (no offence)
I disagree with you about restaurants, there aren’t really any secret ingredients etc…
The main difference is skill, not many people have the skills to actually replicate a tiramisu as good as that specific famous shop. But someone who is really skilled absolutely can
I have actually found this problem. Some foods that I enjoyed aren't sold anymore because the company shut down and it made me sad. It made me reconsider whether it's worth trying new stuff from questionable companies, because even if I find something good it will probably disappear anyway.
I was about to buy the new Zelda game online, you are right though it’s hard to imagine how they can ever stop supporting it without everyone who bought a digital game coming to them with a bill. I wonder what the terms and conditions say?
I always buy physical copies for this exact reason.
This seems like it's only going to get worse many games need online services to function at all. Super Mario Maker as mentioned in the post is one of them, but there are countless others on 3DS and PC that won't function properly.
Ideally it would be possible to archive the games (like ROMs or what the Internet Archive does for websites and files) and also the server / database so that the games could be playable in the future, but I doubt that Nintendo or any larger publisher would do that.
I wonder if there's a solution for this in the short term or if these games and their data would be lost forever.
Ideally it would be possible to archive the games (like ROMs or what the Internet Archive does for websites and files) and also the server / database so that the games could be playable in the future, but I doubt that Nintendo or any larger publisher would do that.
I wonder if there's a solution for this in the short term or if these games and their data would be lost forever.
I wish there was some way to tie it to copyright where if you want to lock the rights up, you have to provide the game in a playable form at a reasonable price. I’ve seen proposals which would implement that as a kind orphan works tax with a threshold so a small indie game wouldn’t be expected to provide unlimited support.
A tax small enough to not harm indie publishers is almost tautologically unlikely to affect big publishers at all. The incentives created by fines and taxes are greatly overestimated. For something like this to work, it needs to be achievable without the continued cooperation or even existence of the original business
To the opposite, the tax should kick in if the operation is large enough. If your revenue from the game exceeds $10M, you should do some minimal continuity work. If it exceeds $100M, you should do much more serious continuity work.
So you'd like to incentivise more obfuscation of revenue to boot?
I think an effective remedy for this kind of situation can't just be fiscal, we need requirements to publish adequate technical specifications and strong IP carveouts to make it likely to move the needle. Forcing companies to maintain continuous support is a non-starter. We should instead focus on enabling unofficial support from outside the companies, and remove legal threats from those who choose to do so
I think an effective remedy for this kind of situation can't just be fiscal, we need requirements to publish adequate technical specifications and strong IP carveouts to make it likely to move the needle. Forcing companies to maintain continuous support is a non-starter. We should instead focus on enabling unofficial support from outside the companies, and remove legal threats from those who choose to do so
Obfuscation of revenue is a really bad idea, all the way to a federal criminal investigation.
The idea is that the continuity requirements should not be onerous, given the revenue, say, less than 1% of it, "a good problem to have".
Publishing a reasonable spec would be a part of that.
The idea is that the continuity requirements should not be onerous, given the revenue, say, less than 1% of it, "a good problem to have".
Publishing a reasonable spec would be a part of that.
Pretty sure that hasn't stopped Hollywood accounting for the last century, and I see no reason why EA can't pull off the same things that Warner Brothers has been doing.
Hollywood accounting is about hiding profit by making it look like all of the revenue was used for expenses. Hiding all of your revenue outright is a different ballgame and if it were easy to do legally Nintendo wouldn't be paying billions in taxes on it already.
This is unrelated to the thread. The point was obfuscation of the fact that the profit is from a specific copyrighted work. I.e. selling 600 versions of a game each with a different default skin hides no income from tax authorities.
You're referencing profit instead of revenue, which the thread was referring to. Again, you can't hide revenue as easily. Splitting it up 600 ways doesn't solve the problem that game XYZ sold 10 million copies from the 600 subsidiary distributors. Nintendo could hide the profit that way, saying the subsidiaries took 100% of the revenue as costs, but the total revenue can't be hidden. It's either a reported sale or not, there's not really a way to fudge that.
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Personally, I think we should consider making legal IP protection opt-in. In other words, with a product like this you should provide a way to remove the protection to the Library of Congress, for example. If you fail to provide this, then you cannot use the courts to enforce copyright/patent/etc.
Imagine if the tax was, for the sake of argument, based on the inflation-adjusted lifetime revenue over $500k and had different rates based on the total sales, each increasing over time so the cost of locking up a 20 year old game is more than they ever made for it. I don’t see how what wouldn’t have a strong incentive to release things they aren’t actively commercializing.
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I don’t know why this would be a tax?
If you’re going to go down this path, why wouldn’t you just require that the title needs to be purchasable on a primary market and usable on hardware/software that is currently supported in order for a copyright to be enforceable.
If I can’t purchase and enjoy a copyrighted work legally, the copyright is unenforceable.
In response to sibling comments, I don’t know why you’d do a carve out for small and indie game studios. If you’re not actively offering your copyrighted content for sale in a primary market, it shouldn’t matter whether you are a big studio are a small studio.
Let society take over archiving and sharing your work.
If you’re going to go down this path, why wouldn’t you just require that the title needs to be purchasable on a primary market and usable on hardware/software that is currently supported in order for a copyright to be enforceable.
If I can’t purchase and enjoy a copyrighted work legally, the copyright is unenforceable.
In response to sibling comments, I don’t know why you’d do a carve out for small and indie game studios. If you’re not actively offering your copyrighted content for sale in a primary market, it shouldn’t matter whether you are a big studio are a small studio.
Let society take over archiving and sharing your work.
Artificial scarcity is a scourge but I think for some works, say where you only want them to be available in a specific time and place, then perhaps as the author of that work you have a right to enforce that, at least to the extent that others shouldn’t be able to say record a live performance and then sell it with some kind of rights later.
All that is to say I think it’s slightly more complex than what can be contained in a single HN comment but agree with you in principle.
All that is to say I think it’s slightly more complex than what can be contained in a single HN comment but agree with you in principle.
This sounds like a feature rather than a bug to me, to be honest. If there's an official recording of said live public performance that is available, then copyright holds and third parties wouldn't be able to record and redistribute. OTOH if there is no official recording available, then I would argue that it is in the public interest to allow third party recordings to legally circulate, since otherwise that particular performance would just be lost altogether.
If artists truly want their performance to be "in the moment" with no way for anyone else to see it, they can arrange for private performances where the audience can be bound by a contract above and beyond basic copyright; but I don't think we should be optimizing for this case.
If artists truly want their performance to be "in the moment" with no way for anyone else to see it, they can arrange for private performances where the audience can be bound by a contract above and beyond basic copyright; but I don't think we should be optimizing for this case.
I don’t disagree.
I am attempting to say a person shouldn’t be able to record someone else’s performance and distribute it for profit or post it on a streaming service and profit from the ads.
I am attempting to say a person shouldn’t be able to record someone else’s performance and distribute it for profit or post it on a streaming service and profit from the ads.
Because taxes are how we typically set incentives and the government is well-configured to use them. This is common in other contexts: for example, in many cities leaving your property vacant will trigger additional taxes because they don’t want empty buildings impacting the surrounding neighborhoods.
> If I can’t purchase and enjoy a copyrighted work legally, the copyright is unenforceable.
That’s not true in the United States, and if it were you’d still have the problem this thread is discussing where you need the servers (or DRM systems, etc.), which is why I’d like to change the incentives so it’s cheaper to release things you no longer intend to use even if they weren’t directly distributed to users.
The indie carve out reflects that there is some real cost here (packaging things up, vetting the rights for a release, etc.) If you have an old game which never went big, you don’t want a solo developer getting hit with a bill they can’t afford because they didn’t back up everything well or life happened and some planned work took longer than they thought it would. Again, remember this proposal is for a legal mechanism to compel action and you want to think about how it could impact people with the least resources.
> If I can’t purchase and enjoy a copyrighted work legally, the copyright is unenforceable.
That’s not true in the United States, and if it were you’d still have the problem this thread is discussing where you need the servers (or DRM systems, etc.), which is why I’d like to change the incentives so it’s cheaper to release things you no longer intend to use even if they weren’t directly distributed to users.
The indie carve out reflects that there is some real cost here (packaging things up, vetting the rights for a release, etc.) If you have an old game which never went big, you don’t want a solo developer getting hit with a bill they can’t afford because they didn’t back up everything well or life happened and some planned work took longer than they thought it would. Again, remember this proposal is for a legal mechanism to compel action and you want to think about how it could impact people with the least resources.
OP is saying that this is how things should be, not how things are.
The government is well-configured to use copyright as a stick, too. Literally the only reason why copyright - an artificially imposed monopoly - works at all is because the government enforces it, and so it gets to set the terms for eligibility. The legal mechanism here would be a new law, same as your tax proposal, so I fail to see the difference.
As far as needing servers to continue running - the community is generally quite capable of doing that so long as there are no legal roadblocks to it like DMCA and CFAA. It is likely to provide a better experience too, compared to what would essentially be compelled support from the original developer, which is virtually guaranteed to be the least they can get away with to legally dodge the tax - e.g. spinning up one underpowered server that can only serve very few users at a time.
It is also unclear how such compelled services would interact with game updates. Is the server required to support all past versions of the game going all the way back to the original release? For competitive multiplayer games especially this may not feasible for good reasons. OTOH if you only require that they support the most recent update, this opens the possibility of the developer simply shipping an "update" that disables as many features as they can get away with once the game is on life support - e.g. removing multiplayer entirely if possible, or at least making it as crippled as they can get away with; and then providing support only for that crippled version.
The government is well-configured to use copyright as a stick, too. Literally the only reason why copyright - an artificially imposed monopoly - works at all is because the government enforces it, and so it gets to set the terms for eligibility. The legal mechanism here would be a new law, same as your tax proposal, so I fail to see the difference.
As far as needing servers to continue running - the community is generally quite capable of doing that so long as there are no legal roadblocks to it like DMCA and CFAA. It is likely to provide a better experience too, compared to what would essentially be compelled support from the original developer, which is virtually guaranteed to be the least they can get away with to legally dodge the tax - e.g. spinning up one underpowered server that can only serve very few users at a time.
It is also unclear how such compelled services would interact with game updates. Is the server required to support all past versions of the game going all the way back to the original release? For competitive multiplayer games especially this may not feasible for good reasons. OTOH if you only require that they support the most recent update, this opens the possibility of the developer simply shipping an "update" that disables as many features as they can get away with once the game is on life support - e.g. removing multiplayer entirely if possible, or at least making it as crippled as they can get away with; and then providing support only for that crippled version.
I suppose it's so IP holders will have to have an office and revenue in the market it intends to exercise rights, than just outsourcing it to a lawyer and having 12 copies/year at $1k each compliance sales?
Japanese IP holders exercising IP rights solely in moral grounds in markets they have no intention or ability to enter had been a source of frustration to some. Requiring substantial economical involvement sure is one way to force it.
Japanese IP holders exercising IP rights solely in moral grounds in markets they have no intention or ability to enter had been a source of frustration to some. Requiring substantial economical involvement sure is one way to force it.
So if you can’t find a distributor for your copyrighted work or you’re not capable of distributing it yourself, you lose the copyright? You’re compelled to sell your work? Sounds pretty backwards to me.
The DMCA allows reverse engineering of copy-protected code for abandonware. As a copyright holder you’re not necessarily obligated to maintain working game services, but if you sell a multiplayer game and abandon it, it’s basically free rein for others to make it work again.
To clarify, the DMCA does no such thing. The exemptions you refer to are the result of the Librarian of Congress exercising a statutory “fail-safe” role to specify circumstances that the (otherwise very broad) anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA will be construed not to apply to.
https://copyright.gov/1201/2015/fedreg-publicinspectionFR.pd...
https://copyright.gov/1201/2015/fedreg-publicinspectionFR.pd...
Furthermore, these exemptions only cover unlocking DRM - not providing the unlock tools, which is illegal in all circumstances.
Yes, you are really expected to reverse-engineer and decrypt everything yourself. DMCA 1201 is a really fucking stupid law.
Yes, you are really expected to reverse-engineer and decrypt everything yourself. DMCA 1201 is a really fucking stupid law.
It's also important to note that exemptions granted under this mechanism expire after 3 years unless renewed. When the exemption expires the exempted activity becomes an infringing activity again.
> if you sell a multiplayer game and abandon it, it’s basically free rein for others to make it work again.
The more functionality there is on the server (common for anti-piracy/cheating) the less likely that is to happen. I’d like to see that change, reflecting that the idea behind things like the DMCS preservation exceptions and copyright expiring is contributing to the public commons and that’s different for running code than earlier forms of media.
The more functionality there is on the server (common for anti-piracy/cheating) the less likely that is to happen. I’d like to see that change, reflecting that the idea behind things like the DMCS preservation exceptions and copyright expiring is contributing to the public commons and that’s different for running code than earlier forms of media.
So we can play ut24k online again? Someone could setup a master server list?
No. The exemption only applies to circumventing access controls related to authentication servers that gate access to single player modes. Duplicating online multiplayer functionality (which was proposed and rejected because of industry opposition) is not in scope of the exemption so would not be protected against liability.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/victory-users-libraria...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/victory-users-libraria...
> tie it to copyright where if you want to lock the rights up, you have to provide the game in a playable form
this or they lose the copyright.
this or they lose the copyright.
The website that posted this post (Pretendo) is doing just this, sort of. They are working to RE the 3DS and WiiU online capabilities.
Seeing the progress of Xlink Kai I have faith they will succeed.
I hope one day there will be a precedent set for companies to open source the servers they are shutting down.
I hope one day there will be a precedent set for companies to open source the servers they are shutting down.
I disagree that it will inevitably get worse, with the exception of games that explicitly games as a service.
As the article points out, this whole system was basically a result of the infancy of online game services, especially for Nintendo. It's a quirky result of an architecture that is much less centralized than modern console game services.
If you ask me, it's very unlikely that Nintendo will ever shut down the Switch eShop, because I don't think the Switch eShop will be replaced when its successor launches. It will be much more like the PS4 to PS5 transition where your account information and digital library stays the same.
(By the way, the solution you are talking about is what the blog authors are working on)
As the article points out, this whole system was basically a result of the infancy of online game services, especially for Nintendo. It's a quirky result of an architecture that is much less centralized than modern console game services.
If you ask me, it's very unlikely that Nintendo will ever shut down the Switch eShop, because I don't think the Switch eShop will be replaced when its successor launches. It will be much more like the PS4 to PS5 transition where your account information and digital library stays the same.
(By the way, the solution you are talking about is what the blog authors are working on)
I made a top-level comment before I saw yours wondering how they’ll handle Switch online services.
And I think you’re right. If they have any sense, and it generally seems like Nintendo does, they’ll keep the Switch eshop running indefinitely. Hopefully they do the same with the other backend services supporting the Switch, but that is more questionable. They really should though.
And I think you’re right. If they have any sense, and it generally seems like Nintendo does, they’ll keep the Switch eshop running indefinitely. Hopefully they do the same with the other backend services supporting the Switch, but that is more questionable. They really should though.
> Super Mario Maker
What happens concretely if you start Super Mario Maker while the 3DS console is offline? Can't you play it on a plane?
What happens concretely if you start Super Mario Maker while the 3DS console is offline? Can't you play it on a plane?
So... Nintendo made the same mistake twice?
For context, the Wii used GameSpy under-the-hood. You weren't necessarily required to use it (as evidenced by EA shipping their own system) but most developers did. The reason why Wii online was shut down was specifically because GameSpy got bought out and started massively increasing their server hosting costs.
Of course, that's a little different from the Rendez-Vous situation, because presumably Nintendo is hosting the servers and just put someone else's software on them. Still, it's strange that they built two different account systems - and I suspect part of the reason why they're shutting down the Wii U and 3DS systems is purely so that they don't have to support what sounds like a nightmare, anymore.
Here's to hoping they built the Switch's online somewhat sort of correctly...
For context, the Wii used GameSpy under-the-hood. You weren't necessarily required to use it (as evidenced by EA shipping their own system) but most developers did. The reason why Wii online was shut down was specifically because GameSpy got bought out and started massively increasing their server hosting costs.
Of course, that's a little different from the Rendez-Vous situation, because presumably Nintendo is hosting the servers and just put someone else's software on them. Still, it's strange that they built two different account systems - and I suspect part of the reason why they're shutting down the Wii U and 3DS systems is purely so that they don't have to support what sounds like a nightmare, anymore.
Here's to hoping they built the Switch's online somewhat sort of correctly...
Maybe NIH syndrome has its uses. I don't blame Nintendo for using outside companies to handle online, it's never been their core competency. They're an entertainment company, not a tech company.
Their user hostility is a little ridiculous, though. I think Japan's galapagos syndrome comes into play a bit.
Transferring your ACNH save was a nightmare before their cloud service came out, if I remember.
Transferring your ACNH save was a nightmare before their cloud service came out, if I remember.
NEX is still used by many games on the Nintendo Switch, so I don't think it's another GameSpy situation.
That being said, Nintendo has started using an in-house replacement system called "NPLN" in some of their more recent titles. Some examples include Splatoon 3 and Pokémon Scarlet/Violet. (They've shown no indication of converting older titles to the new system, however.)
That being said, Nintendo has started using an in-house replacement system called "NPLN" in some of their more recent titles. Some examples include Splatoon 3 and Pokémon Scarlet/Violet. (They've shown no indication of converting older titles to the new system, however.)
I'm heartened, at least, to read that StreetPass will still work after the shutdown. This is such a fun feature, being able to see Mii's from strangers all around the world. Just having a stopover at an international airport was enough to fill my Mii queue with dozens of cool characters.
This is almost certainly because Street Pass is device-to-device, based entirely on proximity to other users. There's no server to shut down, so Nintendo would have to go out of their way to turn it off by releasing some sort of update to have devices kill the feature on some date.
I'm surprised the 3DS hasn't been hacked trough this functionality. It would be an awesome opportunity to create some kind of worm that quickly spreads around the world and you also get to name it with a trendy name like "Fail Pass".
That was discovered a few years ago but they reported it to Nintendo who patched it before people knew about it: https://mrnbayoh.github.io/36c3/
Fortunately, small protocols like this are pretty easy to write securely if you sanity check all of your inputs and bail if anything is wrong.
I don’t know the Mii format but it can’t be large, and the only arbitrary input there is the name, I believe.
Nintendo themselves are pretty good at writing secure stuff; it’s usually libraries or 3rd party games which have been responsible for the software exploits in Nintendo software.
I don’t know the Mii format but it can’t be large, and the only arbitrary input there is the name, I believe.
Nintendo themselves are pretty good at writing secure stuff; it’s usually libraries or 3rd party games which have been responsible for the software exploits in Nintendo software.
Aren't pretty much all the wii exploits string parsing bugs?
The original one was actually a name parsing bugs in the twilight princess(first party title) save file.
And now people use the letter bomb exploit which abuses a string parsing bug in the letter system of the wii.
I'd say Nintendo have a pretty bad history of writing secure format parsers.
The original one was actually a name parsing bugs in the twilight princess(first party title) save file.
And now people use the letter bomb exploit which abuses a string parsing bug in the letter system of the wii.
I'd say Nintendo have a pretty bad history of writing secure format parsers.
> I'd say Nintendo have a pretty bad history of writing secure format parsers.
Those examples are very old at this point. You may be surprised to learn that Nintendo have learned from these, and are much better at this than they used to be.
The Switch is only hackable via hardware; no software methods work, and the only one that did was caused by a hardware problem on Nvidia’s part.
The original Wii exploit was to use tweezers to short two circuits at a special time. The software that revealed led to the software exploits which are used today.
The Wii U was exploited by its backwards compatibility with the Wii.
If marcan wants to tell me I’m wrong, I’ll believe him, but until then I’m convinced that Nintendo is far better at this than they used to be.
Those examples are very old at this point. You may be surprised to learn that Nintendo have learned from these, and are much better at this than they used to be.
The Switch is only hackable via hardware; no software methods work, and the only one that did was caused by a hardware problem on Nvidia’s part.
The original Wii exploit was to use tweezers to short two circuits at a special time. The software that revealed led to the software exploits which are used today.
The Wii U was exploited by its backwards compatibility with the Wii.
If marcan wants to tell me I’m wrong, I’ll believe him, but until then I’m convinced that Nintendo is far better at this than they used to be.
I was big into the HomePass community until it stopped working, but fortunately folks have been working on StreetPass 2 as well, for those who enjoy the spoofing-at-home part of the community: https://gbatemp.net/threads/streetpass-2-rise-from-the-ashes...
Now that we've seen this pattern emerge multiple times in the past (people losing a large chunk of their games due to the shutdown of the online catalog), I think it begs for a killer feature in the future: the ability to burn the games you've purchased from the online catalog onto write-once blank cartridges.
Distributing games via physical copies is already a profit loss compared to distributing them via an online store, and distributing different cartridges per-game means even more supply issues for that specific game. Allowing players to do a one-time burn of the game they purchased to a blank cartridge would mean game companies could sell the game at full price digitally, make an extra sale on the cartridge, and gamers get the security of knowing that if servers were going to be shut down, they'd have the ability to burn the games they care about to physical media and be able to keep playing them. Win win for everyone.
Distributing games via physical copies is already a profit loss compared to distributing them via an online store, and distributing different cartridges per-game means even more supply issues for that specific game. Allowing players to do a one-time burn of the game they purchased to a blank cartridge would mean game companies could sell the game at full price digitally, make an extra sale on the cartridge, and gamers get the security of knowing that if servers were going to be shut down, they'd have the ability to burn the games they care about to physical media and be able to keep playing them. Win win for everyone.
This is a great idea, but doesn't solve the problem of _game servers_ shutting down.
Or even general availability of games...
Purchase a game console, why shouldn't the store remain functional indefinitely?
Yes, I get operating costs for your store front, but the standard should be, _if you are operating a market it should not be yours to control_.
Monopolies are bad in all forms, game stores should be operable by anyone, period.
And yes companies can protect themselves by disqualification of warranty for 3rd party stores, but that should be the consumer's choice, not some arbitrary CEOs decision.
We should buy your product because it offers something worth buying, not because you needed a subscription to bump your numbers...
Purchase a game console, why shouldn't the store remain functional indefinitely?
Yes, I get operating costs for your store front, but the standard should be, _if you are operating a market it should not be yours to control_.
Monopolies are bad in all forms, game stores should be operable by anyone, period.
And yes companies can protect themselves by disqualification of warranty for 3rd party stores, but that should be the consumer's choice, not some arbitrary CEOs decision.
We should buy your product because it offers something worth buying, not because you needed a subscription to bump your numbers...
I thought the whole point of download-only games is that they are not borrowable/lendable/resellable, so wouldn't allowing one-time only writes defeat the purpose?
Services should not, cannot, and will not continue past the point at which their value to the users is less than the cost of maintaining them. I don’t know if that’s the case here or not, but I would expect any service that doesn’t have a recurring fee associated to it, or is otherwise driving more value like games still being developed and sold for it, to continue very long. What would be the point?
Overall the gaming industry is a peek into what many media industries want your life to be like. You have access to their IP only as long as they want to support it, no local copy to keep forever, always online, kernel-level permissions to detect cheating software, DLC dribbles and microtransactions and lootboxes everywhere. It's problematic and only getting worse and I've given up on games for the most part.
If aspects of culture can be memory-holed because people aren't allowed to retain copies (and I mean popular shows and movies, books, music, not just games), the only winning move is not to play.
Abandonware should be open-sourced, copyrights should be capped at around a decade, and corporations should stop competing with each other to be the biggest asshole.
If aspects of culture can be memory-holed because people aren't allowed to retain copies (and I mean popular shows and movies, books, music, not just games), the only winning move is not to play.
Abandonware should be open-sourced, copyrights should be capped at around a decade, and corporations should stop competing with each other to be the biggest asshole.
I still own the first steam game I ever bought and sometimes play it. Nearly every game I own just works on any machine I own. Interface is my choice. At this point I could even argue that the console they offer has more bang per dollar.
I don't really get why people willingly joined walled gardens like that.
I don't really get why people willingly joined walled gardens like that.
Steam is still a walled garden that can arbitrarily take away games at any time they want. Everyone who sells via Steam (including Valve) can and do sometimes turn off online services.
Your garden might be wider, but there's still walls.
Your garden might be wider, but there's still walls.
You can still back the games up, if necessary on external drives. If they have DRM it can be cracked. None of this is is possible on consoles (or if it is I've never heard of it).
There are efforts, yes, but you will be surprised just how hostile the major players are towards this (and how big brother they are). If you know any of this the illusion that Microsoft (or Nintendo/Sony) are anything other than unethical profit mongers quickly disappears.
Many consoles have had their DRM cracked, some easier than others. I believe the Xbox 360 still requires soldering in a modchip, but the 3DS for example can be cracked easily and safely by loading some files onto an SD card and following a few steps.
As time goes on and console hardware becomes increasingly integrated, it'll become harder and harder to do hardware bypasses. As for the 3DS, that was pure luck caused by shitty system design, that allowed application bugs to cause ACE. There's no comparison with a platform that the user has direct and complete control over.
Try playing two steam games you "own" on two different PCs at the same time. Get a friend, child, or sibling, log into your steam account from both computers and open up two different games. It doesn't work.
Also try creating a separate steam account for each game you buy. Then see how easy/hard it is to switch between steam accounts on the same computer.
Also try creating a separate steam account for each game you buy. Then see how easy/hard it is to switch between steam accounts on the same computer.
> Try playing two steam games you "own" on two different PCs at the same time.
If that's an actual issue for you. You can trick most games by just going offline on the computer where the game is already running in the moment you start it on the second machine. Some games are 'tricked' by starting the exe directly.
If that's an actual issue for you. You can trick most games by just going offline on the computer where the game is already running in the moment you start it on the second machine. Some games are 'tricked' by starting the exe directly.
So long as it’s very clear when I’m buying a product that it’s dependent on a service, I’m ok with my games and content disappearing and my devices being bricked after N years. It’s an environmental tragedy but at least I can choose to buy a different products. Games and devices need to come with some SLA that guarantees that it’s up for 99.9% of the time for the coming (day) 5 years. Added bonus if the producer promises that after the SLA period or in the case of the company becoming defunct, all server software will be made available publicly.
But the key realization here is that when we “buy” games these days we just rent them. If we aren’t happy with that then we should simply not take part in the transaction.
But the key realization here is that when we “buy” games these days we just rent them. If we aren’t happy with that then we should simply not take part in the transaction.
I hope there is/will be a backup of all the levels uploaded on Mario Maker or it will be an unfortunate loss and Nintendo does not care of course.
Yes, they are all archived
https://archive.org/details/super_mario_maker_courses_202105
https://archive.org/details/super_mario_maker_courses_202105
This is one reason I'm over and done with proprietary consoles. So tired of shitty company's like Nintendo being able to call any kind of shot. They may still know how to make fun games and do that on accessible and reasonably priced hardware, but beyond that they are an objectionable and ass-backward company on so many levels.
I vote with my dollar. I vote against Nintendo.
I vote with my dollar. I vote against Nintendo.
Consoles are not the only place where this is happening. More PC games are requiring always-online access even for singleplayer content. User experience be damned.
I just had to refrain from a Steam purchase because I saw that it requires the Origin launcher, an EA account, and is always online. For a singleplayer game. Madness.
I just had to refrain from a Steam purchase because I saw that it requires the Origin launcher, an EA account, and is always online. For a singleplayer game. Madness.
I remember when SimCity 2013 launched and caused a massive controversy because it required a constant online connection in order to play the game. The Xbox One also had to do calls home every few days to allow you to play games you purchased before Microsoft backtracked when it caused bad PR for them.
It only took a decade but now this stuff is just common practice and nobody cares about paying $100 for digital purchases that will be ripped away from them when some server is shut down in a few years.
Honestly, physical games are kind of a bust at this point too. Many games are shipped with incomplete versions of the game on the disc, and you're required to download some of, if not majority of the game when you insert it. Hell, some games are sold in physical cases but you open them up and instead of getting a disc/cartridge you get a piece of paper with a download code.
It only took a decade but now this stuff is just common practice and nobody cares about paying $100 for digital purchases that will be ripped away from them when some server is shut down in a few years.
Honestly, physical games are kind of a bust at this point too. Many games are shipped with incomplete versions of the game on the disc, and you're required to download some of, if not majority of the game when you insert it. Hell, some games are sold in physical cases but you open them up and instead of getting a disc/cartridge you get a piece of paper with a download code.
I don’t disagree in principal but what exactly is the alternative? Playing SuperTuxKart and Pingus or some other open source games all the time? I hate the “service-ification” of everything, but I think it’s a near-monopoly that’s kind of hard to avoid.
There’s sites like GOG that give DRM-free versions of games, and I like GOG a lot, but it’s still fundamentally a proprietary service that could shut its doors down tomorrow. I know that I personally do not have all my GOG games backed up, and I am one of the rare people that has enough disk space to actually do that, so I doubt I am weird here.
There’s sites like GOG that give DRM-free versions of games, and I like GOG a lot, but it’s still fundamentally a proprietary service that could shut its doors down tomorrow. I know that I personally do not have all my GOG games backed up, and I am one of the rare people that has enough disk space to actually do that, so I doubt I am weird here.
lots of steam games have no drm
They require steam to be running, don't they?
What happens if steam goes away?
What happens if steam goes away?
Nope. Adding the "steam has to be running" check is an optional step the game developer performs before they upload their game to steam. The dev can go out of their way to wrap their .exe in the steam DRM.
If the dev does not do this, there is no steam DRM. lots of games dont use it, remember kenshi as an example.
If the dev does not do this, there is no steam DRM. lots of games dont use it, remember kenshi as an example.
A lot of games on Steam can run without running Steam
It's trivial to bypass that check using a Steam "emulator"
There also often software to strip the drm out of direct purchase games.
The existence of drm removal tools does not make a product drm free, in the same way ms office isn't open source if you steal the source code.
The existence of drm removal tools does not make a product drm free, in the same way ms office isn't open source if you steal the source code.
Several run completely fine without Steam running (or even installed)
Vote with your dollar and support an open source game like 0ad then.
https://play0ad.com/community/donate/
Until there is a proven revenue model to pay people to work on open source games there won’t be many.
https://play0ad.com/community/donate/
Until there is a proven revenue model to pay people to work on open source games there won’t be many.
My partner and I decided to buy a Wii together for our first Christmas in 2009. We had a lot of fun playing online with our friends and strangers until the services went offline.
It looks like those servers went offline in 2014, but it felt like we didn't get this service for very long.
We pretty much decided from that experience we'd never buy a console again.
It looks like those servers went offline in 2014, but it felt like we didn't get this service for very long.
We pretty much decided from that experience we'd never buy a console again.
> They may still know how to make fun games and do that on accessible and reasonably priced hardware, but beyond that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
I don't understand this thing about shutting everything down. I have a VPS that costs me £1.20 per month, so at the very base level if it is a service that nobody is using, then its maintenance cost can be extraordinarily small. And if people are using it, and you have a significant cost because of that, then that's a clear indication that it's too early to shut it down. Seriously, internet server bandwidth is cheap these days, especially compared to when these services were first put in place.
The only logical reason I can think of to shut these services down is to try to drive people towards new kit.
The only logical reason I can think of to shut these services down is to try to drive people towards new kit.
It's the security aspect. Nothing runs on an island, so there's the entire OS layer, libraries, and everything else. These require regular security upgrades, as vulnerabilities are discovered. Eventually, things are deprecated. Python, php and so on, have versions that are end of life. And so, you have to upgrade to an entire new stack. Often that requires upgrade to frameworks, and therefore code.
And beyond that, there's uptime monitoring. Security alerts. Logs to be read.
Bandwidth and bare metal costs are trivial, compared to labour to keep such things operational.
I wouldn't be surprised if one of two things happened. Some piece is now obsolete, and that requires a large amount of work to upgrade. Maybe a partial code rewrite.
Or someone key left. And training isn't seen as worth the effort, when #1 is close on the horizon.
And beyond that, there's uptime monitoring. Security alerts. Logs to be read.
Bandwidth and bare metal costs are trivial, compared to labour to keep such things operational.
I wouldn't be surprised if one of two things happened. Some piece is now obsolete, and that requires a large amount of work to upgrade. Maybe a partial code rewrite.
Or someone key left. And training isn't seen as worth the effort, when #1 is close on the horizon.
Usually the "security" operates on a similar principle, it's not actually any more secure.
Upgrades are (usually) complete poison.
Upgrades are (usually) complete poison.
I believe it’s actually quite expensive to keep a service in a working condition. You can’t just leave a system connected to the internet running for years with no oversight.
But ultimately, your last sentence points out the most important reason - the companies want gamers to spend time and money on new games.
But ultimately, your last sentence points out the most important reason - the companies want gamers to spend time and money on new games.
I wonder why people keep on giving money to this very toxic company. Vote with your wallet, people.
I do because I think of my gaming as a service. I see money out, and good time in. If I judge that the good time is worth the money, then I'll use the service, however they deliver it.
Take a finance/financial management class and you will start seeing all your expenses this way. It's really eye-opening.
Truly the Apple of the gaming console world.
At this points, it should be mandatory by law to open source the code of any online service your discontinue if people paid for a product that is tied to it.
then release the server source code and documentation and let the community run it. shutdowns with no extra release are unacceptable
I just bought my kid a used Wii U for Christmas. If I only care about his ability to play games offline, should I be concerned?
The NAND issue is what to avoid. https://www.reddit.com/r/wiiu/comments/11q733p/whats_is_the_...
Thanks for this. Fortunately we got a white Wii U, which it sounds like shipped with Samsung nand and is unaffected by this issue.
no, nintendo ships complete playable games.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was an unfortunate exception to this rule. Seeing them drip-feed features already present in the previous games doesn't bode well for the future of the franchise.
Easy to jailbreak the WiiU if they lock you out of your games
No I don't think so.
This is why I don't buy Nintendo. Any time the kids want something from them we pick something from a brand that supports their past consoles instead, like Microsoft.
And this is why I dont buy the Xbox Series S. Hell if I'm buying a videogame without disc reading capability.
If you go into it fully aware expecting about $3000 every 6 years it's roughly $41 per month. That could include the system, the system refreshes, controllers, storage cards, game passes, online play, headset, etc.
The 3DS/Wii U eShop was defenseless against hackers towards the end. You could download games off it for free. It makes sense it’s closing down. The 3DS has also been around since the iPhone 4s.
FreeShop was patched in 2018
That’s what Nintendo said but the eShop was still hackable.
I don't think it was, there were unsuccessful attempts to revive FreeShop but you could always download CIAs from the web so yeah piracy was still rampant
No one talked about it because they didn’t want normies to know. Might as well just use CIAs though.
[deleted]
May these game companies be the next victims of AI.
Online services for earlier consoles like the Wii were more basic, and IIRC in some cases were developed and maintained by third parties, not Nintendo themselves? I understand wanting to get rid of that overhead especially if it wasn’t driving incremental revenue.
But now the Switch is more intimately tied to online services for buying games and add ons. The most customer-friendly approach would be to keep backend services running indefinitely. Basically consider your backend to be a platform like Windows or macOS and maintain and evolve it indefinitely, keeping older consoles alive as long as possible (and continuing the ongoing revenue stream from older consoles, even as it shrinks over time, to at least cover cost.)
It seems like they have to do something like this to support downloadable games, at least with the online shop. I wonder how they’ll handle it.
I read a rumor that the successor to the Switch is expected in 2024 or 2025. And we picked up a Switch a couple months ago and I chose to buy all games as digital download version. And I remember the backend for the Wii being shut down. So this has been on my mind recently.