Archive link: https://archive.ph/aWo6a
In early April 2024, online play and other functionality that uses online communication will end for Nintendo 3DS* and Wii U software. This also includes online co-operative play, internet rankings, and data distribution.
We will announce a specific end date and time at a later date.
Please note that if an event occurs that would make it difficult to continue online services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software, we may have to discontinue services earlier than planned.
- This includes software exclusive to New Nintendo 3DS
On the one hand, they should. On the other hand, we all gave our money to Nintendo knowing that Nintendo was going to Nintendo it up. It’s a shitty company with a terrible take on what software ownership means, of course they’re going to ruin this.
IMO we shouldn’t force companies to keep their servers online forever. That’s a silly law that will hurt gamers. Instead, we should have an expiry date on games. Make companies state beforehand how long their servers will be up and how much functionality will be lost. Then fine companies that shut their servers down beforehand, or even force them to publish the source code to run your own.
Right now online services are in this vague state where nobody knows how long what services will work on what devices. Give people a chance to make that decision beforehand. That’ll cost them sales in the end of their product lifetimes (who’s going to buy an online game a year before server shutdown?) but you can prevent this rug pull situation.
What I’d also like to see is some kind of extra tariff on software and hardware that requires online servers to function with no alternatives. Make games that the plug can be pulled out of less attractive, use it to subsidise games that do come with server software.
That’s not what the person you’re replying to suggested though. They suggested that companies should release self-hostable server software when they discontinue providing the service themselves. In the age of containerized software this wouldn’t even be all that difficult in many cases
That’s fair enough, but I don’t think it’s very feasible. There are a lot of companies using other people’s copyrighted code in their servers that they don’t have the right to distribute, nor are they likely to ever get it.
I’d certainly like an “or-or” situation; either the company is forced to provide a fully hostable version for all online components or they’d need to set an expiry date. I just don’t think forcing companies to provide servers is going to go down well in most governments.
I didn’t say it had to be open source. Copyright is irrelevant as far as this topic is concerned - compiling code into binary is transformative. The only thing that matters here is patent law, and it seems easy enough to just make a law that allows non-profit infringement of patents for this explicit purpose. I don’t think there’s any legal roadblocks to releasing server software.
I didn’t say they should keep the servers up forever, I agree that’s unreasonable. But it isn’t unreasonable to require that they release the software necessary for hosting the servers so that the fans/community can host servers if they so choose.
Seriously this needs to be addressed! Gran Turismo Sport is shutting down in january after, what? 4 years? Insane