EA Once More Shuts Down Servers of Several Current Gen Games

[Friendly]

Re: Online passes, digital distribution and downloadable content

"Online passes are cool, because they allow game companies to keep game servers running"
Oops, I hope you didn't just buy online passes for any of these games:

After April 13th, online play for these titles will be impossible:

• BOOM BLOX Bash Party for Wii
• Burnout™ Revenge for Xbox 360
• EA Create for PC, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
• EA Sports Active 2.0 for PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360
• EA Sports Active NFL Training Camp for Wii
• FIFA 10 for PlayStation Portable and Wii
• The Godfather™ II for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
• MMA for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
• Need for Speed™ ProStreet for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
• The Saboteur™ (loss of The Midnight Club access) for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
• Spare Parts for PlayStation 3 Xbox 360

http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates
http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/19/ea-a...ne-pass-games/

I for one agree with EA; 18 months of online play like in the case of MMA or 17 for EA Sports Active 2.0 is certainly enough.
Tough luck if you'd like to acquire DLC (redeem vouchers) for any of these games; it's your own damn fault for not buying them sooner.

Edit: typos

[louisg]

I'm glad I grew up in an era where videogame companies weren't completely screwing over their players.

I don't get why none of these games allow for peer-to-peer internet play if the official servers are down.

[spoot]

I'm glad I grew up in an era where videogame companies weren't completely screwing over their players.

I don't get why none of these games allow for peer-to-peer internet play if the official servers are down.

DLC

Anyways, I was bitching about this to few of my friends the other day. I used to run dedicated servers for Half Life, Quake 3, Unreal, etc on a dedicated server at my home. I had hundreds of custom maps and models loaded. It was alot of fun.....we could fire up maps that no one had played before which evened up the field quite a bit.

GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DAMN EA.

[Friendly]

By the way, if you'd like to get online achivements/trophies for any of these games, you'll be S.O.L., too.

[Ruldra]

This makes me regret buying Mortal Kombat and indirectly support online passes. I wonder if my pass even works now, they expire after a while and I never used mine.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey, there's no industry code of ethics for game companies; although I dunno what the IGDA has come up with. The ECA doesn't seem to be spending any time on these issues, making me wonder if it's not an industry group merely titled "Entertainment Consumers Association" just to co-opt some of the public.

In any case I think it's a simple case of voting with your wallet. I've got enough old games to tide me over for a while, and occasionally there are games released without crippling scamware coupons (i.e. every Battlefield game since the original and its expansions) or DRM (SecuROM still makes me feel pangs of guilt at not booting Linux sometime just to blast its final traces off a 2005 hard drive - although Adobe also gets its hooks into drives in a similar fashion).

I have no idea what the last EA game was that I purchased - and in any case it was probably a Valve Software title they were just distributing. I have Cotton for X68000 though!

[Estebang]

Haha, the only EA games I own are Souky and Shaq Fu.

If Diablo 3's nearly complete reliance on server-hosted assets (even during single player) is any indication, gaming in ten--or maybe even five--years is going to be like the movie theaters. Once people stop playing the games, they'll be gone. Oh, and don't expect to be able to play them at all without a persistent internet connection and constant server-side checks for pirated copies. We're already seeing a similar model in Japanese arcades with NESiCA, which is absolutely worthless for preserving anything. Aside from new encryption cracks and discovered oddities, SDOJ may very well be the last game to ever be added to the MAME list, whenever Cave folds or finally gives the go-ahead for SH3 support.

Maybe the chaps who cracked BBCS should have waited till the next revision was out, perchance? I strongly suspect it had something to do with the almost immediate wide adoption of NESiCA afterwards.

[BIL]

Haha, the only EA games I own are Souky and Shaq Fu.

I still occasionally do a minor double take when I notice the EA logo on my Garegga and Souky Otokuyo manuals... and the Time Warner Interactive one on Taroumaru. How odd to owe such publishers for some of the finest Japan-exclusive games ever.

[Estebang]

EA with their old logo was a very different company, to say the least.

[Ed Oscuro]

EA with their old logo was a very different company, to say the least.

I was gonna say something about them and Origin, but then I found this and so on. Yeah, better incompetently monopolistic than invasive, tentacled-eyes evil.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, better incompetently monopolistic than invasive, tentacled-eyes evil.

Nothing EA does would surprise me, quite frankly. They're the company that single-handedly destroyed Origin Systems by taking them over and basically shitting on everything they made with unrealistic deadlines (Ultima VIII and Ultima IX, I'm lookin' at you). So much for more Privateer or System Shock games ever coming out.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Its a shame EA are such twats as they make some good games imo.

[Specineff]

Its a shame EA are such twat publishers as the studios they buy every year make some good games imo.

Fixed.

[louisg]

If you need to cleanse your soul, feel free to play one of these games from back when EA didn't suck:

[BPzeBanshee]

No love for Jungle Strike/Crue Ball guys? I loved those games and the EA intro was pretty cool but now they're just crap.

The original Hot Pursuit (or maybe it was 2) with the Opal Speedster in it was awesome too. Haven't touched an EA game since though I'm fairly sure.

[Friendly]

Funny, seems EA started to go wrong right around the time they changed their logo.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Tough luck if you'd like to acquire DLC (redeem vouchers) for any of these games; it's your own damn fault for not buying them sooner.

There's no mention of DLC being made inaccessible.

[Friendly]

Tough luck if you'd like to acquire DLC (redeem vouchers) for any of these games; it's your own damn fault for not buying them sooner.

There's no mention of DLC being made inaccessible.

DLC for which vouchers were included and which was distributed directly via EA can't be accessed anymore. Example: The titty DLC-voucher that is included with new copies of The Saboteur.
You can still buy it on XBL/PSN, but your free voucher becomes void. That means besides online, another part of the game you already paid for becomes inaccessible, unless you redeem it before the servers are switched off.
Sorry for not wording this better.

[E. Randy Dupre]

That part of it's not such a big deal and it isn't anything new. It's always been the case when you buy anything that contains a redeemable voucher that the voucher is only valid up to a specified date.

[KBZ]

I really can't stand stuff like this, and now current gen games getting taken offline? I thought it was bad when the majority of Dreamcast games were taken offline, but then ALL of xbox live was stripped from the original xbox in one day. Now this? The party isn't even over and they've already cut the power.

There need to be standards for this. They want everyone to buy and enjoy their games, yet then control how they're enjoyed and for how long?

If they don't want to host the servers anymore, release the server software so other people can! GAH!

[lilmanjs]

EA only makes Sports games worth buying these days. though they have eaten up so many good companies and turned them into shit its unreal. I'm just glad after all this time they've allowed Maxis to make the true sequel to SimCity 4

[Ed Oscuro]

That part of it's not such a big deal and it isn't anything new. It's always been the case when you buy anything that contains a redeemable voucher that the voucher is only valid up to a specified date.

Was the date specified, or is it just "until we don't feel like it?" There's a difference.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Ed:

http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cf ... eID=428892

* One-time use code for 'The Midnight Show' downloadable content available with full retail purchase. Code expires December 31, 2010. Internet connection required.

So they've actually extended the life of the redeemable code for fifteen months longer than they originally said they were going to. I'd say that was pretty good going.

(Anecdotally, I think this might be common practice. I've bought games myself before now which have contained a DLC voucher for which the expiry date has apparently passed, yet I've still been able to use them without a hitch. I guess taking this stuff offline after the offer date isn't top of the publisher's list.)

I'm just finding it surprising that anybody is shocked by this behaviour, because it was well-known that EA were going to do this kind of thing about ten years ago, if not sooner - it was rumoured to be one of the main issues in the argument between them and Microsoft wrt online modes in their games on the original Xbox.

The other thing that isn't being taken into account here is the list of games itself - I know that Burnout was still being played by people online as recently as eight months ago, because I was one of them (a bunch of us decided to give it a whirl again and were very surprised to see that the servers were still up at that point), but I doubt that there's been much use of the servers for the other games in that list over the last twelve months. EA are notorious for releasing annual updates of their sports franchises and the fact that they've been able to do this for twenty years indicates that the audience always migrates across to the new versions. Boom Blox presumably saw the kind of drop-off in use common to every single online Wii title. If there's no community there - no regular use of the service - then it's inevitable that they're going to discontinue that service.

[Ed Oscuro]

At a stretch I might say that it's OK to shut down some unpopular game from 2005/2006 that is technically "current gen," although it just makes the whole structure of gaming (particularly the trend of having half or more of your achievements be multiplayer-related) look even more asinine, in my view.

It's too bad that the whole structure of this is taking more control out of gamers' hands, with the reluctance to release dedicated servers or let players keep their communities alive. It also explains that some of the reasoning behind the DLC debacles (I guess this is where we come full circle) is partly due to the pigheaded structure of the "client - server" relationship becoming standard in games. When you has a disc, you don't need no stinkin' server...but nope, they gotta fight piracy and all that jazz, who cares if we sacrifice the value of a game and the work done on it for that purpose?

[Friendly]

@E. Randy Dupre
I'm a bit surprised at you. Are you actually defending this awful practice? Why should a digital voucher expire AT ALL before it's redeemed? This is totally anti-consumer.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Why should a digital voucher expire AT ALL before it's redeemed? This is totally anti-consumer.

Absolute nonsense. I went into WHSmiths and bought a magazine the other day. At the till, I was given vouchers for money off tickets at Alton Towers. They had an expiry date on them. Is that also anti-consumer?

Expiry dates on vouchers for free stuff have been around for as long as vouchers for free stuff have (and note: free stuff). It's not a practice that's been introduced with digital distribution, or even with videogames. Is this really news to you?

Oh, and just to reder the DLC argument entirely invalid, you've been given a month's notice. It's not like the voucher code has been made unusable yet, so you've got plenty of time to scoot down to the shops and buy yourself that copy of The Saboteur, so that you can unlock the DLC nudity for free instead of paying 400 points for it.

At a stretch I might say that it's OK to shut down some unpopular game from 2005/2006 that is technically "current gen," although it just makes the whole structure of gaming (particularly the trend of having half or more of your achievements be multiplayer-related) look even more asinine, in my view.

It's too bad that the whole structure of this is taking more control out of gamers' hands, with the reluctance to release dedicated servers or let players keep their communities alive. It also explains that some of the reasoning behind the DLC debacles (I guess this is where we come full circle) is partly due to the pigheaded structure of the "client - server" relationship becoming standard in games. When you has a disc, you don't need no stinkin' server...but nope, they gotta fight piracy and all that jazz, who cares if we sacrifice the value of a game and the work done on it for that purpose?

I agree (although, again, in this particular case I've got to ask how much of a community something like the PSP version of FIFA 10 - because it's the PSP and Wii versions, not any that actually matter - existed in the first place). It wouldn't be as much of an issue if these games also supported split-screen or LAN multiplayer, bt frequently it's online or nothing.

Take Chromehounds. That's pretty much a multiplayer-only console game. I mean, it isn't, but it only has any real playable value as a multiplayer. Since Sega took the servers down, owning it has become pointless.

[Friendly]

Oh, and just to reder the DLC argument entirely invalid, you've been given a month's notice. It's not like the voucher code has been made unusable yet, so you've got plenty of time to scoot down to the shops and buy yourself that copy of The Saboteur, so that you can unlock the DLC nudity for free instead of paying 400 points for it.

Right, sounds like an awesome plan to go and buy the game now, with only one month of online play left.

It makes me sad when someone defends corporate bullshit, and it makes no sense (unless they are being paid).
I guess some people are born slaves.

Shutting down servers (especially after 18 months or less) and not giving players a way to run their own servers or use p2p to keep playing games online which they paid good money for is bullshit, plain and simple.

[Damocles]

Oh, and just to reder the DLC argument entirely invalid, you've been given a month's notice. It's not like the voucher code has been made unusable yet, so you've got plenty of time to scoot down to the shops and buy yourself that copy of The Saboteur, so that you can unlock the DLC nudity for free instead of paying 400 points for it.

Right, sounds like an awesome plan to go and buy the game now, with only one month of online play left.

It makes me sad when someone defends corporate bullshit, and it makes no sense (unless they are being paid).
I guess some people are born slaves.

Shutting down servers (especially after 18 months or less) and not giving players a way to run their own servers or use p2p to keep playing games online which they paid good money for is bullshit, plain and simple.

Uhh..."The Saboteur" had no online play to begin with. So, it's just the titties. You should go buy it, however. It's quite fun for what you'll pay. Not exactly a fitting swan song, but not rubbish. Such a shame about Pandemic. Some good games...some not so good games...and then some EA games. At least quite a few of the chaps moved over the 343 and are, oddly enough, working on Halo 4.

Concerning EA, this should come as no surprise to anyone. They regularly announce these closings and servers shutting down, for them, is an inevitability. Eventually, all the servers for 360/PS3 will go down and people will just use whatever version of XLink Kai is up and running.

[Friendly]

The joy of modern games with online play. This time, an entire game becomes unplayable:



http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/02/rock- ... ed-may-31/

Digital distribution ftw.

Boy am I glad no-one can switch off my physical game collection.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Boy am I glad no-one can switch off my physical game collection.

Nuclear detonation in the upper atmosphere says otherwise... but I get your point.

If I'm paying for something, I'm paying for it for as long as the shit its playable on holds out - not when someone decides to flick a switch.