ESA Nonsense: Preserving Digital Games is Hacking/Piracy

[Ack]

Oh, what the EFF.

[Erik_Twice]

That's just beyond dumb

[Gunstar Green]

I can understand where they're coming from in the case of MMOs. They don't want you to keep playing the old one for free. They want you to move on to their new one and keep paying them for content. It's counter productive for them if their consumers refuse to move on.

Still, it's a pretty terrible thing. I would have never been able to share Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst with my girlfriend if hackers hadn't made it playable again. Sega is actually aware of the private servers but chooses to turn a blind eye towards them as long as they're not functioning on a commercial level.

[noiseredux]

I can understand where they're coming from in the case of MMOs. They don't want you to keep playing the old one for free. They want you to move on to their new one and keep paying them for content. It's counter productive for them if their consumers refuse to move on.

I get what you're saying, but makes me wonder if in some cases servers are shut off too early. Meaning, if consumers refuse to move on, maybe they are still willing to pay for that old game?

Related: After the servers for NBA 2K14 went down on 3/31 there was so much public outcry that it broke offline career modes that 2K Sports has turned them back on and decided that going further they will be keeping the servers up an extra 6 months for their annual sports games.

[Ack]

I can understand where they're coming from in the case of MMOs. They don't want you to keep playing the old one for free. They want you to move on to their new one and keep paying them for content. It's counter productive for them if their consumers refuse to move on.

I get what you're saying, but makes me wonder if in some cases servers are shut off too early. Meaning, if consumers refuse to move on, maybe they are still willing to pay for that old game?

Hellgate London also comes to mind, where the developer went defunct, and the Hellgate property was bought out by another within a year of its release. The multiplayer servers were taken offline for the US and Europe about six months after that, meaning the game had less than a year and a half where it was possible to play in multiplayer(which was the main crux of the game, as it was an action RPG/FPS hybrid geared around co-op).

[J T]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU

I would totally download a car.

I would also download a car.

In fact, I'd download cars like I download TV shows...only the same problem would exist. Running out of storage space.

Downloading a car is a bad example because it is too extreme for what they are advocating. These people wouldn't even want you to "hack" your car with fancy "mods" like a spoiler or new rims. That would violate copyright protection for the car developer's original artistic intent. Hell, they don't even want you to add any gas or oil that could keep it running longer than they intend because they want you to stop using the old model and buy the new one.