It would help people who wanted to have a functioning video game. Then you could ask your friend (or someone on Discord) what their IP address is and play with them.

[–] Nibodhika -1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You're again mixing the point, your friends IP doesn't have authentication, progress, chat, etc, etc, etc. You're talking about a different kind of server.

[–] ampersandrew 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The thing I'm criticizing is that they make this other kind of server impossible, even though it would be exactly the kind of backup plan you'd want for a situation like this one.

[–] Nibodhika 0 points 7 hours ago

But that is an apples to oranges comparison, just because you personally don't care about those features doesn't mean others don't care either. For games without those features mentioned in the original comment (like Baldur's Gate 3) not having join by IP is ridiculous we agree there. But for games that do it's just not feasible, there's too much of what makes the game the game in those features. Don't get me wrong, I personally think that companies should not just kill the game and should provide ways to make their game playable offline after closing the servers, but it's not as simple as allowing you to join by IP for the games being discussed here. What level would your character be? What load out would it have set? Which items would be unblocked? Etc, etc, etc, the servers that control all of that are too engrained into the fabric of the game, and that's something that happened organically because people liked those features and wanted cross-progression, security, etc. Can all of that be removed? Sure but then you're left with a shell of what the game is/was, still I believe companies should make such a release before closing the servers, but again this has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with direct join by IP.