this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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Online gaming requires servers to run, and servers require money. Either the game is more expensive, the online is a subscription, or you have to run the server yourself. There are games that do each of these.
Edit: or microtransactions. Fuck microtransactions.
Normalizing needless online servers is part of the issue here (only with AAA titles). These companies set up servers and say shit like "well it has to be paid for somehow!"
Games like Diablo 4 where you need internet to play single player. Diablo 2 resurrection removed all the LAN/Self hosting features of original D2.
Blizzard isn't the only company doing this either.
Fuck that noise.
That said, with the prices being where they are, a single subscriber basically funds the entire cost of running the server.
Not exactly. Electricity aside, servers also require maintenance. That requires server admins. Those don't come cheap.
Edit: also network costs. With the requirement of handling high user numbers at stupidly low latency levels, they'll need a seperate internet connection from corp and the data service will also not be cheap.
Then solve the problem the same way the PC industry did by allowing anyone to host the server.
Which has its own drawbacks. Community servers are great for something like Battlefield/Battlebit where a single server covers 30-128 players. Less so for smaller groups and as games "die". Time has no meaning, but I want to say it was mid 00s Unreal Tournament (so after 2k3/2k4 came out, but while UT was still alive) where it increasingly became nigh impossible to find servers not running instagib or "pro" mods. Which made sense since it was mostly the various clans making their servers public when they weren't practicing.
But also? Look at a live game like Destiny or Warframe. For the purely PVE content, you can get away with users running listen servers. And just ask any Warframe player about how much we just LOVE host migration. But once you add any form of competitive aspect, that is no longer viable. And community hosted servers for eight players in a matchmaking queue are just not going to be a thing.
On the console side of things? That monthly fee covers (some) game servers but also the content servers to download all the patches and games.
On the PC side? Generally you are either dependent on a major publisher/studio that can afford to leave a few racks running in a closet while they make new games. And you are fucked when they realize that and shut down the game. Or you hope that it is subsidized by DLC and microtransactions.
And, if it is your primary platform, I think the multiplayer fees on consoles (other than switch) are handled pretty well these days. You aren't paying for halo matchmaking. You are paying for an instant game collection every month and gamepass. Which is more or less exactly what sony did after clowning on MS for charging money.
If I had it my way this is exactly how it would work.
Alas, even non-Valve PC games are moving away from that model unfortunately.
There is also peer to peer which is basically the same way torrents work
“There’s no servers”
What exactly do you think those “host machines” are?!?
PC games run on servers, but you don't pay for a Windows monthly subscription to play the games, you just pay for the individual games themselves.
These servers are hosted by third party companies anyway.
I’m not sure what you mean. PC games usually run on your PC, unless you’re streaming. It’s the multiplayer server software that run on servers. And the servers are paid for by the company that makes the game, usually. Or the publisher. The actual server hardware is rented from cloud providers, if that’s what you mean. Servers aren’t free, that’s my point. If you want multiplayer online functionality, someone has to pay for the server. And ultimately that cost gets passed on to you, the end user.
What I mean
Xbox: you have to pay to even be able to play online at all, even if the third party servers are paid for and operated by other means. Third party games still require you to pay xbox. They (third party) own the servers and pay for the servers. Even free games require you to pay Xbox.
PC: you can play games online without paying your OS provider.
It's too bad every dev runs their own (often piss-poor) servers instead of giving us dedicated server hosting software to run our own. Can't go back to those days even if we wanted!
GameSpy was such dog shit tho
You got some hella rose tinted glasses on my guy.
GameSpy was a bloated piece of garbage that is only fondly remembered because the other options were worse. It crashed constantly which ripped you out of your game and it performed this trick especially often right when the game launched.
Ping was always wrong, lobbies displayed as full when they weren't, server filtering was non-existent, required login every time you disconnected...
I was thrilled to move off of it to basically anything else
Bloated? It literally did 1 thing, and that was give you a list of servers that you could filter, despite your attestation it had no filtering.
All Seeing Eye was often considered better; though I remember it being exactly the same program just with a different name.
All it did with the game was connect you to the server you selected using the game's own commands. If GameSpy itself crashed after you've connected to the server, the game wouldn't be affected.
You sure you're thinking about GameSpy?
Dont grt it twisted the main thing a subscription is funding is shareholder value.
What do you know, all three happened because of the unrelenting pursuit of profit.
Cost of doing business. Publishers who can't afford to literally just forget about the cost of running servers have no need to be in business.
Most modern games do not have server software to run your own. And yet they don't cost extra to play online on PC. Hm. 🤔
Peer To Peer
Look it up
Your comment is exactly the same type I'd see from toxic users on reddit arguing that people should pay because Microsoft hosts servers for multiplayer and that the commenter gladly pays for it whenever I'd go to look at reddit posts calling out bullshit on pay walled multiplayer on consoles
Oh I don’t pay. I don’t play on PlayStation or Xbox, and I honestly don’t think people should, but I understand why people do. It’s easy, and playing on PC is harder.
The more middlemen you put between the developer of the game and the end user the more money you’re going to pay. You might get a better/easier experience, but it will cost more. That’s just economics. So minimizing that is good for the end user if they’re cool with having a harder time setting things up and playing.