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.
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.
All three happened because servers actually cost money. Do you give away things for free to strangers on the internet?
There’s no profit in letting users run their own servers, btw.
Yes, there is. They make the game more expensive, charge a subscription, and then cut all the cost of hosting. That is where the industry is heading.
Ok yes, if they’re charging you a subscription to run your own server, there’s profit in that. I don’t know of any companies that do that, but I would not be in favor of them doing that. Considering that is not a common practice in the industry, I think we can move on.
remember Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War? The game that didn't have dedi servers for Zombies for several months after launch, cost $70, and had a battle pass?
Hperrin your getting continuously downvoted here, perhaps that should be a good wakeup call to step back and look at why you are being downvoted
Because people disagree with me? That doesn’t change the fact that that’s how the industry works. Multiplayer is always paid for by something. If nobody bought Shark Cards, GTA Online wouldn’t be free.
Also, consoles are subsidized. Microsoft makes money on your subscription, not your Xbox.
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 companies aren’t in the business of giving away free services, and it’s wild to expect them to be. You wouldn’t expect a landscaping business to do all your landscaping for free after you pay for the first time.
I don't expect to have to pay another company to walk across my own lawn
Alright, then play games where you can host your own server. There are plenty. That doesn’t work for all games though (particularly ranked games where the server software has to be verified or people could easily cheat), so you’ll be limited in what you can play.
I'm not super familiar with current console allowances, but are you suggesting that people can just "host their own server" and not pay the psn or Xbox live fees that are forced onto them? I just don't think that's true. You have to pay the fee to connect to any server, even your own.
This was more about general gaming, but you can connect to some games online without a subscription on Xbox. Not all.
First of all, this is wrong. Free to play is an insanely profitable business model.
But also it's wrong because non-F2P multiplayer games aren't a free service. You paid $60/$70 for the game, and whatever the cost of the servers is would have been factored into the sale price. The per-unit cost of hosting an online game is nowhere near the cost of the game, especially back in the day when most "servers" were just a matchmaking service for P2P game clients.
Nowadays, the cost of running a multiplayer game is lower than ever. Cloud hosting gives a ton of flexibility to design an online service that is affordable to run, not to mention the money printing machine that are microtransactions (often sold in non-F2P games that also require a subscription to play).
Online subscriptions are not meant to cover server/hosting costs. They're a monopoly tax from the platform holder, who can charge you money to connect to the internet simply because they can, and they know you have no other option.
In my comment I mentioned about the game costing more to cover the cost of multiplayer servers. So that’s already been covered.
And the subscription costs pay for tools for developers to build specifically for Xbox, like https://developer.microsoft.com/en-US/games/publish
tell me more about how landscaping with physical labor and materials is just like having a server turned on
They both require money.
Electricity is not free, hardware is not free, engineering and maintenance is not free, and an internet connection is not free.
Explain all the free to play games then.
Microtransactions.
You're right, that's why it costs money to play online multiplayer on PC
Oh wait
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.