Golwar wrote on Jan 5, 2011, 21:00:
Hehe, sorry didn't want to make false assumptions or overly simplify that stuff. It's just that I wonder how expensive all this could be?
The fewer players, the less servers you need. If the software development is set to halt, you don't need to do any related new configuration. All that remains would be, imho, to maintain the hardware and run automated software procedures, for a reduced amount of servers.
If you could describe me what is so expensive that it outweights the regular negative PR they gain if they cancle 1-2 year old games, I'd gladly hear it.
Mind you, I support that they bury games that nobody plays anymore.
Eh, I suppose if you're talking in terms of negative PR, then I don't think the sysadmin/dev time could ever amount to the loss you'd get on PR.
You'd have to have at least one sysadmin, who would likely be paid $70-$100k/yr, along with the hardware, which, if say we're talking about ten servers, we're talking about dropping at least 1.5k per server every three years or so, so let's say another 15k every 3-5 years.
Server maintenance can still be tricky and quite unglamorous - no one else wants to do it, and there's strangeness abound in this art.

But overall, I agree with you, either spend some time/money to get a ready to use server binary out there for people to use, or continue maintaining the servers with a skeleton crew.