LibertyOrDeath wrote on Jul 6, 2014, 22:19:
Businesses are in it to make money, but since you guys think it is so easy, donate for a year's worth of service! Oh wait, that takes money (gasp)!
While I agree that server/bandwidth/etc take money to run, I disagree with *why*.
Back in the day you bought a game and were given a server (dedicated) option (executable or command-line switch) to run your own servers, and foot the bill for hosting yourself. You'd either have a master server which all the servers registered to in order to find player-hosted, or you had to know the IP or hostname of it. You also were given free reign to modify ('mod') the game; different weapons, different maps, etc.
Those days are all gone because of *greed* by the dev studios or producers. Once companies figured out they can charge for DLC, any incentive they had at all to allow modding and player-run servers went out the window.
As a side-effect of that it forced them to run their own servers. This has a real-world cost to it (as you said), and puts dual pressure on them to shutter it as soon as they think they can. One pressure is to get rid of those costs, the other is to 'encourage' people to buy the next iteration of their game (with slightly reskinned models).
We as consumers also share some of the blame because we're letting it happen. As consumers as a whole (not anyone in particular) we're responsible for it because we don't push back and demand the things we used to enjoy.
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