Epic Games is de-listing and stopping sales of old Unreal titles

[Xeotroid]

Apparently music listeners are not as brain dead as gamers.

So, so many people have no local downloaded or CD music libraries, they just use Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, or some other music streaming service and find it almost unusual that someone has a big folder with music files somewhere on a hard drive.
Without using 3rd party tools of dubious legality that need your account's credentials, these services don't allow you to make standalone local copies of music. Spotify's offline functionality forces you to get online at least once a month. Apple Music seems to have no such limit, but it still doesn't allow you to access the audio files. I have no clue about the others.

[phantombeta]

As much as I absolutely sympathize with the distaste towards DRM, I still feel like Steam, GOG, et al are preferable to what we used to get with physical releases. I say, look at where the physical game marketplace is right now, for games that were always physical, i.e. anything released before 2004. Copies of games for pre-XBox 360 game consoles (especially if Nintendo made them) and pre-online PC games have ratcheted up to insane secondhand markup in recent years. Sure, these games haven't been forcibly removed from the market the way a good number of digital releases have, and as long as the media is well cared for, it'll always be playable and they can never take away the license. But if I wanted to buy that copy of Duke Nukem 3D without putting up with the digital marketplaces, I'd be paying almost three times what its original MSRP was. And that's no way to maintain an inclusive and accessible library of games.

And that's notwithstanding whether I can actually find that copy in the first place. Duke 3D is popular and in demand. If I wanted a copy of something more obscure than that, like say... 7 Colors by Infogrames, good luck.

Very much this. And that's without even getting into places that aren't rich 1st world countries like the US and UK! The moment you look at those, it becomes clear that despite all their issues, digital stores are objectively better than physical releases.
Regional pricing means games don't cost an arm and a leg, there's no physical media that can be subject to absurd taxes, everything in the store is available to everyone unless it's literally been banned in that country, there's no limited stocks, you don't get fucked over because you live in a city that has no game stores, games don't occupy precious physical space, there's no fragile physical media that can be permanently damaged if you live somewhere hot and humid...

[Graf Zahl]

Apparently music listeners are not as brain dead as gamers.

So, so many people have no local downloaded or CD music libraries, they just use Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, or some other music streaming service and find it almost unusual that someone has a big folder with music files somewhere on a hard drive.
Without using 3rd party tools of dubious legality that need your account's credentials, these services don't allow you to make standalone local copies of music. Spotify's offline functionality forces you to get online at least once a month. Apple Music seems to have no such limit, but it still doesn't allow you to access the audio files. I have no clue about the others.

It was called "Radio" back in the day. Also, while these services are popular, it is virtually unthinkable that they were the only way to consume music - you can purchase virtually everything as a physical media or at an unprotected digital download. Where's that for modern games. As nice as GOG is, you won't find these titles there.

And let's not forget the cost factor. I have no objections about a protected service where you play a flat fee per month to play any game you like - when it was still possible I spent quite a bit of money at my local video store to rent new games and try them out - but current gaming is that you pay full price for something you don't own, and that's not acceptable for me.

[Rachael]

To answer your question - there are "game pass" services offered by some publishers which give you temporary access to a large collection of games - the costs vary but I think those offer a bit of a digital substitute to the store rentals you talked about - and yes - new games are often a part of it, the only caveat is it's not always guaranteed to be the new game you *want* because the specific games available are tied to the publisher. Some might also be tied to specific gaming consoles, too.

Here are a couple examples:
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass
https://www.ea.com/news/unlock-play-wit ... ss-premier

[Graf Zahl]

I know, but these suffer from the same problem as movie streaming services, i.e. each publisher wants their own business so the overall cost gets too high in the end when having to pay for multiple services.

[sinisterseed]

As much as I absolutely sympathize with the distaste towards DRM, I still feel like Steam, GOG, et al are preferable to what we used to get with physical releases. I say, look at where the physical game marketplace is right now, for games that were always physical, i.e. anything released before 2004. Copies of games for pre-XBox 360 game consoles (especially if Nintendo made them) and pre-online PC games have ratcheted up to insane secondhand markup in recent years. Sure, these games haven't been forcibly removed from the market the way a good number of digital releases have, and as long as the media is well cared for, it'll always be playable and they can never take away the license. But if I wanted to buy that copy of Duke Nukem 3D without putting up with the digital marketplaces, I'd be paying almost three times what its original MSRP was. And that's no way to maintain an inclusive and accessible library of games.

And that's notwithstanding whether I can actually find that copy in the first place. Duke 3D is popular and in demand. If I wanted a copy of something more obscure than that, like say... 7 Colors by Infogrames, good luck.

Very much this. And that's without even getting into places that aren't rich 1st world countries like the US and UK! The moment you look at those, it becomes clear that despite all their issues, digital stores are objectively better than physical releases.
Regional pricing means games don't cost an arm and a leg, there's no physical media that can be subject to absurd taxes, everything in the store is available to everyone unless it's literally been banned in that country, there's no limited stocks, you don't get fucked over because you live in a city that has no game stores, games don't occupy precious physical space, there's no fragile physical media that can be permanently damaged if you live somewhere hot and humid...

I think the only concern here would be a security one in case your account gets stolen, but then if you have the receipts that should normally be a non-issue to get it back, especially if you're quick about it.

As for the fear of losing your game library one day? Well actually Valve at least's gotchu fam, apparently they've recently been testing a killswitch internally, so in the extreme case of Valve going under one day, all games decouple from Steam. There, DRM-free games again. Which I think also makes the whole point of "you don't own your games" moot in this particular context. Up to the other services to follow suit.

you can purchase virtually everything as a physical media or at an unprotected digital download.

Um, no, not really.

There's plenty of albums I want but they have long stopped being produced. In some cases Bandcamp has me covered, but some are just lost to time, or end up paying like 100$ to buy it from a collector. But this time around I wholly agree that for music, digital distribution will never replace listening to your music inside the player and look through the booklet, read the lyrics, get the thanks from the bands, and so on.

For music, physical media is very much still relevant, if not more relevant than ever depending on genre. Hell, vinyl is actually more popular than ever in metal these days, as absurdly fragile as vinyl discs can be.

I know, but these suffer from the same problem as movie streaming services, i.e. each publisher wants their own business so the overall cost gets too high in the end when having to pay for multiple services.

And that's where the seven seas got you covered if that doesn't bother you.

I limit myself to two, and if something else ends up catching my attention but isn't available on either, sorry, but I'm not signing up for the third. Enough is enough.

[AmissaAnima]

That's simply not how corporations work. The "long game" for them is to maximize profit in the short term and deal with the consequences later, often in underhanded and dishonest ways, for both. Whatever loss you think they will get from this - they likely thought of it too and figured it was something they could take.

I'm not justifying this. I'm just pointing out that the problem is more the rules by which the machine abides, more than the actions the machine takes to follow them. You're focusing on the symptoms of the problem and ignoring the cause.

And if you think that part of the point that I am making is that corporations strip away your humanity - you'd be right. Look at what it did to Tim Sweeney. This is a textbook case of what happens when you get rich, and all you can think about is getting even more rich. You ignore the comforts in life, and the sentimental value of the things in it - it's legitimately a mental illness. Not saying it happens to everyone - but it certainly seems to happen to more people who do get rich than it doesn't.

I unfortunately do not have much knowledge on how companies work, But i know a thing or two about how human greed can affect human beings,
And that's honestly why i don't buy much games anymore as i feel that i can't trust most companies especially with the low quality junk they sell to people.

I prefer focusing on the symptoms of the problem, But if i feel the need too i'll tackle the cause and work on it.
(had to do a lot of both in the past six years thanks to poor living conditions)

I haven't heard of Tim Sweeney until you mentioned him, But i haven't really done much research on Epic so it's not really a surprise.

[Chris]

As for the fear of losing your game library one day? Well actually Valve at least's gotchu fam, apparently they've recently been testing a killswitch internally, so in the extreme case of Valve going under one day, all games decouple from Steam.

Valve going under isn't the only way to lose access to your game library. If you lose your account, all games tied to it are gone. If you get banned for doing something against their TOS, completely unrelated to the games, you can lose your account and everything in it. If you forget your password and support is unable to verify you for a password reset, you lose it all. And there are still issues with temporary loss of account access, where if you lose internet or go some place where internet access is spotty, you can have issues if the game thinks it's time to check in and refuses to run until it can, or if there's a large update and it won't run until it can do that update.

But even in the case of Valve going out of business, I seriously doubt any kind of DRM kill-switch will fly. Unless the contract Valve has with publishers explicitly allows it, the publisher has to give the go-ahead for removing the DRM. If Valve tries to pull a stunt like that without their consent, you can bet the publishers would be all over them with injunctions and other legal measures to prevent it. And even then, it would only work for people that manage to get the de-DRM'd update while Valve still has servers to distribute such a thing (if Valve goes under, they won't have servers to serve anything).

[Nems]

As for the fear of losing your game library one day? Well actually Valve at least's gotchu fam, apparently they've recently been testing a killswitch internally, so in the extreme case of Valve going under one day, all games decouple from Steam. There, DRM-free games again. Which I think also makes the whole point of "you don't own your games" moot in this particular context. Up to the other services to follow suit.

Do you have a link to a source confirming this? It's not the first time I've heard of this killswitch claim but anytime I ask for a source no one can provide it.

[Kinsie]

I don't think I've heard anything about a killswitch beyond rumors, but I do recall a former employee basically saying that all contingencies considered (buyouts keeping the service running for the profit, decryption keys being released for auth server emulators upon company closure etc.), the only event that could truly cause permanent loss of Steam library/inability to activate encrypted games is if a giant meteor blasts Washington State off the face of the earth.

[sinisterseed]

As for the fear of losing your game library one day? Well actually Valve at least's gotchu fam, apparently they've recently been testing a killswitch internally, so in the extreme case of Valve going under one day, all games decouple from Steam.

Valve going under isn't the only way to lose access to your game library. If you lose your account, all games tied to it are gone. If you get banned for doing something against their TOS, completely unrelated to the games, you can lose your account and everything in it. If you forget your password and support is unable to verify you for a password reset, you lose it all. And there are still issues with temporary loss of account access, where if you lose internet or go some place where internet access is spotty, you can have issues if the game thinks it's time to check in and refuses to run until it can, or if there's a large update and it won't run until it can do that update.

But even in the case of Valve going out of business, I seriously doubt any kind of DRM kill-switch will fly. Unless the contract Valve has with publishers explicitly allows it, the publisher has to give the go-ahead for removing the DRM. If Valve tries to pull a stunt like that without their consent, you can bet the publishers would be all over them with injunctions and other legal measures to prevent it. And even then, it would only work for people that manage to get the de-DRM'd update while Valve still has servers to distribute such a thing (if Valve goes under, they won't have servers to serve anything).

Indeed, there's still some undergoing issues, but with a number of your points, such as getting banned for violating the ToS in various ways (most common ways for this would be cheating/modding VAC secured games in critical ways such as replacing executables or libraries and joining a server with them, scamming, or making fraudulent transactions) some blame could also be put on the account owner and not entirely on Valve, especially for losing account credentials, which similarly should not be an issue if you either keep the receipts or some other kind of proof of purchase, such as the jewel boxes housing the activation codes. In case you've got no means to prove your ownership, well, I can only say it's unfortunate, but you should always keep some proof around in case of emergency, especially in the digital age, as there's no way to know when something bad happens - and I'm sadly speaking from experience here, back when I didn't take security serious at all. When that came and bit me in the ass it sucked, hard. But I was immensely grateful to the fact that I kept all the important stuff and could get it back.

As for the killswitch itself, I imagine that if they did in fact go as far as making internal tests, then there probably is some level of agreement between the companies, so that companies selling their goods on Steam but wishing for something to stay dead in the worst case scenario, stays in fact dead, or they will explicitly lose their DRM in case of an extreme scenario. And besides, the other big question mark here is what does in fact happen if you aren't around when the DRM removal happens? Would it all be delivered via updates in the first place? Would the DRM-less versions be stored on some other servers or place (think about people owning thousand of games, when and where are they gonna download all that data)? What about the games you haven't downloaded and archived? Right now there's too many questions for something that has in fact not even been confirmed to be 100% true. Even then, I'd rather not think of the worst case scenario at this point in time, simply because the chance of Valve going under has a chance of around 0%. For now at least.

[Nash]

Source: https://www.gog.com/forum/unreal_series ... mes/post26

[dpJudas]

Sounds like a corporate bullshit story to me. Trying to blame the FTC, saying they forced Epic's hand is just sad.

[Graf Zahl]

Wow, that's truly a load of bullshit. Even if it were true, why de-list is outside the US as well? That alone should be a good indicator of the trustworthiness here.

[dpJudas]

I am a bit bored so I looked up this COPPA law they are referring to, and it is like a childrens version of GDPR (except you need actual approval from the parents and can't just spam everyone with a dark pattern accept popup). Since Unreal Tournament isn't a website, isn't an online service (beyond the master server, that is), none of the provisions of this law seem to apply at all.