It changes the plans of shuttering a server, not offering a new one. Any such independent play patch soils only be released when a company is ready to end servers.
A new game previously intended to be released December 31st of this year, caught off guard with just one day of warning, could still release without changing a thing. The game will have servers for years to come, presumably.
It actually requires a pivot, because if you want to account for making a game playable at end-of-life, you normally have to plan that from the start, to make sure the game is structured in a way that allows for easy switching. If all you plan is actually to turn off the servers, well, that’s the current situation.
Making sure the game ends gracefully means either releasing dedicated server binaries, implementing P2P (or Splitscreen) multiplayer or disabling multiplayer, and repurposing/rebalancing previously online content to work in the new setting. That’s not easy to do if you never wasted a thought on those things in development, especially with a skeleton crew of developers which have been working on other stuff for years at this point.
Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to see this legislation come into effect, but even I have to acknowledge that a game that has been worked on for years and goes live in January 2027 is probably not designed for this.
Highgaurd didn’t even last a month, and they definitely didn’t have the funds left over to make that game self hostable while they were in their death throes, even if they wanted to.
What pivoting?
It changes the plans of shuttering a server, not offering a new one. Any such independent play patch soils only be released when a company is ready to end servers.
A new game previously intended to be released December 31st of this year, caught off guard with just one day of warning, could still release without changing a thing. The game will have servers for years to come, presumably.
It actually requires a pivot, because if you want to account for making a game playable at end-of-life, you normally have to plan that from the start, to make sure the game is structured in a way that allows for easy switching. If all you plan is actually to turn off the servers, well, that’s the current situation.
Making sure the game ends gracefully means either releasing dedicated server binaries, implementing P2P (or Splitscreen) multiplayer or disabling multiplayer, and repurposing/rebalancing previously online content to work in the new setting. That’s not easy to do if you never wasted a thought on those things in development, especially with a skeleton crew of developers which have been working on other stuff for years at this point.
Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to see this legislation come into effect, but even I have to acknowledge that a game that has been worked on for years and goes live in January 2027 is probably not designed for this.
Highgaurd didn’t even last a month, and they definitely didn’t have the funds left over to make that game self hostable while they were in their death throes, even if they wanted to.