15 votes

"Games as a service" is fraud

1 comment

  1. ShrubOfRegret
    Link
    The video is incredibly long, and, unfortunately, I didn't see any particular subsection of it that would make a good summary. For that reason I'll try to give a shortened version here. Ross...

    The video is incredibly long, and, unfortunately, I didn't see any particular subsection of it that would make a good summary. For that reason I'll try to give a shortened version here.

    Ross points out that many games could not be considered services. Most often, as a consumer you purchase a game once, and then it's expected that you own that specific copy; that is not a service. As with all things, there are exceptions to this, but many "games as a service" games are in fact not services.

    Besides being misleading, the problem with the "service" label is that it's used to justify things like shutting down servers, rendering the associated game unplayable. He finds it unacceptable that these games are dying, and the reason isn't because of hardware incompatibility or other "natural" causes. With current trends like the impending release of Stadia, he only sees the problem getting worse.

    This video is a sort of call to action to try putting a legal framework in place to save these games, but don't mistake that for a call for indefinite support from these game companies. Ideally he would like patched servers or source code to be released, but just having some improved ability to reverse engineer these games would be appreciated.

    3 votes