Considering how much crap Sony got for almost shutting down the PSP and PS3 stores, I wouldn’t say they get a free pass. It just doesn’t make sense for people to complain about servers going down for a game no one plays because…well, no one is playing it. If it were a popular online game, that would be a different story and I’m sure you’d have pushback online. Unfortunately this isn’t a Sony only problem either. EA is particularly bad about shutting down servers and have done so for games launching more recently.
MS is in a special position where they have their own server infrastructure that they need to maintain anyway. So the servers running Live services, like matchmaking, would be used for something else anyway, meaning maintenance would be required regardless, so why not just keep most games up?
It’s more than a program running on a server and even then the server has to be properly maintained or they risk having another PSN hack situation. I’m on the infrastructure team at my work and maintaining a server backend for even a company of our size is a constant undertaking, I don’t even want to imagine how demanding it is for a gaming network.
Also since Sony doesn’t have a cloud infrastructure of their own, it’s not really as easy as spinning up new servers on the fly as needed. That will depend on who they contract with and how much server capacity they have in that contract.
Please try not to crap on efforts of developers because you pay too much attention to fanboys on Twitter.
I wouldn’t say Sony gets a free pass. There’s usually an angry thread on Resetera for these shutdowns. It’s just a minority of people that are really interested in keeping older games alive unfortunately.
Oh I completely agree and that goes along with my point. It’s hard to come up with excuses for the stores, just like it would be hard to excuse closing down servers for a popular online game. If the player base is low and few are playing a game, then I don’t see it as giving a company a pass if they shut down servers for a game most aren’t paying attention to to begin with.
It’s simple. No one cares. Sonys multiplayer games we’re never succesful. Their remasters of uncharted and the last of us don’t even include the multiplayer parts. I know there are places online with people arguing how good these multiplayer modes are, but no one gives a damn in reality. This is further proof
People pay for Gold but wouldn’t it be Activision running the servers for COD?
My guess would be why spend money and resources running servers for a game no one is playing.
Gears of War 2006 can still be played online via MP? Wow. 15+ years, I would shut that shit down. In my mind, at a certain point, it’s simply time to move on. But whatever, it’s not my money so meh.
I know dedicated servers are better but what exactly is the difference? Is peer to peer based on playing with someone else or something? I want Outriders to have dedicated servers which im not sure if they do or not but only because I know the performance is better when playing on a dedicated server compared to peer to peer.
Sony gets away with pretty much anything they want to. Gaming journos are at an age where their first console was probably a PS1 or PS2 so they will not hold Sony to account for anything and they seem to make sure Sony just doesn’t get any push back for anything.
Well, that is the thing with peer to peer vs. dedicated. There is no Gears of War 2006 server for them to shut down. It just uses Xbox Live, and one of the players’ console acts as the game server. As long as Xbox Live itself is up, the multiplayer will work because that’s all it requires to work, same as any other strictly peer to peer game.
The Assassin’s Creed games are shutting down because they used dedicated Ubisoft servers that had to be maintained separately.
Peer to peer = The only thing you need to run a multiplayer session is the matchmaking service, in this case Xbox Live. One of the consoles acts as the game host.
Dedicated = Uses a special server specific to that game, to host the sessions and/or to store player stats etc. Better performance than using a player as the host, but the disadvantage is that the multiplayer will only work as long as the dedicated servers are still available.