Planning for worst-case scenario - DRM etc.

[AtomicP]

News that Telltale Games (>100 employees) has gone belly-up: 

 

What's the link to here? Well, there is uncertainty about what will happen to customer purchases from TG's store. Some titles can be downloaded in their entirety, others rely on TG's servers working to pull down the files. Given that BoX requires a working internet connection to use many of the core features, is there a backup in place that would allow customers (should the worst happen) to still play the game? 

 

In the past, prior to Steam (apparently they have a plan in place for such an eventuality) DVDs and CDs were the physical proof of life of a game. As long as that worked you could play. Digitally distributed games are a different story with no obvious mitigation for failure. GoG has this sorted out to a degree by having no DRM so backups of games will work should GoG vanish. Of course, the onus is on the customer to make these backups!

 

 

[Godspeed]

This is one reason why i asked Steam keys for my preorder products.

But usually developers release somekind of patch that no longer need online features to use main elements of the game.

 

There are some examples that has not done so like war of the roses. ( Game can not be played even you own it on Steam )

Edited September 23, 2018 by Godspeed

[Dutch2]

That was also the discussed for RoF. While this still can be played off line, it only needs the career and mp mode for being online. For the career we have the PWCG with the GUI as an alternative and while the RoF mp is become more and more empty, eventually nobody would miss that mp function if thats being shutdown. 

 

 

[unreasonable]

I would hope that the developers would do the right thing and do a final update that put the mission generator for the career onto our HDs and do away with the online DRM altogether.  Unfortunately when a developer goes down the tubes it might loose the capability to do this over-night so there are no guarantees.

 

Anyway, I see no reason for catastrophizing about the fate of BoX just yet.

[AtomicP]

3 hours ago, unreasonable said:

I would hope that the developers would do the right thing and do a final update that put the mission generator for the career onto our HDs and do away with the online DRM altogether.  Unfortunately when a developer goes down the tubes it might loose the capability to do this over-night so there are no guarantees.

 

Anyway, I see no reason for catastrophizing about the fate of BoX just yet.

 

Yeah, I wasn't aiming at being nihilistic, just the news that a big dev. had fallen over got me thinking. As @Dutch2 said, there are ways around the online mode. 

Edited September 23, 2018 by AtomicP

[40plus]

Similar discussion has come up several times in the Elite Dangerous forums where the persistent universe that you play in, even in single player, is hosted on their servers. In that case the developers have actually shared their plan the issue a final release if/when they ultimately shut the servers down. The release would allow players a local instance of the background simulation. . . . . Just a promise at this stage but nice to see some communication on a topic that gives players anxiety.

[InProgress]

Yeah but Tell Tale was simply stupid. They made one good game and got greedy, rehashing old game. Every game of theirs was exactly the same, same gameplay/graphics/mechanics/lenght and even choices that never really matter. They never changed even tho problems were way earlier, most if not all of their games did not make enough money, yet they were spamming them like insane.

 

 

 

They only thing they had to offer is known universe fans would pay for. The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Batman, Wolf among us, Borderlands, Maincraft... and more.

 

Edited September 23, 2018 by InProgress

[-TBC-AeroAce]

If the devs do ever stop supporting it, I'm sure they will open everything up and then allow full access to mod teams. But let's be real, which all of the early access titles .... still to come out one would assume we are at least 5-10 years away from anything like this.