Save Our Digital Past: The Campaign to Stop Destroying Video Games

28 August 2024 at 17:05 in Gaming News with no comments
Save Our Digital Past

We all have those games we love to return to, even after years. But sometimes, we can’t play them anymore, and there could be many reasons for that. To tackle this issue, there’s now an EU citizen initiative collecting signatures. You can find all the info here.

Key Information

  • There are many reasons why publishers shut down services for games.
  • We shouldn’t blame the publishers for this.
  • An EU citizen initiative is calling for games to remain playable forever.

Why Do Some Games Disappear?

Today, we’re talking about why some games become unplayable. This usually happens with games that need a constant internet connection. Games that don’t require internet access aren’t affected by this. The main issue is that publishers often shut down the live service, making the game unplayable. But why do they do this?

There can be many reasons for ending the service of live games. Usually, it’s due to a drop in player numbers. For example, Halo 2 from 2004 saw its player base shrink after Halo 3 was released in 2007. By 2010, Xbox decided to shut down the online service, making multiplayer impossible, although the story mode was still available.

Halo 2 Multiplayer

But it’s not always just about low player numbers. In 2013, a game called Marvel Heroes, an action-RPG similar to Diablo, was released. By 2017, the servers were shut down because the developer, Gazillion Entertainment, went out of business.

A more recent case is Babylon’s Fall from 2022, a co-op RPG where you fought through hordes of enemies with various weapons. However, this game was just bad—Steam reviews were mostly negative, and it only got 13% positive reviews on Google. Since no one was playing it, the studio decided to shut it down.

But this issue isn’t limited to unpopular or older games. The car racing game The Crew, which was released on September 30, 2014, has been unplayable for the past few months. Ubisoft shut it down on April 1st. The reason for this is again the lower number of players, as well as the existence of several successors like The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest.

Conclusion

There are different reasons why developers and publishers might shut down a game. Whether it’s a dwindling player base or the studio closing, it’s not always fair to blame the publishers. The server costs for these games are often high, and no company can afford to run them at a loss.

The Crew Dead

But for the fans, it’s always a bummer when a favorite game, one they’ve invested a lot of time and emotion into, becomes unplayable. This also means that a piece of gaming history is lost, whether it was a great game or not. After the servers go down, the game is often gone for good. And let’s not forget, people paid for these games and should have a right to play them. That’s why there’s an EU citizen initiative aimed at preventing video games from being destroyed.

Stop Destroying Video Games Initiative

This citizen initiative demands that publishers selling or licensing video games in the EU keep those games in a playable state. In short, they don’t want the servers to be shut down, making the game unplayable. They’re not asking publishers to keep investing resources indefinitely, but they want games to remain in a reasonably playable condition.

Stop Destroying Videogames

How this would be implemented is a tricky question, and it’s not clearly outlined in the demands. For games like Marvel Heroes, it might mean making the game playable solo without online access. For purely multiplayer games, it could mean allowing players to set up their own servers. If you live in the EU and care about this issue, you can sign the petition here.

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By Kilian Kilian

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