Which is why one should never support corporations taking control over aspects that used to be neutral. It is possible to program for LAN and client-side hosting.
Too many people are caught up in trappings of marketing and convenience to ask themselves if they are dependent on a corporations good will for something. Be it installing games, playing games, updating games. Game saves, multiplayer, mods.
Because we're talking about games, it's pretty easy to just not consume. If you were talking about all the food companies doing something, there's not much we can do. Entertainment is a luxury and theoretically should be the easiest industry to boycott and force change.
On the other hand, you could also argue that because we're only talking about games, making a responsible consumer choice isn't that important.
There's no way to get everybody to boycott an entire industry on the principal of a change that has been made, at least not for any meaningful amount of time.
It's just kind of become an accepted fact of life that when you buy a game now days it will eventually be taken from you.
True, but if 10% of the playerbase joins you, their sales go down by 10%. That's a lot. Often, more than enough to notice. 10% can be completely doable, if it's something other people also care about.
Which is why one should never support corporations taking control over aspects that used to be neutral. It is possible to program for LAN and client-side hosting.
Too many people are caught up in trappings of marketing and convenience to ask themselves if they are dependent on a corporations good will for something. Be it installing games, playing games, updating games. Game saves, multiplayer, mods.
When an entire industry makes a change in one direction all at once what option does the consumer have except to follow along?
Because we're talking about games, it's pretty easy to just not consume. If you were talking about all the food companies doing something, there's not much we can do. Entertainment is a luxury and theoretically should be the easiest industry to boycott and force change.
On the other hand, you could also argue that because we're only talking about games, making a responsible consumer choice isn't that important.
There's no way to get everybody to boycott an entire industry on the principal of a change that has been made, at least not for any meaningful amount of time.
It's just kind of become an accepted fact of life that when you buy a game now days it will eventually be taken from you.
True, but if 10% of the playerbase joins you, their sales go down by 10%. That's a lot. Often, more than enough to notice. 10% can be completely doable, if it's something other people also care about.