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EA games with server shutdowns Feb 2nd 2010
- Thread starter CrunchinJelly
- Start date
deejay8595
my posts are "MEH"
I don't see the problem with shutting down Madden 09 servers.. Why keep it up if 2010 is out?
dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
Brazil said:
Again, if no one is playing on the servers, why should they be forced to keep them up? The sports game community jumps to the new game every year. Most of you people complaining don't even play any of these games, but complaining about it....okay.
Do you think EA would turn down the chance at ad revenue if people were still playing these games?
Even though I got my monies worth out of BF1943, it sucks knowing that the servers will be gone by next year or so. Why the fuck cant they put LAN feature on ALL online enabled games on consoles???? Is it b/c they dont want ppls to be playing their game after servers are offline? Dont we gamers buy that shit in the first place(game)? Whats so bad about hosting our own servers?
dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
Gravijah said:
Yeah because sports gaming and fighting gaming communities are exactly the same.
dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
Gravijah said:
Sports gamers jump to the next game and don't look back. Fighting gamers love playing old fighting games. Hence the XBLA and PSN releases of classics. I don't see Madden 2001 getting re-released anytime soon. That isn't how it works.
Have ANY of you gone online with these games that are being shut down? There is no one online playing them.
Alot of ignorance in this thread about what is going on online with these games. I am just letting you know what is happening online with these games and why it isn't an evil move.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
If no one is playing on the servers, then they're not saving anything by stopping people from doing so.dskillzhtown said:
speculawyer
Member
Jeez . . . they should have at least a minimum of 3 years.
I mean really now . . . I'm sure the volume tapers down, so they could reduce the number of servers dedicated to something as the volume drops. So the cost can't be very much.
But pulling the plug w/in 2 years? That is harsh. This is not just cutting off support for ancient products . . . this is pulling the plug on relatively recent products in order to push people to the new products.
I mean really now . . . I'm sure the volume tapers down, so they could reduce the number of servers dedicated to something as the volume drops. So the cost can't be very much.
But pulling the plug w/in 2 years? That is harsh. This is not just cutting off support for ancient products . . . this is pulling the plug on relatively recent products in order to push people to the new products.
radioheadrule83
Banned
EA: "Buy our yearly incremental updates! (laughs)"
speculawyer
Member
If no one is playing the games then it costs almost nothing to keep the servers going. They can consolidate several old games to a single physical server. The cost savings is not much.dskillzhtown said:
And why should they keep them up? Because it is the right thing to do. Many people do NOT buy the new version every year. They may just want a football game and don't really care about the current player stats.
dskillzhtown said:
YES! I was bummed when I tried to play a 2006 FIFA game with my nephew only to find that the server support was pulled.
Perhaps they should at least tier the pulling of the plug. First pull the support of full multi-console team play. Then later pull the plug on 1-on-1 matchmaking. Finally pull the plug on highscores, etc.
dskillzhtown isn't inherently crazy. If the Madden crowd really is migrating almost uniformly every single year, then what EA is doing is fine.
As in, if 99% of the Madden players are the same people buying it every year over and over again, then it absolutely makes sense to shut these down. If it's 60/40%? Or even 80/20? Then there may be a problem.
But here's what I'd argue more generally: even if 99% of the current Madden market is upgrading every year, the intense pressure to do so has likely driven off an immeasurable, but very large group as well. Yearly Madden sales have stagnated or even begun to contract: how much would it be selling on a year-to-year basis if EA did not put such significant pressure on buying it annually? It could still be growing, even.
To wit: does 99% of the Madden market buy the game every year because that's just the way they are, or does 99% of the Madden market buy the game every year because the people who are not willing to buy it every year have been driven out of the market? I'd argue the latter is more likely.
As in, if 99% of the Madden players are the same people buying it every year over and over again, then it absolutely makes sense to shut these down. If it's 60/40%? Or even 80/20? Then there may be a problem.
But here's what I'd argue more generally: even if 99% of the current Madden market is upgrading every year, the intense pressure to do so has likely driven off an immeasurable, but very large group as well. Yearly Madden sales have stagnated or even begun to contract: how much would it be selling on a year-to-year basis if EA did not put such significant pressure on buying it annually? It could still be growing, even.
To wit: does 99% of the Madden market buy the game every year because that's just the way they are, or does 99% of the Madden market buy the game every year because the people who are not willing to buy it every year have been driven out of the market? I'd argue the latter is more likely.
dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
JoshuaJSlone said:
Yeah, because putting those resources towards a game people are playing instead would be criminal. Because we all know server space and maintenance is free.
You guys win...hell, why can't I play Madden 1996 online!!!!
speculawyer
Member
It is cheap and they can put multiple games on a single server.dskillzhtown said:
You are just being an asshole now. EA pulled the plug w/in 2 years. You are suggesting support for 13 years now.dskillzhtown said:
3 to 5 years would be fine.
dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
speculawyer said:
I was waiting on the namecalling to start. Now I am an asshole. Not surprising. Actually surprising it took this long. Always the comeback when your argument has been defeated.
Thank you.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
If it's old and little used, what kind of resources can it really be taking up? Set it and forget it.dskillzhtown said:
dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
JoshuaJSlone said:
It actually doesn't work that way. Dealing with XBL and PSN you can't just "set it and forget it".
But since you guys know it all, have at it.
EA should devote those resources to the zero people on NFL Tour or those 23 people on Madden 2009 servers. *
*as of last night
speculawyer
Member
Waaah! I'm a victim. Someone called me an asshole when I was being an asshole with a ridiculous strawman argument. Waaaah!dskillzhtown said:
Yup! I don't follow the NFL whatsoever but play the game because its fun. B/c I couldn't careless about player updates I buy a football game roughly once a generation (Gameday '98, Madden '02, NFL2K5, Madden '09). It would not cost much to keep the servers up and no matter what the activity is, shutting the server down after only 16months is fucked up. Madden '09 was my first online sports game and it was fun.speculawyer said:
Psychotext
Member
I actually wonder if half of these games have their own "servers". It's likely EA have been using the same authentication system for a while now (at least this gen) and it doesn't exactly make sense to point each game at a unique place given that most of the titles have peer to peer multiplayer anyway.
Seems more likely to me that the games authenticate at the same cluster, but these listed games just get removed from the list.
Seems more likely to me that the games authenticate at the same cluster, but these listed games just get removed from the list.
Nihilistic Monk
Member
kamspy said:
I work for a hosting company that has a little known gaming community as part of its assets that takes up a cab of our servers running PC games (modern valve titles, l4d/l4d2, counterstrike COD4 as well as the old pc classics) for a community with a good few thousand members it really doesn't take up much bandwidth. We just use it as a way of selling people dedicated games servers (free advertising by hosting this service)and we just absorb the bw cost. We're not a large company, and trust me, with about 25 servers running games, I've seen single server users paying a couple of thousand pounds a year use waaaaaay more bandwidth than this as a service.
For companies like EA, with the amount of users for these old games, I really can't see that it's costing them much money to host these services. Admittedly, we're euro based, so don't care about US latency so much, but even if they went for US / Euro presence, I really can't see how it's really costing them any significant amount vs customer goodwill, especially for the 09 games.