• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Original Xbox DLC - Already Dead and Gone?

Vgamer

Member
Azure Phoenix said:
I'm glad that people are finally starting to wake up to the dangers of the current DLC system on the three main systems, although I'm disappointed that this had to happen before people started to sit up and listen.

In 10 years time, if Microsoft have decided that supporting the 360 is holding up advancing the next Xbox and they kill off support, what happens to everything on your hard drive if it, or the console dies? You can still play 30 year old Atari games, but potentially thousands of XBLA games and bits of DLC will be gone forever unless Microsoft make sure they play on future Xbox systems.

Ya its really weird to think that in 10 years time it may be easier to buy and play a Genesis game that has been out for 20+ years then it would be to buy and play some of these downloadable games on 360, PS3, Wii etc...if the console makers decide not to support them in the future. That would be insanely depressing.
 
Azure Phoenix said:
I'm glad that people are finally starting to wake up to the dangers of the current DLC system on the three main systems, although I'm disappointed that this had to happen before people started to sit up and listen.

In 10 years time, if Microsoft have decided that supporting the 360 is holding up advancing the next Xbox and they kill off support, what happens to everything on your hard drive if it, or the console dies? You can still play 30 year old Atari games, but potentially thousands of XBLA games and bits of DLC will be gone forever unless Microsoft make sure they play on future Xbox systems.

Another thing that isn't getting any attention is the patches, many games need them to boot up DLC and if your save relies on DLC being present then you can kiss goodbye to your saves if the patch is not there. Considering how frequently the system automatically purges them from the cache, a LOT of DLC and saves are going to be dead in the future regardless of if you still have them on your hard drive.

It's very concerning and the main reason I have almost completely stopped buying anything digital for the three consoles, I still regularly play my 20 year old Mega Drive games, but one day my copy of Castle Crashers will be dead and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

The bolded is a big issue to me, too. And it seems like one Microsoft could fix if they just let us save title updates in the save file for each game instead of loading from the cache. The size of the cache varies depending on the size of the save device. These title updates have a maximum file size of 4MBs. I have over 12GB of Mass Effect 2 data stored on my HDD, would another 4MBs really make a difference?

Also, sorry for missing the sarcasm. It was 4.30am when I was posting and I had been out drinking (and playing Mass Effect 2) so my detector was broken.
 

gkryhewy

Member
All this freaking out, when all the OP has to do is use the license transfer tool to move the licenses to his new 360. Seems he already has the content on his hard drive, no?
 
Dash Kappei said:
I was basically saying that only fools could be so certain that Live = I'm safe with my digital purchases till the end of the world...

Nobody ever suggested that, and honestly it's pretty embarrassing that you're suggesting they did out of some kind of weird desire to defend Nintendo's extremely terrible policies in comparison to Microsoft's now clearly bad, but still objectively not as terrible, policies.

By far the major complaint offered in the thread you're fixated on here was that Nintendo downloads aren't ever downloadable to a different system -- or in other words, they start out the day you buy them with the problem that's cropping up for these Xbox downloads only now.

Mandoric said:
But doesn't the Xbox 1 DLC structure completely avoid Live, and work game-by-game?

All Live functionality except the most basic authentication checks is coded separately into each OG Xbox game. For DLC, the titles have to check in with the Live servers to make sure you're logged in and whatnot, but then the actual DLC downloading mechanism is specific to each game.

It makes sense to take this news (assuming Microsoft really did just turn the DLC servers off two months early) as a sign of lacking commitment on MS' part to keeping digital content alive and available, but it doesn't make sense to take this as an inevitable sign that the same process will repeat 4 years from now because of the changes in how Live works on 360. The old Xbox Live was essentially equivalent to the Wii online system now, while with the 360 everything Live-related is handled by Microsoft's software. From a system design standpoint, the likelihood that this iteration of Live would be so incompatible with the next that it needed to be locked out is a lot more unlikely.

I do think the scale of DLC involved also does make a pretty big difference. With the first system, the number of games supporting DLC, and the total amount of content available, was fairly minor. With the 360, you're looking at DLC available for literally almost every game and a significant market of full gaming titles purchased via DD. The number of affected users and the amount of affected dollars will be much larger, large enough that how they handle the next transition will affect how people perceive (and buy) their next system.

But again, the cavalier attitude this demonstrates is pretty worrisome. It'd absolutely be in the self-interest of a company like Microsoft to maintain the 360's library of content smoothly onto their next system (and thereby produce a sort of "vendor lock-in" for all the people with tons of money invested into this stuff) but no one ever went broke betting on a corporation doing a short-sighted, self-destructive thing to save pennies on the dollar.
 
KAL2006 said:
I stopped buying digital games a long time ago (never EVER bought DLC though), mainly because when I wanted to sell my 360 for a PS3 I found out all my XBLA games were wasted (no resale). Although in the end I decided to keep my 360 and buy a PS3 aswell, that tought me not to ever buy anything digital, I just feel like I don't fully own the games.
Yes sir. I have let this stew in my head for around 12 hours and I am horrified at this proposition that I will no longer be able to play some of my downloaded games from PSN or Xbox 10 years from now. I mean I have probably invested right around $75 or $100 over all three consoles, and now I am kind of soured. No geometry wars, no Super Stardust HD, no Super Mario RPG... These will all be money lining the big 3 pockets with me sitting and having nothing to show for it. Wow, I am even kind of pissed now. This is kind of bull**** if you ask me.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Note for those you LTTP on X-box DLC:

ALL (Minus Halo 2's maps, UP UNTIL a certain date I'm forgetting, shortly after the Map Pack disc released in 2005) DLC on X-box Live originally WAS FREE. THAT'S RIGHT. Microsoft NEVER RAPED YOU other than the $50/year to P2P online console play. That was the reason I paid $50/year. I got the play my X-box games, with no ads, with free DLC if developers released it. All for a new X-box game a year.

Now? Ads on dashboard. WE NOW HAVE DISNEY MOVIES. (Tee-hee) DLC PRICE RAPE.

Total 180 from what they were doing in the original X-box Live.

But ALL the dlc was free. Halo 2's maps eventually went free, but it was the testing ground to see if they could milk some cash out of eager beavers on the maps and it's partially to blame for the DLC on console being pay-for fiasco this generation.
 

Aaron

Member
TheSeks said:
But ALL the dlc was free. Halo 2's maps eventually went free, but it was the testing ground to see if they could milk some cash out of eager beavers on the maps and it's partially to blame for the DLC on console being pay-for fiasco this generation.
I like to make up stories too, but here in reality the original Xbox DLC was definitely not free. I still don't have all the courses to Links 2004, which I play to this day, because you have to pay to get the other courses. I know there were a few others that I can't quite remember, but I'm not sure why you're making this shit up.
 

Dash Kappei

Not actually that important
charlequin said:
Nobody ever suggested thatt and honestly it's pretty embarrassing that you're suggesting they did out


Damn I wish the search function worked.
I can tell you that I brought that up in the first place partly because many, many people here assumed it was going to be that way ("forever till the end of times" is obviously an extreme choice of words on my part just to get the point across, but you got the idea) in a couple of threads before, and that if we were going to be screwed then Live! would be the last place to do so, even bringin' up (yet non-existent from Microsoft) future compatibility talks and all that jazz.

out of some kind of weird desire to defend Nintendo's extremely terrible policies

Again? Where are you getting that? I completely despise the way Nintendo chose to handle digital distributed games consumer's rights, I think it's completely fucked up.
Now can you get off the "you're a fanboy" bullshit please?


By far the major complaint offered in the thread you're fixated on here was that Nintendo downloads aren't ever downloadable to a different system -- or in other words, they start out the day you buy them with the problem that's cropping up for these Xbox downloads only now.

What?! It's not the same situation AT ALL.
As of today, everything that has been purchased by anyone on Nintendo's DD services can be redownloaded again.
Can you say the same about XBOX Live? Nope you can't.
See?
What I hate here is the spinning, I see no fair judgement when it comes to Nintendo's services and the others. They all suck. Instead, only certain perks are accounted for, while others are not, deliberately, for Sony's and Microsoft services.
You can choose to tie everything you buy on Wiiware/VC to your Nintendo Club account and not only to the console. If you buy something before doing that, than yes it's just tied to the console. There's already been plenty of evidence of people gettin' everything they had bought before on a new console; same on a repaired console and even on new consoles bought after having the first stolen and *without* having to ship the console to NOE/NOA repairs centres.
This gen Nintendo is also the one of the big three which seems to care the most about backwards compatibility... and yet everything I've written above never gets any consideration when having these discussions. It's far from an ideal situation, gettin' everything back on a different console it's not like snapping fingers... but it's not like "you're DONE!!1", which is what I'm reading, constantly.
I choose to buy from Wiiware, Live and PSN but I know that each and every one of those has its perks. We need to push these companies to get a fairer contract agreement, but until now there's nothing set in stone: Saying that one avoids Nintendo's DD products because of that is more than fair... unless that's the only service that gets shafted.

TheSeks said:
Note for those you LTTP on X-box DLC:
[..]
All DLC on X-box Live was free. THAT'S RIGHT.

No, it's not.
 
WickedCobra03 said:
Yes sir. I have let this stew in my head for around 12 hours and I am horrified at this proposition that I will no longer be able to play some of my downloaded games from PSN or Xbox 10 years from now. I mean I have probably invested right around $75 or $100 over all three consoles, and now I am kind of soured. No geometry wars, no Super Stardust HD, no Super Mario RPG... These will all be money lining the big 3 pockets with me sitting and having nothing to show for it. Wow, I am even kind of pissed now. This is kind of bull**** if you ask me.

Yup. Pretty much is.

Any hardware manufacturer who can promise me my purchases will carry over to their new system is going to be way, way more likely to get my money in the next hardware generation. Heck, that promise would make me more likely to buy a PS4 and I don't even have a PS3 to lose downloads from. :lol
 
Dash Kappei said:
Now can you get off the "you're a fanboy" bullshit please?

Protip: in the future if you want to avoid that, you might want to talk about the fucking thread topic instead of dragging in fanboy bullshit from a different thread like two months ago.

What?! It's not the same situation AT ALL.
As of today, everything that has been purchased by anyone on Nintendo's DD services can be redownloaded again.

On the system you bought it. Anyone trying to do what several people in this thread are specifically complaining about -- i.e. downloading content they already bought on an Xbox1 onto their 360 to save it for the future -- would already be screwed.

Either way, someone who already has the content saved to their current system is fine, while anyone who needs to redownload it due to system failure, buying a new console, etc. is screwed. In other words, Nintendo has had a DLC policy that screwed some people out of content they paid for for years -- which I've complained about -- and now MS is instituting a policy change which is screwing people out of content they paid for -- which I am also complaining about.

You're complaining about spinning, but literally the only person who thought it was necessary to make this thread into a pissing contest between different hardware manufacturers was you.

This gen Nintendo is also the one of the big three which seems to care the most about backwards compatibility...

And if GAF wasn't run using shitty software and therefore the search function worked, you would be able to pretty easily verify that I've gone on and on praising Nintendo for having two systems for sale with full BC, mocking Microsoft's half-assed efforts on the matter, and talking shit about Sony's horrible flip-flop on it.
 

Parch

Member
Dacvak said:
For some reason I smell a potential class-action lawsuit.
I'm sure the Microsoft legal team (and others) have carefully worded the agreement to cover their ass.
You never did actually "own" any DLC. The console renting statement is the fact.
Online ripoffs. The future is now.
 

coopolon

Member
elektrixxx said:
I am confident that this is the last time it will happen. Outside of licensing issues like Yaris (ugh) and the Ultimate Alliance 2 DLC, our 360 stuff is still going to be there.

They put their feet in with the original Xbox. They're too deep and there are too many people on LIVE on their Xbox 360's now to get out of it.

What world are you living in? This is the same company that shipped a product with an astronomical failure rate, then denied it for years, then when they could no longer deny it, tried to get out as cheap as possible with a half ass warranty extension.

And at least with hardware failures, customers had a leg to stand on for a class action lawsuit. Here, Microsoft could restart Xbox Live tomorrow, calling it Xbox Live 2, and make you buy every single game/DLC you want again, being perfectly within their rights because you already agreed to it.

They will support 360 DLC for awhile, maybe even a decade. But 15 years from now? 20? Fat chance. Most people don't care, and that's fine, but Microsoft will eventually shut down it down and move on just like they are doing now.

And to all the people saying Xbox Live is such a more open platform that is so much more amenable to future revisions, where are you getting this from? Are you network engineers who have studied how Xbox Live works. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I have hard time believing you know what you are talking about (I sure as hell don't.)
 

Susurrus

Member
I'm glad all DLC I got was free on Xbox 1. Toejam & Earl 3 characters/levels, and Halo 2 maps AFTER they were free.:lol

Also those hating on Nintendo's method....I'm 100% sure I registered the console to my Club Nintendo or whatever it is called account when I got prompted to first time I put it online. Also did the same w/ my parents' console (which every DLC they own is gifted from me...) so I don't see the problem. I know Nintendo sees I have it because when I go to Nintendo's site it has me review said games.
 
I'm WAY LTTP on this obviously, but how can Microsoft 'cancel', 'shut down' or whatever Live for the original Xbox.

I'm completely confused on that one.

Isn't the point of P2P the fact that there's no servers TO be shut down? I seriously don't get it.
 

Vgamer

Member
2 Minutes Turkish said:
I'm WAY LTTP on this obviously, but how can Microsoft 'cancel', 'shut down' or whatever Live for the original Xbox.

I'm completely confused on that one.

Isn't the point of P2P the fact that there's no servers TO be shut down? I seriously don't get it.

While the actual games are played using P2P Microsoft still used Live as a matching service to connect the systems together and find other players. So without it the fact that the Xbox does P2P for online games does not really matter since you cant find the other players without Live.
 
Vgamer said:
While the actual games are played using P2P Microsoft still used Live as a matching service to connect the systems together and find other players. So without it the fact that the Xbox does P2P for online games does not really matter since you cant find the other players without Live.

Ok gotcha. So basically Live still uses a server for original Xbox games for matchmaking and other shit, and that's being shut down.

So basically this confirms that the friend limit is being upped, plus some other features original Xbox games were holding back?
 
I would be nice if they had some kind of parallel server structure that still allowed those original xbox titles to find the servers, without interfering with the real live servers, just for the DLC stuff.

The cost probably wouldn't justify it for the number of people who care. Which are probably in the sub-500 range, worldwide. At least outside of the context of pulling the plug in which everyone who has a chip on their shoulder about DLC comes out to scream hyperbole, like this thread. :lol

Some of the vitriol being spewed here is not appropriate to not being able to download a splinter cell map from 2004. Not at all.
 
Susurrus said:
I'm glad all DLC I got was free on Xbox 1. Toejam & Earl 3 characters/levels, and Halo 2 maps AFTER they were free.:lol

Also those hating on Nintendo's method....I'm 100% sure I registered the console to my Club Nintendo or whatever it is called account when I got prompted to first time I put it online. Also did the same w/ my parents' console (which every DLC they own is gifted from me...) so I don't see the problem. I know Nintendo sees I have it because when I go to Nintendo's site it has me review said games.
I don't think the PGR2 booster packs became free at any point, did they?
 
Kibbles said:
But I'd have to upgrade my PC which costs $. I'd also much rather use controller, and then I'll probably get schooled by the kids with keyboards.

Its still the next best thing. You get all the DLC on the pc version, and you get to use a 360 controller, which adds all the sticky aim that your used to on consoles. Its surprising how good you'll do, even if they use keyboards. It even has achievements. If i was still a hardcore Halo 2 player, its where id go.
 

RdN

Member
This really sucks.. I went to download my Halo 2 DLC today 'cause once again it got corrupted thanks to deleting my 360 cache and it says it's no available. Let's see if Microsoft will say something.. but I'm not keeping my hopes too high.
 

soldat7

Member
gkrykewy said:
All this freaking out, when all the OP has to do is use the license transfer tool to move the licenses to his new 360. Seems he already has the content on his hard drive, no?

The license transfer tool does not magically allow your original Xbox DLC to work; I wish it did. The files become 'corrupt' if you so much as sneeze (clean your cache, replace your Xbox, etc.)

It appears that we have the 'license' to download them again, but not the ability because Microsoft seems to have begun razing the original Xbox Live a little early.
 

RdN

Member
soldat7 said:
The license transfer tool does not magically allow your original Xbox DLC to work; I wish it did. The files become 'corrupt' if you so much as sneeze (clean your cache, replace your Xbox, etc.)

It appears that we have the 'license' to download them again, but not the ability because Microsoft seems to have begun razing the original Xbox Live a little early.

Exactly.
 
coopolon said:
Here, Microsoft could restart Xbox Live tomorrow, calling it Xbox Live 2, and make you buy every single game/DLC you want again, being perfectly within their rights because you already agreed to it.

Sure. The question is really whether this would be a) profitable for them in the long run and b) whether they would have incompetent management who would do it even if it weren't.

You can absolutely never rule out b) altogether, so there's no way anyone could ever say "they won't ever do that," but I do think that the quantity of content MS has sold on 360 is so large that shutting it off would be pretty likely to bite them in the ass in a way the (minor in comparison) amount of Xbox content won't.

And to all the people saying Xbox Live is such a more open platform that is so much more amenable to future revisions, where are you getting this from? Are you network engineers who have studied how Xbox Live works. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I have hard time believing you know what you are talking about (I sure as hell don't.)

I'm not exactly a network engineer, but I am a software developer with experience with networking systems and I've read enough about the way the system's set up to make a few inferences. The really key point is that Live on the original Xbox was implemented directly into each game -- so you could only change features by actually patching the games themselves. On 360, Live is implemented on the console and games use the console operating system to handle all the networking stuff, so you can add features to Live simply by patching the OS and leaving the games untouched. That should theoretically make it much easier to maintain compatibility in the future when they add new features, compared to the Xbox 1 games.

SonOfABeep said:
I would be nice if they had some kind of parallel server structure that still allowed those original xbox titles to find the servers, without interfering with the real live servers, just for the DLC stuff.

I'm actually not sure there's any reason that they couldn't just load the DLC into the 360's DLC framework, make it all free, and let people download it that way. AFAIK none of it needs to be downloaded inside the game in question since you can install it off demo discs or copy it from other hard drives.
 
charlequin said:
I'm actually not sure there's any reason that they couldn't just load the DLC into the 360's DLC framework, make it all free, and let people download it that way. AFAIK none of it needs to be downloaded inside the game in question since you can install it off demo discs or copy it from other hard drives.

Well, from what I understand the actual bit of code on a game like Splinter Cell or Halo 2 that goes and seeks out the DLC is a separate .XBE that is launched that seeks out the servers where the files are. That's why it always makes that hard transition into the DLC loader on original Xbox games.

I imagine there's plenty of easy ways they could keep it running, but there's really no reason to when it's such marginal and mostly now that the original xbox live multiplayer servers are down. Engineering a workaround and paying to keep the files hosted(along with getting 3rd parties to agree/license the content continually) is all probably more hassle/expenditure than it's worth.

I can't really argue with them. When it's such miniscule shit as this, I can see why they'd just say fuck it and pull the plug, now that they have a better working, more adaptable, and permanent system. Like I said before, those truly upset by the DLC being gone probably number in the few hundreds worldwide, if that, and probably less than 100 that will have a permanent effect on their business. Not worth it, even if those few are very loud and angry and unpleasant for a few days after it's done.

Move forward, gentlemen. I'm more upset about the matchmaking service getting pulled, but that's what happens with 1st revision infrastructure. Modern XBL is more adaptable and should be far more permanent, especially given their success this generation.
 
Lard said:
And this is exactly why I don't support games with DLC.

If you truly don't buy any games with DLC you are missing out on a LOT of great games to zero positive effect. Probably more of a negative effect than anything.

Yeah, I'm gonna say you're a destructive force on the industry if you take that stance. Abusive DLC is one thing, but to just throw the whole thing out is foolish.
 
Didnt sega shut down their online service on the DC....but people still found away to continue playing the games?


Also, lol at DLC. Nothing* will kill my physical software. You have to come and steal it from my cold dead boxes.



*I think DVDs have a lifespan of 50 years or so.
 

goldenpp72

Member
jamesinclair said:
Didnt sega shut down their online service on the DC....but people still found away to continue playing the games?


Also, lol at DLC. Nothing* will kill my physical software. You have to come and steal it from my cold dead boxes.



*I think DVDs have a lifespan of 50 years or so.

DC used a much easier method to hack i think, I don't think it will be possible for this to happen with xbl.
 
Okay, so a little update for anyone who would like to know what is going to happen, well, some BungieBoy called Microsoft Support and I guess Microsoft has been getting a ton of calls about this just in the first day or two of this happening!

So I suggest all you people here would would like to get some games in, call in tomorrow sometime and just ask about the situation and if they were going to do anything about this. You are adding +1 to their list if they actually do have one going, but also, you can report back here if there are any updates on the situation.

Vashkey says: (via b.net forums)
"I called tech support and they said that Microsoft got significantly more calls about the situation than they had expected and they're actually keeping count of everyone that calls and deciding what to do based on that.

So I'm sure the more people calling the better. Do so if you can, I say. Let them know how much we care."

http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=41087046&viewreplies=true&postRepeater1-p=5#end
 
Hey, I'll call if it makes a difference.

I'll even tell them that playing Halo 2/Counterstrike/whatever makes a significant difference in my value perception for paying for an XBL subscription. I'm sure that would make a difference in lighting a fire under their ass on this.
 

soldat7

Member
WickedCobra03 said:
Okay, so a little update for anyone who would like to know what is going to happen, well, some BungieBoy called Microsoft Support and I guess Microsoft has been getting a ton of calls about this just in the first day or two of this happening!

So I suggest all you people here would would like to get some games in, call in tomorrow sometime and just ask about the situation and if they were going to do anything about this. You are adding +1 to their list if they actually do have one going, but also, you can report back here if there are any updates on the situation.

Vashkey says: (via b.net forums)
"I called tech support and they said that Microsoft got significantly more calls about the situation than they had expected and they're actually keeping count of everyone that calls and deciding what to do based on that.

So I'm sure the more people calling the better. Do so if you can, I say. Let them know how much we care."

http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=41087046&viewreplies=true&postRepeater1-p=5#end

Thanks. I'll call.
 
SonOfABeep said:
Well, from what I understand the actual bit of code on a game like Splinter Cell or Halo 2 that goes and seeks out the DLC is a separate .XBE that is launched that seeks out the servers where the files are. That's why it always makes that hard transition into the DLC loader on original Xbox games.

Well, what I was thinking is that these games don't care how the DLC got onto the hard drive, just that it's there, right? If they don't have to "phone home" to verify the legitimacy of the DLC (and I admit I don't know about this) then you could download the DLC outside the game, save it to the HD, and then just play the game normally.

Modern XBL is more adaptable and should be far more permanent, especially given their success this generation.

Well, that's really the issue. If they can convincingly demonstrate that this isn't just going to repeat itself on 360, that'll be one thing. I'm not necessarily convinced.
 
soldat7 said:
Thanks. I'll call.

Note -- I'm mostly talking about online play here, but it applies to download services exactly the same, obviously. If you take down the download server, you take down the online play server too.

On the one hand, honestly, it's kind of surprising that they even kept it going this long... this kind of thing has happened to PC games for as long as they have been online, and it has been a very frequent source of frustration. Companies often just ditch older services the first chance they can get. I know a lot of people have compared this negatively to PC games, but if you look at older PC games, most PC games more than a couple of years old which had built-in online services are now offline, and can only be played online through network spoofing on Gamespy Arcade and services like that, provided that the game allowed network play. It is actually only the bare few older PC games which still have their original online servies still running... Blizzard is still running battle.net for all of the games it supports, but they are very much the exception. Westwood Chat, for instance, which ran the multiplayer for all earlier Westwood titles (C&C Red Alert for instance), was shut down years ago. It was replaced by a fan-run server which the games can still see, so if you go online with those games they will still work, but it isn't the original service. There are other similar examples of fan-run servers saving officially disconnected online games, some with official sanction like that one, some with a sort of official sanction like NetStorm's, and some unauthorized like SubSpace (Continuum)'s.

For the less popular majority of titles, though, those online services are gone now unless emulators or replacements have stepped in. Anything that did its multiplayer through TEN, or MPlayer, or the other pay services... gone unless there's some IPX spoofing or something. Any of Sierra's games with online play... not via Sierra's online networks, Sierra is gone now. It's the same for any of Ubisoft's older titles, anything that ran on Microsoft's Internet Gaming Zone (later known as the MSN Gaming Zone), pretty much any online EA game not from the past year (this applies to almost all of their online console games too), etc. Unless there's a replacement fansite thing, those games' services are gone.


Of course, because they are PC games, things like fan-run servers, hacked games that can see the fan-run clients, agreements with the publisher to redirect the online service to a new fan-run client, IPX spoofer technology, or direct-IP options still leave many of these games with some kind of online play, if you know someone else to play against. On consoles these kinds of things are much harder to do; I know the Xbox has been hacked, though, so I wonder if anything like these things is possible for Xbox... perhaps not, consoles are always much more secured, but I don't know.

Of course, games that use player-run servers, such as the Gamespy server browser setup found in many FPSes, are mostly excempt from this. As long as someone wants there to be a server, there will be. But that mostly applies to FPSes, not other genres,

For another console example, look at the Dreamcast. Maybe five games have been successfully hacked to see fan-run servers (Phantasy Star Online) or have designs that allow it to still be played (Quake III Arena, 4x4 Evolution), but the rest are offline forever with no known workaround, or at least none that people care to try to figure out.

But anyway, on the one hand, yes, these things are awful. It makes playing games online much more difficult in the easy cases and impossible in the hard cases, and that's very frustrating. I know that finding games with older titles is harder, and maintaining a server that few people are using can seem like a waste of resources to the company, I guess, but still, it's cruel, and gaming would be better if we could start finding ways to keep this form happening, or to make workarounds easier, once official service has been terminated. Just because games are older does not mean that they are less worth playing!

charlequin said:
Well, what I was thinking is that these games don't care how the DLC got onto the hard drive, just that it's there, right? If they don't have to "phone home" to verify the legitimacy of the DLC (and I admit I don't know about this) then you could download the DLC outside the game, save it to the HD, and then just play the game normally.

Yes, and there is a database of all of the Dreamcast downloadable content, with links to save all of it, on the dreamcast.onlineconsoles.net website. Of course getting those files onto your DC is made easier by the fact that the DC has a web browser and you can download them directly to your VMUs if you have your DC online... or you can burn a CD with save files on it, some of those contain the downloadable content on them too. Because the Xbox doesn't have a web browser by default and won't play CD-Rs without modding it's obviously a little trickier there... of course many people do have modded Xboxes though, and I'd guess that there are people who have been saving this stuff, I'd think. If this shutdown is maintained, hopefully all the DLC that doesn't require online checks surfaces so people can get it again and put it on their Xbox hardrives somehow.
 
usea said:
This is a problem with a particular company, their hardware and their policies. Not with DD as a concept. There are lots of DD platforms and implementations out there that are fantastic and don't have these issues.
Everyone will have this issue one day...everyone, even steam. It will die one day too.
 
On a sucky yet positive note, the xbox support dude wanted the exact message, not paraphrased so I had to boot one of my old xbox games up on my original xbox and get it for him. While it sucks that I cant get at any of the DLC, I started playing through Mech Assault 2 single player again; what a fantastic follow-up to the original on xbox. Man, this game was so much ownage back in the day and is still completely playable.

IMG00339-20100209-2050.jpg
 

Fugu

Member
This thread prompted me to hug my PC. As I hate Steam, DLC, and digital distribution as a whole, I feel vindicated knowing that my copy of Might and Magic VII and the hundreds of other PC games on my hard drive (haven't formatted my secondary drive since 1998) will be there likely until the day the hard drives stop spinning.
 
DarkoMaledictus said:
One of the reasons I always buy the pc version... consoles break, becomes obsolete, services end... with pc I always get to keep my games no matter what! Almost feels like renting + the online games never last as long as with pc! Somehow there alwasy is a community for the games on pc... its weird like that!

Ever buy a Steam game?
 

user_nat

THE WORDS! They'll drift away without the _!
Fugu said:
This thread prompted me to hug my PC. As I hate Steam, DLC, and digital distribution as a whole, I feel vindicated knowing that my copy of Might and Magic VII and the hundreds of other PC games on my hard drive (haven't formatted my secondary drive since 1998) will be there likely until the day the hard drives stop spinning.
Which by the sounds of it may be fairly soon. If you've had that drive since atleast 1998.
 

SmokyDave

Member
goldenpp72 said:
Consoles: Where buying becomes renting
This is a Microsoft thing, not a console thing (yet).

Judging by the number of people whose response to the original XBL going down was "Can we buy online enabled versions of these games on XBLA now then?" I'd say they were onto a good thing.
 
Dead Man Typing said:
The bolded is a big issue to me, too. And it seems like one Microsoft could fix if they just let us save title updates in the save file for each game instead of loading from the cache. The size of the cache varies depending on the size of the save device. These title updates have a maximum file size of 4MBs. I have over 12GB of Mass Effect 2 data stored on my HDD, would another 4MBs really make a difference?

Also, sorry for missing the sarcasm. It was 4.30am when I was posting and I had been out drinking (and playing Mass Effect 2) so my detector was broken.
I was thinking about this and yeah my games are going to be fucked over in the future unless next gen they don't need to disable anything from this generations downloads and patches.

Also fuck, I hope next gen the games we get and that use patches will actually save the patch on my hdd correctly instead of in a limited area of the memory that can be over written without warning. While I was away from home without the internet my forza 2 save was fucked over because the patch was gone after playing a bunch of other games before moving offline, I had to restart my game for a 2nd time that night and I am still grumpy about it, forza 3 is going to be the same but instead of not loading your profile it will just delete any dlc cars you had with NO WAY to recover them if you do redownload patches and files at a later date, fucking ass.

Can't wait until RE5 gold edition on 360 loses it's gold edition content in 10 years because it's just the regular game on a dvd with a ton of redeem codes in the box compared to the ps3 version with all content on disc, lol!!!
 

Persona7

Banned
I have been wondering about 360 game patches and updates as well, caching them instead of directly saving into the game folder was a pretty dumb idea.
 

kuYuri

Member
Well I managed to download the only real things I were missing, which was KotOR DLC. I have other games like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, but I doubt I'll be using that DLC in any meaningful way.
 
Top Bottom