What are everyone's thoughts on Stop Killing Games?

C_Inside · June 26

I recently learned that there's currently an initiative going on in Europe called Stop Killing Games whose purpose is games preservation. Specifically for those requiring an online connection. It's spearheaded by a guy called Ross Scott, of Freeman's Mind fame.

Considering ESO requires an internet connection and for ZOS' servers to be active, this means that eventually ESO will die and you won't be able to play it ever again. Yeah, it was obvious from the start that this would be the case with ESO being an MMO but I dunno, I just never really gave it much thought. I guess I took it for granted that ESO would always be there since, well, it always has been from the moment I started playing it. Realizing, or rather coming to terms with the fact that, my time making builds, farming trials, and proging dungeon HMs is finite has really made me melancholic.

Anyway, have you guys heard about the initiative and if so, what are your thoughts about it and games preservation as a whole? And @ZOS_Kevin, has the dev team considered making an end of life plan for ESO for when it eventually goes offline? Personally I'd hate for all the work that was put into this game to just up and vanish at some point.

JiubLeRepenti · June 26

I also hope ESO will be playable offline when servs will be shut down.

Elsonso · June 26

I think that when Microsoft/XBox/Bethesda/ZOS is tired of running ESO, there would be provisions for a community run server for continued play. ZOS would no longer be involved. It is not required for ZOS to make a single player version to allow for continuation of the game.

Thysbe · June 26

heard about it an already signed the initiative (if you are an EU citizen you can vote with your ID information (Passport Number, Name and Nationality) - just google European citizen initiative - Stop Destroying Videogames. Currently 550k people signed and they aim for 1 Mil).

With a MMO its hard to say what´s doable within a reasonable effort. At least some minimum guaranteed lifetime information from purchase date on and some information on the End of Development/End of Support plan would be interesting.

Availablility on private/community run servers after the official ones stopped running would be great.

MorallyBipolar · June 26

Great idea. No idea how it could work though without a wealthy investor to pay for the servers.

Tandor · June 26

While an admirable idea in some respects, it's pretty impractical and unlikely to come to anything. Many games will have licence/copyright issues, and often developers will want people switching to their next game and not sticking with a discontinued game from which they derive no ongoing revenue.

Elsonso · June 26

MorallyBipolar wrote: »

Great idea. No idea how it could work though without a wealthy investor to pay for the servers.

The beauty of allowing community run servers is that the server does not have to handle tens of thousands of people or scale anywhere near what the current server capacity is. Just because ZOS built six private clouds to run ESO does not mean it has to be done that way. It might be possible to run small private versions of the game server.

spartaxoxo · June 26

Controversial but I don't think it's realistic or even needed to preserve every video game to ever exist. One of the things about an MMO is the community that built it. And, well, that won't always exist because we won't always exist. I don't think people 100 years from now are going to want to play every single thing that ever existed from this time period. It's nice to have historical artifacts but it's okay that the game is as finite as we are.

I'd like the biggest and most important stuff preserved. I'm very much okay with the rest of it being eventually lost to history. Same way the works of Shakespeare survive but every single popular book every created while he was alive.

That being said I think it's good that there are groups like trying to preserve some gaming history. I think it would be good for some of this stuff to survive. Selfishly, I do include ESO in that. But I'll admit it's not as huge in the genre as say WoW.

Radiate77 · June 26

I would love to see the following changes if ESO ever stops supporting a megaserver:

Peer-to-peer structure for all content, including matchmaking for all matchmade activities.
Drastic improvements to the way companions function so that all PvE content is capable of completion, even those without matchmaking.
Added bots to all PvP content as filler if games do not fill, and to keep Cyrodiil engaging.
A lot more NPCs scattered throughout towns engaging in daily life.
Guild traders can be removed, as players can do business when matchmade, or invited.

ESO could survive without servers, it might even thrive.

LunaFlora · June 26

i think that is important and it would be awesome to see MMOs still playable after servers stop being supported.

though i doubt ZOS is thinking about that already as they probably want to keep developing ESO until they are not able to anymore.

MasterSpatula · June 26

People are still playing Star Wars: Galaxies. Pre-CU, CU, and NGE versions are available, all on servers hosted by fans. Neither Sony nor Lucasfilm/Disney have shut them down.

We can hope there'll be a similar option when ESO shuts down. ZOS/Bethesda/Microsoft will have to be as forgiving. But if DISNEY, of all companies, thinks it's not worth their time to crack down on this, we can hope Microsoft will behave similarly.

whitecrow · June 26

According to Wikipedia, Everquest is still up and expanding after 25 years.

Vonnegut2506 · June 27

whitecrow wrote: »

According to Wikipedia, Everquest is still up and expanding after 25 years.

Ya, Daybreak games actually has several of the older MMO's still up and running with events, expansions, etc.

DreamyLu · June 27

I heard about the initiative and signed it.

However, I'm not too pessimistic. When you think that GW is still running (the original Guild Wars): it was born in 2005, meaning 20 years ago! They keep it running although it doesn't have a big population anymore and although there is GW2 that offers a lot more in term of content.

I believe that MMOs are necessary. They get an always renewed population, even if not as big as during the first years after their creation. They will always be some surviving.

Now logically, some will die, but that will probably be only those that - from the start - never generated a big enough community, so that they would have died in all cases, no matter what. Typical example: Archeage Unchained that closed US and EU servers.

ADarklore · June 27

Well, Matt did say they planned to keep the game going as long as players were still playing. Realistically, the game will keep going as long as they are making enough revenue to maintain the hardware and support personnel. Both DCUO and SWTOR are still going, being updated, and they don't have a huge population... and Daybreak always said DCUO was their highest grossing game, even with only roughly 5,000 active players.

Elsonso · June 27

Yes, but i am not convinced that Matt is the one who ultimately makes that decision. If XBox or Microsoft want the servers shuttered, they will be shuttered.

Ragnarok0130 · June 27

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

I also hope ESO will be playable offline when servs will be shut down.

I'd like that but history shows us that MMOs typically don't patch in an offline mode when they go dark which is a shame. However many communities find ways to resurrect MMOs via community efforts if the studio/publisher doesn't sue them.

I'm a big fan of game preservation and think it's a very good thing.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · June 27

TBH my plan for if ZOS announces the servers are being shut down is to go through as many empty bot-created pages on UESP as possible and put dedicated effort into filling them with relevant information before said shutdown occurs.

And screenshot all my characters. If I get into modding the next single player Elder Scrolls game they might get shoved in with a quest or something.

Toanis · June 27

I'm all for a revision of the legal aspects of using an Atari 2600 rom file on an emulator or running a cracked copy of a 20 years old game that otherwise won't work without the original CD in an actual CD drive with an IDE connection.

But at least for PC single player games GOG usually has us covered right now, with the blessing of the copyright owners.

For an MMO there is a lot more involved server side, there might be 3rd party software involved or proprietary tools the company would like to keep secret and use in their next game. Scaling that down to a small scale solution will cost money, and an mmo usually shuts down when it's no longer profitable to run, or when its continued existence might impact the next game's profit. So where is the money going to come from ? Should the EU pay them my tax money to make it happen.?

wolfie1.0. · June 27

DreamyLu wrote: »

I heard about the initiative and signed it.

However, I'm not too pessimistic. When you think that GW is still running (the original Guild Wars): it was born in 2005, meaning 20 years ago! They keep it running although it doesn't have a big population anymore and although there is GW2 that offers a lot more in term of content.

I believe that MMOs are necessary. They get an always renewed population, even if not as big as during the first years after their creation. They will always be some surviving.

Now logically, some will die, but that will probably be only those that - from the start - never generated a big enough community, so that they would have died in all cases, no matter what. Typical example: Archeage Unchained that closed US and EU servers.

I agree that there are some positive examples out there. But for every one rhat persists, there are hundreds that are just gone.

All online content based around the 3ds e shop = gone. Many other online games as well. It wasn't until recently that I could play old school oblivion on my pc on windows 11 due to ctds and other issues.

Sometimes its not even the games themselves that are the issue. Nvidia dropped support for phys x and that broke some games.

So its a complicated issue. I would hope that if eso goes, that Microsoft allows fans to support it or they liscense it out to someone that will.

ArchMikem · June 27

Even if theres resources available for a community hosted "Elder Scrolls Forever" server after ESO's end of life, I know for a fact it'll only be for PC. As a Console player I'm forced to accept the game will die for me, regardless.

katanagirl1 · June 28

It would be nice to still be able to visit my houses and continue to decorate them, and be able to gather crafting materials if the game was officially shut down. I guess I am thinking of that in an offline capacity. It would be strange to travel the zones with no one else around but it would be better than nothing.