They already killed the Unreal franchise once, now they desecrate its corpse. A month from now they shut down the servers for all the Unreal/Unreal Tournament games and mess with UT3 integrating it into their online services over all platforms.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/epic-games-to-shut … rock-band-games
Running the multiplayer open now will be solely on the community.
I can understand discontinuing servers for old games, but why remove them from digital stores?
Just revise the advertised product accordingly and at least leave it up for sale. 😒
Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-15, 21:57:I can understand discontinuing servers for old games, but why remove them from digital stores?
Just revise the advertised product accordingly and at least leave it up for sale. 😒
The way Epic themselves words it "We have started removing games that were still available from all digital storefronts and are disabling any in-game DLC purchasing as of today" isn't super clear on are they going to remove ALL of the mentioned games from sale or just the ones that can't be played at all anymore after the servers go down. Removing all of them makes no sense whatsoever.
It could make sense from a licensing point of view.
I remember, the N64 game Wave Race 64 wasn't freshly sold for a long time (not available on WIi Virtual Console for a while).
The reason was simple: In-game advertisements for companies like Coca Cola, Adidas etc were originally seen in background.
However, since those licensing agreements expired, the game couldn't be sold anymore in ots original from, without making modifications.
Or in other words, Nintendo wasn't able to just re-use the old binary image.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/189706-n … 80090560?page=2
Maybe something similar is happening here?
Perhaps there's another licensing issue. The game's engine, third-party code, legal disputes with the original developers..
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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It's not licensing. Unreal doesn't have restrictive licensed middleware - that began with UT3. Logos of publishers no longer involved were already dropped. MathEngine (Karma in UT2003/4) were bought out by Criterion (later desecrated by EA.)
This is Epic just taking their ball and going home. They've already done this to Rocket League and Fall Guys after their steam success.
First I’m learning of the Rock Band servers going down. Still play that a few times a month on my 360 🙁
I know 333networks and the like handle Unreal, UT99 and several other things using GameSpy but how would we even run a third party master list for UT2004? Doesn't that rely on CD key validation? Are we going to get sued for trying to disable the CD key stuff in UT2004?
I really hate these big companies, always making idiotic decisions because their "masters" have no idea how anything works. I don't care if a "shareholder" swings by and "buys" a bunch of imaginary idiocy, that stuff never incentivizes me to do anything.
“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων
