The government won't protect your access to live service games
An attempt to protect gamers against publishers’ abrupt shuttering - or “sunsetting” - of live service games failed this week, after the government stated that there are “no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games”.
A petition that had passed the 10,000-signature threshold for parliamentary discussion was put in front of the government, but the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport said that while it recognises gamers’ concerns, it would not be changing existing laws surrounding digital obsolescence any time soon.
The call from gamers was to ban publishers from “irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold”, arguing that games designed so they cannot be played at a time of the company’s choosing amounts to planned obsolescence.
It came off the back of complaints concerning titles like Ubisoft’s open-world racing game The Crew, which was rendered unplayable when its servers were taken offline in April 2024. A similar fate potentially awaits games as prominent as Gran Turismo 7, which offers very limited offline gameplay.
Gamers rightfully believe that a game they paid up to £60 - or potentially soon as much as £80 - for should work in perpetuity. This was always the case with the games of the 2000s and before, since the absence of online services meant that the disc had to work out of the box, and always would do in future.
But the advent of widespread broadband connections meant that by the 2010s, developers were integrating online services so closely with games that without an internet connection they would offer much less functionality - or none at all.
And this isn’t restricted to online game modes. Gran Turismo 7 and the recent IO Interactive Hitman titles are both examples of excellent single-player games burdened by an always-online requirement. When their servers are eventually decommissioned, players will have access to a severely limited experience.
While keeping online services alive forever is clearly unrealistic from a financial standpoint, developers should plan ahead to avoid screwing over their users when they are shut down. I believe my stance is common sense:
- Single-player games should never require online connectivity
- Where possible, multiplayer games should make content available offline - for example, allow players to take on co-op missions solo
- Prior to “sunsetting”, developers should release code to enable gamers to run their own private servers and continue playing if they so wish
And if developers and publishers don’t play fair? Well, then of course your best recourse as a responsible gamer is to stop buying their products.
