'Let it Die' servers shutting down, but offering players a onetime purchase to keep it alive offline
14h 15m ago by lemmy.world/u/lazycouchpotato in games from www.pcgamer.com
So they won't Let It Die... heh...
I imagine the servers would have been shut down some time ago, if not for the confusion.
"So are we shutting down that game? What's the name?"
"Let it Die."
"Alright."
"What are you doing?!"
"Shutting down the servers...?"
"Why?"
"... You said let it die!"
"I didn't! I said it's Let it Die not let it die!!"
"What?!"
third base!
what?
no he's on second. third base, i don't know
This is awesome. Should be the normal way to do things!
-- Frost
I don't think Robert Frost said that.
Disagree, it should be at no extra cost.
It was free to play, it was a service game. Now with the offline option it becomes a product game, it makes sense to ask for a one time purchase money, no?
No. They can't prey on people with "micro"-transactions and then ask for money to get a game that should have been playable offline anyway. That's abusing the live service, free-to-play model for as long as it benefits them and then also asking for the price of a game afterwards. Let's not let them set a precedent here.
The precedent is that their live service game is now preserved in a way few others are doing. Buying the game shows that there's money to be made doing this, meaning others might have an incentive to preserve their shuttered live services, too.
It's a 8 years old game, asking some extra for an offline version doesn't sound abusive for me. You clearly disagree, that's fine.
What, they should just make games for free?
Live service games exist to extract as much as they can from people through the form of MTX. They should use that money to plan for the eventual shutdown of their game, not then ask people to pay for it. Just make it paid to begin with and scrap the in game purchases.
I tried to look at what they were selling and it doesn't seem like anything you're buying is actual content, but rather a shortcut to success. Microtransactions suck, but if ownership wasn't promised or implied anywhere, what are the players exactly entitled to? I just don't see any lies, broken promises, or failed expectations.
Unless you are buying DRM-free, ownership isn't implied for any game. They don't need the money to make the game playable offline, that work has already been done, charging for it is just trying to get one last cashout.
Hey that game you've been playing all this time, them purchases you've made, well if you want to keep playing, you have to pay us!
It is implied: most people do expect to keep a game if they buy it. There's no expectation to keep an arcade machine after inserting coins. Everyone who paid for extra lives or whatever powerups should have done so with a clear expectation that the online game that they haven't purchased will die eventually. Nobody is being duped or betrayed.
Giving it out for free would be nice and probably wouldn't cost them too much, but it's also unreasonable to demand something that was never promised. Damn, I can't believe I'm defending some free-to-play pay-to-win microtransaction online service hell game, but I guess even they can do something right not wrong every now and then.
You didn't really answer the question.
Silly question. They haven't made a game for free.
So you're required to spend money on in game purchases to play?
I play a "freemium" game and haven't spent a penny on it.
I'm not arguing in favor of the exploitative tactics those companies use to dupe people out of money, but you can still play most of them without paying.
It's absolutely within the realm of possibility that a chunk of the people that would buy a lifetime license are people who haven't spent any money on it so far.
And this is still a very rare move for a game company, and it's a trend that needs to start. Don't let perfect stand in the way of good.
It's not free to play because they are being generous. It's because it enables the most exposure to the most predatory model.
Would they have made the same amount of money with a paid game? Probably not, most free to play games know they arent interesting enough to sell like that.
Selling the game after the fact is just gross, not them being nice. The trend that needs to start is any online games just being playable offline from the start, or for free in the end.
Or we wait for legislation to hopefully force this, without any extra purchases needed.
They should make the free game, free-er.
Other commenter mentioned it's f2p so that would make a little more sense to charge for it. Depending on the price tag.
I sure didn't expect this from a free-to-play game. Nice job, GHM
Back in my day games didn’t need live service for multiplayer! get off my damn lawn
Offline mode is nice, but for a game with core online features they really ought to release a dedicated server.
Well I guess I'm glad I didn't like it because I just found out about it last week and was checking it out.
I was obsessed with this game for a few months when it first came out. I've had thoughts here and there about checking back in to poke around, but I guess not. I'm sure my base is a mess from raiders for as long as I've been gone.