The release of Overwatch 2 wasn't the end of the original Overwatch. The Overwatch game that came out in 2016 hasn't existed in a long time. That game had 12 playable characters. The game was changed and that 12 character version stopped existing less than a year after the game came out. Now there's 32 characters with vastly different skills and play styles, really changing the game. The maps are different. Even the original 12 characters have had some changes.

Should it have been illegal for them to add characters to the game? It's not what I originally paid for. They took away the original Overwatch the second they rebalanced or added characters.

> Should it have been illegal for them to add characters to the game?

Sure, why not? Or at least illegal to forcefully change my game without giving me an option of not updating (at the cost of maybe not having anyone to play with). One could argue that I as the customer should be allowed to decide when to patch my game client and server.

There obviously needs to be consensus between players so some version is going to be more popular than others, probably the latest version, and the developer has an interest in keeping the game fresh so as to sell more copies (or lately, skins), so as a customer I'm driven towards the latest version, but I don't see why I should be forced to it.

I honestly don't see the problem you seem to see.

It would be such a terrible outcome, having the player base fractured over tons of different versions. It would be a far worse experience than them adding some new characters and game modes and renaming the game Overwatch 2.

Yeah but that's not something you actually expect would happen do you? Like 99% of players won't bother and will just go with what the developer provides until the developer decides to kill the game, at that point you have the self-hosted servers available.

Yeah, but one could argue by making updates to the game they're destroying the experience of the old game, taking it away from me. I see little difference in the argument about the "original" Overwatch servers getting migrated to Overwatch 2 and them releasing updates which would ultimately make older versions effectively unplayable (no players).

Like cool, you've now put the force of law into making them continue to manage old versions, versions that practically nobody plays on. By adding a single new character they've now changed the game, and if you didn't like that addition, it's an unplayable game even if you had the option to not update. This is fundamentally the same as Overwatch getting shut down (the old version becomes effectively unplayable).

If anything, they shouldn't be legally allowed to modify the game at all, because making a modification to it makes the original effectively unplayable because there'd be effectively no player base. Or maybe they should be allowed to make updates to their game platform...

If the release of Overwatch 2 was effectively taking Overwatch away from the people who paid for it, every update to the game was effectively taking away that edition of Overwatch from people. But people didn't care until the launcher got updated to say "Overwatch 2", suddenly now that's a travesty and Blizzard is somehow taking it away.

I got Overwatch on release day. I still can play Overwatch today. I don't get why one would say they took it away from people unless you agree every update to the game is taking the old game away from people.

I've never played Overwatch, it was just an example, but my point stands regardless of whether players want changes or not; I simply want there to be some accountability for mega corps so they can't just abandon games, release the new iteration for $60, and then kill the old version off.

Or rather, so that when they eventually do, a potentially still popular game isn't rendered unplayable since there are no official servers and no software for me to use to host my own.

It's more aptly fit to use CoD as an example to be honest, I just used Overwatch because I'd read some were unhappy how they just killed it and replaced it with "sort of but not really the same game".

Since I'm not in the Overwatch scene, can you answer something I'd been wondering? Did they migrate cosmetics from 1 to 2? Cosmetics seems to be the big cash cow these days so if the new one has similar characters, but they kill the old one off and don't let me bring my hard earned or bought cosmetics then I'd be pretty pissed personally.

> Did they migrate cosmetics from 1 to 2?

Yes. Your whole account got migrated.

> I simply want there to be some accountability for mega corps so they can't just abandon games, release the new iteration for $60, and then kill the old version off.

Well then definitely don't point to Overwatch for that, because they released the new version for $0 and migrated everyone's equipment.

> It's more aptly fit to use CoD as an example to be honest

You mean the game where I can play multiplayer for games released well over a decade ago? I haven't heard of an instance where they shut down the old servers for that series yet at all. Other than that they'll be doing that for their free to play platform, but that's practically the same argument as Overwatch to Overwatch 2. You should be able to import accounts, it's no cost for the new version, etc.

EDIT: I guess some CoD versions ran on GameSpy which shut down a while ago. That was a third party system not made by the publisher though, dunno if you can really hold the publisher responsible for that third party service going offline.

This wouldn't work with games nowadays. Or let's rephrase is: it would discourage game developers to develop these type of games. If Blizzard would make private servers for Overwatch available, that would mean people wouldn't care about buying cosmetics from Blizzard. Same goes for games like League of Legends, Fortnite and even Call of Duty nowadays. If you can have your own private servers, you just unlock everything. I see that as a consumer you would want that to be a thing, but from a developers point of view other ventures get more attractive and we wouldn't have those games anymore.

I think this is a fallacy.

Maybe the big developers wouldn't have incentive to develop billion-dollar cosmetic-powered games anymore, but someone would make it work financially.

You'd still have hugely popular multiplayer games, and maybe they would be somewhat less ambitious in scope and features (i.e. dev cost), but they would still be fun, and have strong communities built around them.

Maybe they sell DLC map packs (which would not have the "community fragmentation" problem from today's centralized matchmaking if private servers exist), or figure out other ways to generate incremental revenue.

Or maybe they don't, and just sell the base game, and are still successful because it's not a 5,000 person team and a nine-figure budget.

Today's games don't exist because of the business model, it's the other way around.

Why is that a bad thing though? Multiplayer shooters existed before the modern rent seeking paradigm. And they can exist afterwards too. The only thing we would lose is that particular parasitic business model. Not everything should be legal.

If this parasitic business model is legally crushed, companies will just move on to the next one, and likely eliminate an entire class of games that a lot of people enjoy because they cant make as much money off of it.

TF2 lets you mod pretty much anything and by all accounts its cosmetics are still hugely profitable for Valve.

> TF2 lets you mod pretty much anything

It's not 2012 anymore, 90% of players play casual where sv_pure is always enabled so you can't mod almost anything.

And it doesn't kill TF2 to support and offer the option for both.

Depends on your definition of "kill".

The original pre-matchmaking TF2 experience is dead. Modern casual is nothing like it and often feels indistinguishable from playing vs bots.

I think there's an answer to this, which is to separate the inventory service from the game servers. Keep the same inventory service online, reuse it for all of your games. Any official servers and any vanilla servers will validate that you own the cosmetics you use, modded servers can override this but you can't use your cosmetics everywhere unless they're actually registered to you. (Or possibly the clients validate it too in which case even a modded server couldn't override it for every player.)

And (as with several other things being discussed in the comments) of course Valve has already done this, and offers it as a service: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/inventory

Curious if there is an open source generic "game server backend" that indie devs can code to that would allow smaller devs to host online games?

I suppose not — to the degree that the backend doesn't just act as message/traffic coordinator but also has game logic. (Although I can imagine an architecture where the back end indeed just manages message sending ... and one of those recipients is the host app that handles the game logic.)

There's a few things out there, several game focused backend as a service. Most of them are focused on mobile games because that's where the easy money is.

Funny enough, there's a Google for Games github org that has some good open source projects for things like matchmaking, cloud saves, etc https://github.com/googleforgames

It’s interesting to me that entire genres of games were created because private dedicated servers were available and bored teenagers could create a TC and play with their friends. Also the technology was such that assets and game scripting were accessible Team fortress, counter strike, Dota, plenty of examples. You bought half-life so you could download and play the mods. I guess that niche is filled by Roblox now? Or maybe Minecraft?

One recent genre is auto-battlers from Dota 2 custom game tools. To my eyes that’s been the only large genre grown from in game tools in a decade which has life beyond original game itself.

Tower defenses and AoS/Dota/ARPG/Mobas as examples of the above from 90s and early 2000s. Maybe “gliding” is a genre too from counterstrike now seen outside in games like trackmania, and probably Gary’s mod is it’s own genre too. Then only genres and modes which live within the original games since (though amazing and well done).

I really think Blizzard had an opportunity with StarCraft 2 to rewrite gaming history if it’s modding tools were up to par. Instead we got custom games less sophisticated than ones 20 years younger from it. I don’t think the modding community ever really recovered being left empty handed in that era. Maybe it’s recovered, modders were left without adequate tools for a while. Modders really did produce hundred million to billion dollar genres in the past, I’m not sure if that is still happening.

Why would that be a problem once they decide to no longer support overwatch? When you turn off your servers, release one last patch that adds running your own server to the game as part of your game shutdown.

No skin off your back other than "cutting into sales of thatsamegame, butnextversion", which people are going to buy anyway.

you can just disable cosmetic drops/leveling/whatever else on private servers since it's sadly such a massive part of multiplayer games nowadays, problem solved.

Oh no, then we're stuck having fun modding old games on our private servers.

I see this as an advantage.

What legal remedy exactly do you propose here?