Publishers aren't preserving games and it hurts

Earlier today, I wrote a short article about a group of gamers who are signing a petition in order to try and stop companies from shutting down online multiplayer games. The goal of the petition is to lobby governments to implement laws that will prevent publishers from ending support for multiplayer games.

Almost 200,000 gamers have signed the petition so far, showing that there’s a contingent of players who believe that the closing of games hurts the industry. I can’t help but agree, though I say this with hesitation. The example given on the petition website is for Ubisoft’s The Crew which they claim had a player base of “at least 12 million” when it was shut down.

While I doubt those figures are correct - the game only had a maximum of 12,000 players on Steam on launch day - the sentiment is worth hearing out. The petition reads, “An increasing number of video games are sold as goods, but designed to be completely unplayable for everyone as soon as support ends.” As reported by Kotaku last year, around 60 games were closed down in 2023, and this year is no different. More and more games are being shut down when developers and publishers can no longer support them, but is there an easy fix?

The Crew - Ubisoft

I don’t think so, though I’d love to see something change. Pushing large companies like Ubisoft and EA to support games for longer may seem like the best way to go, but these games tend to be closed down because the daily players don’t often justify the servers staying open.

When EA closed down Battlefield: Bad Company 2 earlier this year, the game had less than 500 players at its peak in March 2022, and many companies can’t keep the servers open for these games. You could argue that EA has the cash on hand, and I’d agree, but how many games would they have to keep ‘alive’ if they met the player’s expectations?

Ultimately, if a petition like this were to succeed and get the attention of the EU governments, any law that could be implemented may hurt smaller studios and publishers. Being forced to keep servers running on a game with so few players would negatively impact the finances of smaller publishers forcing them to cut costs.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Electronic Arts

If we look at the core goals of the petition, it reads, “To have authorities examine this behavior and hopefully end it, as it is an assault on both consumer rights and preservation of media.” For me, it’s that second point that is most important - game preservation.

Preservation of media is incredibly important and it’s taken very seriously by most sectors of entertainment. For film, you have plenty of physical media in several options - DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K discs. If something like The Walking Dead gets removed from streaming services in years to come, then you’ll have them in a physical capacity. It’s the same with music. Even though we have streaming subscriptions, albums will always be preserved by CD, vinyl, or even digital back-ups made by ripping your owned content into MP3 formats.

Aside from a few companies - like Limited Run Games and Super Rare Games - who are bringing digital games to physical discs and cartridges, there is little in place to preserve gaming for historical purposes, for future generations, and to protect the money we’ve spent on games.

Multiplayer experiences are a part of this, of course, but the petition raises a more important point. We spend our money on games that will eventually disappear. Whether that’s due to a low player count causing a cancellation of services, or a licensing issue forcing games to be delisted, we never know if these games will be there in a decade. Even if it’s a game launched by a large publisher as a sure-fire hit.

Marvel's Avengers - Crystal Dynamics

You only have to look backward. The Super Nintendo console lived for around eight years and saw around 522 games launched in the EU. How many of those games are available to play legally? How many have been preserved as a piece of gaming history, whether the game was successful or not? Even today, backward compatibility is barely supported and many classic PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 games are difficult or near impossible to play, especially as we live in a time of endless remasters.

We saw recently with the Xbox 360 marketplace closing that hundreds of games - titles that teams of people worked hard on - have now vanished. Of course, if you still owned a console you could download them before they disappeared but not everyone is in a position to do so, and not all hardware will be supported with the swift movement of technology.

Gaming, as an industry, is in a difficult position. It depends on technology - servers, consoles, controllers, televisions, and operating systems - and the games themselves are rarely supported for long after launch unless they’re billion-dollar opportunities. This mindset applies to both online functions and older games not being preserved. If this petition, and the sentiment behind it, gains any traction, I’d be amazed. I’m hopeful that one day consumers and players will be a bigger consideration for publishers, but I’m not holding my breath.