This definitely ties into fear I have about preserving gaming culture. There is this increasingly large gap of games that simply don't work anymore. And it's only getting worse. At the most extreme, it's a multiplayer only game, or even a single player game that runs online (Like Diablo 3 or Sim City), and when the servers go down, the game is just gone. But then you have multiplayer servers that go offline, DRM authentication that goes offline, DRM that is no longer compatible with Windows 10 because it's too invasive. And those are just the problems caused by the 2010's obsession with everything being somehow tied to the internet. Then you get into raw OS and hardware incompatibility.
It's really tragic that a lot of games from approximately 1995 (Windows 95 roughly) through 2002 (Windows 2000) have a terrible time running on modern system. Games that were originally designed for Windows XP fair a little better, but I doubt that will stay the case for much longer. And we'd be so much worse off if Dosbox didn't exist. Those guys are amazing.
[–] Atarian ago
A lot of business models rely on these servers being switched off and the userbase migrating to the next product. I can't see AAA studios damaging their profits by open sourcing their server software very often.
[–] Codewow [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
That's licensing for relatively cheap would be a way to continue to make money from it. Or they should risk it for a biscuit and see what happens. I'm sure the majority of people would have already moved on to the next products by the time the servers went offline anyways.