Although our poor Vita is kinda being forsaken by its maker, there are some hidden special (and sometimes exclusive) gems on the system. More recently I bought two of them: Freedom Wars and Helldivers.

Freedom Wars is a hunting game, in the same vein as Monster Hunter and other games alike. After sinking dozens of hours in the game and finishing the single player portion of the game, I discovered that I had only scratched the surfaced, as the hardest (and coolest) missions and better rewards and craft materials were available only in multiplayer. Actually even the single player portion of the game would have been more fun (and easier) if played alongside other players online.

As for Helldivers, it is a top-down shooter and the genre itself is way more fun in multiplayer, but the game goes beyond. Although you could play single player or local (couch) multiplayer, the game doesn’t have an ending per se. Even playing alone or locally, you are a part of a bigger war that is influenced by all the Helldiver community and it’s players, which dictates the planets and the races you can play against. It is kinda nice as it gives you a sense of scale, that you are a tiny portion of a greater whole.

So, that’s nice and all, but then I started to read the games manuals and read the following on both: “SCEA  may retire the online portion of this game at any time”. That got me wondering … I already talked about the lack of autonomy here (https://wololo.net/2015/02/28/just-my-2-cents-the-digital-games-fallacy/), but I think that this goes way beyond that.

Back in the day you bought the game cartridge (or CD-ROM) and that was it. The entire game was in there, and even if it had a multiplayer or patch component, it wasn’t a centralized blackbox. The developer would make the (redistributable) patch available on their website as an installer (a .exe in MS Windows world) that you could burn in a CD-ROM or save it on your HD and install it as many times as needed.

Any multiplayer component the game may had, whether it was an external matchmaking system (as the deceased GameSpy) or you could directly host the game and give the IP to other players (LAN or WAN), as well as download a dedicated server software and host your own server. That kind of stuff kept some games alive way after it’s shelf life. If you want, you can grab a 1999 Quake 3 retail CD-ROM, download the patch and play on hundreds of servers around the world.

Now, try to do that with way more recent games, like Battlefield 2 from 2005. Well, you simply can’t (http://www.ea.com/1/service-updates and http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-05-12-50-ea-games-will-have-their-servers-shut-down). Maybe some may think that if the game is 10 years old, you cannot expect them to be fully functional at this point, but then again why didn’t EA (or any other developer for that matter) release a standalone dedicated server software so players can enjoy their retail game they bought if they choose to do so?

Some people love a given game so much that they go to some extremes like sniffing network packages and creating their own servers by reverse engineering them. This is the case with Mario Kart Wii, where people can still play online after the gamespy shut down (http://chadsoft.co.uk/online-status/), its awesome. But should players need to do that to enjoy their games?

Also, consider the following scenario: A person buy a game in day D-1 before the servers shutdown, and now cannot enjoy multiplayer. Was it fair for the player? Shouldn’t the EULAs have some kind of warranty to ensure that players could have a minimum time window that the game must be multiplayer-enabled?

Some may say that multiplayer is an optional feature, like a “bonus” from the developer. While I don’t agree with that, especially in some genres like FPSes and Fighters, this is only the tip of the iceberg. What about game-breaking bugs? With the digital distribution it is more and more common to have day-1 patches to fix rushed games. What happens when these update servers go offline? Do we stop being able to play our retail discs/cartridges?

Sadly, the more we think about it, the worse it gets. What do we do about our paid DLCs? How long will they be available? Remember the GFWL fiasco? They announced they would cease support and access to some features, then what happened? Well, some were unable to access their single player saved games (or even save game progress) or purchased DLC. What happened is that players were at the developers mercy: whether they would migrate their games functionality to another service (like Steamworks), or simply do nothing at all and leave their player base high and dry.

Some developers, like Gearbox, did the honorable thing and migrated everything from borderlands to Steamworks after Gamespy’s demise. But it is so arbitrary that sometimes the same company take two complete different directions with their games. One major example being Capcom. I have two games from them: Super Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter X Tekken. When Microsoft announced the demise of GWFL, Capcom migrated the multiplayer (sadly now broken) and DLC from SSF4 to Steamworks, which is nice. But with SFxT, they simply ignored their players, who now cannot access any of their paid DLC, play multiplayer, nor even save their single player progress or settings (http://shoryuken.com/2014/01/17/capcom-has-no-plans-to-transition-street-fighter-x-tekken-to-steamworks-after-games-for-windows-live-shutdown/ and http://steamcommunity.com/app/209120/discussions/). The sad thing is that it is all in the EULA, so there isn’t anything anyone can really do about it.

After that, I decided to actually read the the terms and conditions, so let me just summarize some of them directly taken from Freedom Wars manual:

– They can only guarantee that the game cartridge will work for one year tops, and only in US and Canada.

I think this is unfair, because they officially sell the cartridges worldwide, not just only in US and Canada.

– The purchase grants you a “limited” (???)  use of the software.
– The software is licensed, not sold.
– They can edit and block any content streamed from the game.
– Cannot publicly broadcast the software in an “unauthorized manner”.

I think these are kinda worrying, since I couldn’t find what “limited”  and “unauthorized” actually mean. Probably anything they want. Also it is funny how they say they can simply edit however they want anything you stream. So, for instance, if you stream and share a gameplay video of Freedom Wars, does that mean they can put a Swastika on my face and voice over some racial slurs with Hitler’s speech at the background? Where do they draw the line?

And here is where things get interesting:
– The developer may, by automatic update or otherwise, modify the software AT ANY TIME for ANY REASON.

So, essentially if they decide to turn Freedom Wars into a X Rated homosexual  rabbit xxx MMO because the new CEO got a secret fetish for male rabbits, they simply can? Probably they won’t, but legally they could, as well as they legally can prevent you to access any feature you paid for at any time, maybe locking you out from your own game.

Probably all of this happens to push the player base forward to the newer and hotter game around, as they take out features from the games we already “bought”, or maybe to give room to relaunch the same games as an HD remaster or something like that just to reinstate features the game originally had. I am no lawyer, but the way I see is that little by little our rights as consumers are being suppressed, as more and more is artificially controlled by game developers and publishers. Shouldn’t be there some clauses that actually stand for the gamers side? Am I too paranoid? What are your thoughts?