I’ve been wodnering how regulations about not killing games deals with compaines running multi-player servers?
For single player games or games with single player modes it seems easier to implement.
I’ve been wodnering how regulations about not killing games deals with compaines running multi-player servers?
For single player games or games with single player modes it seems easier to implement.
For a long long time compnies provided dedicated servers to their players. Sometimes included in the game files, sometimes as separate downloads. Often it was just a Linux binary, sometimes both Windows and Linux. Players would then have to enter the IP of their desired server.
Sometimes a central server would list all the available servers. For the Unreal games that was recently shut down. The community created a new one and patched the games to use it instead of the official one.
With games like Minecraft or Baldur’s Gate 3 the server is even included in the game. If Microsoft and Larian and Steam went away you could still play them that way with minimal fuzz.
Interesting how Minecraft is the best selling game ever, yet it has basically no DRM. Apart from the actual download, buying an account gives you access to the official authentication servers, and that’s it, basically.
In fairness, Microsoft certainly has tried to get the next closest thing with Bedrock. The hosting of server backends through their architecture via “realms” allows them to lock you out of a whole lot, and I still see people getting randomly banned because of their profanity filter.
But yes, if Realms shut down right now, there would always be Java (and even privately hosted Bedrock servers).
CS 1.6 is how I learned about port forwarding