"What are the contractual or implied obligations of a game publisher for titles that are exclusively ONLINE ONLY to continue to provide online services?"
There really isn't any obligation. They can unplug the master servers whenever they want and for whatever reason. They have to deal with consumer backlash, however, if people are still playing on them. I'd imagine Capcom examined both ends of this. For example, it's really, really expensive to keep a fleet of servers going, especially when the game does't continue to sell. You don't want to know how many are involved in Half-Life 2's Steam network and how much that costs Valve every month. But it also depends on how much the server does. Red Faction PC's server is still up at THQ, but all it essentially does is track games.
It's going to be a big question with the next-gen consoles though. I, for one, would vastly prefer a centralized method of game control handled by Microsoft than each company doing its own seperate thing.
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Date: 2005-09-04 05:18 pm (UTC)There really isn't any obligation. They can unplug the master servers whenever they want and for whatever reason. They have to deal with consumer backlash, however, if people are still playing on them. I'd imagine Capcom examined both ends of this. For example, it's really, really expensive to keep a fleet of servers going, especially when the game does't continue to sell. You don't want to know how many are involved in Half-Life 2's Steam network and how much that costs Valve every month. But it also depends on how much the server does. Red Faction PC's server is still up at THQ, but all it essentially does is track games.
It's going to be a big question with the next-gen consoles though. I, for one, would vastly prefer a centralized method of game control handled by Microsoft than each company doing its own seperate thing.
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Date: 2005-09-07 05:39 pm (UTC)I want my motherfricking Namco VS Capcom.