Please, allow players to launch a private game without being at least 2. A Simple solution without too much work, and a right step in the good direction.
Allow Private game without being in a strike team. People will be able to do their Private game penance, and solo play will be possible with still a possibility for a friend to join via steam, social tab, etc.
…That’s just solo mode though?
That’s basic Solo Mode. Which imo should be in the game since launch.
But a good/perfect Solo mode should also imply a bot rework (Making them more controlable; being able to decide what they’re able to do), and possibly being able to host (which might have been mentioned, but imo not necessarily) .
That’s literally the bare minimum we’ve been asking for since Private Matches were added. Too bad Fatshark is actively malicious towards Solo Players and won’t change a 2 to a 1 on a single line of code even after nearly 4 years
The solution is the stop killing games initiative. Other than that tencent will pinch every cent they can get.
Why does it take a law to pass to make companies good on their word
I do not think the “Stop Killing Game” would affect Darktide as it is already released, and it wouldn’t really matter toward being able to do solo games.
I agree.
OTOH, most of DTs problems may stem from the monitizatiion strategy. I suspect that the absence of solo, lack of maps, too-many modes, and the inability to pick modifiers, are all rooted in publishing policies, not development difficulties.
Me, I’d be happy if the game were better balanced … which might also be a monitizatiion issue, if the quality of the basic gameplay loop is viewed as of little relevance to the game’s financial success.
the initiative is about stopping devs from making games unplayable so it would affect Darktide too, if it doesn’t sunset before it comes through
it would matter toward being able to solo games because in order to keep playing darktide after fatshark stops supporting it, they would have to allow us to play by ourselves without having to connect to a fatshark server, which would functionally be the option to play solo
Yeah, I really see no reason they can’t just lower it from 1 to 2. There’s the solo mod, but it’s just sad.
this is not what stop killing games does. It would affect games that are developed AFTER stop killing games goes through, it would not affect currently released games yet to sunset. That is fantasy.
i don’t see the logic in that, if the goal of the initiative is
This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.
i don’t see why that would only apply to games sold after that, shouldn’t it apply to all currently running games before a cutoff point? especially if they continue to sell things in game after the set of laws achieved by the iniative goes live
i guess if they completely cease all sales the moment skg comes through they would not become object to those laws, but i honestly don’t see why they would, it doesn’t even cost a lot to just give out the server tools
because otherwise there’s no way it’d ever pass, both because of the realities of business and also the actual material of game development. Thinking it would apply to things already developed is uninformed wishful thinking! if you listened to any of the SKG talks in the eu they say this over and over
dunno how uninformed it really is because literally any other consumer protection law works that way. if you continue selling in-game purchases you must comply to the latest laws period. otherwise overwatch 2 could technically become overwatch 3 and then overwatch 4 and consumer laws post 2016 would never apply because it’s technically just patches
i don’t see why this law would be exempt to the same reasoning regardless. i’m aware it doesn’t apply retroactively but there’s nothing retro about selling new microtransactions in 2028
i’d appreciate some links to those kind of statements being made because i tried looking and only found the retroactive angle discussed. they don’t seem to cover the ground of “game that exists now and keeps selling new stuff after the laws come into effect” in any of those
I believe you’re talking past each other. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe eatingsand is saying that actively operating Live-Service games would need to comply to any consumer protection laws, including SKG, or they’d be in violation of said laws. While Awuga is saying that games that were released prior to any consumer protection laws, including SKG, won’t need to comply to said laws since they’ve already been made and released.
These are not mutually exclusive. The Crew, for example, won’t need to suddenly be updated to have an offline mode as the game was released and shut down prior to SKG, but a game like Darktide or PoE would need to comply since they’re actively in service.
i’ve since read into it a bit more and i find a lot of instances of them saying it will certainly not be retroactive (this is clear to anyone i think, no bringing back dead games or games that are already not being worked on) but no instances of them saying that live service games will be able continue to operate storefronts and sales freely without having an eol plan to secure those purchases consumers are making.
honestly it could be either way depending on what law text they eventually come up with. regardless of what the skg guys say, the text of the law will be an EU matter and they tend to force existing things to comply in similar consumer protection matters. i don’t know if there’s anything that makes this genuinely impossible in this case though, seems like it’d be simple enough to require existing games to comply if they want to keep selling digital goods in the EU after passing the law. but as i said i can’t really find specifics on this so probably it’s still up in the air even.
Yeah, consumer protection laws are rarely retroactive, but are treated as “if you want to continue providing a service, you must abide by these laws” and are given a grace period to adopt any necessary changes to become compliant.
That being said there are still loopholes, such as not providing services in protected countries, or even shutting the game down prior to the law taking effect/during the grace period.
AFAIK the legislation isn’t even in draft and they’re still discussing the idea in the EU, so we don’t know what exactly it will look like. Especially for existing live services.
Typically it won’t apply retroactively to past sales, but once the law comes into place you must comply to keep selling (to protected consumers). It may not even apply to products/services that were launched prior to a yet-to-be-determined cutoff date. So potentially expect a lot of rush-jobs and >>totally<< planned Early Access periods from game companies looking to skirt the additional commitments (if they can, they will).
It’s like GDPR cookie banners – no website was punished for not having them before the laws came into place. But operating now without proper consent measures means you risk litigation.
Can’t say for sure until there’s actual legislation drafted and put forward, but most likely any Stop Killing Games regulations are going to grandfather in existing games, like Darktide, and not require anything of them.
Most legislation of this type is “applies to products released after X date after this law is passed”, for a number of reasons, most of which are even good. It’s not impossible that it will be expansive enough to include products that receive significant updates after the chosen date (aka, active live service games), but I would not be expecting that in a vacuum.
At the end of the day, solo mode is extremely unlikely to have happen in Darktide. There’s several reasons for this, but the biggest one is that it will simply involve significant amounts of time and effort from FS engineers to rebuild the game’s network infrastructure and hosting mechanics. You can argue that this shouldn’t be the case, but the simple fact of the matter is that it is, and unless something changes bigly, that means we’re just not going to see solo mode for this game.
While I agree with you, my “crusade” for Solo Mode is mainly to try and get Fatshark to admit they scrapped it. It’s pretty pathetic of them to refuse to just state facts because they’re protecting their short term reputation at the expense of their long term reputation.
I’d rather be known as someone who over promised and admitted it, than as someone who makes promises they can’t keep (a liar). How anyone can read an announcement from Fatshark and say “that’s for sure gonna happen because they said it” after multiple examples like Solo Mode is beyond me. When your company reaches the “I’ll believe it when I see it” point with your customers, you’ve already failed.
Since no one has gone and read the law currently trying to pass in California it would only apply to games being sold January 21st 2027, any company that sells a copy of their game after that date would be required to make an offline mode.(Including dlcs, cosmetics)
So darktide or other live service games would have to choose pull it from the stores before the due date in the usa or be bound to provide an offline version when they finish their live version.
The law is applicable towards sells not release dates so grandfather in only counts for purchases before the date but not after.