PSA For any people who want to keep whining about the Single Player...

[Bebop]

Just stop. It sucks that it got shut down, but it did have a single player as advertised. It was never advertised, nor licensed, as an OFFLINE single player game.
You assumed that yourself, which is your own blunder. It even said that it required a connection to play on the store page, people! So it's the Devs' fault you decided to not read the store page? Right...
Welcome to life.
Grow the hell up.

[Silent Protagonist]

that and right now the few devs that remained have stuck a deal with MS and a Digital Arts museum and right now a contract is being written up for the Museum bringing the servers back up for all those who own the game (is progress in the right direction but news is few and far between but its still a thing its the legal end that is dragging ass on it (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lawyers and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and all)

[Rock]

PSA for whiny Fan Bois.

The game page says "Internet Connection Required". Check. Game doesn't run despite having required "Internet Connection". False advertising 101. I paid for this crap and can't even play it.

[Crunch]

Thank you for the PSA Mr. Krabs.

Rock, The game was running for three years. The company that made it went out of business (literally, it doesn't exist any more). The license for it from Microsoft expired (the owners of the digital IP) and without a company to lease it, there was no way to keep the servers running legally.

Prime (the lead developer) has gone on to another company and is working on other projects, but has been working in his spare time (not getting paid for any of this) to have TheMade (a digital museum) host the servers as an 'exhibit'... and beyond belief, Microsoft seems to be actually *okay* with this idea. The rest is time and legal hurdles moving at the speed of corporations (which really is a glacial pace).

All I'm saying is those that are defending the situation are doing so for a reason. Prime could have walked away, under no obligation to try and bring it back for us, or even owe us much explanation, but for those of us that have been around the whole time, the team really came through while the studio was running. They made a lot of missteps along the way, and the rocky, laggy, launch didn't help, but they were keeping us informed the whole time, they always listened to us, responded to feedback by making changes to things. It was a very good team that worked on this. Near the end, Prime and one of the programmers still added a few things in on their spare time on the weekends, KNOWING they weren't getting paid for it, but because they wanted to keep it going for as long as they could, and make it the best they could for us.

Some of the crabbiness may also be explained by the fact you are not the first person to just jump in and declare a 'scam' when it really was just a sad situation for many involved (including everyone in the studio that lost their jobs as the company went out of business, just to put things into perspective...) that *might* have a happy ending eventually... for the players. I hope all the members of the development team find their happy endings as well with gainful employment elsewhere.

As for me, I'm sorry you never got the chance to play it. I was a good game made by a team of folks that had a lot of heart and passion for Shadowrun. You said you were going to try and get your money back for that, and I wish you luck (but as I mentioned in that other thread, that's between you and Steam, and...).

Anyway, I've explained it all before, but since you seem so invested, I thought I'd dredge up the tale again.

Crunch~

[Silent Protagonist]

as always well said crunch

[Katsu]

Originally posted by Rock:

The game page says "Internet Connection Required". Check. Game doesn't run despite having required "Internet Connection". False advertising 101. I paid for this crap and can't even play it.

If it says "Internet connection required to play", how did you arrive at the idea that you would *not* have to connect to a server for any portion of the game?

This is pretty normal even for modern AAA titles you can play alone, be it Diablo III or The Division, to name just a few examples. If you click on the "Single-player" button on the store page, you will be shown a lot more. Welcome to the 21st century.

It sucks for you considering you did not get anything out of your investment, but blaming anyone else for putting off playing this game for years is a pretty unfair move. No different than buying a loaf of bread from the bakery and then complaining it's gone bad after letting it rot for months.

If you've come for the purpose of generating outrage, you will only find more disappointment here. I doubt insulting everyone who disagrees with your opinion is going to bring you much closure.

[Rock]

Games don't rot. They are not bread. That is a dumb comparison. I have Atari games I can still play if I like. I purchased the game. I have an internet connection. Plenty of games make you "sign-in". Stardock is notorious for pointlessly forcing you to go online. But they can also easily turn that off. That is exactly what I expect out of any game I purchased. If the server goes down, TURN OFF the sign in requirement in the code. It should not be difficult unless the game was coded very poorly.

[rentier7419]

there are license issues with your comment - they have the "online"-license not the offline-license - so there is no legal way to remove the need for serverconnection else they also have to pay licensefraud(if thats a word)

[Fraggoth]

Originally posted by Rock:

Games don't rot. They are not bread. That is a dumb comparison. I have Atari games I can still play if I like. I purchased the game. I have an internet connection. Plenty of games make you "sign-in". Stardock is notorious for pointlessly forcing you to go online. But they can also easily turn that off. That is exactly what I expect out of any game I purchased. If the server goes down, TURN OFF the sign in requirement in the code. It should not be difficult unless the game was coded very poorly.

Part of the difficulty in this case is the fact that your character data is stored serverside - you need to sign in in order to have access to your characters, much like most other MMOs (World of Warcraft, Everquest, Guild Wars, City of Heroes/Villains, EVE Online, etc.). That paired with what rentier7419 mentioned above makes this an irritating situation, for sure.

That said, it's FAR from unique - what do you think happens to all those MMORPGs that die out? If yer lucky, you have some enthusiasts that manage to get private servers or emulated servers up and running a-la City of Heroes/Villains, Star Wars Galaxies, or Warhammer Online. If you aren't lucky, well, you go the way of Tabula Rasa, Horizons: Empires of Istaria, and many others.

Worth noting is that in the Modern Era, you no longer actually have ownership of a game if you purchase it - instead, you basically just have a license to play. Whatever service you use to run the game - be it Steam, Epic Games Store, Stardock, Origin, Uplay, Blizzard, or GOG - reserves the right to remove that game from your account (or remove your account entirely) whenever they want, for whatever reason. Yes, that sucks mightily, but hey - you signed the EULA, so you agreed to those terms. Sure, few if any of those services would ever go ahead and DO that, but the point is that they COULD.

In the case of SC:BL you have a company that no longer exists that is making a genuine effort to get their game up and running in SOME form, all at-cost with absolutely no hope whatsoever of recouping that time and effort. There is absolutely no reason for them to do so other than because they want to (and maybe because it sets a precedent and will pave the way forward for other deprecated games to do the same).

[Rock]

I don't buy MMORPGs for exactly that reason. I own all the games I buy. I am not purchasing licenses.

I have played other "online" games that patched when the servers went down so people could still play the game offline. End of the day, if I buy a product, I should be able to use it. The product was sold to me under false pretenses.

[Brigand231]

The only way to truly buy a game to own it these days is to buy a board game. Any game you "buy" on Steam is purchasing a licence. Your Steam game library is (in reality) a library of licences, not a library of games, regardless of whether you have them installed locally or not.

[Rock]

I purchase PS4 games all the time. Also PC games in a box. Very few games actually require any sort of online connection to play.

Also play plenty of Steam games without being online.

[Brigand231]

Originally posted by Rock:

I purchase PS4 games all the time. Also PC games in a box. Very few games actually require any sort of online connection to play.

Also play plenty of Steam games without being online.

I think you're misunderstanding some terminology here. Even purchasing a PS4 game is a license. PC games that come in a box are also licenses to play those games. Requiring an online connection or not has zero to do with ownership vs licence.

[Rock]

LOL. I own the game, and I can play whenever I want. The clearest sign someone has lost an argument is when they start grasping at semantics.

[Silent Protagonist]

so your admitting your defeat then? and your willing to end this pathetic argument of who owns what?

[Rock]

I'm not the one who tried to turn this into a pathetic semantic argument. I owned the game, and should have been able to play. Now I refunded the game, so no further issues.