What Happens If Devs Want To Shut Down Game

[Sparky862]

Will we still be able to use the servers to play on, game just doesn't get updates anymore?

Cause there are not many space games out there, and ED is far better for me than what is on the Market so I don't want the game shutting down.

[funkynutz]

They don't want to shut it down any time soon. It's one of their biggest earners.

There's a lot of speculation around the subject, static offline galaxies for instance... But the truth is, we don't know what the future holds. Pointless worrying about it at the moment.

[EJR]

Pretty sure ED is Frontier's flagship game, been running for almost a decade now

[HamakiBCN2]

In its current state, the game would be gone.

There were talks, years ago, about what would Frontier do in that scenario. I believe the idea was that, in the event of an inminent shutdown, they would try and provide a static version of the galaxy that could be run locally so that, theoretically, people would be able to play offline.

I don't think there's been a single word about that since then. My guess? if it ever comes to that, i doubt Frontier would be in a finantial situation in which they would be able to do that. What would happen, i think, is that it would go free-to-play for a while, then all cosmetics would be unlocked, and a few weeks later, the game would be shut down, dead.

Goog news is that there's no indication of any of that to happen anytime soon, so there's that.

[W0lff_]

The game would be shut down, just like most of other MP games. Unplayable by any conventional means. If you tried to play you'd be greeted with something like a "There's been an error connecting with the servers!" screen and greying out all buttons in the menu.

I doubt they'll let players set up their own servers, but who knows; I wouldn't count with that though.

[Sparky862]

I would appreciate like a offline mode should this happen. Cause honestly I don't see myself playing the other games there is to offer.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Sparky862:

Will we still be able to use the servers to play on, game just doesn't get updates anymore?

FDevs also lease servers space for this game on Amazon (AWS). If they ever decide to shut the game down, I suspect that they will stop paying for the servers, too. There is no reason to keep game servers online for a shut down game.

Cause there are not many space games out there, and ED is far better for me than what is on the Market so I don't want the game shutting down.

It's not going to happen any time soon. FDevs just announced 4 new ships, and something very exciting to come this year. I doubt that they meant shutting down the game as something exciting for us to expect. ;)

Before game servers go down, FDevs might release an offline version of the game with a static galaxy. At least, that was a probable plan back then.

[Alrik]

Originally posted by Sparky862:

Will we still be able to use the servers to play on, game just doesn't get updates anymore?

If Frontier doesn't want to publish Elite Dangerous anymore they will sell it to an other company.
There are even older MMOs than Elite Dangerous still running by new publishers that made that their bussines model.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Alrik:

If Frontier doesn't want to publish Elite Dangerous anymore they will sell it to an other company.

Why would they? They are not obliged to sell what they don't use. It's still their iconic game, even when the time comes for them to stop its servers.

[HikariLight]

With how there are the Private Group and Solo settings, maybe they can set up the Solo one to be properly offline and the Private Group could be one player hosts and their friends join in.
Just my thoughts on it.

[HamakiBCN2]

Originally posted by HikariLight:

With how there are the Private Group and Solo settings, maybe they can set up the Solo one to be properly offline and the Private Group could be one player hosts and their friends join in.
Just my thoughts on it.

That would mean either running the entire Background Galaxy Simulation locally (good luck with that) or playing in a dead galaxy where nothing ever happens, minor factions are either never in any state, or stuck in the same state forever.

Frankly, I would kind prefer to give it a respectful closure and just shut it down altogether, rather than having some gimped zombie version of it.

[⎝⧹Za Furan⧸⎠]

I hope they become it an offline game without the BGS at least, if they decide to shut down the servers, better that than nothing.

[HamakiBCN2]

Originally posted by <【Za Furan】>:

I hope they become it an offline game without the BGS at least, if they decide to shut down the servers, better that than nothing.

The problem is, the BGS controls pretty much everything else. what kinds of missions show up in the board, where are the combat zones, what signals spawn in any system...

Without the BGS, or rather, with a BGS frozen in time (like the "snapshots" they used in Betas before), nothing ever changes, and nothing you ever do has any effect whatsoever.

In my opinion, that's actually worse than nothing. I'd rather see the game gone in a blaze of glory, than exist in such a pathetic state.

[⎝⧹Za Furan⧸⎠]

Originally posted by HamakiBCN2:

Originally posted by <【Za Furan】>:

I hope they become it an offline game without the BGS at least, if they decide to shut down the servers, better that than nothing.

The problem is, the BGS controls pretty much everything else. what kinds of missions show up in the board, where are the combat zones, what signals spawn in any system...

Without the BGS, or rather, with a BGS frozen in time (like the "snapshots" they used in Betas before), nothing ever changes, and nothing you ever do has any effect whatsoever.

In my opinion, that's actually worse than nothing. I'd rather see the game gone in a blaze of glory, than exist in such a pathetic state.

They can make the BGS host sided then, and make it manageable by a single player in systems with millions for example.

[0Samuel]

I mean, look at Eve. I don't think anyone bothers asking what happens when that gets shut down any more.

Truth is, unless Frontier decides to release an Elite Dangerous II, which seems unlikely, their fortunes are pretty tightly bound to that of this game; their other projects might make a bunch of money on initial sale, but they don't have the longstanding brand recognition or dedicated playerbase to provide them any reliable income with which to keep their studio afloat when the side projects flop.

Now, another fiasco like Odyssey's initial release could, conceivably, kill the game. But, even with the diversification they seem to have gone for in the aftermath of that, killing the game would kill the studio. So until Frontier gets targeted by the nastier sort of corporate raider, I think it's fair to say they'll keep the servers open for the foreseeable future.

[꧁༺ Some ༻꧂]

Originally posted by Sparky862:

Will we still be able to use the servers to play on, game just doesn't get updates anymore?

Cause there are not many space games out there, and ED is far better for me than what is on the Market so I don't want the game shutting down.

Then that's just what's going to happen You pretty much answered your own question in your question. Is there property they do it they want with it All we essentially bought was a license to use the software This is why I stopped purchasing games that require online only services I will only ever play free to play games that are under this type of umbrella ever again after these devs abandoned us console users so. They can go noose themselves for all I care

Just to be more clear about it or once the servers are shut down all you're going to be able to do is the tutorial nothing more nothing less because as far as I'm aware the PvP aspect of the game the arena I think it's called requires online services as well.

Therefore the software becomes useless and essentially abandon where I wouldn't even go as far as to call it that considering it doesn't even function without the server
At least most abandoned software can actually function . It's going to take a miracle for someone to reverse engineer the client to run on a custom server built from the ground up. As this is possible as it was done on fantasy Star online for the Dreamcast and PC back in the early mid 2000s