With the advent of online-only games what we'll eventually see is the erasure of a generation's (sub)culture.
When in 2070 a kid will ask their parents what they used to do when they were small, they'll answer "Play League of Legends" or maybe "Play Fortnite". "Can I try it?" "No, it is gone now."
>When in 2070 a kid will ask their parents what they used to do when they were small, they'll answer "Play League of Legends" or maybe "Play Fortnite". "Can I try it?" "No, it is gone now."
Even if it weren't online, it would be hard to find emulators in 50 years I assume.
For x86 systems? No way, we already have open source emulators like QEMU and 50 years isn't enough to make the retro computing nostalgia for x86 go away even if they stopped making the things tomorrow.
Is that any different from kids asking their parents to play Gameboy or Nintendo 64 games? Or wanting to play board games that are not sold anymore?
Sure you can find it somewhere second hand, or you could use an emulator. But I suspect this will be possible with the NFS games, someone will figure it out and make them playable.
The meaningful difference is that with an online-only game you can't find it somewhere second hand or use an emulator or patch it. It stops working entirely once the servers are disconnected.
Your best bet is that some volunteer somewhere will spend an enormous amount of time replicating the servers themselves. But unlike emulation (which has been proven legal) these fan projects regularly get shut down by the companies who made the original games, and unlike ROMs, distributing a community server is not as simple as just putting a file on a torrent.
As an example, look at the work that's gone into trying to preserve the Miiverse -- about the best case scenario, Nintendo hasn't tried to sue them yet. In theory there are community options now. In practice, they're not really usable yet; most Wii U games just don't have that functionality working anymore.
So online-only games are in a separate category of difficulty to preserve. In comparison, Gameboy games are basically trivial to set up if you're willing to pirate, and relatively easy to extract from used cartridges even if you're not willing to pirate. The big difference is that even if you have a legal copy of an online-only game already installed on your computer or on its original platform, once the servers go away its no longer playable.
I really miss a bunch of the 3DFX games I used to play on a Voodoo 3000 card in the 90s. After a quick Google search I see a well maintained emulator for it I'm really grateful to have my childhood at my hands anytime.
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When in 2070 a kid will ask their parents what they used to do when they were small, they'll answer "Play League of Legends" or maybe "Play Fortnite". "Can I try it?" "No, it is gone now."
Even if it weren't online, it would be hard to find emulators in 50 years I assume.
Sure you can find it somewhere second hand, or you could use an emulator. But I suspect this will be possible with the NFS games, someone will figure it out and make them playable.
The meaningful difference is that with an online-only game you can't find it somewhere second hand or use an emulator or patch it. It stops working entirely once the servers are disconnected.
Your best bet is that some volunteer somewhere will spend an enormous amount of time replicating the servers themselves. But unlike emulation (which has been proven legal) these fan projects regularly get shut down by the companies who made the original games, and unlike ROMs, distributing a community server is not as simple as just putting a file on a torrent.
As an example, look at the work that's gone into trying to preserve the Miiverse -- about the best case scenario, Nintendo hasn't tried to sue them yet. In theory there are community options now. In practice, they're not really usable yet; most Wii U games just don't have that functionality working anymore.
So online-only games are in a separate category of difficulty to preserve. In comparison, Gameboy games are basically trivial to set up if you're willing to pirate, and relatively easy to extract from used cartridges even if you're not willing to pirate. The big difference is that even if you have a legal copy of an online-only game already installed on your computer or on its original platform, once the servers go away its no longer playable.