Kelly @ Kelly @programming.dev

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65

Joined

5 mo. ago

I'm using the word "feel" because I'm not qualified to provide a legal opinion.

It lasting 10 years doesn't mean much to the people who were sold the game in the last 6 months without any warning they were buying into the final hours.

Should they have announced and removed it as soon as the board meeting ended? How much earlier would that be in this case?

My unsubstantiated theory is the the licences they signed for all the vehicles and real world content had a 10 year lifetime.

Usually those contracts would just require that they stop selling the game, but they may have included something about the servers in the contract too.

Either way they new something was going to change in 2024 and realistically they knew which of these possibilities were viable:

• sign new deals with all licensors and continue business as usual
• sign new deals with cooperative licensors and modify the game to remove the others
• remove the game from sale and keep the servers running for current customers
• remove the game from sale and kill the servers - tell people to buy the sequal

I'd they waited until December of 2023 to have that meeting then that feels negligent.

If they had that meeting earlier and continued to sell the game (until ≈100 days to EOL) without warning customers that feels fraudulent.

Call me crazy but I expect businesses to guarantee their products.

On December 14, 2023, Ubisoft delisted The Crew and its expansions from digital platforms, suspended sales of microtransactions, and announced that the game's servers would be shut down on March 31, 2024, citing "upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crew_%28video_game%29

People who paid around us$40 for the game on December 13 were being sold a lemon.

Given that it was released in 2014 it seems likely that their licenses were given a 10 year duration and they always intended to shutdown in 2024 at the latest (of course if its user base failed to reach critical mass they could have pulled the plug earlier).

Does selling a game in 2023 when you plan to kill it in 2024 legally qualify as fraud?

It looks better than the art for the new snow bros game

https://youtu.be/yGsHq-mZI8U

Its a pretty good outcome but the games with "resolved" issues are not all good news.

Some examples (all from different games):

• Remaining on the title screen for 30 seconds will cause an error to trigger and the game will close. Please navigate away from the title screen before the error occurs.
• Inputting a particular sequence of controls in a stage may on rare occasion cause the game to close.
• Slowdown may occur in some parts of the game
• Screen distortion may occur in some parts of the game
• When Nintendo Switch 2 players battle Nintendo Switch players online, Nintendo Switch players' character models will have distorted textures.

Still, if they have identified these issues it says a fair bit about how though their testing was.

At that point is not really oblivion?!

NS1 pro controller is compatible with a running NS2 console but will not wake it from sleep.

Not a huge change in the charts but the lists of titles with problems are getting longer.

2 titles have committed to fixes:

• Fortnite (Switch 2 version planned)
• Fitness Boxing (update planned)

I'm reading:

• "exclusively Nintendo Switch 2 game cards" as meaning its the new red S2 game card format.

So no, not compatible with S1 consoles

I'm reading:

• "exclusively Nintendo Switch 2 game cards" as meaning its the new red S2 game card format.
• "include the original Nintendo Switch game and its upgrade pack all on the same game card" as meaning that the base game has been patched with the NS2E upgrade and the result written to disc.

Of course if any post release patches that occur may need to be downloaded but their apparent intent has been to provide a version that is playable from gamecard.

This sounds like the best implementation with the exception that the base game is not playable on S1 consoles (something you could do of you bought it digitally).

• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was the #1 highest selling title on Switch (67m)
• Mario Kart 8 / Deluxe is the #5 highest selling videogame (75m)
• Mario Kart is the #13 highest selling videogame series(189m)

It has a few fans out there

PSx

Transferable licence.

They can be sold, gifted, inherited, etc.

Its the same concept as a stub game disc which requires a full online install (something Xbox used for cross-gen one/series titles).

Its nothing like the account tied physical sales they proposed at the Xbox one announcement.

Switch 2 game-key cards won’t be account- or console-locked

What? Of course not ... that's why they are in the form of game cards.

Switch games are sourced only from Nintendo

I'm pretty sure some regions can buy Nintendo digital games from humble store.

The don't support my region so j don't know what the range is like but I believe it as available for some places.

I don't think he has a great understanding of Australian prices.

The current MKW price of au$120 looks high but if you remove our GST and convert to USD with the average exchange rate over the last 12 months its equivalent to us$70.85. (Donky Kong is au$110 or us$65).

We are currently at a low point with our dollar so the conversion for MKW today would be us$66.49. (DK would be us$61).

Compared to the prices I'm seeing internationally it looks like Australia is getting relatively generous prices from Nintendo.

Interesting, maybe we are just getting a good deal.