I remember getting a PS3 just to avoid this back then

Worse. All games used to let you create your own servers to play with friends. That's basically gone.
- Not just that. People wonder why online games are so toxic, overly competitive and filled with cheaters. Matchmaking is the reason.
  You don't have to be nice because chances are you're never going to play with those people again. All other matchmade players are just glorified bots, they're completely dehumanized. That means shitheads can act like shitheads without any repercussions. Compare that to community servers where the admin will ban you if you're an asshole. You even end up making friends because the same people will visit the same server.
  And what's your purpose for playing when everyone you're playing with are glorified bots? Well your focus turns on you which in turn means your main metric of fun becomes your own skill. Since you can directly measure your own skill you look a things like wins/losses and kdr. You start to focus on things that correlate to competitive play and if the matchmaking is skill-based the game actually pushes you into sweats as the goal is to get you to a statistical 50% winrate. Now compare that to community servers where you're not pushed into sweats, the overall skill of players stays largely the same and because you'll be playing with people you know there no need to focus on being the best you can be, you can just mess around with others.
  And of course cheating is a huge issue, but again it's one of those things where having an admin to vet sus players make a huge difference. The admin isn't infallible but cheating is less of an issue if you're playing with people you know.
  But people would much rather give it all up and deal with toxicity, sweats and cheating because the server admin could be a badmin. But maybe I'm just old and am remembering the good old days when you could make friends playing on the same server.
  
  Jesus. I hadn’t thought about it.
  I never make friends in games these days. I just drone around and quit when I get tired of it. I don’t even like multiplayer anymore. This is why.
  Back in Counter-Strike/CS: Source days I made a ton of real friends. I knew what was going on in their lives. I congratulated them when they got married and had kids.
  My clan server was always full of regulars just laughing and telling jokes and making changes to the server to see what worked for us. We had it perfect. Vote for knife fights, fun sounds like “gotchya bitch” for a knife kill. We built it together and we all stumbled into the server by accident and it just fit who were so we stayed. We had a rotation of maps that we all agreed on.
  They’re still on my friends list. Last online 11 years ago, 7 years ago, 13 years ago, 12 years ago.
  Damn, looking at that hurt a little bit.
  It’s sad just how fast time goes. I have no idea where they are now or what they’re doing. That sucks.
  The last time I talked to the one dude he had overdosed on heroin and was trying to get his life together. He might not even be alive anymore.
  For nearly 5 years I hung out with those dudes every night.
  I meet people now that I could see myself being friends with, but there’s no incentive to talk to them again. Random lobby, play game, the end.
  I was hoping GO (now 2) would have an active user base in the servers. Nope. No gungame, no endless custom maps, no fun sounds, just base shit.
  As sad as it was, I’m glad you made me think about this tonight.
  
  Spot on!
  Sometimes even cheaters could be dealt with without an admin in those days. Servers would have fun game settings and odd maps that would break cheating gameplay.
  My brother and I often played CS in the same room, on opposing teams because we didn't like being cheated and didn't want to be cheaters. We found an empty server with a sniping-only map. Made for great fun and someone joined in about 15 minutes later. They seemed really good, so we joined together to see if we could make it challenging. The new guy was just too good, so we decided to swap back and forth with the new guy to see if one of us could make a 1v2 miracle happen. That's when we figured out he was impossibly aim hacking. Bummer, our fun game was toasted.
  Then we realized the map settings had friendly fire on and a 5 second start delay. Aim hacks don't target your own teammates. A perfect trap was available: we'd headshot TK the cheater at game start and then 1v1 each other. The cheater tried swapping to the other team only to find my brother using the same TK tactic. Our cheating friend found himself without a chance to grift. Needless to say, he didn't hang around for long.
  
  Holy fuck I miss community servers
- I miss the days of opening Steam and being able to search a million servers to find the specific niche type of game I wanted in CS. Warcraft, custom maps, zombie... So fun
  
  There's people actively working on bringing those to cs2, but you wouldn't know by the massive shitshow that the server browser is with thousands of redirects currently, which is why the community also built a server browser if you search CS2Browser you'll find it, you can go back to enjoying it ^^
  
  Zombie escape is the best 🏃‍♂️ 🧟‍♀️
- I don't doubt this this is generally the case, but most of the games I enjoy playing with friends offer their own servers. Which got me thinking about it, and they tend to be indie games.
  So it's not gone. Niche, perhaps.
  
  it just reinforces the fact that the only games worth playing are indies and like 5 AAA ones
- AKA dedicated servers. They exist now for games now, but are... well not rare, but very specific. Factorio has a dedicated server. Ark has a dedicated server. Valheim, Space Engineers (windows only), Satisfactory, to name a few that I've dealt with myself. Demand them. Punish devs who don't accommodate them with your wallets. No user dedicated servers, no purchase. Fuck you and the distributed info-scraping service you rode in on.
  I have a list of games I will never buy because they have succumbed to the lure of hosted services with no user control, no dedicated server support. Those devs want control; they want to control you, how you play and how you interact with those you play with.
  
  https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dedicated_Servers_List
  Just posting this here. No Reason.

- Tinnitus?
  
  Not to be confused with EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
- Stop making me more jealous.

Are we really going to convince ourselves now that Sony wouldn't have introduced a subscription at some point? Realistically the only reason Microsoft where the ones to popularise it is because Sony didn't get there first
- Meanwhile Nintendo was just waiting in the corner so they didn't have to be the first to try and start charging for their incredibly shitty p2p serverless online service while changing literally nothing
  
  We can at least be relatively sure Nintendo wouldn't have been first because they were so fucking terrified of online consoles that they almost had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it at all
- Nostradamus much?

Just don't buy that expensive crap. If people where better at math they would buy PCs instead and we wouldn't have any exclusives.
- Steam deck is the best option for cost/value
  
  Damn I want that limited oled though haha.
  I probably won’t be getting it.
- I'm finding it hard to believe that you can get PS5-tier graphics and performance from a $450 PC...do you have a build you can recommend?
  
  You get cheaper games, no subscription for online play, mods, replaceable parts, and an actual computer that can do literally anything you program it to though. Also a PS5 is at the very least $550 where I live
  
  Psst... The ps5 has a monthly/annual cost you're conveniently forgetting about, while unfortunately proving right the OC you replied to
  
  You have to factor in the cost of the online subscription over the life of the console when pricing out a comparable PC. That is what he meant by “better at math”.
  
  You can't, but getting in an argument with the master race nuts is a fool's errand.
  
  This is another case of YMMV because you have to be thrifty. You can walk away from a microcenter with everything but the GPU for that price. (The 5600x3D bundle is a really good option but I understand most people can't get to a microcenter in person).
  If you're thrifty, you can get your hands on something like a Radeon 5700xt for between 80-120$ (check Ali Express).
  On the AliExpress note, even though I recommend a GPU, I can tell you that I do not recommend any of these Chinese motherboards from AliExpress unless you're prepared to burn money. You can get them to work for very cheap but they are made out of ewaste and there is always something wrong with them (I've bought a few).
  This will get you into the sub 800$ tier Gaming PC. At that point I would recommend installing a Linux OS like ChimeraOS. This will give you the total functionality of a steam Deck and that console-like experience.
  If you're looking for some more pre-assembled, morefine and minisforum make small PCs that come with a discrete radeon 6600m. This will get you into a PC that will be the size of a console but will definitely put you above 800$.
  
  yes, truly that is all that matters. God forbid you have to turn off godrays

- Gates had a point. Everyone was spending thousands on hardware but wouldn't spend a little more for Basic. There were free options, they weren't poor ( computer hardware was very expensive in the 70's), but everyone was using Basic without buying it.
  It's like today where people will spend thousands for a gaming PC, then complain about Windows when they should be using Linux.
  
  But it's literally reversed now? Windows is the only consumer-grade paid OS and it's also the worst consumer-grade OS.
  Bill Gates promised higher software quality and then delivered an OS, which has pretty much as its only quality that other software targets it.

Laughs in PC.
- I enjoy PC gaming as much as anyone but the simple fact is you can't do what a Series S does for $250 with a $250 PC. Plus with gamepass the math doesn't even need a napkin. It's simply the best deal in gaming right now, whether you're paying for online play or not.
  
  you can't do what a Series S does for $250 with a $250 PC. Plus with gamepass the math doesn't even need a napkin. It's simply the best deal in gaming right now, whether you're paying for online play or not.
  The consoles themselves are often sold at a loss because they know they will make that money back on games. Which is a better value proposition is arguable, especially once you factor in how much more you'll be paying per game relative to steam sales, the ability of PCs to do things other than gaming, and the inevitable obsolescence of consoles. I can still play games on a modern PC from when steam was new.
  Microsoft also offers a game pass for PC, but I'd rather own my games.

It was never going to be free forever, because that would be leaving free money on the table, which is unacceptable to any evil megacorp (which is to say, all of the big three). I imagine PSN initially being free was mostly a result of trying to bridge the gap between PS3 and 360 sales, given the multi-year delay and huge price difference.
- It was never going to be free forever, because that would be leaving free money on the table
  So... When will playing online on PC require a subscription on top of the ISP?
  
  Probably about 2 days after Valve becomes a publicly traded company. While GabeN is alive I don't think that's a risk but after that who knows.
- I remember hearing it was originally gonna be paid, but Sony messed something up in their servers that made people angry and were forced to keep it free.

This is why I exclusively play indie offline games. Also because my PC is getting old lol.

Funny, I remember the playstation's online being dog shit and offline a ton.

I haven't played multiplayer since the PS3 days, before Sony joined the greed bleed

I thought WoW, RuneScape and the like pioneered online subscriptions?
- They were not the first, either. But definitely the biggest in their day.
- Ultima Online predates those too.
- Everquest had a subscription. I think subscription models were common back then for being a member of a forum or getting a magazine or news letter.

Reject modern gaming, return to quake 3 arena.

Is the steam deck a console?
- No, it's a handheld PC.
  
  To be fair, does that make a ps3 running Linux a desktop PC?
- For the purposes of this conversation I would say yes
  Then again I would count the steam deck more as a console than a PC in most scenarios
  
  I count it as a portable mini-PC because the games I'm playing on it are the same I own on PC, using the same account...
- I guess that depends on your definition, but really I'd lump it into handheld computer, I've owned several, such as the GPD Win series
  You can install desktop Linux software on it with no need to perform any types of "jailbreak" so while steam os is a proprietary skin for Linux, its not really locked down the way traditional brick consoles are.
  Console doesn't have a hard definition, so anyone could come through and make a case for why it is.
  Edit: you can see the people replying after me all have different definitions and standards for the word, it's arbitrary really
  
  It runs desktop Linux natively, steam button, power, switch to desktop.
  
  So was a launch ps3 not a console because you could install linux as an "OtherOS" before sony revoked thr feature?
- Yes. It's a mass manufactured consumer product with gaming as it's intended purpose
  That's a console.
  
  Consoles typically lock the player into their ecosystem, though. You don't have to use steam to play games on the deck.
- Depends at what level you define 'console'.
  Is it a device purpose built for playing games? Yes.
  Does it have its own bespoke gaming platform? No. It plays games and applications made for the x86 PC platform.
  
  does it have its own bespoke gaming platform?
  Sure steam doesn’t fit that definition exactly but I mean…it kind of serves the same purpose.
  
  Steamdeck is more console than x86 PC is a platform. I get what you mean, but PS4 and PS5 are too technically x86 PCs. Most modern games' tightly coupled target are actually APIs they are using.
  It can be one click in a compiler to compile the game to ARM PC, but it's a different story when you port your game engine to console, where you have to implement the same features using different APIs. (E.g. Raytracing, storing game data, connecting to profile, implementing multiplayer etc.).
  In the example of SteamDeck, the platform is Win32 or Linux ABI compatible OS.

If MS didn't do it, someone else would have and it would have become the trend anyway. The problem isn't the particular sins of a specific company (though to be clear, MS is heinous), the problem is the profit motive.

I sleep like shit, but at least I'm happy with my PC.

Video games could have had a single version for the entire world which contains every localization that the user can freely choose between (you know, like every other software with an international market), but Nintendo popularized the geolocking model that other competitors also started using. (And no it's not because it would take too much space, that might have been true in the ROM cartridge days but now most game cards are just overpriced proprietary SD cards with hundreds of gigabytes of storage, and it's not like game studios are particularly conservative with file sizes nowadays.)
Phones also could have had removable batteries and could be disassembled, but Apple popularized the throw it in a dumpster and get a new one model that other competitors also started using.
The tech industry is especially brazen because two thirds of the users literally value convenience and "polish" above data ownership and device repair rights and literally anything else and the other third is just ignored and everyone calls them stuck in the past, paranoid, amish, etc.

Monetization is the natural path of capitalism. It would not have stayed free for long.

I don’t think folks remember how truly shitty Nintendo‘s online service was when it was free. The fact is these companies will not put meaningful resources into them unless they are directly generating revenue. I hate it, but that’s reality.
- ...It's improved? Doesn't it still handle communication weirdly (needing a separate app for voice chat), or is that on a game-by-game basis?
  
  It was awful prior. The netcode was terrible, MP was a joke on virtually every game.
- It's still shitty even now that you pay for it. The free retro emulation doesn't offset the connection issues and massive lag, nor does it excuse the god awful store.
  
  I still think they're 10 years behind but dude it was unplayable prior.

Yeah… Microsoft has this thing where they ruin everything they can get their hands on.

I literally had this thought today then this post shows up on lemmy

OK. I've been browsing through the Lemmy comments here, and I'm drucking funk, fuck you.
Once there was a utopia. YOU Killed it. Fuck you. Um not really a utopia, but whatever, fuck you.
The beginning of the end was Gears of War or Halo. It wasn't that they were particularly good, but they were easy. Anybody could just hop into a game. WOOOO! Game time. Then in came the corporations.
I need to give Epic a little bit of credit here. They've always been fighting against the establishment. So none of you remember the days of Unreal Tournament. You fucking mewling little pukes. The name Cliffy B means nothing to you. Once upon a time a game company made a FPS arena shooter game called Unreal Tournament. It was the sequel to their story based FPS called Unreal. It was amazing for its time, but who cares. They defined game engines in ways that are rippling to this day.
Blah blah blah, stuff, then they released a game called Gears of War. Ok, you're new here. Epic was used to releasing amazing games and then engaging with their players. I know the name CliffyB for a reason. Oh, but Microsoft is a Company. They are serious business. This is a store. Epic would release MapPacks for the UT games, and they would contain some serious work, and they were available for free. Nope said MS. This is a Store. You buy things here. Fight fight fight. Don't worry. The good guys (investment brokers) will win. Right.
But MS had Halo. Nobody here remembers the early source of Halo. The game that came before. I never played it myself, I just remember a high-school acquaintance talking about it. Something about Marathon. Yeah. Marathon, that seems like it was important. Hah ha ha ha, nothing.
Marathon becomes halo. Fuck. That's a lot of shit to contain to one sentence. Oh Well, you're dumb as fuck. Fuck you and your fucking modern ignorance.
"I can play Halo with my friends on my Xbos with such ease. I don't need to smart."
Begin the world of Consoles. This is way betterer. No brain need. Just two thumbs and some money.
"Oh, there is money here." said the people who have MBAs and not much else to speak of. (So do you know what MBA is for? It's for people who are fucking useless, but went to school anyways lol)
At this point, we need to lambaste Epic, because they took their success at game development and tried to turn it into power. "Fortnight FTW makes us have a store makes us infinite money!"
Ok, so now here we are. All the shitstains are in place, (including you lol, cough cough).
So now the people who are making decisions about games don't actually know the first fuck about anything. Not about storytelling, not about non-linear storytelling, not about emergent gameplay, not about basic gameplay. They don't understand what compels instrumental play vs free play. What they understand is that things "NAMES" sell, and you will buy.
And you're buying. Look at all the dollars you're spending on...
- is this a copypasta
  
  No
- The beginning of the end was Gears of War or Halo.
  Hey now I have many fond memories of playing user made maps in Halo CE on PC. For me it was when Duke Nukem Forever flopped. Everyone preordered it and it started a long line of games being delivered buggy and incomplete.
  Halo 2 was the one actually on x box live.

What if I told you servers cost money. No servers, no online gaming.
- yet somehow it's free on PC, hmmmmm
  
  Ah right, good point. Perhaps the cost calculations work differently then. Consoles are much cheaper to buy than PCs because the manufacturers expect to make money on their subscription services. I'm pretty sure neither Microsoft nor Sony make any profit on selling the hardware, but they have to make profit somewhere.
  
  To be fair almost every popular multiplayer game has online micro transactions or a premium subscription model.
  It feels free from your perspective but there are a chunk of users paying for the servers under the Pareto principle.

Online gaming requires servers to run, and servers require money. Either the game is more expensive, the online is a subscription, or you have to run the server yourself. There are games that do each of these.
Edit: or microtransactions. Fuck microtransactions.
- Normalizing needless online servers is part of the issue here (only with AAA titles). These companies set up servers and say shit like "well it has to be paid for somehow!"
  Games like Diablo 4 where you need internet to play single player. Diablo 2 resurrection removed all the LAN/Self hosting features of original D2.
  Blizzard isn't the only company doing this either.
  Fuck that noise.
- That said, with the prices being where they are, a single subscriber basically funds the entire cost of running the server.
  
  Not exactly. Electricity aside, servers also require maintenance. That requires server admins. Those don't come cheap.
  Edit: also network costs. With the requirement of handling high user numbers at stupidly low latency levels, they'll need a seperate internet connection from corp and the data service will also not be cheap.
- PC games run on servers, but you don't pay for a Windows monthly subscription to play the games, you just pay for the individual games themselves.
  These servers are hosted by third party companies anyway.
  
  I’m not sure what you mean. PC games usually run on your PC, unless you’re streaming. It’s the multiplayer server software that run on servers. And the servers are paid for by the company that makes the game, usually. Or the publisher. The actual server hardware is rented from cloud providers, if that’s what you mean. Servers aren’t free, that’s my point. If you want multiplayer online functionality, someone has to pay for the server. And ultimately that cost gets passed on to you, the end user.
- It's too bad every dev runs their own (often piss-poor) servers instead of giving us dedicated server hosting software to run our own. Can't go back to those days even if we wanted!
  
  GameSpy was such dog shit tho
- I wish more games would let us run the servers ourselves these days. Too many of them won’t even let you if you want to.
- Dont grt it twisted the main thing a subscription is funding is shareholder value.
- What do you know, all three happened because of the unrelenting pursuit of profit.
  
  All three happened because servers actually cost money. Do you give away things for free to strangers on the internet?
  There’s no profit in letting users run their own servers, btw.
- Cost of doing business. Publishers who can't afford to literally just forget about the cost of running servers have no need to be in business.
  
  Most companies aren’t in the business of giving away free services, and it’s wild to expect them to be. You wouldn’t expect a landscaping business to do all your landscaping for free after you pay for the first time.
- Most modern games do not have server software to run your own. And yet they don't cost extra to play online on PC. Hm. 🤔
- This is basically an argument for itemizing any and all things that can be articulated tbh. I don't pay a "kitchen" fee or an "electrical" fee or a "dishwasher" fee when I go to a restaurant. They calculate what things cost on the whole then price accordingly. That's how 95% of non-single-item transactions occur.
  I'm not even necessarily against the concept of paying for the service on consoles (I kind of go back and forth on it personally) but this argument simply doesn't hold water.
- Peer To Peer
  Look it up
  Your comment is exactly the same type I'd see from toxic users on reddit arguing that people should pay because Microsoft hosts servers for multiplayer and that the commenter gladly pays for it whenever I'd go to look at reddit posts calling out bullshit on pay walled multiplayer on consoles
  
  Oh I don’t pay. I don’t play on PlayStation or Xbox, and I honestly don’t think people should, but I understand why people do. It’s easy, and playing on PC is harder.
  The more middlemen you put between the developer of the game and the end user the more money you’re going to pay. You might get a better/easier experience, but it will cost more. That’s just economics. So minimizing that is good for the end user if they’re cool with having a harder time setting things up and playing.