There was a time (quite some time ago) that I was a big fan of playing Aliens vs Predator 2's online multiplayer mode. In the realm of multiplayer gaming I've since mostly moved on to greener pastures, but after finally getting around to playing the terrible Playstation 2 RTS game Aliens vs Predator: Extinction (and promptly wishing I'd never bothered) I thought it might be fun to wash the bad taste out of my mouth with some AvP2 action. What actually transpired, though, ended up putting an even worse taste in my mouth.
I installed the game, got all set to go online and... nothing. No master server. That means no cd-key verification, no list of game servers, nothing. After some quick searching, I'd found that Sierra has pulled support of the game. If you want to play AvP2 online now, well, sorry. You can't. If it was just this one game, just this one time, it might not be worth mentioning, but what happened here is a sign of the times for the PC game industry as a whole, particularly as we move faster and faster toward a digital-download-dominated market. It is not just a story of one game, but a cautionary tale of what happens when there is a single point of failure.
Granted, it's a very old game. Granted, Sierra's merger with Activblizzard might have had something to do with all this. However, fundamentally, none of this really matters. What really matters here is that a game that was supported is now no longer supported, and that this lack of support was based solely on a unilateral decision by the company involved. Customers who were formerly able to play the game online now cannot, and there's nothing they can (legally) do about it.
They could have released a final patch to remove the cd-key verification process and hand off the master server responsibilities to Gamespy or something run by the fans who are still out there. They could have, but doing that would've taken time, and time is money. Since they weren't making any more money on this game, it was a sound business move to not spend any more money on it, either. So, they just pulled the plug. Good business sense, but it leaves whoever might still be out there without any options at all; not that Sierra cares, they've sold five million copies of various mass-produced trash since AvP2 was last profitable.
And that, dear reader, is the real reason why this should be a cautionary tale for the whole industry. Any sort of "verification" or other server is a single point of failure. If the company decides they don't want to run this server any more (and they will eventually) and they don't feel like releasing a final patch to disable it (and they probably won't), you're out of luck. In the case of AvP2, the verification process was for multiplayer gaming only. However, we are moving increasingly toward a market where everything is digitally downloaded and DRMed by its makers.
What would happen if, say, Valve decided to pull the plug on Steam? Preposterous, you say! Completely impossible! Fine, it is a long shot. However, let's ignore the odds for a moment and assume it happened. Guess what: absolutely none of your Steam games will work any more. At all. Single player, multiplayer, it doesn't matter. The game is so tied to the verification server, that once the server is gone, absolutely nothing in the game is able to function any more. Steam is the single point of failure taken to its extreme, as the game is entirely tied to the functioning of its servers.
The only comeback to that argument is, "well, that's so awful, it'd never happen." While it's likely that it'll never happen, it's not impossible. The fact that the company is big and probably has the resources to continue supporting their product doesn't mean that they will. If you bought DRMed music from Wal-Mart, you've already learned this lesson the hard way. That's right, retail giant Wal-Mart has unilaterally decided that they don't feel like running DRM servers any more. This means you can't play DRM-protected music you bought (or should we say licensed?) from them. What to do? Wal-Mart suggested you "back it up" by doing exactly the same things the RIAA used to say you can't do. If you happened to miss this announcement (and it's not like they publicized it), you probably didn't find out anything happened until your "plays for sure" music didn't play any more.
Lest the total failure of your entire game collection be too much gloom and doom, it's also possible that Valve may decide to pull support for a handful of older games long after they've past their prime, just as Sierra did here, and just as other companies have done. The point is this: Customers are entirely dependent on the whims of companies when it comes to these decisions, and the companies are going to act solely in their own financial interest. What does it matter if they alienate (no pun intended) the fanbase of some old game? Hey, it probably doesn't. Pull the plug and save a buck! They'll just have to buy something newer and in 5 years we can do it all over again. Right?
