On Cloud Saves and Redundancy

I nearly blogged about this yesterday in a "the sky is falling!" kind of post. A good thing I didn't, since the story has since been updated.

All save files and "careers" of NBA 2K14 are stored in the cloud, not locally. So when 2K took the servers offline, all save games were suddenly lost. Outrage led to 2K bringing the servers back online, saying they decided to extend server life from 18 months to 27 months. Users should be grateful, because 2K's original response was less than comforting: "Sadly this may come as an inconvenience to some of you and if so we truly do understand and can feel for how upsetting this may seem as there always is a special bond that occurs between a player and their MyCareer save but all good things must come to an end and rest assured your MyCareer or MyGM went out while on top!"

I don't play NBA 2K14 (Madden is more my thing). But it made me stop and think for a moment. There are three primary uses for online game servers: to store save games, to run DRM checks, and to create multiplayer lobbies.

Multiplayer Lobbies
With multi-player lobbies, it is no secret that the ability to run the game is dependent on third-party servers. You could be left handing in Left4Dead 2 if Steam's servers get overloaded (which is happening more and more often lately). Battlefield 4 - ditto for EA's servers. Unless someone is running a private server, it is generally accepted that online multiplayer gaming is at the mercy of the stability of the parent corporation's data stacks.

DRM Checks
DRM checks are unfortunately a run-of-the-mill experience these days. A company that sells a product deserves the right to protect the integrity of that product. That doesn't justify Ubisoft's invasive DRM back in the day (remember the Assassin's Creed II DRM debacle?), but if a company demands a license check when I start the game, fine.

The problem that arises is if I don't have internet for whatever reason, or if the game company's severs go down while attempting to play. Mass Effect 3 is a perfect example of this. Every time I log in to the game, a DRM check is run. Not just against my copy of the game, but against all the DLC that is installed with the game. If their servers are down, the game will authenticate (since game authentication is done locally), but the DLC will not. So there is no way I can continue playing the game until the EA servers come back online. Unless I want to start a new game - WITHOUT THE DLC. But when a game's DLC has been monetized like Mass Effect 3's has, who wants to play without it, if you have it? To be fair, this situation has only happened to me twice in three hundred fifty hours of single-player gameplay (EA's servers have been very reliable). And if their servers go down while in the middle of playing the game, everything has been authenticated, so there is no problem (just a little message that pops up saying that connection to EA's servers has been lost).

And what if the servers used to authenticate the game go offline? If you read my post on getting the original Assassin's Creed to run, you'll see that the only way to play that game on PC - even with the DRM-free version from GOG - is to disconnect your PC from the internet so that the game does hang trying to connect to a server that does not exist. A patch from Ubisoft would have been nice...

Save Games
And now, save games. Every single game I have every played has always had local saves that were backed up on line. This is incredibly convenient. Just Cause 2 is the type of game that I glut on, get bored, uninstall, re-install, and glut some more. It is great that the saves are backed up in the Steam cloud, so when I re-install, I can pick right up where I left off. But having the save-file system dependent on an internet connection? Maybe console gamers have better (more constant) connectivity, but as a PC gamer that kind of dependence just boggles my mind. Always have redundancies, whether you work for NASA and are on your way to Mars, or whether you're playing video games paid for with money that save and scraped together for months.

Not having local backups is just insane.

If 2K had patched NBA 2K14 so that all files were now local, then shut down the servers, they would be saving themselves the headache of keeping their servers running, and their userbase would not feel put upon. I understand why so many companies want to use the cloud for as much as possible, I really do. It helps them police piracy. But protection of a product cannot come at the expense of the user-base. That will result the rapid erosion of said user-base, until it no longer exists.