EA has recently announced that they're essentially flipping the kill switch on their free-to-play real time strategy game BattleForge, terminating all server support for it by October 31st. As the game requires an Internet connection to play, this means in the absence of a server to host the online content, the game will be rendered totally unplayable in the coming months. Though I have never played the game myself, looking over some reviews of it, there were many players who were quite fond of the game and had much praise to say about it, even though the game has failed to reach the mainstream market penetration that it might have deserved. What's more from what I've read, it is technically possible to solo through the game by yourself without necessarily needing to interact with any other players; in fact some missions are exclusively single player by design, and in-game currency can be earned through playing the game and without necessarily needing to spend real world money.
With these points in mind, this begs the question to all those always online digital future supporters a few months ago, who ardently supported Microsoft's DRM policies: What happened to all that good faith you had that these companies will provide an offline patch later? I've been told on several occasions that surely if it ever came to this, these benevolent corporations who think only for what's in the best interest of the gamer will simply provide a patch for offline play, and thus problem solved! Nothing to get worked up about, so see? What's the big deal? You're all just making a big scene about nothing. Well here we are; that theory has been put to the test now and it failed. Even though BattleForge theoretically has enough of a framework in place to offer an offline option, none will be given even in its final hours.
It's worth noting that BattleForge is far from the first video game ever to suffer this kind of digital fate, as there have been many free-to-play style web browser games that have come and gone over the years as well, but BattleForge is particularly unique in that it's a much more advanced and in-depth game produced from a well-established AAA publisher, which gives us a frightening glimpse into what we can truly expect from this grand "digital future" for hardcore gamers that always online proponents speak of so fondly. Some players have actually invested well over $100 into this game and now they will have nothing to show for it. BattleForge wasn't originally free-to-play either; it came in full retail boxed copies, which have now been effectively repurposed into paperweights too. Isn't always online great guys? I love it when my software discs come with an arbitrary ticking time bomb attached. In fact, I think I want all my games always online. That's the world we live in after all, isn't it? #AdamOrthLogic
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| Where's Batman when you need him? |
In EA's statement, they remark that they find it unfortunate and never easy to shut down an old game like BattleForge. That was a nice sentiment, but wait a minute, BattleForge was released in March of 2009. The game is only four years old! This is considered an "old" game? Even World of Warcraft is still being supported after all these nine years and counting. Of course, one could argue that Warcraft is a significantly more popular game, and as long as a game maintains a healthy level of player activity, it will always be supported. Perhaps, but the lasting value of a game really shouldn't be left up to the whims of the majority. If a player feels like revisiting a game they paid for with their own money even many years into the future, there's no reason that option shouldn't still be left open to them, regardless of whether that game ever managed to achieve popular widespread appeal or not. It's their game; they should decide when they feel like playing it or returning to it, especially when the game theoretically should have been capable of offering offline content in the first place.
BattleForge may not be one of the more iconic and well-known games to suffer this fate, but it raises a warning flag for what we can expect from bigger games to come as more AAA mainstream games are fundamentally integrated with online functionality. The clock is ticking for some of your favorite games, and someday many classics may be lost to future generations because of arbitrary restrictions created by an online service-based approach to gaming.
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