- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: Recoton007
Posted by: Botolf
"Pulling the plug" would require more than ceasing to patch a game, I'd argue it would be more along the lines of shutting down all the multiplayer servers, like EA has done for some games in the past. That will most certainly kill a game, stopping post-release patches doesn't doom one. And your Blizzard example, would you expect that to be the norm in the industry? Really, would you?
Using EA Sports is not the best example of a company "pulling the plug" on a game. The reason they cancel online gameplay, is because a new Sports game comes out every year, and managing all of those different servers is costly, and causes more harm then good. They partially cancel service in old sports games because they release a new one every year, and they can't manage the servers, the other reason why they would cancel the servers is to encourage people to buy the latest Madden or Nascar game every year.
Bungie does not churn out new Halo games every year, and neither does Blizzard. It is expected that if you spend many years developing a game, that you update it and clean up the bugs, even after the major sales points in the game have passed. Valve is an excellent example of this, as they have been constantly updating Half-Life 2 ever since the game first came out.
Best example, probably not, but the point I was making is that Bungie is hardly "pulling the plug", you can still play the games, in their entirety, services haven't been discontinued, aside from the obvious patching. The games aren't dead, the developers have just moved on.
To get patches now would be complicated. For Halo PC, Gearbox would probably be the party to do it, and they have their hands full with several ports and a new IP, if I recall correctly. They've no doubt moved on from Halo PC. For Halo 2 Vista, it's even less likely. Hired Gun was broken up into tiny chunks after release iirc, and was obviously handed too much to handle (IIRC, all they had for post-release support was no more than a dozen people, if that), their confirmation of ceased patching so early is no doubt a response.
I will agree with sentiment that Halo 2 Vista was seriously botched, though (Halo PC, not so much. Crappy netcode is an issue, but not a game-breaker often at all). I hope Microsoft handles the eventual porting of Halo 3 to PC (It's bound to, it's selling like the world's ending tomorrow) far better than the disaster that was Halo 2 Vista (More people working on it, non-gimped Guerilla, maybe some features like co-op, etc).