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And some people wonder why digital store prices never go up to support proper apps and games.

Buying cheap is the best insurance against these situations
 
The Korobelniki was the best thing to come from all of this.

But (rock band) Ozma's Korobelniki is still the best version of "The Tetris Theme Song"....

Ah well.... it wasn't nearly as fun as the original GameBoy version.
 
I didn't even know it was on iOS. One of my favorite childhood games on NES. Lots of disappointed kids out there.
 
Hopefully it's being sold to another company. EA has a really bad track record with classic games titles. The debaucherous way they handled Sim City should be taught at schools as what not to do.
 
This is why I generally stay away from non-physical games now.

There is always a chance that a game will be pulled from the App Store, or an iOS update will break the game and the developer may not update the game to make it playable again. There are so many different things that can prevent you from playing games you purchased now.

This is a strange time for gaming. With physical media, it is pretty much good forever as you can always play it. I have many old NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. game that I can still play today, many decades after purchasing them.

If I die, all those games can go to my children, and they can continue to play them if they would like.

With digital purchases, you never know when the games will no longer be available to play.

Even owning the physical media doesn't mean much. If there's an online component to the game then the life of the game has a limit.
 
EA has past form in dumping old licensed apps - I keep an old iPad around purely to let my wife play EA's Yahtzee Adventures and Game of Life, both of which they lost the licence to and were pulled, only to become incompatible with iOS updates shortly thereafter.

I appreciate EA has little choice in the matter unless they are willing to pony up for the licence renewal, but it still sucks.
 
Stuff like this makes me very wary of buying any sort of DLC/microtransactions, especially for games that are "always online" - you never know when the servers are being turned off.

Although with a game like Tetris that definitely doesn't need a constant internet connection it's especially annoying and stupid when they pull a move like that.
 
This is the new norm that will only be pushed harder down our throats as time goes on. You own NOTHING nowadays. If there is an app, game, service, device you like you pay for it as long as you use it. Not saying monthly subscription but everything you buy has an expiration and once it hits you buy it again and again and again.

Don't get me started on copyrights. People really want XYZ. ABC company owns rights to XYZ. Joe makes a new XYZ no you can't do that it's ours. ABC company when are you going to release a new XYZ? *crickets*

Music is the new fun one too. You pay for a subscription and you make playlists. I just this morning looked at a playlist of about 100 songs I made from the 80s 90s 00s. Three songs are grayed out. They are gone now. You can buy them and restore them but shut up and give us money.

Lets not forget that if you buy a physical CD DVD Bluray you are technically not supposed to make a digital copy. You only own a "physical" license.

It's all ridiculous.
 
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This is a shining example of everything wrong with mobile apps and their developers and the ecosystem and everything.
 
This is why I generally stay away from non-physical games now.

.....

If I die, all those games can go to my children, and they can continue to play them if they would like.

With digital purchases, you never know when the games will no longer be available to play.

I agree and disagree with this.

In the 70s/80s/90s, physical games for the Ataris, Nintendos, etc. were on cartridges which were a lot larger. You couldn't easily lose them behind a bookshelf or in some small crack. A dog couldn't take them and destroy them by holding them in his mouth for 3 seconds.

That's the problem with the new media - for the Nintendo DS, the cartridges are so small. For the other systems, they're on CDs, which can be easily scratched or destroyed if dropped and a dog picks it up for 3 seconds, or a kid rubs it on the floor for a few seconds.

That's why I've switched to digital - they can't be ruined so easily. Maybe if my kids were in their teens and we didn't have small pets it would be different, and I'd get mostly physical media.
 
This is so stupid. If EA lost their license to Tetris, fine. But they shouldn’t prevent those who have already downloaded and purchased the apps from being able to play them!
 
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This is why I generally stay away from non-physical games now.

There is always a chance that a game will be pulled from the App Store, or an iOS update will break the game and the developer may not update the game to make it playable again. There are so many different things that can prevent you from playing games you purchased now.

This is a strange time for gaming. With physical media, it is pretty much good forever as you can always play it. I have many old NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. game that I can still play today, many decades after purchasing them.

If I die, all those games can go to my children, and they can continue to play them if they would like.

With digital purchases, you never know when the games will no longer be available to play.
Unfortunately most physical games now days do nothing to ensure the game will still be able to play. Many times these days the "Physical" disc either contains a downloader for the actual game or an incomplete build that requires an immediate update to be playable. Even if you are so lucky as to get a complete build on the disc the game is often coded in such a way as to require the publisher's servers to be online to support core mechanics of the game, the game won't run without a feed from an ad server, or the game lacks any enemy AI and instead relies on synthesized ghosts of other players so even if it could be modified to run without the servers the opponents would just sit there doing nothing and that doesn't make for much of a game.
Many games are entirely based on player vs player yet do not support local PvP or event networked PvP so without the server to connect the players even games that would still be fun to play splitscreen or on a local network are useless once the publisher pulls the plug.
So you may have a disc, you may even have an executable but sadly many of the current generation of games simply will not function once the publisher pulls support, sure a few may get reverse engineered or pirated private servers but those are only those with the most dedicated of fanbases and even those solutions will die after a few years as the hosts lose interest, move on to other projects or pass away.
So physical media doesn't gain you much these days, other than a false sense of security. Modern games are not like the cartridge or CD era. They are pretty much useless without a connection to the mothership and even something as simple as a puzzle game will often refuse to run without access to an ad server.
 
And that right there, is why I don’t play games by EA as they have pulled this nonsense before. I love that in their statement they thank people for their support while not supporting people back and taking stuff away from them. Such an awful company.
 
If you’ve been around long enough like I have you might remember the Apple II days when EA announced it was stopping all development for the Apple II platform in favor of the PC. They made a big deal out of it saying they were concentrating a platform that had a future. Many of us Apple II guys to this day will not buy ANY EA product, period.
 
It just stopped working here in Norway now. There was a message to update the app but the update is not available in this region/country...great
 
I agree and disagree with this.

In the 70s/80s/90s, physical games for the Ataris, Nintendos, etc. were on cartridges which were a lot larger. You couldn't easily lose them behind a bookshelf or in some small crack. A dog couldn't take them and destroy them by holding them in his mouth for 3 seconds.

That's the problem with the new media - for the Nintendo DS, the cartridges are so small. For the other systems, they're on CDs, which can be easily scratched or destroyed if dropped and a dog picks it up for 3 seconds, or a kid rubs it on the floor for a few seconds.

That's why I've switched to digital - they can't be ruined so easily. Maybe if my kids were in their teens and we didn't have small pets it would be different, and I'd get mostly physical media.
I really don't consider this a problem at all.

First, if you lose your own game, there is no one to blame but yourself.

Besides, if you do lose it, you can just go on Amazon or eBay and replace that physical game.

With digital games, if a developer pulls a game from the App Store, that game could be gone forever, with no recourse.


The only blame on the consumer would be the fact that they purchased the digital game, but other than that, the rest is on the developers and Apple.
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Even owning the physical media doesn't mean much. If there's an online component to the game then the life of the game has a limit.
Many times these days the "Physical" disc either contains a downloader for the actual game or an incomplete build that requires an immediate update to be playable.
Yeah, just because it is on a disc, doesn't mean it is physical media. With so many games requiring downloadable content to even play, regardless if they start out as disks, I would consider this non-physical media as well.
 
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You're confusing "digital" and "physical" with DRM and DRM-free. Those are quite different concepts. There's nothing preventing digital from being DRM-free, and indeed that's what stores like GOG are for. The games you buy there can't be taken away from you. Personally I haven't bought on Steam in over a year. The most annoying thing is Feral won't agree to have their Mac ports on GOG in those cases where the Windows version is (e.g. XCOM).

--Eric
 
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