Endings to Things
So Atlas Reactor is closing down for good this Friday.
Part of me is really disappointed, the other part is just sad. Actually, devastated is more like it. I have to admit I've actually cried about it more than once because it makes me really damned sad and angry.
AR was not a game I've played every day for hours at a time, but it was the source of a lot of creativity for me and a friend and we've spent hours upon hours writing stories in the game world - just the two of us together. And seeing the source of this creativity just... cease to exist is actually damn heartbreaking.
It's also heartbreaking to see the wasted potential. So much potential in the game and the story, but due to mismanagement and lack of proper advertising it went all down the drain.
And it makes me angry. It makes me loathe this "Games as a Service" stuff where you're bound to the will of whoever owns the servers of the game. One day to another a company can just decide to take a game away from you with no way to ever play it again. And all that will be left are screenshots, youtube videos, memories and a bunch of files on hard drives.
How is this a thing? How can they get away with it? Why are we so helpless and just have to watch our hobbies be ripped out of our hands and reduced to nothing but memories, bound to fade into nothingness. Why are people so heartless and would rather sit on a dead IP and do nothing with it than release the server code for a "no more updates" legacy version? Just let the community run the damn server.
But no that... would require empathy and care...
I'm sad and disappointed in the world...
Part of me is really disappointed, the other part is just sad. Actually, devastated is more like it. I have to admit I've actually cried about it more than once because it makes me really damned sad and angry.
AR was not a game I've played every day for hours at a time, but it was the source of a lot of creativity for me and a friend and we've spent hours upon hours writing stories in the game world - just the two of us together. And seeing the source of this creativity just... cease to exist is actually damn heartbreaking.
It's also heartbreaking to see the wasted potential. So much potential in the game and the story, but due to mismanagement and lack of proper advertising it went all down the drain.
And it makes me angry. It makes me loathe this "Games as a Service" stuff where you're bound to the will of whoever owns the servers of the game. One day to another a company can just decide to take a game away from you with no way to ever play it again. And all that will be left are screenshots, youtube videos, memories and a bunch of files on hard drives.
How is this a thing? How can they get away with it? Why are we so helpless and just have to watch our hobbies be ripped out of our hands and reduced to nothing but memories, bound to fade into nothingness. Why are people so heartless and would rather sit on a dead IP and do nothing with it than release the server code for a "no more updates" legacy version? Just let the community run the damn server.
But no that... would require empathy and care...
I'm sad and disappointed in the world...