In a way, piracy can fix that problem too, since pirate servers existing for ongoing games means they'll never actually die, unless the server source code gets taken down and nobody archives a copy. I mean, WoW Classic only happened because a private server running vanilla got too big, despite Blizzard bullshit of "You think you want it, but you don't" and "We don't have the code to roll back".

Star Wars Galaxies, Phantasy Star Online, City of Heroes, Warhammer Age of Reckoning all still exist and can be played, despite being "dead", thanks to private/pirate servers.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

That only works if the server code gets leaked or someone reverse engineers it. Both of those options shouldn't be relied on, especially for more complex or less popular games.

[–] kazerniel@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

In a way, piracy can fix that problem too, since pirate servers existing for ongoing games means they’ll never actually die

That happened to Ragnarok Online. Iirc the early server code got leaked by hackers (it seems it's still being developed on GitHub lol), so all throughout the game's 20+ years lifetime it has had a flourishing private server scene with hundreds of servers still online, so I don't think it will die in our lifetimes.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago

Marvel Heroes Omega is one I recently discovered has private servers now. I really miss that one. The whole campaign is playable, but the server will be wiped once 1.0 of the emu comes out, possibly early next year.