this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

What "online only" means is the need to authenticate to a proprietary server. After logging in, you are then (potentially) directed to a random server to play on.

If you are not online, you cannot authenticate and therefor not be directed to a server. This means you cannot play the game. When the authentication server and infrastructure behind the game is taken offline, the game becomes unplayable, because it is online only.

If a final patch were to be made where either a private authentication server would be made available for you to self-host, or authenation to be completely removed, you could play the game either offline on your device locally or LAN, or online by anyone who cares enough to host a server with the game logic. It would no longer be "online only" since you would have a choice. You can choose to play offline, or choose to play online.

If a game actually needs servers beyond the authentication part, then those should be made available too, so that anyone, again, can play locally or online.

It's logical that if game servers are made available, a game can never be "online only" again, because you could host the server on your pc and connect to localhost.

Your whole argumentation about "online only" game design falls completely flat. You are mixing concepts that have nothing to do with one another.

A game can be a battle royale by design, gameplay wise, and have the ability to host your own servers by design, technical architecture wise.

Quake Live used to be online only. You could not host your own servers. They released for steam and made it possible to host your own servers. The old authentication system was taken down, logins are no longer required, and now you just launch the game and pick a server in a built in server browser. It should be the standard and Quake Live should serve as an example of how it should be done.