I’ve been involved in creating an on-premise version of a cloud server. We decided the best approach was just to make it a separate thing with barebones functionality. Just ensuring the client side software could connect to this on-premise solution without crashing was hard work enough.
The thing is that making an on-premise product takes deliberate effort. It’s rarely ”just ship an exe file” (or even ”just ship a docker compose file”)
I believe if this is passed game studios will resort to the same approach my team did - just ship a barebones version of the server side software.
I’m responding to the claim that ”It’s not a challenge” and that the game developers can just ”release the server for free”. It might be doable, but not easy. Especially when there’s a lot of time pressure involved.
Maybe I made it sound too easy because I’m used to do it and I find more challenging to add security features for authentication or to use some licensed libraries 😅 that’s a bias on my part.
Still I am not a good developer, and I have done it.
Even the industry has done it, just look at all the downloadable servers on Steam, some of them even free.
I expected it will not be difficult for experienced developers to comply.
I’ve been involved in creating an on-premise version of a cloud server. We decided the best approach was just to make it a separate thing with barebones functionality. Just ensuring the client side software could connect to this on-premise solution without crashing was hard work enough.
The thing is that making an on-premise product takes deliberate effort. It’s rarely ”just ship an exe file” (or even ”just ship a docker compose file”)
I believe if this is passed game studios will resort to the same approach my team did - just ship a barebones version of the server side software.
And that’s just what is needed, if the game works as it does while supported.
Yes, but it’s still a major challenge.
I’m responding to the claim that ”It’s not a challenge” and that the game developers can just ”release the server for free”. It might be doable, but not easy. Especially when there’s a lot of time pressure involved.
Maybe I made it sound too easy because I’m used to do it and I find more challenging to add security features for authentication or to use some licensed libraries 😅 that’s a bias on my part.
Still I am not a good developer, and I have done it. Even the industry has done it, just look at all the downloadable servers on Steam, some of them even free. I expected it will not be difficult for experienced developers to comply.