Elite Dangerous Odyssey

[Sally]

I'm doing some research and I cannot find any evidence of this. I'm not saying this is not true and for all I know any game with in-app or in-game purchases may do this from time to time. If you have any kind of article or forum post describing this as a global problem in Elite Dangerous, please share it.

Well I thought it was obvious what the problem was but I guess it might not be for some people given how normalized this practice is. Here's what you can do to experience the issue first-hand:

1. Buy and install the game.
2. Run the game, create account and whatever other requirement it has.
3. While the game is running unplug your ethernet cable or switch off your WLAN NIC, see how the game immediately throws an error and closes.

You might think this is not an issue because many other games are the same (online only on a centralized server), the difference with other games and games like Elite Dangerous is the terms of purchase and consumer rights are vastly different; games that are offered free of charge or through a subscription fee such as gachas or MMOs are services under those terms, that is you play for free so you're not owed anything with gachas and if you stop paying subscriptions, you loose your access in the case of MMOs. Games like Elite Dangerous, Need For Speed 2016, The Crew, Fallout 76, Sea of Thieves, Raiders Republic, Helldivers 2 and a ever-increasing concerning list of more titles are selling you a copy with the classic consumer terms (one-time purchase and you keep the copy forever) that depends entirely on a proprietary server that the publisher owns and controls, so when the server goes down all copies are effectively dead, unless someone figures out a way to emulate those servers (so far the only game I know that could be preserved with this design is the first The Crew). This is legally and technically speaking equivalent to Microsoft, two decades ago, hiring thugs that go into your house and destroy your copy of Freelancer today, it's blatantly illegal and malicious and it's a problem they introduced deliberately to control what people plays and when, to push further for a consumer culture of use-and-throw-away.

Hopefully this explains what the problem is, if you have more doubts go ahead and search for "Accursed Farms Games as a Service" on YT, the guy has an hour long video going through every single detail of this issue.

---

"I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute." - RMS