Blizzard's Games Will Stop Working on Windows XP and Vista Later this Year

[BeerTent]

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That seems extremely dickish, these are people who bought a game that would work on their system and this just screws them without giving a good reason. I would hope they're willing to pay those people since they're taking the game from.

They have a good reason. Windows XP has been fucking End Of Life for almost three years. Vista was never properly adopted by the consumer base because of the manufacturers, so Microsoft is about to declare that End Of Life.

I'm all for ripping on Blizzard, sure, but supporting something that even the developer of that something doesn't want to support is a hassle, a waste of money, and a liability. The IT world changes. People need to learn to change and adapt with it instead of holding the rest of us back and generating more needless work.

It's not a matter of supporting it, it's a matter of leaving it alone. The games work fine, make the next one not work on XP and Vista. Give me Starcraft 3 that needs 7 or newer. Leave the current games current. I can't imagine anything they could do to them that would need an OS change.

Blizzard is consistently updating their games with newer content. Newer models, new maps, and new gameplay elements. Each model and each map needs to be built with both, newer technologies, and with older technologies. If we say, take Dx9 shaders, and apply it to a map that uses Dx11 shaders, the game could become unplayable with black backgrounds of transparent textures, or provide a player with an unfair advantage by allowing them to see something that players on newer hardware/software cannot. This is the biggest plus-side of Consoles. You only have to built for one hardware configuration. If you want your PC game to be compatible with a wide range of systems, you basically need to rebuld all of your content to be compatible with, say, OSX, Ubuntu, Include some functions and alternate code for old Legacy drivers for Radeon cards... Etc, Etc.

Edit The exception to this is if your game uses a relatively simple technology that is already compatible across a wide range of systems. Cross Code [http://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/], for example, uses it's own modified version of Chromium to run a HTML5 setup. (By the way, That's fucking genius.) A larger AAA game like Overwatch, or GTAV with their own en gines would need far, far more work to ensure compatibility across multiple hardware configurations.

By saying "Leave the Current Games Current" you're saying, "Don't add new characters to your games. No new Maps. No new gameplay tweaks. No new bugfixes." Games have changed significantly over the years. You're prettymuch saying, "Let these games fall into obscurity." Which, a lot of Blizzard fans might not enjoy the notion of.

Look at someone who enjoys the campaigns there is nothing else they can really add, those are perfect. There's nothing they could really add that would change things in a meaningful way.

This is about more than just StarCraft. I too, was shocked to find that Blizzard has more in their library than just the one game I like. (OW)

Either way, SC2 will still need those updates, lest the multiplayer becomes stagnant. SC2 SP and MP are the same game. Nobody said that they're changing the single player campaign to magically become exclusive. I only posted theories up above. Just don't expect any offical support when you run into any problems running XP or Vista.

If they take the smart route, more than likely, you won't notice anything come April, but if they go for the 'nuke all' approach, then yeah, XP users might have to, *Gasp* get with the times in order to continue. Either way, IT changes quickly. It'll leave people, including myself, in the dust.

Again, games are changing. We've gone beyond the NES days of "one version on a cart only." We have updates, online multiplayer, complicated games with new mechanics, and crafty-ass players who are A-okay with trying to break the game, hence the need for balance changes. Sure, your campaign is fine, but there could still be bugs, and it'd be a hell of a lot easier to solve those bugs with libraries from a modern OS, than with libraries from a 15+yo OS.

 

[Xan Krieger]

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That seems extremely dickish, these are people who bought a game that would work on their system and this just screws them without giving a good reason. I would hope they're willing to pay those people since they're taking the game from.

They have a good reason. Windows XP has been fucking End Of Life for almost three years. Vista was never properly adopted by the consumer base because of the manufacturers, so Microsoft is about to declare that End Of Life.

I'm all for ripping on Blizzard, sure, but supporting something that even the developer of that something doesn't want to support is a hassle, a waste of money, and a liability. The IT world changes. People need to learn to change and adapt with it instead of holding the rest of us back and generating more needless work.

It's not a matter of supporting it, it's a matter of leaving it alone. The games work fine, make the next one not work on XP and Vista. Give me Starcraft 3 that needs 7 or newer. Leave the current games current. I can't imagine anything they could do to them that would need an OS change.

Blizzard is consistently updating their games with newer content. Newer models, new maps, and new gameplay elements. Each model and each map needs to be built with both, newer technologies, and with older technologies. If we say, take Dx9 shaders, and apply it to a map that uses Dx11 shaders, the game could become unplayable with black backgrounds of transparent textures, or provide a player with an unfair advantage by allowing them to see something that players on newer hardware/software cannot. This is the biggest plus-side of Consoles. You only have to built for one hardware configuration. If you want your PC game to be compatible with a wide range of systems, you basically need to rebuld all of your content to be compatible with, say, OSX, Ubuntu, Include some functions and alternate code for old Legacy drivers for Radeon cards... Etc, Etc.

Edit The exception to this is if your game uses a relatively simple technology that is already compatible across a wide range of systems. Cross Code [http://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/], for example, uses it's own modified version of Chromium to run a HTML5 setup. (By the way, That's fucking genius.) A larger AAA game like Overwatch, or GTAV with their own en gines would need far, far more work to ensure compatibility across multiple hardware configurations.

By saying "Leave the Current Games Current" you're saying, "Don't add new characters to your games. No new Maps. No new gameplay tweaks. No new bugfixes." Games have changed significantly over the years. You're prettymuch saying, "Let these games fall into obscurity." Which, a lot of Blizzard fans might not enjoy the notion of.

Look at someone who enjoys the campaigns there is nothing else they can really add, those are perfect. There's nothing they could really add that would change things in a meaningful way.

So they should stop updating all their games to preserve the experience for a handful of people running an OS which is abandoned by its own manufacturer? You really need blizzard to be the bad guy here that badly, or just straight up don't understand the issue?

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That seems extremely dickish, these are people who bought a game that would work on their system and this just screws them without giving a good reason. I would hope they're willing to pay those people since they're taking the game from.

They have a good reason. Windows XP has been fucking End Of Life for almost three years. Vista was never properly adopted by the consumer base because of the manufacturers, so Microsoft is about to declare that End Of Life.

I'm all for ripping on Blizzard, sure, but supporting something that even the developer of that something doesn't want to support is a hassle, a waste of money, and a liability. The IT world changes. People need to learn to change and adapt with it instead of holding the rest of us back and generating more needless work.

It's not a matter of supporting it, it's a matter of leaving it alone. The games work fine, make the next one not work on XP and Vista. Give me Starcraft 3 that needs 7 or newer. Leave the current games current. I can't imagine anything they could do to them that would need an OS change.

Blizzard is consistently updating their games with newer content. Newer models, new maps, and new gameplay elements. Each model and each map needs to be built with both, newer technologies, and with older technologies. If we say, take Dx9 shaders, and apply it to a map that uses Dx11 shaders, the game could become unplayable with black backgrounds of transparent textures, or provide a player with an unfair advantage by allowing them to see something that players on newer hardware/software cannot. This is the biggest plus-side of Consoles. You only have to built for one hardware configuration. If you want your PC game to be compatible with a wide range of systems, you basically need to rebuld all of your content to be compatible with, say, OSX, Ubuntu, Include some functions and alternate code for old Legacy drivers for Radeon cards... Etc, Etc.

Edit The exception to this is if your game uses a relatively simple technology that is already compatible across a wide range of systems. Cross Code [http://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/], for example, uses it's own modified version of Chromium to run a HTML5 setup. (By the way, That's fucking genius.) A larger AAA game like Overwatch, or GTAV with their own en gines would need far, far more work to ensure compatibility across multiple hardware configurations.

By saying "Leave the Current Games Current" you're saying, "Don't add new characters to your games. No new Maps. No new gameplay tweaks. No new bugfixes." Games have changed significantly over the years. You're prettymuch saying, "Let these games fall into obscurity." Which, a lot of Blizzard fans might not enjoy the notion of.

Look at someone who enjoys the campaigns there is nothing else they can really add, those are perfect. There's nothing they could really add that would change things in a meaningful way.

This is about more than just StarCraft. I too, was shocked to find that Blizzard has more in their library than just the one game I like. (OW)

Either way, SC2 will still need those updates, lest the multiplayer becomes stagnant. SC2 SP and MP are the same game. Nobody said that they're changing the single player campaign to magically become exclusive. I only posted theories up above. Just don't expect any offical support when you run into any problems running XP or Vista.

If they take the smart route, more than likely, you won't notice anything come April, but if they go for the 'nuke all' approach, then yeah, XP users might have to, *Gasp* get with the times in order to continue. Either way, IT changes quickly. It'll leave people, including myself, in the dust.

Again, games are changing. We've gone beyond the NES days of "one version on a cart only." We have updates, online multiplayer, complicated games with new mechanics, and crafty-ass players who are A-okay with trying to break the game, hence the need for balance changes. Sure, your campaign is fine, but there could still be bugs, and it'd be a hell of a lot easier to solve those bugs with libraries from a modern OS, than with libraries from a 15+yo OS.

I just don't get why they'd change something that isn't broken, why they make a masterpiece but then keep painting over it. What we have is great, I love it, it's one of my favorite RTS series. I feel like people who paid for a game deserve to be able to keep playing the game. It was designed for their systems, let them keep enjoying it. Make Starcraft 3 not work on them, don't just take away a game from people. It seems like kind of a mean thing to take people's money and then take the game from them.

 

[BeerTent]

[...]I just don't get why they'd change something that isn't broken, why they make a masterpiece but then keep painting over it. What we have is great, I love it, it's one of my favorite RTS series. I feel like people who paid for a game deserve to be able to keep playing the game. It was designed for their systems, let them keep enjoying it. Make Starcraft 3 not work on them, don't just take away a game from people. It seems like kind of a mean thing to take people's money and then take the game from them.

Money.

 

[Elijin]

[...]I just don't get why they'd change something that isn't broken, why they make a masterpiece but then keep painting over it. What we have is great, I love it, it's one of my favorite RTS series. I feel like people who paid for a game deserve to be able to keep playing the game. It was designed for their systems, let them keep enjoying it. Make Starcraft 3 not work on them, don't just take away a game from people. It seems like kind of a mean thing to take people's money and then take the game from them.

Money.

I mean, depends what you mean by that. They certainly aren't making any money from Windows sales. You could argue they're saving labour costs in not working on ensuring their patches work on defunct systems, I guess?

Xan:
The games aren't separate single player and multiplayer titles. They're a single title, and you're essentially asking for the MP component to be paused forever, so that people running abandonware can play the single player. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at MS for leaving those OS's behind. Not unaffiliated developers for no longer being able to justify putting time and effort into defunct systems.

The only ground you stand on, is asking for a 'permanent offline' patch being offered to those systems, to preserve the experience for those individuals without stagnating the titles for everyone. But even then, given their online infrastructure, that's still work towards a problem they didn't create.

 

[BeerTent]

[...]I just don't get why they'd change something that isn't broken, why they make a masterpiece but then keep painting over it. What we have is great, I love it, it's one of my favorite RTS series. I feel like people who paid for a game deserve to be able to keep playing the game. It was designed for their systems, let them keep enjoying it. Make Starcraft 3 not work on them, don't just take away a game from people. It seems like kind of a mean thing to take people's money and then take the game from them.

Money.

I mean, depends what you mean by that. They certainly aren't making any money from Windows sales. You could argue they're saving labour costs in not working on ensuring their patches work on defunct systems, I guess?

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Hey man, that all adds up over time. They're a business. While I won't say their support services are crazy expensive, Blizzard and other publishers are in the game to make money, and cutting costs is one of the ways of making it.

Developers need to ensure current patches work on the operating system. That's training, sandboxes, extra work, extra testing, and a support side of things, you have additional training and logging.

 

[shrekfan246]

I don't see how this is a surprise. Microsoft Office doesn't work on Vista anymore, so why would Blizzard's games?