from the mine-mine-mine dept
There are lots of ways things play out when it comes to fans of multiplayer video games building out their own host servers to play them. Sometimes fans set those servers up simply because they can do it better and more securely than the publisher… and then the publisher takes them down because of intellectual property concerns. Sometimes gamers simply want to play an older version of an online game, before the publisher pushes out a bunch of updates and expansion packs… and the publisher takes them down because of intellectual property concerns. And, rarely, sometimes the publisher ends its official support and hosting of a game’s servers and actually acts human and cool by giving fans a cheap license to host their own servers to keep the game alive.
The most frustrating version of this sort of thing is when a publisher fully ends support for a game, shuts down its servers, and then prevents any and all fans from ever playing the game again over IP concerns. And there can be no more stark example of this than Concord, an online game that Sony shut down 2 weeks (!!!) after its release, over a year ago.
A group of dedicated coders has managed to partially revive online gameplay for the PC version of Concord, the team-based shooter that Sony famously shut down just two weeks after its launch last summer. Now, though, the team behind that fan server effort is closing off new access after Sony started issuing DMCA takedown requests of sample gameplay videos.
The Game Post was among the first to publicize the “Concord Delta” project, which reverse-engineered the game’s now-defunct server API to get a functional multiplayer match running over the weekend. “The project is still [a work in progress], it’s playable, but buggy,” developer Red posted in the game’s Discord channel, as reported by The Game Post. “Once our servers are fully set up, we’ll begin doing some private playtesting.”
Those DMCA takedowns came from MarkScan, a longtime partner of Sony that looks around the internet for anything remotely resembling IP infractions and fires off DMCA notices. No demands about the actual game servers have been made… yet. And that makes this all the more strange. MarkScan, presumably at the behest of Sony, is taking down gameplay videos for a game that simply doesn’t exist outside of this fan effort. There are a billion gameplay videos of Sony games that are actually active and out in the world, but these get taken down?
And, again, it’s the absurdity that is the real star here. Concord officially existed for 2 whole weeks in 2024. Sony shut it down and refunded the money of any buyer that wanted one. It shut down the studio that made the game. So when some actual fans of the game come along and want to revive it on their own, Sony starts issuing threats?
“We’re choosing to not make this game available and insist you don’t either.”
While the team behind Concord Delta hasn’t been contacted by Sony directly, the YouTube video takedowns have put the group in something of a defensive crouch. “Due to worrying legal action we’ve decided to pause invites [to our Discord server] for the time being,” Red wrote on the Discord, as reported by The Game Post.
Of course, Sony could also decide to simply look the other way and let players enjoy a game the company seems to have no interest in officially supporting. That’s what Nintendo appears to be doing with fan projects like The Pretendo Network and WiiLink, which restore online functionality that’s no longer officially available on classic Nintendo consoles.
When you manage to make Nintendo look relatively fan-friendly, it should be obvious you’ve done something horribly wrong.
Filed Under: concord, concord delta, copyright, dmca, fan servers, reverse engineering, team games, video games
Companies: markscan, sony
