Private Servers Could Save Games from Dying
Online games die when their publisher’s servers go dark, and players lose games they paid for. Ubisoft’s shutdown of The Crew in 2024 made this impossible to ignore and sparked the Stop Killing Games movement. The fix is something gamers already understand: private servers. When the official servers shut down, players should be able to run their own.
Why games die
Modern online games depend on servers that only the publisher runs. When those shut down, the game dies, even its single-player modes, as with The Crew. It wasn’t always like this. PC gamers used to run their own dedicated servers for games like Quake, Counter-Strike and Battlefield. As Xbox Live and PSN made online console gaming the norm, matchmaking on official servers replaced that, and PC followed. Consoles never let players run their own servers, so Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo must be part of any fix.
The proposal: private servers from day one
Every online game should ship with private servers from day one, so they are tested and known to work. Think LAN play, but over the internet and on consoles too: no matchmaking, just a server for you and your friends. Platforms can make this cheap by shipping a standard private-server framework in their dev kits, the way Unity and Unreal ship a network stack.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would host these servers as part of their online subscriptions. Minecraft Realms already works this way, but only for Minecraft: friends-only servers sold as a subscription across Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and PC. Friends join through the platform, chat and voice go through its moderated systems, and the host can kick cheaters. Player data stays with the platform, so private servers add no meaningful new safety or privacy risk.
PC: one framework, many hosts
Steam could offer the same on PC, open to any hosting provider or player. The market already exists: companies rent servers for Minecraft and Valheim, and many players host their own.
What this does not ask
This is only about online games, not games that already work offline. It is not about keeping games on sale or running servers forever. A game can be delisted, but copies people already bought should keep working on private servers. It asks publishers to build with parts that can be handed over, which is cheap when designed in from the start.