It sucks, plain and simple. Single-player games should never require internet access, and if the game has a multiplayer component, it should be a separate mode that leaves the single-player mode working even when there is no internet connectivity.

It’s just basic fucking common sense… except that it conflicts with financial interests and greed.

If the game is single player, there's no reason for it to force you to be connected to the internet. It's annoying and it shouldn't be the norm

I hate it.

Usually I'm online but what if I'm not, or what if they have server problems, or what if in 5 years they feel done with the game and remove the servers. If I pay for a game, I want to be able to play that game on my terms

It just leads to a worse player experience now, and limited likely an inability to play later

If it's single player game, having an always online component is straight up dumb. Fuck anybody who does this.

Honestly fuck always online games. Piracy prevention methods at the cost of the paying customer. Absolute ridiculous that you cant play things you own offline

Honestly? I used to not care. I usually have internet connectivity and have at least one backup method of getting online.

But now my father is psuedo-homeless and there's so many games he's missed out on because his Van/RV didn't get enough cell signal to work.

After that I understood the problem in a far deeper way.

Games were accessible to me as a kid, not because I could afford them, but because I could just pop in my neighbors CD (and enter their CD key if needed) and be off to the races! If I were to grow up poor now, it would be miserable.

Always-online "single player" games, huge downloads, and if you happen to avoid all that you STILL need to check in online occassionally to use your own Steam Library.

I mean, if 15 year old me existed today, I'd still be pirating things but it would be through a network of friends with Blu-ray burners and good internet connections.

These days, I try to buy on GOG only, and only their non-DRM titles. Then I can throw them onto a samsung t5 and sneaker net it to my dad without worrying if Steam/Origin/Blizzard/Epic will get in the way.

Such a bad idea.

Internet goes? Can't play

Power goes? Can't play

Travelling? Can't play

Servers go down? Can't play

Servers are shutdown? Can't play

Not being able to pause a single player games is so silly, its such a good feature especially for situations like yours.

I pirate any single player games that require always online and its just a better experience, the game doesn't pause when the internet goes and I don't have to worry about servers being shutdown

I'm sure Blizzard and EA are looking at the way Netflix is forcing its users to only watch content in their own household and dying to implement that into their games too

It’s a case of the game industry creating a problem to sell the solution in my opinion. They insist that they need fo force increasingly ridiculous monetisation onto us because they need to maintain the servers, but the reason they need servers to maintain in the first place is because they made their functionally single player game phone home unnecessarily every ten seconds. The irony being that if I’d just pirated the game I wouldn’t have to deal with that.

I choose not to play these games.

My internet connection drops constantly because Cox is horrible at providing what I pay for so if a game has an always online DRM component it becomes unplayable frequently. I don’t like it for that reason, but I also don’t like it from a “the server will go offline at some point and then this is going to be unplayable forever after that” point of view.

I would never buy such games in the first place. If a singleplayer game doesn't have an offline mode I'm not interested.

The always online is bad. The micro-transactions are worse. I'm tired of being told "But it's just cosmetic!" Yeah, well that used to come with the game too. "They need to be able to make more content!" Yeah, it's made over 666 million dollars. They can afford more content. "At least it's not..." That shouldn't exist either.

Games, and expansion packs. That's it. Day one MTX is insulting. "here's your game, pay to unlock more of it" should not be a thing we accept. At this point I half expect a back-slide to pay full price and then a sub to actually play the game. I can not wrap my head around why people defend it, I've stopped buying games with MTX entirely.

Diablo 2 resurrected is quite good, though. Nailed that one.

If it's not a multiplayer game then it shouldn't need to be online.

Like I play Hitman a lot and occasionally the game pauses because it loses connection to the server even though it's single-player. It's usually able to reconnect but its still a bit annoying. And I am playing with 500mb internet and an ethernet connection, so the issue is on their side.

So yeah, I really don't see why it's necessary or why it's become such a trend.

Always-online singleplayer is bullshit, and we all know it.

This means I’ll almost certainly come to rely on games which I can pause. Unfortunately this isn’t possible with Diablo IV since it requires an always online connection even though I’m essentially playing it as a single player game.

There's a difference between always-online SP and essentially one-person MP games though.

It sucks that they did it that way, but at least it makes slightly more sense there.

Always a bit of a turn off for me. Ross (guy that did Gordon's mind and game dungeon) has a pretty good series of videos about why online only games are bad because they can be killed. He really hates the idea of killing games, and I agree with him.

Not only can the game get killed, however, but it can be changed fundamentally in a bad way. Balance can be tweaked for the worse etc. And unlike single player games you can't revert back to a previous version.

I also hate that LAN play has been pretty much stripped from the PC game landscape. LAN parties during college were the shit.

I went through the same phase several years back when my child was born, and you’re right—games where you can pause any time are the only kind worth playing for several years after a new child.

I can't imagine that anyone actually likes being forced to be online in singleplayer games/modes, but I see the point when there is multiplayer involved. Diablo IV makes sense, but I strongly dislike the shift to the MMO-lite model that necessitates a permanent syncing instead of making it optional. I thought it was fine in Diablo III where you could pause as long as no one was in your lobby.

I suppose my stance on it is that, as long as multiplayer doesn't bleed into singleplayer, I'm okay with it - but I'm also fortunate to have a relatively stable connection. I much prefer games that don't lean into the online aspect at all, though.

Unless it's an online multiplayer game, it's an instant Nope button for me. I generally refuse to be locked out of my singleplayer content if I lose Internet connection, your servers go down, or worse... get shut down intentionally due to licensing deals ending.

Big no from me. I almost exclusively play single player games and tend go back to old games a lot. The always-online requirement is not just annoying in the now but a big problem for the longevity of games.

In the case of Diablo IV I'm also not sure if it was really meant to serve my interests rather than Blizzard's. The MMO-lite aspects feel like the excuse rather than the reason.

If a game is always online I expect it to be f2p, since then that's a situation where a game disappearing if the company decides to pull it doesn't bother me. It's not even likely that piracy would be able to save an always online game the way abandoned games that never got DRM removed can be.

They are particularly annoying on the Steam Deck and other handhelds where not being online is common.

Anyway, I dislike it in general but like you I've put up with it in some cases (see the Hitman series).

Complete dealbreaker for me. You'll never actually own games with such models, as you are completely dependand on the publisher. Once they pull the plug, you can't play the game you paid for. Server probleem? Sorry, you can't play right now. Traveling? Sorry, can't play.

It is also generally bad for modding and the overall user experience. These kind of games often have DRM that don't allow for modding

For games that don't need connectivity is a no-go to me. It's just some more programmed obsolescence garbage so when the company decides you have to buy the next game they can just forbid you playing the one you have. Sorry sir but if I can still play Tetris on my Gameboy why would I let you take that away from me.

As a new dad, that problem was solved by being too tired to game with the little free time anyway lol. Also emulators like yuzu work wonders here as you can just pause the emulator even if the game doesn't support it.

In my opinion all games that can be played solo should have an offline mode. Personally I have an excellent internet connection but I hate having to depend on servers to be able to play the game that I bought.

The thing about always online is that the servers often crap out, especially during launch or during major patches. That just annoys the hell out of me.

I only play Destiny 2 (always online) and Civilization 5 and 6 (only online for multiplayer). If a game is a live game like Destiny or Fortnite then I can understand it but not having an offline mode in a game like Diablo seems really dumb.

I honestly don't really like it even when implemented well. It's even what caused me to uninstall Just Cause 3. As fun of a game it was, I hated being constantly harassed by Square Enix telling me to connect to their servers or that there was some kind of error in connecting to said servers. I just want to play the damn game.

I find games to be less fun the more time I'm spending not actually playing said game and dealing with some menu option or another, and always online games seem to be the worst offenders in this category. There always seems to be some kind of server error or I lose connection for 5 seconds and now the game's paused while it loads, or the game has to load the servers every time I open the menu.

It depends on the game. Like if it's an online only game, then of course that makes sense. But a single player game, or even a game with a single player mode requiring always online is and will always be dumb.

Diablo 4 not being designed for offline solo play as well (like D2 and I think even D3 was) is annoying though.

If a single player game requires online connection im not buying it.

@Parellius
I despise them. I only buy them if I'm going to play online with friends but I know at some point if I want to play solo I'm going to have to get a "less connected" version of them...

Now if I only need the solo experience, well...

Another issue arises now that handheld PC gaming is getting more and more popular. Those games will definitely ignore a big part of their potential customer base, and I assume suffer the consequences

An always online requirement is just another form of DRM. If a game has DRM, I simply don't buy it.

The only reason to require an Internet connection for a game is if it's primarily multiplayer.

Emulation is my favorite way to play for this reason. I have the full game and I can play it in any way I choose when I choose and with the steam deck where I choose. I hate the preoder bullshit where they ship a broken mess and are patching it for a cycle or two and then they shut off the servers...

I boycott ubisoft for this and ea because they are a shitty company. Thankfully we have projects like pretendo and xlink Kai to restore the old networks and they work with emulators

Always-online has not affected me much. What you describe above about pausing is a coding issue, not an attribute of online play. To my knowledge, Watch Dogs 2 and Deep Rock Galactic work the same way: People can join your session at any random moment, but before they do, you can pause the game as normally.

Always online is garbage and I hate it.

Man, I miss the days of offline multiplayer. Split-screens, one person hogging WASD and the other the arrow keys.

Shit, I'm old.

I don't like always online games.
Some years ago a friend asked me to play Diablo 3 together, so I bought it and tried it in singleplayer to get familiar with it, since that was the first time playing a Diablo game.
I got very hard lag - in a singleplayer session and lost the connection to the server several times.
It was such an awful experience that I couldn't bring myself to play it online anymore.

it requires an always online connection even though I’m essentially playing it as a single player game.

That is awful. What are their reasons for that?

Never was a fan of the change. I grew up before internet was common place in many households. Only thing you had to worry about was if the game cartridge had too much dust lol.

I don't like it. I play with a Steam Deck from my bed and the Wi-Fi connection is pretty bad from there. I easily loose connection every five minutes.

That means I can't play any games that require constan online connection, which is a bummer.

I refuse to play them. My rule naturally excludes titles that actually need it for multiplayer, like MMORPGS.

If it's a strictly multiplayer game, fine.

If not, that's just DRM, and it should die in a fire.

If it’s a singleplayer then no, I don’t think there are any reasons to have singleplayers to be always online. It can have online features but shouldn’t be a requirement

I hate the "always online, always changing, sudo-mmo"- genre that's becoming the norm with certain publishers. Avoid anything GaaS-like unless it's something I feel the need to experience. In this case I just play Grim Dawn or some other great arpg whenever I get the itch for the genre! Lets me play multiplayer when I want to, and just play real singleplayer whenever I want to.

Singleplayer games have no reason to require an internet connection to be able to play the game.

Hate it as I have a Steam Deck so I just wouldn’t play it if it needed an online connection as I play a lot when travelling.

Happened when I was away with some mates and we tried to play FIFA which needed an initial online connection to Origin. Was infuriating trying to get it work with bad mobile connection

I have a friend who lives in a dry cabin in Alaska. Only internet is a limited mobile hotspot. Games like Diablo 4 are pretty much off limits.

I understand that some games can really benefit from being always online, but I think it's important for games that can be played solo to have the offline option. The more choice the consumer has, the better.

definitely a turnoff for me.. years ago when I first discovered Diablo 2 on an old computer at a place I was house-sitting at, I had no internet whatsoever.. nothing
that game kept me sane in so many ways
eventually several months later I managed to leech some web access from an old construction yard or something behind the place, but that's a story for another time..

I like No Man's Sky take on this, that seamlessly shifts from offline to online. I can stop/resume it without an hitch on my Steam Deck, even in multiplayer zones.

With Diablo IV, I get disconnected when there's a light breeze.

I like Xbox for a lot of things, but travelling to the country side with an xbox that doesn't work because of a stable internet - even if all the games are downloaded and not online multiplayer? - dum

the potato technology nintendo-switch works better...

I hate it I try to always avoid always online drm but sometimes it's really impossible, i'm gonna be honest and say that i got some issue with my steamdeck for them. (f u ubisoft btw) So if i find that a singleplayer game needs an always online drm i just don't buy it.

I wouldn't buy such game. "Would" because so far none of the games that interests me required constant connection. I don't play multiplayer games to begin with so it's easy to avoid.

My internet access is through metered connections, so I find it quite agrivating to be forced to burn precious cap space on a game that could totally be local only.

I absolutely refuse to buy any game that requires being online for single player. That is a line I will never cross.

Nah. I don't have a reliable or constant connection. Constant online anything doesn't work.

If a game demands always online, I'll avoid it, period. These days I have no interest on stuff like that.

I refuse to buy always-online games. Not being able to pause is just dumb (and probably could be fixed if Blizzard would still give a damn). But not being able to mod the game is a deal-breaker for me, an ARPG that can't be modded is not worth my time.

Always online has pretty much always been a terrible idea except for where it's actually required (MMOs)

Very bad idea and I don't understand why it is becoming the norm. Let's say you want to play again Diablo 4 in a few years (probably because you will be taking care of your kid) but all the player base has disappeared. If Blizzard cuts the servers to save some money, you will not be able to play the game on an official instance, even if it is only single player. Let's say the servers won't shut down down, another issue remains. Users who want to play in public areas or when travelling won't be able to launch the game (rip steam deck users).

I really dislike it, but it won't stop me from buying a game. I was recently without internet and went to play a game on my Steam Deck and was surprised to find a game I had been playing required access.

What bugs me most about it is that it seems like everything these days is tilted towards the companies. If a game doesn't require the internet, the only reason it's there is to collect data on what you're doing and maybe to help enforce DRM. It's bad enough that I can only rent games from Steam (although bless Valve for making gaming on Linux so good), now I can't even play the games I "own" if I don't have a pipe back to the company? Ugh.

I don't like it and try not to play games where it's a requirement. Especially in single player games.

Always online games really bug me. For someone like myself that goes out to sea for several weeks as part of my job, I won't have connection during those time periods thus I can't play the game I played.

Additionally, if the company removes the servers that the game connects to once the game has been out for whatever they determine to be "long enough" the game becomes unplayable

I haven't seen an upside for always online games only downsides. Totally understand that games with an online multi-player component need that internet connection but there is no reason, that I have seen, that are single player games or have single player components need always online connection.

I hate that "Games as a Service" are preventing the longevity of games. I worry about all of the incredible stories and experiences that these games provide being very quickly lost to time.

I think I prefer games that require being allways on-line to those with bad Denuvo implementation that kills the performance.

For single player games it's just bullshit DRM that makes everything a hassle. God forbid you be able to play a game right after you move, or your internet goes out during a storm or whatever.

@Parellius I prefer games that I can play offline if I need to, but I have been a Diablo fan for over 20 years. Of course I purchased Diablo 4.

There seem to be two Diablo IV games.

One is a single player or co-op offline RPG where you're running around killing monsters and collecting loot so that you personally can save the world. Seeing other players running around just breaks the illusion.

The other is some online multi-player thing where you can run around and team up with other people in the quest to min-max your build, where you pay stupid amounts of money to make your character look the same as all the other people who paid for the same skin.

I like the first game, have no interest in the second, and I resent where the mechanics designed for the second game interfere with the first.

I have accepted the fact that this would be the new normal since Diablo 3 and the infamous error 37. It was a problem back then when good internet is hard to come by. But at 2023, unless there's zero online elements in a particular game, I have no issue with always online requirement.

Good that we still have great titles from Nintendo eg. TotK

Concerning gaming with a newborn, you should also look for games that you can play with one hand, so you can hold the baby with the other. Europa Universalis 4 is a great game if you've got a kid who will only fall sleep while being held.

The games I play usually don't support online at all lol. So a game being only online is kinda a deal breaker for me lol.

I try to avoid games with always online as much as possible but sometimes you don't have choice. If you want to play Diablo IV there's not much else you could do. But at least Diablo has some form of multiplayer. If you have a solely single player experience with always online, it's just bullshit. The DRM is only punishing players that pay for the game. If you insist to implement this kind of DRM then please go ahead but then you also have to run the servers forever. If you don't then why should I buy your game?

It has no place in single player games and turns me off from playing them. There's no real reason they exist other than removing the ability to use cheats (which should be allowed in single players games imo) to obtain items or boosts that are only available on their cash shop. It also ties in to the Game As a Service model which i've come to detest; usually because they have a constant stream of updates that tries to monopolize your free time, whereas i am the kind of player that can say "ok this is done".

Games that offer multiplayer in addition to single player, such as D4, should allow you to have a single player save that's offline, can be paused and anything goes.

I dont like always online games, since I have had connection issues for a long time before I moved which made it almost impossible to play multiplayer games for me. And now my W-LAN card on my computer died without the option to use LAN. I am already glad that I can still access Denuvo "protected" games since those need to send some stuff to Denuvos sometimes.

Same experience as you with D4. Fun game but the always-on requirement is a tad annoying. Not deal-breaking for me, but I have had my fair share of rubber-banding on my SteamDeck, especially with Bluetooth headphones connected. D2R worked well offline, why not have an offline mode here?

I don't buy always online games. Period.

Last month, construction workers did something in our street. I didn't have Landline Internet for a whole week. Always Online is pretty horrible for single player games.

That and FOMO mechanics are a dealbreaker for me. I love playing video games, even spending a lot of time on them, but they are priority number 3 at best.

I quit War Thunder after grinding some battle pass and realizing I would need to keep up while having the time of my life on an Icelandic vacation. I just stopped, and that feeling of withdrawal is what I associate it with now.

I let it lie on my hard disk for a while, but after trying to play a few times and always feeling that it's the game that's going to play me so I won't enjoy even one match I just gave up and uninstalled.

This was not because of the recent and ongoing crap with the economy btw.

I fuckin hate it. Total bullshit

Diablo 3 is always online and lets you pause in all single player modes. Always online isn't the issue - the issue is games that are multiplayer only, like Diablo 4.

I started playing D4 two days ago and constantly try to pause the game when I need to give something else attention. It should also be easy to do when you’re alone in a dungeon. There are games that are online but let you pause when you’re alone (though I can’t remember which game I am thinking of right now)

Absolutely detest them. I still consistently play old games because they're a blast and make me remember when I was a kid. That won't happen for my kids with their games, as the servers will be long gone and close to zero companies are going to spend more time updating the game to not need a server. I'm an old man yelling at my lawn, but games went from trying to entertain to trying to suck every cent they can out of you.

One of my biggest enjoyments is hacking games up as well. You can learn about coding (set ammo to -1 - is it unlimited, 0, or game crashing). Sometimes it's fun to be a god after a stressful day. Sometimes my kids play with me and I don't want to have to tell them no, worry about them dying every couple seconds and getting frustrated, or having to drop it altogether.

I just want to buy a damn game and play it how it entertains me the most - not have to deal with server errors, not have to deal with 12 year olds screaming, not have to deal with people who have far more time than I do being 1000x better.

I probably hate it less than most people but it doesn't excuse bad design. Warframe, for instance, requires you to always be online - but if your instance is set to Solo, you can pause the game.

In case of Diablo IV in my opinion Blizzard has a good track record of keeping game servers online for years and years.

That being said, the game does have some weird server hopping mechanic that you can't turn off, meaning it seems to switch servers while you're playing, which isn't always as seamless as you'd hope it would be. Also, at least for me, it sometimes selects servers with >100ms latency, which is quite noticeable of course.

Ironically I think GTAV did a pretty decent job of this - you can pause at any time during the single player, however I don't remember if it requires a connection to play single player mode.

Imo if a game has a single player mode, being online for it should never be a requirement.

If the game actually does something useful with that connection, I don´t have a problem with it. Examples:

• MSFS does the processing of the terrain and it´s details off site. Also things like live weather and traffic obviously need a connection.
• Souls games allow you to leave messages and read messages from other players. Also you can help or attack other players in their game, which is super useful and fun.

However, sometimes the always on is just a way for the devs to battle piracy. In which case its hurting the actual gaming experience.

I´m not familiar with Diablo 4 to be honest. So, in my understanding, the fact that it need an internet connection alone can´t be the reason for not being able to pause the game, right? There must be some real time interaction going on between your "world" and the worlds of others.

EDIT: Hm, I read up on it for a second and it seems like there is a portal that you can use to teleport to a safe place? A town? Supposedly you can even do that from within a dungeon AND even teleport back to the same place?

I really don't find it much of an issue in 2023. In the seven years I've lived in my current flat, I think there's been maybe an hour where my internet has gone down.

I do see the issue with games that have no online elements but still require a server but D4 is a kind of psuedo-MMO with it's world elements like world events, bosses, etc so it makes sense there.

It made me stop buying games and consoles in the first place.

You have to be online, the game has to be downloaded on the system, there will be bugs and it has to be patched.

Just let me buy a game and play it. I may sound like an old fart but I really enjoyed the days that I could go to a store, buy a game and play it immediately on my console.

Especially the fact that bugs are literally shipped like features now and you just have to accept that your game of 80-90 dollars is ridden with bugs, yeah fuck off really.

Doesn't matter to me one way or another, and it doesn't affect my purchasing decisions.

My take is that if the game comes free with a subscription service, then I don't see an issue. But if I'm purchasing the game, then fuck that shit

I have avoided the Hitman series because of their always online requirement. One day I loaded it up only to be told I couldn't play their single player game because their servers were down for maintenance.

I'm not paying $60 for a single player game that I won't be able to play when the company has server issues.

There's absolutely no reason to force a single player game to be online only. It's just a way to developers to try and prevent piracy.

I don’t love it, but I’ve found that it’s been less intrusive than I thought. Generally only feel it when the internet goes out. That said, I’ve got fairly good fiber internet, so I’m a bit privileged in this regard. We used to have absolutely horrendous rural internet and it sucked.

Well for ladder style games, it is necessary. Take a look at diablo 3 leaderboard on switch. Just absolutely full of hackers/exploiters/ whatever you want to call them because you can play offline.

That being said, diablo should ALWAYS have an offline mode available as well as an online mode. That is how it was in diablo 2 and I miss it.

It obviously only bothers me for single player games. Sometimes my internet is down when I wanna play. There is no good reason for why I have to be online to play a single player game. Sometimes my internet is fine but the game servers are down. Or overloaded. Or the publisher just took them down permanently or whatever.

I tried playing the beta for diablo 4 and the game had network lag. I know diablo 4 is technically a multiplayer game. But I always played diablo alone and I'm not interested in the multiplayer aspect. Sometimes I would get kicked from the server for whatever reason. That sucked. made me not buy the game.

My firewall is configured to block all programs by default. If a game refuses to open or function without internet and I can't find any workarounds it gets angry looks from me and I let it through. I get anxious when playing anything multiplayer so doing so saves me from having to interact with people if I accidentally trigger a multiplayer event or something. Also generally makes games launch faster.

If a game has a single player mode without features that require internet, and isn't accessible without wifi, thats just lazy design imo.

So I have a very specific dog in this fight. I am currently working on an RTS game for the recoil engine. One of my big requirements is the ability for direct hosting without the need of a central server. My biggest argument for this is the fact that if the server ever goes down or I get hit by a truck or anything like that, people can still directly host games.

Also I don't think lan parties should require a trip to a third party server just in order to have games with each other. I feel sometimes like I'm the only person who remembers back in the old days when we had giant lan parties and in a lot of cases there wasn't even really much in the way of internet access to them.

In my personal opinion, I feel like games as a service have done end users a disservice. There are so many games that I would love to go back and play but I can't because the servers don't exist or the developers made it so difficult to host your own servers that you need to jump through a million modding hoops just to make it so that you can actually play a game online with others.

What is really bad though is single player games that require an online connection. Witafits?

For me, it really just depends on the specific game. When talking about Diablo 4, I actually like the fact that I see random players in the open world.

But since D4 is a game which would also work perfectly fine when playing alone/offline, I also hope they had an offline mode - direct example would be Diablo 2. Personally I'd still play in the online version, but having access to offline mode would allow playing it even if your own connection is bad (or just down), so it would obviously just be an accessibility thing for many other players. Also, always-online requirement means that in the far future, the game can become completely unplayable after the servers are closed.

TL;DR always-online doesn't really affect my purchasing choices, but if the game's design is such that an offline/solo version makes sense, I'd still prefer if those games also included an offline mode.

I just want to comment about how pausing the game isn't directly tied to being always-online:

There's some offline games which don't have pause: Dark Souls being one of the well known examples (you can enable pausing by using a mod, but anyway). Something like Clicker Heroes also don't have a pause, but it's really rare that you'd want to pause it anyway.

There's also always-online games which allow pausing when playing solo: Diablo 3 (pc version) is the easy comparison here. Trackmania is another game which I play a lot (uses constant connection for syncing world records), and it's possible to pause the game when playing solo.

Even if D4 is always-online and the open world is shared by design, if Blizzard wanted to, they could still make it possible to pause the game while inside a solo instance.

Look what they did with overwatch.

But to answer your question, it is dumb unless it’s specially a game designed to need to play with others. Even then they should have some solo content.

I will never but a game that requires always online.

Hate it with a passion

this would be an ideal situation to sail the high seas for arrr

With Starlink and an obstructed view of the sky, I really hate online only games because they get interrupted whenever a satellite goes behind a tree. I’ve basically had to use my phone’s hotspot to play games like hitman or multiplayer games like deep rock. It doesn’t use a ton of data once you’ve downloaded the games assets and have everything up to date. I tend to avoid online only games unless they are heavily discounted.

On another note, I have a 5 month old and the Steam Deck has been a godsend. The ability to pause a game and suspend the deck has saved my ass quite a few times and allowed me to get in some quick game sessions. I’m able to play maybe 20-30 minutes sessions during naps or when I’m in the toilet. I mostly stick with single player offline games these days. I have such a large backlog of steam games that have been a blast going back and completing. Also, emudeck has kept me flush with some nostalgic retro games. Even though I have a ps5 and a gaming PC, I almost exclusively use the deck these days. Good luck and congratulations!

I almost exclusively play single-player games. I'm not sure I own one that is always online, since I pretty much always have WiFi on and wouldn't notice the difference, but I don't see why any of my games would have to be always online.

I think when it makes sense it's fine, but I would only really say that for multiplayer games, if it's a single player game there is a really unfortunate reality, which is that pirating it will result in a better gameplay experience.

I like it. I like to know that people likely haven’t hacked their chars. I’ve never had my crashing or rubber banding. It’s been seamless and while an offline version would be fine for me, that would never be the real game and you should never be allowed online.

Personally it's never effected me but it feels like a really dumb decision made by ignorant suits. The fact that pirates get a better product than paying customers is pretty sad.