Outage revealed we don't own the content we buy

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Today’s outage revealed …

  • We DO own the base game to play solo/offline.
  • We DO own the DLCs to play solo/offline.
  • We DON’T own Battle Pass rewards to play solo/offline.
  • We DON’T own Bazaar content to play solo/offline.

You can test this by trying to craft any of it offline.

I’m sure this is in the fine print someplace, but I was under the impression that I owned that stuff the same way I own my e.g. Aquilonia DLC. Nope.

Am I less likely to buy anything from here on? Yep.

The “E” word gets over used, but c’mon Funcom, don’t be Evil.

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Sure, ease enough, when steam is working right to verify I own that stuff.

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Point being …

  • The DLCs have Steam keys verified by Steam.
  • The Battle Pass and Bazaar content do not seem to be keyed via Steam licenses. They seem to be keyed remotely via the Funcom live services.

Happy to be corrected if wrong.

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no your quite right about that , because there been times in the past where we couldnt access dlc til steam was working.

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Wait, so content we pay for in the bazaar or unlock in the battle pass, we cannot access it if we play in offline mode at all??

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Did check have to agree. I assume it worked like the DLCs.

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Here’s how I (unpleasantly) bumped into this issue.

  1. Funcom live services are down.
  2. Fine, I play solo anyhow.
  3. Built stuff using the Aquilonia DLC. Fine.
  4. Destroyed an instance of “Arcane Statue” because I wanted to move it.
  5. But wait, I can’t remake it – why?
  6. Oh, huh that’s BP/Bz content.
  7. What about my other BP/Bz content like the Turan build set extension?
  8. Oh my, it’s missing from my menu.
  9. If I Admin and try to spawn stuff I BOUGHT, I get the “Failed to Spawn” message.
  10. Huh, it looks like I don’t own the license keys (locally/cached) for stuff I paid for.
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That is just effed up. So, down the road when Funcom decides to not host official servers, all the money people have spent on the bazaar and battle passes will be lost and unusable? Oh, I cant wait to see the forums on that day.

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Just to be clear …

  • I always play solo.
  • But … as of the change in content model from DLC to BP/Bz, that BP/Bz portion of the content is an “always online” game. Even in solo mode. In that sense you can’t play offline.
  • So … solo isn’t the issue. Offline is.
  • And I assume their license servers are a slightly different thing than their game servers.

So …

  • Hasn’t there been enough uproar over “always online” solo gameplay? This is very basic customer/market 101 at this point. Are publishers like Funcom really not listening?
  • This smells like “Games for Windows Live” all over again. Content I pay for is busted as soon as the original publisher becomes disinterested. This is very basic customer/market 101 at this point. Are publishers like Funcom really not listening?
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Shame on us for buying into it. But in my defense I have that conan exiles was not online only never play offline, they changed the rules after we where well into 2-3 years of game introducing the ■■■■■■ launcher which is another horrible thing.
Like I said in another topic, last true offline game even similar to this is modded skyrim.

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And reading the EULA would have revealed the following:

No, you do not… you are merely granted a license to USE the software - a license which can be revoked unilaterally by Funcom at any point for any reason…

Same applies to this one :slight_smile:

Correct!

Also correct :slight_smile:

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Only good thing about the launcher is that you don’t have to launch the game, adjust mods, then re-launch the game XD
But I don’t think a launcher was needed just for that, so yeah it’s dumb.

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The digital world is such a scam. Remember when people bought entire shows from streaming services, only to have the streaming service remove the show?

You’d best hope Funcom stays afloat or all your cosmetics are going to go poof.

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Re alternatives. Fallout 4. Particularly the build system, which is crazily well-supported by the mod community.

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This was the last time i ever buy something that i can’t use from you, Funcom.

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I didn’t run into the outage issues, as I play on PlayStation and I believe it was PC only, but I think we all already knew this. The live services hiccup on the regular and we’re constantly having to restart the game to reconnect it. :unamused:

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Thanks for the solid info regarding the EULA.

That said, there is a clear difference in behavior between …

  • the base game and DLCs
  • the BP/Bz

It matters far more what the actual behavior is than the boilerplate EULA. The fact is that these two categories of content are not nearly the same. The idea that some very high level legalese makes them the same, and justifies the behavior as just and equal ignores the facts on the ground. The latter is reprehensible.

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I might also add that I wanted to address Funcom directly with my concern, but their online UX actually steered me here instead of any direct communication. So if this sounds like airing dirty laundry and griping – well, this is where Funcom steered me to communicate this.

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That’s because FC changed the business plan on CE. Last year it was a large controversy over it as they stopped the DLC model (because it wasn’t making mint) and introduced the BP/Bazaar method. So naturally it changed. I can sympathize with not being able to play with items that you purchased in offline environments, the heart of it is that when FC changed to “services as a product” model, CE stopped being a traditional game like Fallout or such and turned into a Fortnite/PUBG type of game. You have to be connected to play as the new model.

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Even Fallout turned into a services game. :roll_eyes:

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