Hey all, I’m back with a look at a specific type of tech for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. It’s all about the Always Online Requirements.

Always Online Requirements: Quite a few games are going this way. They are defined as a title that is either an exclusively single player game, or one with an extensive single player mode, that still requires you to always have an internet connection to play and to be online while doing so. A good example of this is The Crew, which released last year and even made the mainstream news.

Why did that make the news?: Because Ubisoft was sued for rendering the single player mode unplayable after turning off the online servers. Players were upset because they enjoyed playing the title and could no longer do so, even in single player mode. There are probably some people who just played in single player but could no longer do so after the multiplayer side was shut down.

In addition to tying a single player experience to a required online mode, the other thing about games like that is the fact that fast internet access isn’t universal everywhere. It’s still not considered a basic utility in the United States. It also makes it difficult to play games on, for example, the Nintendo Switch while traveling if you can’t find a hotspot.

And so, in my opinion, always online requirements are not very good for games that don’t really need it. Gamers need to be careful when buying a new title mostly for the single player aspects so that they don’t get stuck with an always online requirement that they don’t want or can’t support.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.