For the past week, a fan-made “offline version” of Square Enix’s NieR Reincarnation has had users embroiled in a massive argument about “game preservation VS infringement.” Announced by X user Altret on April 13, the unofficial “revival” project makes the live-service RPG partially playable for the first time since it ended services in April 2024, through the use of private servers. The catch is, however, that this has been done without consent from Square Enix.
Fans who were upset about there being no legal way to play NieR Reincarnation, given that its story plays an important role in the Nier/Drakengard narrative, welcomed the initiative. At the same time, there’s been just as many voices, particularly in Japan, condemning the project, considering it a violation of Square Enix’s copyrights and an act of disrespect towards the game’s original creators. While the ethical issues are a can of worms that likely won’t be seeing reconciliation from the two sides any time soon (especially without comment from Square Enix’s side so far), the discussion has yielded some practical insights into the problem of retrofitting online games for offline play itself.
Addressing the argument of “why don’t developers just release an offline version themselves if they don’t want unofficial ones cropping up,” a couple of Japanese developers have shared technical insights and personal experience concerning the matter.
Itchie, a Japanese programmer and producer who previously worked at game companies like Square and SNK, empathized with gamers’ wish to see online games properly preserved after they end services, but suggested that it’s often not a viable choice for developers in terms of the additional work and cost involved. Mechanisms that are essential for a game to function properly, such as progression tracking, inventory management, enemy behavior and reward calculations among many others, are supported by servers in an online environment. Relocating these mechanisms so that they work locally, he explains, leads to a plethora of new problems to solve, such as save file tampering, synchronization issues and data inconsistencies upon resuming the game.
Furthermore, games designed with multiplayer in mind have their difficulty, rewards pacing and events structured specifically for online play, so converting them into offline games can require reworking not only connectivity-related aspects, but introducing game pacing suited for solo play, enemy AI replacements, and reworking reward balance and save system design. While laymen tend to think of retrofitting online support as a kind of “modification,” Itchie says it’s actually much closer to a complete overhaul of the game’s foundations. While there are cases where creating an online mode is straightforward, that usually means the game was originally designed with that possibility in mind or was inherently compatible with an offline format.
“Making [an offline version] technically work and making it an enjoyable product are two different things,” Itchie says. “There is a strong risk that the game will end up playable but not entertaining, or that it will simply fall apart as a game.” It might be worth noting here that, from the perspective of an unofficial revival project scrapped together by fans, players are sure to be generous towards such inconsistencies, but that probably wouldn’t be the case for something distributed through official channels.
Itchie concludes by emphasizing that a lack of offline support is, in most cases, not due to the negligence of developers. Another Japanese programmer who goes by Kei on X shared their personal experience in response. “I actually went through this exact situation once before,” they say. “When we were about to shut down services, management told us to look into taking the game offline, so I calculated the man-hours required, and it turned out to be about the same cost as developing a brand-new game. When I reported this honestly, everyone was completely taken aback. It actually seemed like it would be harder to pull off than just building something from scratch.”
On the flip side, they add that while designing an online game with offline capability in mind from the start does offset this issue, it severely limits what the developers can do in their game across all fronts of game design. While this perspective doesn’t make the issue of customers losing access to what they paid for and games not being preserved go away, it’s certainly clear that developers don’t have an easy solution to the problem.
