Why Can’t I Play Community Games Offline?

I’ll try to keep this short and to the point because it’s something that kind of peeves me and I don’t like to rant. Last week we had something of a bad storm, and low and behold, my Internet was down. I’m not sure if it was storm related, and if it isn’t, the storm at least helps to set the mood.

Anyways, I was playing Prince of Persia when I’d decided that I’d had enough of  trying to find lightseeds and wanted to go for something a little bit different. You see, just days before I had purchased Philip Muwanga’s: Hexy Trench, and figured that I could try to finish its campaign mode. Once in my community games section, I found Hexy Trench, and attempted to start. I don’t remember exactly what appeared, but I believe it was to the effect of:

Maybe exaggerated

Umm… what? Excuse me? I have to be online to play. Why? I moved over to my arcade games. No problem playing Alien Hominid, another game that I payed for. After searching around the web, I’ve found that not only have other people been hit by this too, but Microsoft hasn’t given a solid reason as to why this measure is even in place. And I’m guessing that’s what it is. Some kind of security measure.

I wouldn’t be upset if I just couldn’t play the demos for the Community Games offline, it still wouldn’t make much sense, but it’s not like I payed for those games. As a person who feels like Community Games should be supported fully, I can’t help but feel a little betrayed. Every demo comes with a little something that sets a time limit. I don’t fully know how these things work, but I imagine that once you buy the game, that piece of code is removed or de-activated. So why can’t we just have my Xbox check and see if I have that piece of code before not letting me play my game that I OWN. It is on my console, and it’s not as though the second I hop off Live it disappears. I can see it. It’s taking up space on my hard drive.

So why can’t I play it?

I suppose an almost no-name blog like myself can’t hope to achieve much, but it’s really the principal of the thing. It’s not like I’m offline a lot, but shouldn’t I be entitled to play the game that I payed for if something, such as a thunderstorm, occurs? If I take my Xbox over to a friends house, should I be forced to connect to his Internet in order to play a local two player game? Something just doesn’t add up here, and I would hope that perhaps we can get some answers.

~ by Dylan Nelson on April 7, 2009.