It’s more that only a few years ago, the same experience could have been revisited - the technology and the means exist - but business reasons say otherwise.
In this case, it’s the Fortnite world.
If Fortnite were a game in the 1990s-2000s, the data (map, world, characters) would be on a CD or DVD and the multiplayer server would also be included on the CD: the community runs its own servers. If the developers release a huge new update - including over digital distribution - users still have the original discs and server software, thus if they want to relive “Fortnite 1997, v1.0’ they can - just reinstall it from the original media.
With the iOS App Store we used to be able to make versioned backups of the IPA files and restore them using desktop iTunes so if an over-the-air update for... say, Angry Birds, added an obnoxious amount of pay-to-win functionality then we had the choice to downgrade before things went to shit.
Now, we can’t do that. This is why I don’t buy mobile games anymore: I have no guarantees about my ability to keep what I paid for.
Angry birds was such a disappointment... I bought it, thought it was a neat game, and well worth the $2.
A few years later I wanted to show it to my kids, and the game I bought had turned into an abomination of ads, in-app-purchases, and dark patterns, and there was no way to get back the charming little game that I originally bought...
Wow, yeah so many dark patterns in kids games, lots of games that look cool and then you install them and have to watch a half minute ad for another video game every time you die. I remember renting NES games over the weekends and so I had to choose between a limited number of choices. The seemingly infinite number of games that exist now via the android play store is crazy but most of them are completely bad and would never get approved from any curatorial perspective yet they make money for the platform and the developer (evidently).
In this case, it’s the Fortnite world.
If Fortnite were a game in the 1990s-2000s, the data (map, world, characters) would be on a CD or DVD and the multiplayer server would also be included on the CD: the community runs its own servers. If the developers release a huge new update - including over digital distribution - users still have the original discs and server software, thus if they want to relive “Fortnite 1997, v1.0’ they can - just reinstall it from the original media.
With the iOS App Store we used to be able to make versioned backups of the IPA files and restore them using desktop iTunes so if an over-the-air update for... say, Angry Birds, added an obnoxious amount of pay-to-win functionality then we had the choice to downgrade before things went to shit.
Now, we can’t do that. This is why I don’t buy mobile games anymore: I have no guarantees about my ability to keep what I paid for.