So I have the core set of the game so far and really want to get the rest of the expansions. But I am a little concerned about the future of the game. With all of the changes going on in FFG, I'm worried that I will buy all the expansions and then no longer have support for the game and then they drop the app entirely. I've seen this happen with Warhammer with their iOS dice app. It eventually just stopped working and crashed and never worked again. Do we know what the current state is of these app driven games are? Is this something that will be supported for quite some time? If not, is there a way to play MoM without the app? Thanks everyone

On 4/3/2020 at 4:59 PM, JPierson said:

So I have the core set of the game so far and really want to get the rest of the expansions. But I am a little concerned about the future of the game. With all of the changes going on in FFG, I'm worried that I will buy all the expansions and then no longer have support for the game and then they drop the app entirely. I've seen this happen with Warhammer with their iOS dice app. It eventually just stopped working and crashed and never worked again. Do we know what the current state is of these app driven games are? Is this something that will be supported for quite some time? If not, is there a way to play MoM without the app? Thanks everyone

Have you tried Valkyrie?

5 hours ago, Nicola Zealey said:

Have you tried Valkyrie?

Quite frankly, this is not a very helpful comment. I don't want to use Valkyrie. I want to use the official app for MoM2e. I have the same concern as the OP. I already own all of Mansions of Madness 2. While we have played the game a bunch, there is much content left to be played. But that won't be possible if the app disappears, stops working, etc. This is the exact problem of buying a BOARD GAME that uses an effing electronic device.

I have already made the commitment to maintain an ios device for this app (as well as for other games that I own that use an app). Having said that, recent games that use an app have placed the apps code into an escrow, that will be released to the public should the company fold, no longer support the app, etc. This way, at least, the gaming community will be able to support and build on the app in the future.

I would love to see FFG do this for D2e, MoM2e, et. al. I just don't think it will ever happen.

The official app runs fine off-line - at least it does on my lap top.

As long as someone has a copy of the app, I believe it should be possible to put a download together.

In the unlikely event FFG stops supporting the app, some kind soul is likely to put such a download up on the internet.

If this happens I doubt very much FFG would issue a cease and desist - it would make them unpopular for no benefit.

I will admit running offline and encapsulated app download might not be true of all smart phone devices. Someone more knowledgeable about these things would need to confirm this. The world of Windows 10 is much more familiar to me than the shadowy world of smart phones! 🙂

This leaves the issue of new content - hence my mentioning Valkyrie.

It will remain on steam as is, FFG are unlikely to take it down and you can expect it to be compatible with at least a couple of newer OS versions (due to OS level backwards compatibility).

The Android and IOS versions, I have less hope for. Android are talking about forcing containerisation of apps, which may require the app to be re-deveoped to work and I wouldn't be shocked if Apple did something similar that would require apps to be updated and republished.

I had thought about the Steam app as well. That’s interesting to thing that it may stay on there even if it stops getting support. Not sure if I trust that all the way though

On 4/6/2020 at 1:22 PM, scrubbless said:

It will remain on steam as is, FFG are unlikely to take it down and you can expect it to be compatible with at least a couple of newer OS versions (due to OS level backwards compatibility).

The Android and IOS versions, I have less hope for. Android are talking about forcing containerisation of apps, which may require the app to be re-deveoped to work and I wouldn't be shocked if Apple did something similar that would require apps to be updated and republished.

The IOS becoming obsolete on Windows laptops is not a big issue for several versions due to emulators.

It is possible that FFG takes the app down from Steam and does not mod it so it can be run without steam - just to be unpopular. In that case I would hope some clever hacker could hack it not to call up steam at the start.

But even in the worst case scenario, reverse engineering many of the existing scenarios into Valkyrie would be a lot of work but do-able. The complexity of the intro scenarios like Circle of Eternity is low compared to the complexity of most of the top rated Valkyrie scenarios.

Of course, FFG could issue a cease and desist on Valkyrie as well but what do they gain except a lot of ill-will?

You can still easily run games that I was playing as a kid nearly 40 years ago. Worrying about suddenly not being able to run the app is pretty silly.

5 hours ago, KBlumhardt said:

You can still easily run games that I was playing as a kid nearly 40 years ago. Worrying about suddenly not being able to run the app is pretty silly.

It's not so easy. The problem is when you have dependencies. For example I have a game on Steam that does not work on Windows 10 at all. Until recently I had it working fine inside a Windows XP virtual machine. Except now Steam refuses to run on Windows XP because it's not supported anymore.

The windows version of Mansions of Madness is also dependent on Steam, so we're at their whim when it comes to compatibility.

That's even assuming we still use any of the OS that we use nowadays. For all you know in 10 years everything runs in the web and we don't have the ability to run anything locally anymore. All the signs are pointing to that, so unless somebody writes a third party app to replace the official app (because it's all too likely FFG will either not exist or care anymore), you can't play it anymore.

13 hours ago, neosmagus said:

It's not so easy. The problem is when you have dependencies. For example I have a game on Steam that does not work on Windows 10 at all. Until recently I had it working fine inside a Windows XP virtual machine. Except now Steam refuses to run on Windows XP because it's not supported anymore.

The windows version of Mansions of Madness is also dependent on Steam, so we're at their whim when it comes to compatibility.

That's even assuming we still use any of the OS that we use nowadays. For all you know in 10 years everything runs in the web and we don't have the ability to run anything locally anymore. All the signs are pointing to that, so unless somebody writes a third party app to replace the official app (because it's all too likely FFG will either not exist or care anymore), you can't play it anymore.

Yes but in the very long run we're all dead or maybe existing in cyberspace!

In any case there is already a third party app and it is called Valkyrie.

It would almost certainly be less work porting the existing scenarios to Valkyrie than writing another third party app from scratch.

It may even be less work [if players want lots of new scenarios to be written] to port the official scenarios to Valkyrie even if FFG makes its app code base public domain. It all depends on how modular and well-written it is as an editor. Maybe FFG spent a lot of time and money on getting in a team of top highly paid software developers and giving them plenty of time and support to enable developing an editor everyone could use with ease. Who knows? On the other hand, maybe it's been knocked together quick, with a few overworked souls working to impossible deadlines with numerous bodges added ad-hoc. Maybe I'm just a bit jaded and cynical but many folks have a remarkably rosy view of software development.

🙂