“You were oblivious to the magical bits beneath the hood” (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Sunday, August 03, 2014, 22:25 (3765 days ago) @ kapowaz

You have a game client which is installed / run locally by the player. It must connect to a game server to do anything: it can't be run without a persistent connection. Whilst playing the game, your client has knowledge of your game's state.
You then also have the game server which runs continually, but crucially it also maintains state for every client's game. This way, you can't (for example) somehow fool the client into thinking you've killed an enemy when you haven't, because the server will be able to verify what you have and haven't done in the game world. It's more accurate to think of the game as running on the server, but you're issuing commands to your character via the client.

Destiny can operate just fine without server access for short periods. The game is playable, and enemies die when you shoot them, if your connection is briefly interrupted. Too long though, and it boots you out.

I think a lot of code is run client side.