They are gonna remove games in future like they did with the movies
They already have lol.
Licensed titles are different. Unless they’ve done that for non-licensed titles.
Kindle literally removed 1984 from people’s devices
That was a case where the seller literally didn’t have the rights to the book. If you search for the title today you’ll find a version that is listed as the Authorized Orwell Edition.
Not the same as what I was referring to. Video games based on licensed IPs, often get taken down from digital game stores because the publisher’s license has ended. What you described with 1984 is someone who shouldn’t be selling the media, having sold it. Sure, it sucks if the title disappeared from your device but maybe that was the only legal resolution?
The proper legal resolution would be refunding the customer and then settle it between Amazon and the author that didn’t have the rights to sell what they sold. If I buy some food at the grocery store and there’s a recall due to for example contamination, I can go back to the store and get a refund. I can even go to any store selling the same item without an invoice and get a refund (for their list price I think). This is at least the deal in Denmark. This should be the same if something was sold with a missing license or improper license (if it is sold as a product but the license the seller has expires and is not renewed)
Conveying something to someone in perpetuity (i.e. “selling” it to them) when you don’t have the right to do so is fraud. Just because Amazon or whoever’s right to continue offering the thing ended doesn’t mean their customers’ property rights somehow end with it.
It’s exactly as absurd as a car dealer stealing back all the cars they previously sold just because they ended their agreement with the manufacturer.
There is absolutely no sane world in which stealing your customers’ property could ever be the “only legal resolution!”
Sometimes the license for the music in games expires and developers/publishers just remove it from the games.
That, by itself, is absolutely outrageous and absurd. The game developer’s failure to license the music appropriately is between them and the music copyright holder; nothing gives them the right to steal the content back from the third parties they conveyed it to in perpetuity.
Agreed, licensing for anything like that in game should be required to be permanent. Only exception I can possibly think of is live service games where the content cycles out of availability.
I wouldn’t argue just that it should be; I would argue that it is and we have a massive problem with the FTC failing to enforce existing law.
I think it will no longer be available as an option.
I will be buying no more PlayStations then.
Same.
Xbox is pushing the same thing with gamepass, Nintendo lowered their digital games pricing to match/go lower than physical media. Everything is going that way.
If buying is not owning, piracy is not stealing
This is such a great quote.
But if you read the fine print, you are not buying these games, you are entering into a subscription to them. Paying a one-time fee to subscribe to the games indefinitely. That’s why it feels like buying.
That’s how they getcha.
So it’s almost like buying is not owning?
Almost, but not exactly.
And look, I’m not saying its defensible, I’m just saying that they technically trick us into subscribing, and thus we can’t technically say we’re buying these games. So, GOG ❤️
The fact that it’s legal to have a purchase flow that looks like you’re buying things without the seller being legally obliged to have a disclaimer in big fat letters that says something like “THIS IS NOT A PURCHASE, IT’S A LICENSING AGREEMENT. LICENSING AGREEMENTS CAN BE REVOKED AT ANY TIME AND YOU WILL LOSE ACCESS TO THIS MEDIA YOU ARE LICENSING” is the actual problem.
IMHO, Corruption amongst Lawmakers and Regulators is the actual problem.
People should be avoiding like the plague any stores whose media they can’t actually download and keep in an open DRM-free format in their own devices, but they don’t because they’re not aware of it as the whole thing is one big bloody mess of expert legal domain and the fraud of misportraying a sale to be one things whilst it is a different thing being totally legal when it comes to digital media.
Can’t blame people for not understanding this and thus not navigating it in an informed way, but I sure can blame Politicians and Regulators for not doing their jobs which is to make sure that sales are fair and the consumer can make an informed choice when evaluating a potential a purchase.
I mean… They ask you to agree to the Steam subscriber agreement for each purchase. Pretty sure Epic has a similar disclaimer on each purchase as well.
People just don’t read. 🤷♂️ But yeah, it should be like a TikTok format video for all the inattentive people I guess. More people deserve to be aware of it.
Long document full of legal language than can only be truly comprehended by those with Legal Training isn’t at all the same as BIG FAT TEXT INDICATING IN A SIMPLE WAY THAT THIS IS NOT A PURCHASE.
Absolutely, in the absence of actual Pro-Consumer Regulatory Obligations, the whole “Agreement” is a valid way for sellers of digital media such as Steam to legally cover their asses and not actually saying to prospective buyers the true nature of what they’re buying.
It is, however, not a means to help a purchaser make an informed purchase, rather it’s a way for Steam and other such stores to, in the current legal and regulatory environment, legally get away with doing the very opposite and obfuscate the true nature of what the purchaser is purchasing.
Think about it this way: if the intention of Steam was to be honest and make sure purchasers were making informed purchases, then why not inform purchasers upfront in the product page in a simple way that what they would be buying was a REVOCABLE LICENSE rather than ownership of a PRODUCT, and even explain the difference, rather than hide it in a long document that requires Law training to fully understand?
why not inform purchasers upfront in the product page in a simple way that what they would be buying was a REVOCABLE LICENSE
But yeah, I definitely agree with you in general. You have perfectly valid points.
I will no longer be offering money to receive playstation games. 🤷♂️
Fair
If they could be trusted to treat digital copies as actual ownership, this wouldn’t be such a big deal.
Sony I already didn’t intend to buy the next game console, you don’t have to keep trying to push me away.
“It will be over $1000.”
“Ew, no thanks!”
“But wait, there’s more! You also won’t be able to buy games used or trade them with friends!”
My main problem with this is I can’t sell or trade a digital game after I’m done with it. This needs to be
feltdelt with legally.I like being able to share a disc with friends. Or get one from the library. They kill that, they’re making a hell of lot of enemies.
I feel you but I’m no lawyer.
For real, every jurisdiction needs to extend the first sale doctrine to digital media
At this rate why sell hardware to people anymore? Might as well rip the bandaid and make it a cloud-gaming device.
Many people will tolerate digitally distributed games, but not subscriptions
So. They have chosen death.
The majority of people do not care.
Then the majority of people will get shafted. Nothing new under the sun, I guess.
Unfortunately. The market chose convenience over consumer rights. We no longer own anything and can have it taken away at any time.
They were already getting shafted, by your definition, as they were already buying digital only games.
Well exactly.
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Cool. If thats the case I will no longer be offering Playstation my money for games.
The concept that not everyone has big internet or even good enough might be super strange for these C-level people.
I don’t think they care about those markets (even though they could make a lot of money out of them)
So is that market the last $1 billion still buying physical? A graph was passed around showing sales are down from an $11 billion peak in 2009 nearly 20 years ago.
I wonder how much of that last billion is Switch. I assume physical sales are higher there. But I might be way off.
Even with physical media you have to download large packages of data to start playing the game
So don’t buy a fucking Playstation.
This isn’t that hard to sort out.
I already have one because they were the best platform when it came to actually owning your games.
I’d feel more strongly about this if I’d actually bought a game on a physical disc anytime in the last 3 years.
They’re often cheaper on disc. Random sales here and there nearly always undercut the PSN price.
The real reason I’ve not bought many this gen was PS Plus. There’s a lot of games I’d have been vaguely interested in picking up on a decent sale, only they’ve never been on one, and then went on PS Plus so now aren’t worth buying at all.
Realistically the loss of physical discs means we need far more robust digital rights. The right to trade games to other accounts. The right to continue playing them if the store closes, loading games and licence keys from USB etc. That last one is going to need some thought to prevent abuse, but I think it’s essential if we’re going to live in a digital future. On PC that last one could be done by transferring licenses to another store maybe.
It should still matter to you, unless you don’t mind paying $80 for every game. The competition of physical game pricing and the secondhand market helps keep digital prices lower as well.
Yeah, but why not? I enjoy having access to the game within the same 10 minutes I buy it…
Now downloading, that’s a different story.
How many modern 3d games are there that fit on a reasonable amount of disks? Don’t you usually have to download shit either way?
When was the last time you bought a game on some physical storage and did not have to download etc. things anyway?
OK, but you can sell the disc after using it or share it with friends…
That is the big ticket. We need to be able to sell digital items.
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3 years? About 15 years for me. Whenever civ 5 was released.
At least the digital-only playstations will be really cheap… Right?
And the games, too, since there are no shipping or packaging costs!
