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It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

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Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#31

Post by hx8 »

thfuran wrote: post #14
hx8 wrote: post #10

Absolutely this. Fifteen years ago World of Warcraft was at its peak. You had 12 million people paying a monthly fee, plus buying the occasional expansion pack. No other gaming company had seen reoccurring revenue numbers like that before and it changed the industry. One aspect of this was that if you stopped paying you lost access to the game. The industry has been looking for the next way to level up this subscript…

I’m not nearly so optimistic. I think we have a generation of kids now who mostly never owned any physical media, having grown up with Netflix instead of vhs/dvd, Spotify instead of CDs, steam instead of retail games, etc.

I'm pessimistic about physical media yes. That's a legacy technology at this point.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#32

Post by calvinmorrison »

There's another story about a game that died and was resurrected, Runescape. It launched with a big fanfare of version 3.0 back in 2008 and was met with total disaster. Fans were quitting, private servers of the pre-EOC update, etc. Jagex heard this and stuck a solo dev onto re-launching an instance of '2007 scape' which was basically an old backup they found and a few server instances. They incorporated features of the platform like voting, where votes require strong consent (75% in some cases) to get new features, and it's a seriously community driven game where both sides have something to gain. Now branded "old school runescape" the game has more players than the "runescape 3" that still exists today as Runescape. A win all around.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#33

Post by xp84 »

traverseda wrote: post #24
pitched wrote: post #21

We rent time at a football field. We buy tickets to watch a single match. There are parallels here to not owning video games. I don’t really understand why one is so heinous. Let’s say there’s a new rule implemented by the NBA that no one likes (similar to a fear of live service games changing). How is that resolved there and why can’t that solution work for video games? I think a big thing we’re currently missing he…

With a video game it's not clear that you're purchasing a revocable license. That's why it's called "buying" a video game. If online stores were clear that you were actually leasing a game, I don't think this would be a problem. Publishers and storefronts need to be clear that what you're doing isn't buying, or start selling tickets (season passes) that have a clear end date, or use some other mechanism that isn't "b…

Agree. The only way "buying" is understood in English to mean a temporary entitlement is when combined with those terms like "ticket" or "pass."

The choice of language is deliberately made to deceive. If an auto manufacturer tried that, offering to "sell you" a car but the 3-page "Sales contract" had a clause buried in there that said "We can come to your house with 30 days' notice and just take the car back and you have no recourse besides stopping your payments" this would be ruled as grand theft auto (no pun intended) not "the terms and conditions allow it"

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#34

Post by hx8 »

benoau wrote: post #25
hx8 wrote: post #10

Absolutely this. Fifteen years ago World of Warcraft was at its peak. You had 12 million people paying a monthly fee, plus buying the occasional expansion pack. No other gaming company had seen reoccurring revenue numbers like that before and it changed the industry. One aspect of this was that if you stopped paying you lost access to the game. The industry has been looking for the next way to level up this subscript…

> I'm optimistic that the raise in PC gaming will act as a balance for the obvious greed of the consoles. Why? Steam has never done anything to support ownership of games, their policy completely bans transferring licenses or accounts to other people or leaving them to someone when you die. Their next CEO is someone who has only known extreme wealth their whole life and gets the job because daddy started the company,…

I'm optimistic about PC gaming because if Steam begins acting as an evil gatekeeper then game developers can adopt other avenues to deliver the games to their players. It's an open platform. People are using Steam now because it adds value. People will stop using Steam if it subtracts value.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#35

Post by Avicebron »

kakacik wrote: post #18
Avicebron wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resale-able maybe, unable to be revoked I think is more important. As in you can't wake up one morning and your game is gone overnight because copyright around in-game music changed.

Thats easy to do (on paper). Dont let copyright owners revoke/expire their licenses (or if its revokable mark and price it clearly). Once a product containing it is purchased, its owned till product ceases to exist (or similar). All these music behemoths are way too powerful and they twist entire society globally to dance as they want. Not a fraction of a worry for pirates of course, just for decent paying fools. Abh…

Can you download and resell a digital copy of a game you purchase?

If not, this doesn't seem to fix all of the issues it just feels like finger pointing at "evil copyright laws".

Yeah maybe we can change those to, but what about making it so if you pay for something you can do whatever you like with it.

Say if I buy a copy of a movie from Amazon I should be able to sell it to my friend who doesn't have an amazon account..

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#36

Post by mannanj »

benoau wrote: post #25
hx8 wrote: post #10

Absolutely this. Fifteen years ago World of Warcraft was at its peak. You had 12 million people paying a monthly fee, plus buying the occasional expansion pack. No other gaming company had seen reoccurring revenue numbers like that before and it changed the industry. One aspect of this was that if you stopped paying you lost access to the game. The industry has been looking for the next way to level up this subscript…

> I'm optimistic that the raise in PC gaming will act as a balance for the obvious greed of the consoles. Why? Steam has never done anything to support ownership of games, their policy completely bans transferring licenses or accounts to other people or leaving them to someone when you die. Their next CEO is someone who has only known extreme wealth their whole life and gets the job because daddy started the company,…

The same reason you can be pessimistic?

Maybe if you look for evidence to be pessimistic, you find that, and if you look for evidence to be optimistic you find that.

I'd rather choose the more positive, hopeful perspective than the negative, downer one. What about you?

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#37

Post by PaulKeeble »

hx8 wrote: post #29
aceazzameen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You talk as if all Steam games use Steam DRM. No, it's not GOG but it's not the same category as Sony and Microsoft at all. It's starting to sound disingenuous when I see Steam lumped together with them.

I think it's a fair comparison. Steam can change their behavior to become much more user hostile at any point, and hold our triple digit steam libraries hostage.

Its not like we can sell or even lend the games from Steam that we have, not without breaking the licence terms and hacking around the DRM. Its precisely the same as what Sony is intending to enforce.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#38

Post by benoau »

mannanj wrote: post #36
benoau wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm optimistic that the raise in PC gaming will act as a balance for the obvious greed of the consoles. Why? Steam has never done anything to support ownership of games, their policy completely bans transferring licenses or accounts to other people or leaving them to someone when you die. Their next CEO is someone who has only known extreme wealth their whole life and gets the job because daddy started the company,…

The same reason you can be pessimistic? Maybe if you look for evidence to be pessimistic, you find that, and if you look for evidence to be optimistic you find that. I'd rather choose the more positive, hopeful perspective than the negative, downer one. What about you?

What evidence is there to be optimistic about?

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#39

Post by jbombadil »

I am generally not in favor of adding regulation, but this is a place where I would support it.

Anything that you BUY needs to be your property. This means you must have the ability to:

1. Transfer ownership of it (either temporarily as a loan or permanently as a sale). Digital-only doesn't preclude this: the store can have a "transfer" functionality.

2. (Within reason) use it at your discretion at any point after the sale. This means that a company cannot "revoke" your access at a later time. Specifically for content that is DRM locked, if they decide to sunset that service (store, DRM server, whatever), no problem! just offer DRM free (or generally lock-free copies). I have no problem with Sony not offering DRM free versions of games that I can still download and play with the store. But if that goes away -> you must give me a path to local ownership.

(Multiplayer games that require server infrastructure are a bit more complex, and I'd leave aside for now).

This should apply equally to video games, movies, books, music. Any digital content.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#40

Post by sublinear »

I question how much of this discussion is really being driven by gamers.

Those who wanted change made it happen. There are indie games and remakes without these restrictions. Most of classic gaming preservation has been successful with its goals apart from some legal gray areas and chasing rarities.

These discussions then fixate on the cutoff year for classic gaming and whether everything beyond that is even worth saving. The conclusion is always the same. Nobody really cares about the slop.

All that remains to discuss is politics. That's always the most vocal part drowning out everyone else. Who keeps banging this drum?

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