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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

#71

Post by Uvix »

aceazzameen wrote: post #27
PaulKeeble wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still don't own their games with Steam, the main PC platform. I don't think its going under anytime soon and currently its reasonably customer friendly but as we have seen these big tech companies can turn on their customer base at any moment. GOG is about the only way to actually own the games since no DRM is applied and you can download the entire package and keep it and don't require their launcher. PC alre…

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.

Until Steam starts telling me before I buy which games have their DRM and which doesn't, they belong in the same category as Sony and Microsoft.

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

#73

Post by matthewfcarlson »

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,…

This was actually a funny question at work over lunch. A few of us have kids and like most tech guys over 30, our steam accounts have turned into collections. So I asked, who gets your steam account when you kick it. It’s difficult to think about and seems baffling to spend thousands of dollars and hours assembling a collection only for it to poof away into nothing.

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

#74

Post by markus_zhang »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #55

The question I'm left with: in the past, the uproar over these types of changes seemed to make companies change their mind when considering very anti-consumer decisions. Now, they just go ahead anyway. What's different? How do we get back to how it was before? I know the current political climate is one that enables this sort of thing. There are parallels with the current movement also WRT to the employer/employee re…

Companies need to earn money, so the only leverage we as customers is to NOT buy their products. Educate our kids that such practices are EVIL and to buy the products it means to support those EVIL practices. Don't be afraid to call upon moral. Kids need to understand moral from the beginning, or they will be corrupted by bad practices.

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

#75

Post by criddell »

tayo42 wrote: post #62
hx8 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Look at the market research. It's growing specifically fast in Asia, but there is also strong growth with North America. Having a PC to check your email, order off amazon, and download recipes is dying. Buying a PC and using it for video games is raising. The PC hardware is getting more expensive, but the upgrade cycles are also extending. If you look at the steam hardware survey most gamers are 1-3 GPU generati…

Hmm I see, that's interesting. Seems like the games industry it self is in a pretty bad state despite that

If you include mobile gaming, things look a lot better.

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

#76

Post by seff »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #73
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,…

This was actually a funny question at work over lunch. A few of us have kids and like most tech guys over 30, our steam accounts have turned into collections. So I asked, who gets your steam account when you kick it. It’s difficult to think about and seems baffling to spend thousands of dollars and hours assembling a collection only for it to poof away into nothing.

When we were in college, one of my friends joked that their stream library was their largest financial asset.

When stream trading was more of a thing, and we had a ramen diet, it was probably true

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

#77

Post by criddell »

me551ah wrote: post #9

If you think in terms of ownership, even then digital is not that bad. I’ve owned digital games since Xbox 360 and I can still play them to this day on my Xbox series X. But not all of my physical games CD/DVDs are in mint condition and some have scratches.

You can play them, but the license gives you no right to transfer ownership. This feels like a huge problem to me, especially with ebooks.

I’d love to see regulation around guaranteeing consumers the ability to transfer ownership of digital goods in a similar way to the analog counterpart.

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

#78

Post by RHSeeger »

benoau wrote: post #54
RHSeeger wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you download your game off steam and play it forever; and if it can't connect to the service, it will just let you play offline? Sure, that loses out on the ability to transfer it to a friend, but it's better.

Some of them do, the Total War games I play the most require weekly online activation. But that's just using what you payed for, it only very slightly overlaps with what actually owning something entails.

Is that online activation Steam or is it a third party thing? Steam allows selling games that have external DRM like that. I think they, themselves, don't do it.

That doesn't invalidate your other point.

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

#79

Post by eldaisfish »

krzyk wrote: post #58
sph wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they have to do then is say that they license you a game, and you're not buying anything, despite paying for it. They already do that with online games.

That is literally in any software since like 90s. You buy license.

right, but back in the 90s, the onus of maintaining a working copy of any software was on you. Now, Sony simply reaches into you home and can deny you access to software/movies you "bought".

These are not the same situation.

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

#80

Post by eldaisfish »

jbombadil wrote: post #39

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 th…

i am curious - why are you not in favour of adding regulation? The point of most good regulation is to avoid consumer-hostile situations like this.
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