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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

#101

Post by bluefirebrand »

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…

> What's different

I think what's different is that there aren't any/many dissenting companies building products without the bullshit.

In the past if consumers didn't like something they could shift their business to another company that wasn't doing that thing. Companies had to compete

I don't think I see much actual competition among companies anymore. They're all just trying to build as much lock-in as they can. For example, I think HP printers don't compete with Brother printers really, they just keep trying to milk HP customers more instead of winning new business.

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

#102

Post by keyringlight »

hx8 wrote: post #43
tayo42 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really a rise in PC gaming going on? Isn't that dependent on people having PCs and hardware?

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…

For the kinds of games where DRM free matters, where they don't have a prominent online/multiplayer side or the equivalent of playing the game 'from the disc', is the console subscription really an issue? I don't have a console myself, but from when I've looked into it there's a bunch of mainly free to play games where that subscription isn't needed as both the publisher and Sony/MS get their money from purchases.

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

#103

Post by feoren »

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…

You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about. All the oversight and regulation about everything you don't care and/or know about is big bad government overreach. Every government agency is a useless waste of your tax dollars, except the ones you rely on and the ones where you have friends that work there. Do I have that right?

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

#104

Post by Waterluvian »

I want the most minimum amount of regulation that doesn’t reason much about the type of media or transport method.

Require clear communication of meaning of words like “purchase” and require software “licenses” to indicate “access for at least 5 years” or whatever.

Basically, “you don’t own this. You’re buying the right to access it for least x years” vs. “You are purchasing a key that is fully transferable and provides indefinite access to this product.”

Then let the market sort out the rest, including buyer sentiment.

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

#105

Post by lofaszvanitt »

And "people" seemingly hated NFT so much, but the basic idea of it, like in this case, would've given sony an opportunity to cash in on every resale of the given physical disc. But, oooh the underlying forces that steer our society towards a dead end didn't like that idea.

Same applies to graphics artists. They sell a painting and if it ever changes hands it would've netted them X percent from the given transactions. But NO, that's not the way this should be handled. The elite doesn't want people to earn easily.

Digital vs physical is the same bs just from a different angle.

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

#106

Post by Macha »

RHSeeger wrote: post #78
benoau wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Steamworks, the integration library for games to interact with Steam features, has an optional DRM component. It's not a particularly impressive one, so it's more about stopping people copy/pasting their steamapps folder than stopping dedicated pirates, hence why so many publishers use alternative solutions.

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

#107

Post by Barrin92 »

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…

>What's different? How do we get back to how it was before?

Elect people who regulate business and break up closed platforms. That's what different. Happened to TV too. In the early 1980s TV programming was regulated. Program-length commercials were banned, host-selling was banned, etc. Then Reagan put Mark Fowler in charge of the FCC who thought TVs are "toasters with pictures" and the free market should handle it and you got modern ad-infested, anti-consumer TV.

Gaming hardly was ever subject to any rules to begin with because it grew up after that shift. There's no great mystery, you hand your society over to unaccountable megacorporations and the market and you get exactly what anyone on the street would have told you would happen.

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

#108

Post by Macha »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #105

And "people" seemingly hated NFT so much, but the basic idea of it, like in this case, would've given sony an opportunity to cash in on every resale of the given physical disc. But, oooh the underlying forces that steer our society towards a dead end didn't like that idea. Same applies to graphics artists. They sell a painting and if it ever changes hands it would've netted them X percent from the given transactions.…

I mean of course. If the person who sold you something is able to enforce terms on it, that's not ownership. The prospective NFT-sellers in your example are on the side of Sony, not the customers.

Not to mention all the other failures of NFTs at achieving the goal. The NFT can't know that you've handed over the physical object, or copied/screenshotted the PNG or whatever. It can't enforce that a transfer of the object is paired with a transfer of the NFT - you'd need a contract for that. And once you have a contract, what good does the NFT do for you?

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

#109

Post by Negitivefrags »

al_borland wrote: post #81
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 saw something earlier today that showed the Sony agreement specifies you’re only licensing the games, even if you buy it on a disc. So the fine print means no one ever “buys” a game for the PS5. They are buying a license to use the game for some indefinite period of time that Sony, or some other rights holder, will determine at a later date. This is why things really need to be DRM free from the start, and portable…

This has been the case for software since the very beginning. And people have been complaining about it since the beginning. See the Free Software Foundation.

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

#110

Post by mannanj »

benoau wrote: post #38
mannanj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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