Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

popcar.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 549 posts

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

#181

Post by Telaneo »

nfw2 wrote: post #174
PaulRobinson wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the World understands the difference between buying a product and buying a service. Games (and other digital media), are sold as products, not services, mostly. TFA is arguing this should persist and not be replaced as games as (subscription/licensed rental), services. It argues the move to digital is being used by businesses to switch to a services model under the hood, and that this should be resisted and i…

> Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected? Because we have a free market not a command economy? Publishers can sell whatever they want

Then they can stop pretending and actually sell it as a service. What they're doing now is doing one thing (selling it as a product), while getting the benefits of the other (selling it as a service).

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

#182

Post by jmyeet »

This isn't just isn't as clearcut as people make it. A lot of it is based on a historic idea of an SNES cartridge or PS1 disk that contained the complete game, which was played locally and was entirely self-contained. It makes sense that you'd "own" that.

But we don't live in that world anymore. An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it? If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly? Even with games like CoD that have a campaign, the game would degrade by losing online services.

Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down? Or does it need to be available to download forever? If so, who hosts that?

As another example, I can probably from some old DVDs with games like GTA4 on them if I dig in boxes. I have since bought most on Steam since but ignore that. Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up. What happens then? What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists? What exactly do you "own"?

For digital TV shows and movies, this is far easier. I've never bought any of these. Years ago, you couldn't even download movies again from iTunes. If you lost it, bad luck. They reversed course on that I believe. But all these cases where the digital store lost the digital icense, which is going to happen, what did you think was going to happen?

What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained? By whom? You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle.

But games are tougher for the reasons I described.

Here's something else to consider: part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail. This degradation is built into the pricing model.

I honestly don't know what the solution is here but this just isn't as clearcut as people are making it out to be.

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

#183

Post by Obscurity4340 »

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…

Especially one-time purchase apps, zero control from the user and they can enforce any number of unreasonable control mechanisms over you even once you've paid for the damn thing.

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

#184

Post by paulryanrogers »

nfw2 wrote: post #174
PaulRobinson wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the World understands the difference between buying a product and buying a service. Games (and other digital media), are sold as products, not services, mostly. TFA is arguing this should persist and not be replaced as games as (subscription/licensed rental), services. It argues the move to digital is being used by businesses to switch to a services model under the hood, and that this should be resisted and i…

> Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected? Because we have a free market not a command economy? Publishers can sell whatever they want

> Publishers can sell whatever they want.

Indeed. They just can't commit fraud or false advertising.

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

#185

Post by Telaneo »

nfw2 wrote: post #156
MyMemoryfails wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally i only purchase DRM free games, but it doesn't still change that fact that major digital storefronts use misleading terms. Maybe physical disks would maintain popularity if customers knew they'd be renting the product for unknown period time instead of owning it. It's easy to forget that average joe doesn't understand the consequences when we're on our own bubbles. Edit: The media outrage when Sony removed…

As yes, the poor, ignorant average joe, who doesn't realize the game they buy on the PLAYSTATION store needs PLAYSTATION to work in order to play it. If only enough bloggers wrote enough articles to enlighten them, then they would join the mob and demand forever access to the games they play for 3 weeks then never play again.

Even if I only read a book once after buying it, it shouldn't turn into a rock just because I never intend to read it again.

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

#186

Post by AlienRobot »

pocksuppet wrote: post #130
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…

They did this in California, now online stores in California only let you rent games for an indefinite term. Exactly the same as before but the button says "rent"

That's good, since you are renting them.

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

#187

Post by cyclonereef »

this is one of the few areas i feel like a blockchain-style solution could work. Mint a token, transfer it on sale or resale to the new wallet. Validate a wallet with the key is associated with the account. Same for old-school MSFT licenses or other systems where you buy a license key.

There's probably a shortcoming I'm missing here, but it's the only genuine case I could see a blockchain having use above other technical solutions

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

#188

Post by paulryanrogers »

nfw2 wrote: post #156
MyMemoryfails wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally i only purchase DRM free games, but it doesn't still change that fact that major digital storefronts use misleading terms. Maybe physical disks would maintain popularity if customers knew they'd be renting the product for unknown period time instead of owning it. It's easy to forget that average joe doesn't understand the consequences when we're on our own bubbles. Edit: The media outrage when Sony removed…

As yes, the poor, ignorant average joe, who doesn't realize the game they buy on the PLAYSTATION store needs PLAYSTATION to work in order to play it. If only enough bloggers wrote enough articles to enlighten them, then they would join the mob and demand forever access to the games they play for 3 weeks then never play again.

Why carry water for billion dollar companies?

I can still play my brother's old PlayStation games on his OG PlayStation. They cannot be revoked arbitrarily, nor their music dropped or swapped out. This a feature, and we'd feel quite cheated if that happened. In fact we still go back to old games from time to time.

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

#189

Post by nfw2 »

wsve wrote: post #147
nfw2 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that you BUY needs to be your property. This is obviously absurd as a universal rule. If I "buy" a night in a hotel room, I should own the hotel room? If I order a taxi, I should own the taxi? If I ride a bikeshare e-bike across town, I should own the bike? Whether rent is appropriate or exploitative for a certain product or industry is a fair question, but to say renting should not exist as a concept at a…

All your examples make clear to the customer that their access is temporary and conditional on their continued and ongoing payment, and that ownership of the good/service is retained by the seller. On the other hand, "buying a game" is given the guise of ownership, despite true ownership still being retained by the seller, obscured by the fact you're making a one-time payment. It'd be reasonable if the terminology us…

Rent and Subscribe would NOT be clear because they imply ongoing payment. Consumers care mostly about if they are paying money once or on an ongoing basis, not abstract things like DRM.

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

#190

Post by MYEUHD »

hx8 wrote: post #121
keyringlight wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1. An Xbox Live/Playstation Plus is required for any online multiplayer functionality. 2. DRM Free still matters with multiplayer games. Minecraft is a perfect example, where you can run your own client/server and play with people, and there really doesn't need to be any other middle man involved. 3. With how good home internet is now, it's not a big deal to host game servers from your home on an old computer. Runnin…

> 1. An Xbox Live/Playstation Plus is required for any online multiplayer functionality.

This is false. Free-to-Play titles like Fortnite don't require a subscription to play online.

Post reply on HN