Earlier quoted context omitted.
Subjective being subjective
The word subjective is not itself subjective. People understand the definition of the word subjective.
It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
221–230 of 549 posts
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#222I 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?
I think “when you buy a product, be it a game, a house, a car, a computer, a tractor, washer, TV, it should continue to operate without rent-seeking behavior” is the best type of straightforward, uniformly-applicable pattern of regulation one could hope for. Opposing rent-seeking is literally why we have American democracy, which paved the way for French, Brazilian, Canadian, Indian, Mexican and so many other democracies. Kings were the ultimate rent-seekers: every citizen was the product.
It’s not like this is some special case. People make the exact same arguments against John Deere, Tesla, Apple etc. And it’s a major reason many understand we should favor local (or local-capable/open-weight) AI/LLMs. I think “for any product whose support is discontinued, with more than X users, either open source all relevant software and hardware schematics, or provide a binary that will work on the hardware in perpetuity without DRM checks, based on industry” is a miniscule request in the face of any of these industries. I’d say, for instance, weights for discontinued Claude and OpenAI versions would fit. And it’s exactly the type of problem (functioning) democracies are meant for.
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Digital sales overwhelmingly use "buy" as the term in their UI, not "rent". Rental is a separate thing, and I don't think roughly anyone is saying rentals should not exist in any form.
This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything. Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store? Does anyone really thing Buy here means they will be able to download the game onto their computer and play it there? Fine, pass a regulation that makes onlin…
> This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.
At the end of the day words have to mean something. It is not pedantry to simply discuss what a word or phrase means. There are false advertising laws for a reason.
To that end, I would argue you've never bought a haircut, you've paid for a service.
The issue at hand here is exactly that the word "buy" is used when discussing the appropriation of a licence for content that in practical terms, is still controlled by someone else.
Maybe there are technical reasons for this to be the case, but then maybe the word "buy" should not be used in this instance.
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's always listed in the same spot on all the store page for games. Now why they haven't allowed us to filter games by DRM (like they have f2p) is another question. I'd love if they allowed this and published stats because I like most people assume I'm in the majority and would love to see that you're cutting off access to X% of your market if you include rootkits/aggressive drm.
Only additional third-party DRM is listed there, not Steam's own DRM.
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
That agreement can be filled with unfair terms, and often is. I'd call that fraud.
Organize a class action then if you believe so. Fraud is illegal
Instead of a class action after the fact, what if we tried prevention... say, some form of regulation?
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#226I know this is a topic de jour for submitters lately, but it seems weird for hacker news, a website for and by founders who primarily offer software-as-a-service. I also think it seems weird for a website whose patrons are seemingly predominantly against private property / property ownership. At least the vocal ones seem to feel that way. I get that HN is made up of a variety of people with a variety of opinions, and…
Most of HN has rarely had anything but hateful comments for SaaS business models. The majority of people commenting are never interested in the business side of anything unless they see a chance to wedge their politics in.
This submission is explicitly asking for a discussion against SaaS. This isn't "weird for HN" nor has there been a "variety of opinions" since around 2016.
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#227I've been running a small game dev studio for ~20 years, and the one change I think must be made, is to ban the usage of "buy" when it comes to games. Games are licensed, not bought, and that should be crystal clear to those who are paying. Most of the games people play runs using proprietary software and/or licenses, and often on very specific hardware, with game features that makes sense for the amount of players t…
Changing the verbiage would be better in that it would be honest, but I still find it absolutely despicable that the very concept of owning a game basically disappeared.
Tons of games people play do NOT have notable online features outside leaderboards, cosmetics or other inconsequential mechanics.
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#228The 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 have realized that they can just call the bluff and the vocal minority of customers rarely matter.
The ultimate leverage a consumer has is to not by something if they don't like the terms.
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I understand his comment as being against dumb regulation that only ads unnecessary bureaucracy or stops/limits progress. But he would support a regulation for this because it's a violation against the property of the buyer.
dumb regulation meaning any regulation they don't understand the purpose of is the point.
Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have any of the books bought on Kindle turned into rocks or can their buyers read them again if they want to?
Pretty sure the answer to that is no, they haven't turned to rocks. I believe Amazon keeps a record of your book purchases, and Amazon isn't going away tomorrow, so you should be able to redownload your books (and probably even back them up). If so, all is good there (relatively speaking). Sony also keeps records, but good luck redownloading your PSP game. Or your PS3 game for that matter. But at least in that case,…
Amazon may not be going away tomorrow, but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore. If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device.
For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita - not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP. They'll probably jump on the Amazon revoke-download train eventually, though.