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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

#311

Post by michaelt »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #300
feoren wrote: post #103

Earlier 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?

> You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about. That's not really it. The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by sta…

> The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by statute.

Microsoft may have a monopoly on Minecraft, but they still have competition from other games (Roblox, Fortnite) and other forms of entertainment (social media, youtube, books, IRL friends).

To me, the problem is more one of the terms of the deal changing; if a person brought minecraft with a 'mojang' account and loses their purchase when those accounts disappear in favour of 'microsoft' accounts, for example.

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

#312

Post by sciencejerk »

kiddico wrote: post #277
matthewfcarlson wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who says anyone needs to inform Valve of your passing? Make sure your children have access to the email backing the account and they're good to go.

What happens when faceID or biometrics is required? Quickly gets very creepy if your kids want to keep playing your games

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

#313

Post by sciencejerk »

lstodd wrote: post #98
matthewfcarlson wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haha. I actually back up my steam collection via torrents of GoG releases. Now, I can to some extent automate the rip-out of steam integration, there are solutions. And thus not rely on torrents. But why would I if it's the same thing in the end, and torrents are that much simpler.

Technically legal since Steam grants ownership?

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

#314

Post by sciencejerk »

hx8 wrote: post #34
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,…

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.

I'm optimistic that devs empowered by LLMs and local LLM will fight back and create new platforms if gatekeeping gets too out of hand

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

#315

Post by meh2frdf »

mkozlows wrote: post #137
Groxx wrote: post #119

Earlier 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.

These days, they mostly don't. California passed a law that required clarity (good), and now most things accurately say "license" instead of "buy." (Not universally, but in many cases.)

This I think is fair, consumers generally have a very poor understanding of licensing.

Too many still think in the old days of buying physical goods, you 'buy' a tin of beans, they are now in all sense my beans.

I'm all for helping people distinguish, when something is a straight forward property transaction, or an agreement based on permisions, constraints and obligations ... a license.

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

#316

Post by 17761989 »

teamonkey wrote: post #67
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…

There’s indeed quite an uproar and I’m not unsympathetic to it, but only 3% of Sony’s 2025 revenue came from physical game sales. https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/corporatereport/... (page 37)

[dead]

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

#317

Post by mobelkh »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #300
feoren wrote: post #103

Earlier 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?

> You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about. That's not really it. The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by sta…

I wouldn't say competition is "most of the time", any market that saturates just turns to shit, incumbents can kill off any upstart competition while squeezing customers dry, not to mention fields that should have a baseline (e.i. healthcare), because squeezing customers dry there literally kills people

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

#318

Post by meh2frdf »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #166
nfw2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

No not really.

When you bought a VHS of a movie, you purchased the video cassette hardware, but also a license which was bundled with that object.

That license explicitly had some constraints on it, such as not broadcasting the IP in a public setting, even calling out specific locations like oil rigs.

Distinguishing between products and service, isn't great, as neither are well defined, and end up back in the same debates.

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

#319

Post by rplnt »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #255
rgmerk wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer Cite your sources. There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership. And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts…

> climate simply hasn’t, until recently, required it. I would qualify that as it hasn't required it since the invention of air conditioning. Which also isn't strictly true; the high temperature for Paris on July 1st this year is identical to the high for the same day back in 2015[1], and there are several times since 1970 that the temperature was over 30C. Other sources[2] indicate 1947 was just as brutal as 2019 and…

Outside air temperature isn't an issue. It's not like people drop dead the moment it hits 40. The problem is that after a few days of that everything is heated up through and you have no place to escape it. That's new and hasn't been happening before.

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

#320

Post by sciencejerk »

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…

MS would love to kill off custom Minecraft clients and servers, and have attempted to turn minecraft into a subscription service but they risk losing their entire community if they go too DRM heavy so Minecraft Java edition has remained very open
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