It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by saidnooneever » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:48 AM UTC

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…

this definition is already flawed which should indicate its difficult to put good regulations in writing.

a service you pay for is not your property. and the licenses for games could be seen as a service rather than goods since they are now digital. ofc this is not nice or good, but its possible to do it to skirt ownership rules regarding 'goods'.

for PS5 the problem might be this.

you can sell a license and enable download for games but how many games can you realistically fit inside of a ps5 without some weird storage array in there... games are huge these days and wont get smaller.

for PC customers, storage is their own responsibility. for ps5 im not sure it could work the same, how extensible is the storage etc.

i would expect such things to come with a subscription, so u can access all games u want anytime while the subscription is active and install/download on demand.

the subscription cost being low vs game prices would offset the ownership problem for a lot of people.

i know many people who have subscription to platforms who do this today on PC in order to access many games they cant afford to all buy. (they buy ones maybe if they end up played a lot).

the problem now with these platforms for PC is still they only offer a selection of games, to encourage purchases (because the platforms are more independent from PC and game makers than say PS5 and sony are..)

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

#382

Post by hsbauauvhabzb » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #74

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.

Telling kids that they can’t play the game they can’t stop thinking about because all their friends play and talk about it constantly because the company is EVIL and because of morals works so, so well.

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

#383

Post by JuniperMesos » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:08 AM UTC

pseudocomposer wrote: post #222

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?

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 democra…

> 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 really not. Opposing rent-seeking in a general sense isn't what motivated the American revolution; and the King of England in the 18th century wasn't primarily a rent-seeker. The royal family did and does own a great deal of land in Britain which they collect rents on, but this is true of a lot of the historic and current British nobility; and the institution of the British monarchy was and is doing a lot of other things socially that just have no relationship to rent-seeking one way or the other. Ruling monarchs aren't "rent-seekers" where their citizens are "products", except insofar as any government of any group of people is; and I think that's way too reductive a way to explain why societies and governments work the way they do.

Rent-seeking is a temptation that all sorts of people under all sorts of political and economic systems are prone to. Democracy is no particular guard against it, because people who benefit from rent-seeking in some particular set of circumstances can vote too.

This isn't to say that rent-seeking is good, but it's also a pretty hard thing to regulate. It's really hard to codify in law which economic activities are rent-seeking and which ones are people buying a product or service that someone else thinks is a bad deal for them.

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

#384

Post by duckmysick » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:15 AM UTC

hahahaa wrote: post #297

TyrianPurple wrote: post #295

Once you buy something (physical or digital), ownership of it should rest solely with the purchaser and no one else.

How does that work with SaaS though? Or are you saying to ban SaaS.

If the SaaS provider goes down or decides to discontinue a product, then yeah, ideally I should be able to install it somewhere and self-host it. It might not be easy but should be doable. If I want to modify it to fix a bug, I should do so - or take it to a third-party software shop/consultancy. The same way I can take my car or my fridge to a repair shop after the warranty runs out.

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

#385

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:17 AM UTC

sciencejerk wrote: post #322

criddell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Mobile gaming is a mess. Android is still open, but Apple devices are locked down, and bigG keeps trying to close sideloading. Subsciption micropayments ads enshittification has hit mobile gaming HARD. Not sure mobile gaming is in good shape...?

[deleted]

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

#386

Post by gblargg » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:23 AM UTC

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…

We have this problem due to government regulation. Without it, every game would be cracked and downloadable without any restrictions on use. The server requirements would be reverse-engineered and neutered.

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

#387

Post by jcft2 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:33 AM UTC

user_of_the_wek wrote: post #123

I‘m wondering if there’s a better term to use than „digital games“. Those physical discs are just as digital as anything else.

And the "digital" versions rely on physics just as much as the versions on discs or cartridges. However, it's abundantly clear what is meant here so there is no need to clarify the language...

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

#388

Post by Schlagbohrer » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:36 AM UTC

pseudocomposer wrote: post #222

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?

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 democra…

Slave owners, such as all of the so-called founding fathers, were as much rent seekers as any king

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

#389

Post by Schlagbohrer » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:38 AM UTC

m000 wrote: post #367

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 have no problem with Sony not offering DRM free versions of games that I can still download and play with the store. But if that goes away -> you must give me a path to local ownership. I'm pretty sure that Sony and others would work their way around such legislation. E.g. spin-off shell "studios" that would be the legal game sellers, and when the time comes to sunset a batch of games, these "studios" would magic…

Loopholes like this can be closed with government regulation.

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

#390

Post by markus_zhang » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:40 AM UTC

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #382

markus_zhang wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Telling kids that they can’t play the game they can’t stop thinking about because all their friends play and talk about it constantly because the company is EVIL and because of morals works so, so well.

If it doesn’t work then it doesn’t. What do you lose? You are going to buy the games anyway.