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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

#531

Post by lurkerforawhile »

gosub100 wrote: post #459
lurkerforawhile wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firmware anti-downgrade functionality with eFuses is common across all kinds of consumer devices. The physical evidence is there, if you can find it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFuse > https://free60.org/Hardware/Fusesets/#fusesets-07-11 > https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Fuses#Anti-downgrade > https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/google-gives-develop... >

People play games, not firmware. The claim is not to revoke sonys ability to update the hardware.

use your brain

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

#532

Post by j1elo »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #518
j1elo wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The film is going to be projected anyways. You are buying the right to be present in the room when that happens. You can transfer that right (give the ticket to someone else), even sell it. Before the projection happens, the company might want to close and cancel that projection, in which case you are left without the chance to attend and exercise your purchased service; in that case, the company would (should) refun…

"We should be able to freely exchange games between us" no, because you already play it

Are you saying that we should not be able to buy a book, read it, and then exchange them with each other?

You should not be able to read a book or watch a DVD movie and afterwards give it to a sibling or friend, or leave it on a bench on the street for someone else to pick up?

I don't care if the medium is physical or digital, we should be able to, and OUGHT to do those things.

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

#533

Post by tonyhart7 »

j1elo wrote: post #532
tonyhart7 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We should be able to freely exchange games between us" no, because you already play it

Are you saying that we should not be able to buy a book, read it, and then exchange them with each other? You should not be able to read a book or watch a DVD movie and afterwards give it to a sibling or friend, or leave it on a bench on the street for someone else to pick up? I don't care if the medium is physical or digital, we should be able to, and OUGHT to do those things.

You confuse yourself with purchase of physical goods vs license

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

#534

Post by tikkabhuna »

matwood wrote: post #484
tikkabhuna wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay for services and you may use the term “buy”, but it is clear you’re receiving a service, and a service in its nature is temporary. Buy a night in a hotel, dinner in a restaurant, haircut, shoe shine. These are all services. Buying of digital services like games, films, and music is an evolution of buying dvds, cds or records. There is an expectation that you now own something. I can dig out my dad’s old r…

> I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children. What if you lost or otherwise destroyed/damaged the record, should you still have access through some other means or be forced to buy it again?

I think that's on you. I'd expect it to be on me. If I bought another physical product (a bike, football, scissors, knives), I'd expect to buy a replacement if I couldn't fix it.

That's definitely a perk of digital media.

And for the record, I'm not against digital media. There are a ton of benefits. I think there just needs to be better communication of the expectations between producer and consumers. Reading this thread and seeing that California requires the use of "License" instead of "Buy" is a good example of emphasising the difference between paying for digital media and physical media.

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

#535

Post by krzyk »

franga2000 wrote: post #93
krzyk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is literally in any software since like 90s. You buy license.

It's a completely different license. A normal software license gives you the right to use version X of the software on Y computers/seats/users/... You have the original installer on the disc, you can download installers for patch releases online and save them for later, you have the activation key. At any point, you can uninstall the software and give or sell the installer and key to someone else. What games and some…

Yes, it is recentish, but not that recent. Remember Spore game? It allowed 3 installations, later they changed that.

I was never in the "resell software" mindset, similarly to books, I don't sell those, unless I get a present that is mistargetted. No one gifts me software sadly.

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

#536

Post by LordDragonfang »

_davide_ wrote: post #530
LordDragonfang wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how you ( you specifically) are defining "fully stated": 1. This is very literally what already happens, it's called a EULA. 2. In practice this means you are required to personally come to the customer's house to fix bugs (or any other ridiculous edge case that wasn't "fully stated"). As much as I strongly agree the law should swing much further in the direction of the consumer, as GP points out, that o…

> This is very literally what already happens, it's called a EULA. Yes, but they "reserve the right" to update whenever, making it pointless > "In favor of the customer over anything else" is not a legally viable clause. I'm sure that legislators could put the principle down in a much clearer way. What's lacking is the will.

> I'm sure that legislators could put the principle down in a much clearer way.

That's precisely the problem here. You're "sure" that a problem you don't actually fully understand is trivially solved in a simple manner, when the reality is that this sort of thing is incredibly complicated, and there's a multitude of reasons and competing interests that have resulted in the current equilibrium.

This is the sort of change that requires a country's laws to have to be rewritten from the ground-up, because it invalidates so many assumptions. It's the sort of thing you typically need a constitutional amendment (or at least, a novel interpretation of the existing text) for.

So, yeah, they're lacking the political will for that.

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

#537

Post by bshanks »

feoren wrote: post #103
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?

If someone had said, "I am generally not opposed to regulation, but this is a place where I don't support it.", you could have replied to it in a similar fashion, but reversed.

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

#538

Post by teamonkey »

zythyx wrote: post #266
teamonkey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

The problem with this argument is that while digital sales are 7x more, it doesn't break down the digital portion into purely games, online-DLC, or online-exclusive content. I buy most of my games physically, but then all the DLC I buy from the PS Store because retailers don't have it. And I also buy digital games too, because the games literally don't have a disc, if it did, I would buy it physically. I would say th…

[dead]

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

#539

Post by oldsecondhand »

RHSeeger wrote: post #45
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 worry about shenanigans where you "buy" the game from a shell company and that shell company "folds" and doesn't uphold it's promises. Same is true for a smaller, but not shell, company. If the non-DRM version isn't already crea…

Yep, putting a DRM free version in escrow should be a legal requirement.

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

#540

Post by Schlagbohrer »

m000 wrote: post #418
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loopholes like this can be closed with government regulation.

Governments have failed to patch much more important loopholes that directly affect them. E.g. loopholes for corporate tax avoidance. I doubt they will put any effort at all for fixing loopholes related to dodging game preservation obligations. The best way to not have loopholes is to put some effort in not creating them in the first place, not patching them later.

Can you come up with a theory off the top of your head why governments might have "accidentally" failed to patch a huge hole that their wealthy backers benefit from?

I have news for you, in a democracy in which bribery is illegal, these loopholes can be closed by politicans who actually want to.

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