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Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

birchtree.me

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Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#401

> "But owning a game on a disc today isn't really the same thing. It's still just a license..." Here's the crux of the problem in their own sentence and they don't even realize it. Owning and Licensing are not the same thing. If I own something, I own it outright. If I license something, I am leasing it. It does get fuzzy with media, I will admit. But we need the same protections as physical books and game cartidges.…

Owning and licensing is bullshit propaganda they feed you so you'll feel better about not owning, and you lapped it right up. For consumer products there should be no distinction.

The right word for a consumer product is "rent". As in I'll "rent" this game. For $2 every week until I return it.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#402
post #227

I wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, cou…

Microsoft stole my copy of Minecraft. I had bought Minecraft before Microsoft bought Mojang, and eventually I was forced to migrate my Minecraft license to a Microsoft account. After I had successfully created the account, logged in, and transferred the license, and ONLY after I had transferred the license, I was suddenly locked out of my account until I provided a phone number. I will never buy a Microsoft product a…

I've had this happen with at least three accounts, the most recent one for the purpose of playing Grounded with a friend. IIRC, between registering and trying to log in, my account was flagged for suspicious activity and required a phone number.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#403
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Steam games don't actually have any DRM. They just link to steamapi.dll for things like achievements, and that makes you think you can't run them without Steam. Some have DRM, of course.

What is the command I can use to run them without Steam then? If the game links to a dll that launches Steam and won’t play without it, then that is effectively Drm. Before I even play the game without Steam: how do I download it without Steam?

If you are on Windows, you navigate to the folder that the game is installed to and double click the .exe to launch it.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/5540051992994...

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what

As someone else stated earlier, the NT kernel is actually great. I find Windows 10 and 11 really good once you tweak it a bit and remove some cruft and tweak regedit/GPO settings. Both for modern software. Not to talk about backwards compatibility, Steam games from 2009 run just fine. Windows is also the standard for online games with anti-cheat. Also, for companies, Excel is a must. Yes, still is. The whole ecosyste…

The NT kernel was actually an IBM project, which got divorced from IBM because of contract stuff and Microsoft got to keep a copy. It grew out of VMS which was a heavyweight OS for DEC VAXen, which IBM acquired.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what

Here's a list of MS software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_software You cannot find a single one that was good, or better than whatever was the alternative at the time?

Evidently you can't, or you would have named it

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just pirate it. Minecraft is really easy to pirate if you don't want to play multiplayer, or want to play on pirate-compatible servers (which is one boolean flag in the official server configuration file and doesn't require a pirated server). Make sure to get Java Edition. The other one is just an ad-riddden slopfest where they also ban you if you say swear words.

The point of the account was multiplayer, unfortunately. Wanted a locked down account to play the game with a closed group of friends. Ended up on Minecraft Education on the computer, eventually.

Closed group of friends works fine in offline mode (pirate friendly mode).

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#407

I wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, cou…

Reminds me of the fact that I lost my Xbox account because they shutdown hotmail. My account is working on my Xbox but the password reset options are not supported by the OS on the Xbox. And I can’t change the email of the account from an Xbox. The support wasn’t helpful either. I read that somebody with the same issue got them to change the mail by logging in and out while on the phone. I don’t have the energy to ju…

There's more to this story, you've forgotten your password or something. Hotmail accounts moved to outlook.com, just reset it on a PC.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#408

Gaming is heading in the same direction that TV, movies and music are. It’s a shame. I can invite my friends over, boot up my GameCube to play some Mario Kart Double Dash. As long as the console and disc are okay, I can (hopefully) do that until I pass away. These days? Not so much. I’ll never be able to be sure I can play GTA VI in twenty years. It just sucks not owning anything anymore. I know why they do it, it’s…

This idea that you should have to log into an online account, in order to use a device that is otherwise entirely offline, is the root of all evil in consumer electronics today. Not just game software and game consoles, but PCs, TVs, smartphones, home automation... Everything requires a totally unnecessary tether to the manufacturer, and only allows you to use it if the manufacturer is 1. still listening to the connection, and 2. is satisfied that you tethered properly.

I shouldn't need an online account to use 99% of the things that I have that currently require an account.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience with all Microsoft software. The worst thought out, buggy, untested pile of crap. There's something seriously wrong in Redmond. At least with linux, you can search on the web and find a forum post telling you the magic incantation. With Microsoft, you will be forced to consume some second-rate engineer's unmanaged, barely workable, edge case until it might or might not work. Office on the web is…

The bad part is that Microsoft (generally) used to have some of the best QA in the industry, and that was somewhat extended to Xbox. But they laid off their QA team a year or two ago because "AI will change everything!"

> But they laid off their QA team a year or two ago because "AI will change everything!"

They gutted QA in 2014, ending their software development engineer in test positions, and suggesting the developers should test their own code to get velocity.

Subsequent releases were worse than before, and things have compounded since then. Hard to say that laying off the rest of the team made a noticable difference.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#410
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Error: Forbidden Your client does not have permission to get URL /comic/2026/07/03/returnal-3 from this server. What does it say?

Says how originally people played arcade games and didn't own them at all, since you were constantly putting in quarters to play more of the game. It's an interesting point, though not 100% accurate due to how there were early video game consoles at the same time as arcade games. Pong clones were common for home play in the early 1970s, and things like the Fairchild Channel F and Atari 2600 date from the mid to late…

At least the owners owned them.
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