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

birchtree.me

761–770 of 797 posts

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

#761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"le reddit blackout" was the beginning of the end for reddit, so idk what you're trying to imply here.

Really? In August 2021 Reddit had a funding valuation at ~$10bn. It announced the API changes in April 2023. The blackout started in June 2023. It launched its IPO at $34 per share in March 2024. It's now trading at $160, with a market cap of ~$30.7bn. In other words, it's tripled in value over a 5 year period during which the blackout happened. That's a phenomenal rate of growth.

Why would we measure growth in dollars?

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

#762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the implication is that the blackout did nothing, and Reddit didn't care. Like this message that really says "I will buy the PS5 anyway."

Reddit indeed didn't care. Reddit also slowly collapsed starting from that point in time. It's latest investor information said it's not getting much Google traffic any more.

That may also have to do with the rise in AI usage

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

#763
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are online, and the rights service is failing, it will revoke your key. Do you have evidence of this? I've played Xbox for 25 years and never seen this.

i’ve tested it , that’s how i found out. If you run your dns it’s easy. Set licensing.xboxlive.com to 0.0.0.0 . The entitlement only lasts a few days. If the online check fails and you’re otherwise online, it gets revoked . Nearly all DRM systems are fail-Closed not fail-open.

"If the online check fails and you’re otherwise online, it gets revoked"

That's not being offline ;)

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

#765
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I actually went into reading this thinking I'd agree with you that "yeah that's such hyperbole they must have made something good", and to my shock the good things they have shipped they eventually ruined. Examples: Edge (bloated with ads and Copilot), Office (now a subscription, hasn't evolved, annoying integration with copilot), Skype (dead), Halo (virtually dead), Doom (studio gutted), Visual Studio Code (locked d…

Their list of studio acquisitions over the years is damning. Something must be deeply wrong at Microsoft, because it seems like after one game release worth of time of being under Microsoft, studios become unable to release games in any reasonable amount of time.

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

#766
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An extended Xbox outage that began Sunday evening hasn’t just caused issues for people trying to play digital games — it blocked people from playing their disc-based games, too. First line in the article. An Xbox owner who did the right thing by buying physical copies is still unable to play their games. I don’t play on Xbox, but my kids do, and Overwatch worked fine yesterday (which is a Microsoft property). So I’…

Lock in isn't about physical versus digital. This came up a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138750 Disks can be locked in and digital can be completely free.

> Lock in isn't about physical versus digital.

I fully disagree with this statement, it equates very unequal scenarios.

> Disks can be locked in and digital can be completely free.

Disks can't be locked-in - the OEM console that runs them can. Platform emulators can't be locked-in: MAME, Dolphin, RPCS3, Eden, etc offer user freedom, and all depend on access to the game's physical media in order to dump, rip, or play directly off of.

You need an exploit and/or decryption key to archive a game on a locked-down, downloads-only disk-free console. Something valuable is lost when there is a forced physical to digital transition.

When represented on a quadrant wirh physical/digital on one axis and locked-down/open on the other, the locked-down + disk quadrant can be nullified by user-controlled emulators. Until recently, this quadrant had a lot of games, while digital+open is nearly empty, save for GoG, old non-steam, Humble Bundle games, quirky Indie games, and old game DVDs on a shelf.

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

#767
post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit indeed didn't care. Reddit also slowly collapsed starting from that point in time. It's latest investor information said it's not getting much Google traffic any more.

That may also have to do with the rise in AI usage

Gemini is trained on Reddit data and seems to heavily weight it, so yeah

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

#768

I encourage folks with a PlayStation 5 (or 4) to participate in the blackout by unplugging their console for the week of August 23 at 7:00 PM your local time and run to August 31 at 7:00 PM your local time. Hopefully that helps send a message. We should irrevocably own our games, not rent a revokable license. And we should have price competition from multiple store fronts.

The message is you'll buy the PS5 anyway. If this bothers you, don't buy it. I'm certainly not.

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

#769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's genuinely hard to imagine commodity USB DVD-ROM drives being sold with subscriptions? There's millions of them, they cost nothing, they're built by a dozen no name Chinese factories

Buy a generic one from China.

... That is my point

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

#770
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal backup copies are fully legal, RIAA and MPA admit as much on their own websites; this was settled back in the VHS and cassette tape era

The part I was responding to was "with digital copies sourced from the high seas". The premise that they were responding to was if the only domestically available media playing devices required subscriptions. It's not clear why the assumption would be that getting content from arbitrary international online sources would be something that isn't also sanctioned in this scenario. That doesn't mean the entire scenario i…

I replied to you because my point is that it's established law that they cannot come after you for a backup of a title you own, and even the rights holders admit that.

Selling machines that require subscriptions to operate doesn't change the settled law about having backups of things you bought.

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