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Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

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Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#71

Post by scheeseman486 »

redwall_hp wrote: post #4
nerdjon wrote: post #3

What I don't understand is why Sony is the one being targeted for this when this has been the case with any digital purchase for 20 years? I don't know of a digital marketplace that works differently. But instead all of the hate, the boycots, etc are all targeting Sony instead of focusing on actually figuring out how to improve digital purchase rights which extend beyond games (and far beyond Sony). I know that some…

Valve killed the previously thriving boxed game industry two decades ago and people can't get over how much they love everything about Valve. Sony follows 20 years later (in a world where internet is faster than installing from BluRay and games are outgrowing three layer discs) and people lose their mind. There's more noise about this than Microsoft's mass layoffs at the game companies they bought up.

Physical PC games weren't great in the 2000s. Online activated serial keys, optical disc based DRM that caused problems during both the 9x>NT and XP>Vista transitions, the only thing that made PC gaming tolerable for me was gamecopyworld. Valve (eventually) offered something better than that.

PC games can still be physical. Burn some discs or copy the files onto a USB stick and put it in a box. I think it's crazy that boutique companies like Limited Run Games completely avoid the platform when it's the only one left that isn't actively hostile to the core principles of the company. Admittedly PC does have the image of being a digital distribution only platform these days, but it's illusory and breaking that illusion is a marketing problem.

People were pretty pissed about the xbox layoffs, it's just that things move fast and this was the next thing.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#72

Post by kobalsky »

nerdjon wrote: post #3

What I don't understand is why Sony is the one being targeted for this when this has been the case with any digital purchase for 20 years? I don't know of a digital marketplace that works differently. But instead all of the hate, the boycots, etc are all targeting Sony instead of focusing on actually figuring out how to improve digital purchase rights which extend beyond games (and far beyond Sony). I know that some…

> Where were the boycots then.

1. steam does not have a monopoly on distribution rights for PC games. if steam were to go bankrupt publishers could honor your keys and even other marketplaces could do it. steam themselves let you bring your own key.

2. steam has been a benevolent marketplace leader, even though DRM itself plays against customers, the rest of the stuff they pushed while leading, like game sharing, play and refund, offline playing, are pro consumer.

3. why would your knee jerk reaction to this is pointing a finger to steam, what's your endgame?

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#73

Post by amiga386 »

gustavus wrote: post #23
cratermoon wrote: post #8

If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't theft.

It's actually an interesting question there. Because I've been wondering if I buy something in taking ownership of it, whereas if I steal something I am still taking ownership of it without compensation. However if I'm not buying something but merely licensing it the wouldn't that mean that technically I'm not stealing it I'm only violating the terms of the license of it, which is now a civil not criminal matter.

That's not really how copyright law works.

Firstly, you're not "stealing" (committing the crime of theft) by making digital copies of a work. You are infringing copyright. Even a single copy infringes copyright. To not infringe copyright, you need a license for your copying from the copyright holder.

You can still manage to infringe that license even if you went through a normal storefront and paid the copyright holder the amount they asked for. You can do that by doing things with your licensed copy that the copyright holder wrote into your license that you mustn't do. If they sold physical items, they would not be able to apply such adverse terms to your copy.

If you void your own license in that way, you no longer have that license, and so any copying/modification/distribution you're doing is back to being copyright infringement.

Finally, there is such a thing as criminal copyright infringement. That's when you make a significant profit from copyright infringement (for example, getting people to pay you to watch a pay-per-view event that you're illegally redistributing, or even just having adverts that make you money on a website offering unlicensed Nintendo ROMs for emulators)

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#74

Post by dataflow »

Topology1 wrote: post #37
captainbland wrote: post #11

If we're not owning it, you're not selling it, you're leasing it. Terminology on sales pages should reflect this. "Subscribe now" "purchase license" etc. should be mandated if this is the expectation. Terms like "buy" without qualification are misleading in this context, but they won't remove them from store pages because people are more likely to pay higher rates for something if they believe they are actually ownin…

This is actually state law in CA. People reported Sony to California's Attorney General, who basically said they weren't going to do anything about it. Unfortunately the law is only as useful as its enforcement.

What was their rationale for doing nothing?

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#75

Post by vel0city »

redwall_hp wrote: post #4
nerdjon wrote: post #3

What I don't understand is why Sony is the one being targeted for this when this has been the case with any digital purchase for 20 years? I don't know of a digital marketplace that works differently. But instead all of the hate, the boycots, etc are all targeting Sony instead of focusing on actually figuring out how to improve digital purchase rights which extend beyond games (and far beyond Sony). I know that some…

Valve killed the previously thriving boxed game industry two decades ago and people can't get over how much they love everything about Valve. Sony follows 20 years later (in a world where internet is faster than installing from BluRay and games are outgrowing three layer discs) and people lose their mind. There's more noise about this than Microsoft's mass layoffs at the game companies they bought up.

> Valve killed the previously thriving boxed game industry two decades ago

Boxed PC games were practically dead by the time Valve started selling 3rd party games on their marketplace. Most game stores around me had stopped selling them or massively shrunk the shelf space for them. Xbox, Gamecube, Playstation 3, they had whole walls of the store dedicated to their stuff. PC games had a couple of shelves in the middle of the store, if even that. Sales for PC games had massively fallen between 1999 and 2005 while the rest of the game industry exploded.

The industry had shrunk over a third in five years before Valve started selling online. You can't say it was "thriving".

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#76

Post by Semaphor »

hn_submit wrote: post #66

This statement could do Sony in. Gamers will refuse to buy a PS6 if there's not an ironclad guarantee that they own the games they purchase, be it digital or disc form. And since gaming is the only profit center that's holding Sony above water I see the company disappearing in a couple of years. I foresee another "gaming winter" like we had in the 1980's. Maybe a decade from now another gaming platform will arise, mo…

> Gamers will refuse to buy a PS6 if there's not an ironclad guarantee that they own the games they purchase, be it digital or disc form.

I highly doubt that. I’d say 99%, probably more, won’t care either way. People barely care on PC, and people on consoles are generally used to more abuse.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#77

Post by cautiouscat »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #62

I wonder if anyone will ever have the guts to enter the gaming console market using open source as a base. Linux support for GPUs has never been better than what it is today. I've spent the last 4 or 5 years gaming exclusively on Linux just to highlight how good it has gotten, and no I don't have to run around doing command line incantations. Linux has improved a lot, heck, even AI you have a drastically better exper…

Like the Steam Machine? Or do you mean open hardware too?

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#78

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

hn_submit wrote: post #66

This statement could do Sony in. Gamers will refuse to buy a PS6 if there's not an ironclad guarantee that they own the games they purchase, be it digital or disc form. And since gaming is the only profit center that's holding Sony above water I see the company disappearing in a couple of years. I foresee another "gaming winter" like we had in the 1980's. Maybe a decade from now another gaming platform will arise, mo…

When have gamers held firm in a boycott situation? A lot of tough talk that crumbles when a new hat is released.

There was that infamous picture of the Steam Group, something like, “Never Buy CoD XYZ”. Half of the group members were playing it.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#79

Post by greenowl »

nemomarx wrote: post #39
nerdjon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I maybe should have phrased that better since I do understand their announcement around disks and removing the movies is a reason why they are the current target. I just find it hypocritical, people keep saying they are going to move to xbox or pc next gen and its like. Their policy is exactly the same. You have the same risk and not really ownership. And I am not defending Sony, they have a long history of getting c…

Nintendo still has pretty good physical. Move to them if you can imo

and much better franchise

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#80

Post by nalekberov »

alephnerd wrote: post #45
wredcoll wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve was a plucky underdog against the established publishers and, while dominant today, still has reasonable competition, sony is a giant corp with a reputation and a monopoly on playstations.

> sony is a giant corp with a reputation and a monopoly on playstations. That's like saying Volkswagen has a monopoly on Volkswagen cars. Sony clearly does not have a monopoly on the video game industry, and a plurality of video games are cross-platform across consoles, PCs (Windows/Linux), and even MacOS.

If I want to move from point A to point B, I can choose from BMW, Audi or any cheaper Chinese brand.

But I cannot play 'Astro Bot' on another platform.

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