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 the sale. This means that a company cannot "revoke" your access at a later time. Specifically for content that is DRM locked, if they decide to sunset that service (store, DRM server, whatever), no problem! just offer DRM free (or generally lock-free copies). 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.
(Multiplayer games that require server infrastructure are a bit more complex, and I'd leave aside for now).
This should apply equally to video games, movies, books, music. Any digital content.
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 democracies. Kings were the ultimate rent-seekers: every citizen was the product.
It’s not like this is some special case. People make the exact same arguments against John Deere, Tesla, Apple etc. And it’s a major reason many understand we should favor local (or local-capable/open-weight) AI/LLMs. I think “for any product whose support is discontinued, with more than X users, either open source all relevant software and hardware schematics, or provide a binary that will work on the hardware in perpetuity without DRM checks, based on industry” is a miniscule request in the face of any of these industries. I’d say, for instance, weights for discontinued Claude and OpenAI versions would fit. And it’s exactly the type of problem (functioning) democracies are meant 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 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.
Also: Those ownership/privacy obligations to customers should come first in bankruptcy proceedings, ahead of other debts.
IANABankrupcyLawyer, but I believe the status-quo is that various promises like "we'll open-source the server in the end" or "we'll never sell your data" can become voided in the name of making a buck to repay the landlord or business-partner.
I think the obligation should be transfer to the copyright holder in the case of bankruptcy. They can then choose to either make individual buyers whole or give up copyright protection.
That might work for static videos and music where the thing isn't interactive, but I don't think it maps cleanly to things like games with an online component, or "we won't sell your private data" SaaS promises.
For example, imagine an MMO, where the buyer says: "I want the trademark and the copyright to all textures and 3D models, but I am not buying the copyright to the source code because I'm going to make a sequel."
>>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.
This is why I love Hacker News; I feel you genuinely believe this - that designing and enforcing the law around digital property rights is the easy, straightforward, and the priority/important law :).
(I don't disagree! I'm a computer geek too, this stuff is important and visible to me as well. But let's have awareness of a) the actual complications around crafting and implementing laws around something so massively complex and constantly changing, and b) where the actual priorities for vast majority of people in the world may be:)
a) no one said it was easy. I'd just like some progress on it instead of another 30 years of slowly losing rights to things I buy.
b) yes, there are more important regulations to take into account. But governments also deal with hundreds of proposals. I can want proper digital ownership and still care about building more housing, creating stronger labor protections, and overhaulijg urban development.
A simple law: everything the customer buys must always behave *in favor of the customer over anything else*. If the product/service contradicts this, it must be fully stated before the purchase and cannot be updated. <= This would be a sane balance.
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 only holds until it's your obligation to the customer on the line. "In favor of the customer over anything else" is not a legally viable clause.
> 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.
It's not that I don't agree, but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy" in such a way that it is distinguishable from a perpetual lease with a cancellation clause _to buyers_, without also disallowing a lot of actually useful leasing agreements.
The thing is, you never did _buy_ that Steam game.
And you never bought the software on the TV, which you did buy the hardware of, you bought a software lease along with the hardware.
The latter case I can see something to do about - define the software and its functionality as an "essential component" of the hardware, and require companies to not break essential components of hardware they sell. They can stop offering online services, but the rest of the device should keep working.
For pure software leases, I don't see a good way to not have them be whatever the contract say they are, not without reclassifying them as something else than a copyrighted work. (But then "sellers" should be very clear what you're "buying".)
A lease should have a clear timetable. How long am I leasing this thing for? 1 year? 3 years?
I'm fine with companies leasing software. I don't like it, and I much prefer buying, but that's fine. That is what software subscriptions are, the terms and conditions are clear.
"Buying" something where access can be revoked at any time, for any reason, needs to become illegal.
> It's not that I don't agree, but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy" in such a way that
One fundamental thing would be to make it illegal to lawyer redefinitions of common words. If the sales of a game uses the word "buy" it should not be legal to redefine "buy" in that context to actually mean lump-sum lease or something.
I'm pretty sure the game studios wouldn't like me to buy their games if I were to amend the terms of sale with a clause in fine print that the term "pay" means "setting up a temporary IOU for which I reserve the right to have it resolved into nothing at my discretion". So, I'll pay later if I decide pay, maybe never. That's effectively what their "buy" means.
Your post made me go on a thought exercise: imagine a world where you could either own or lease software products. Game developers could decide whether their customers can actually buy the product (which involves ownership) or just the traditional licensing/leasing, which is the prevailing model today.
How would ownership actually work? What does ownership of digital goods mean? Can they even be owned? You get 1 copy of the bytes? How is this enforced? What's to stop you from just selling it multiple times?
If you can't resell it, then what do you actually own? The right to use the product in perpetuity? But that's just another form of lease, no?
You never bought the movie on a DVD either or the text in a book. Yet everyone understands what is meant. This isn't really something that needs complex legislation.
Now, I'm sure some disciplined software lobbyist have spent a very long time and can answer such questions in legslese that protects the customers. Let's find them.
Of those 15, it might be illuminating to know how many did not on grounds of principle versus merely that the cost/benefit didn't favour it for them at that time?
Slavery was a controversy from the beginning that finally bubbled over into the Civil War. It was not, as this question seems to imply, a near universally approved of practice where a few just didn't happen to need slaves.
That doesn't justify allowing it for almost a century. The US was comparable to the rest of the West, in this regard. The final abolition of slavery in Britain wasn't until 1833.
I don't think the above commenter disagreed with the need for regulation and the justification for it in this context. But that regulation isn't just for the things you think should be regulated and everything else shouldn't be.
>’s not like this is some special case. People make the exact same arguments against John Deere, Tesla, Apple etc
I think the apple sympathizers are a great case on some of the hypocrisy, actually. Seeing people condemn the DMA definitely shows some people will play favorites when push comes to shove.
This is an impressively uncharitable read of GP, and in my view totally uncalled for.
People who "generally" oppose "regulation", in my experience, very often have very good reasons for having adopted that stance, that are rooted in examination (or at least knowledge) of several actually existing regulations. And I would hope we all agree that there are plenty of really bad regulations out there. (If not: I invite you to check out the book https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp... , and consider how this legal state of affairs could come about.)
The entirely unfounded allegation of cronyism ("and the ones where you have friends that work there") is especially absurd. Where the guidelines say
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
this is the exact mechanism for "trampling curiousity" I imagine the site staff have in mind. Why would anyone who can offer you an alternative point of view, want to participate in an environment where responses read like this?
I agree that the characterization was uncalled for in the post you replied to. But I don't agree with your statement that most people who generally oppose regulation have good reasons for doing so. Conservative media outlets have pushed that stance for decades now and it gets regurgitated all the time. Ask most of them what specific regulations they want to see gone and you'll get a blank stare.
I am criticizing a common pattern of thought that I observe, including in the post I responded to. "I'm against X in general, but in this case X is warranted" is a very dangerous thought process, and I believe a good way to try to dispel it is to ask "are all the special cases just ones that you understand and affect you personally, and all the 'in general' ones that you don't?". It doesn't need to be 100% accurate to be a good challenge of the thought pattern.
Yes, there are really bad regulations out there. Some of them are well-intended but poorly thought out, but even more are regulatory capture that is enabled by the same "they're all bad anyway" attitude. Let's work on improving regulations. In my experience, the people who are "against regulation in general" are not the ones who are interested in improving the regulatory body as a whole, and in fact work directly against it.
> The entirely unfounded allegation of cronyism ("and the ones where you have friends that work there") is especially absurd
I was not accusing anyone of cronyism. I was saying that people who have friends who work at, say, USGS, probably talk about what they do and understand that they actually serve a useful function. I am challenging those people to consider the fact that perhaps agencies they've barely heard of also serve a useful function, and they would also support the existence of that agency if they had had conversations with people who work there. Cronyism has nothing to do with it, only familiarity, understanding, and a personal connection.
"Criticizing a common pattern of thought that I observe" is just weasel language for strawmanning and/or ad hominem. Your initial comment is extremely uncharitable, breaks a ton of HN rules, and is completely fallacious with zero (edit: negative, because it actively degrades discourse on HN) value to it. Suggest not doing that.
Your comment trying to defend yourself is also full of fallacies and emotional manipulation. Don't do that either.
You did a summary of conservative ideology. All laws should be abolished so I can do whatever I want, but laws should regulate everything I do not like and the punishment should be harsh.
It is an ideology based in short-term self interest. It is the way toddlers think about the world before growing up.
Laws should help to create a well functioning society where everybody can participate and benefit from it in a fair system. Regulations are part of a functional society.
Digital ownership is not different from anything else. Regulate it correctly or the most powerful people will just take away everything from you.
I think it's an accurate description of a common way of thinking, though I wouldn't call it conservative in the global sense.
Another is some of the domestic manufacturing or hard tech movement people who present lofty ideals about jobs and sovereignty and so on. But there's a claim that when the surface is scratched a bit, it devolves into a want to keep their imported cheap input materials tax / toll free while introducing taxes and tolls to their foreign competitors' end products. I mean who would pay for domestic materials, they're much more expensive, there'd be no margin!
> I think it's an accurate description of a common way of thinking, though I wouldn't call it conservative in the global sense.
It's not a common way of thinking, not in my observation.
Conservative / neo-liberal narratives push strongly against any form of "bigger picture view", more explicitly against solidarity, fueling this mindset of "I only support what profits me personally", i.e. "everyone's taxes should be used for roads (because I have a car), public transport is a waste of money (everyone should buy a car)".
-> It's a vertical word-view, where others are seen either above you (appease them) or below you (disregard them, they should appease you)
--
Liberal citizens still (try to) build on a sense of solidarity, of common investments for the "greater good" of a just (future) society, i.e. "I do have a car, but a stronger public transport system is a benefit to me and my peers"
-> It's a horizontal world-view, where others are seen equal to you and people are much more willing to stand up for each other and unite their voice for a cause.
--
I'm aware that this is not that visible in US, because there are only two major parties here, which both try to please the maximum of the middle spectrum. So both follow a rather conservative narrative and tend to pay lip-service only.
In countries with more than two major political parties it's more visible because the "center-left" democratic party is also threatened by competition from the "left", not just from the "center-right"/"right" party, so they need to acknowledge that citizens raise DEMANDS to them and are willing to walk away if they are not met.
IMO it is extremely common. It is practically the default way people think government should work when they have done no reflection on it (which is still a pretty high number of people, few people reflect that much on how government works or is structured). This is why everyone bitches about how taxes are high and doesn't even know what's in the government budget, or whether or not taxes are ACTUALLY higher than X years ago. They just know that money gets spent and its *THEIR* money so by golly are they gonna get mad when something doesn't work how they want it because it's so *obvious* how to do it right.
I understand his comment as being against dumb regulation that only ads unnecessary bureaucracy or stops/limits progress. But he would support a regulation for this because it's a violation against the property of the buyer.
> being against dumb regulation that only ads unnecessary bureaucracy or stops/limits progress
Does such strawman regulation even exist? Some regulation is intentionally designed to limit “progress”, where “progress” happens to have negative externalities.
It’s kind of a self-legitimizing opinion. Of course anyone would be against unnecessary regulations. I think the real world is not arguing about whether a regulation is necessary, but rather if the economic burden it creates is worth the positive impact it has on society, which is highly contentious, highly subjective debate.
It takes a minimum of 600 hours of training to get licensed to cut hair in California.
Pex plumbing is banned in Chicago as a union protectionist regulation.
The "chicken tax" regulation scheme has screwed up the US truck market for decades.
Electrical code requirements for the wiring of kitchen islands have changed drastically with very small justification within a short span of time.
To this day it is illegal to trade onion futures in Chicago due to an attempt to corner the market on onions decades ago(probably over a century can't be bothered to check).
Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
The affordable care act is written in such a way that the only way for insurers to increase their profit margin on health plans is to increase the cost they pay out to providers ("gold plating")
CAFE fuel economy standards have lead to the arms race of increased vehicle sizes for unnecessary reasons.
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer
Cite your sources.
There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership.
And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts of northern Europe with weird hangups about air conditioning.
But as best I can tell this claim is false; the biggest reason why air conditioning is not so widespread in Northern Europe as in the United States is that the climate simply hasn’t, until recently, required it.
> biggest reason why air conditioning is not so widespread in Northern Europe as in the United States
It certainly is a transitional period where each summer more and more people realize that eventually something needs to be done, "maybe a/c next year" for many years until the year of installation finally comes.
In Northern Europe it certainly is still a rare occurrence that everything gets heated so warm that the air does no longer cool during the night and you can't cool down for the next day. Yes, we do get heat waves but they don't last very long. Yes, summers are mostly getting hotter but it's still nothing like in southern Europe. We might have several weeks of 25-28C with a lot of lakes and sea to dip into.
Admittedly it can be tormenting in city apartments where you might not have a place for A/C even if you wanted to, and where you might not have enough outside walls to effectively cross-ventilate. Further, the stone and pavement in a city absorb heat like a sponge which keeps the average a few degrees warmer than greenleaf areas across the hot season.
Yet I think maybe half-ish of households (or at least detached houses) already do have A/C. Installations have been steadily creeping up in the last 25 years. But those units aren't there because of their cooling capacity (which isn't necessarily always even used). Those are air-to-air heat pumps that keep the house warm in the winter, and can be used for cooling in the summer.
> climate simply hasn’t, until recently, required it.
I would qualify that as it hasn't required it since the invention of air conditioning.
Which also isn't strictly true; the high temperature for Paris on July 1st this year is identical to the high for the same day back in 2015[1], and there are several times since 1970 that the temperature was over 30C.
Other sources[2] indicate 1947 was just as brutal as 2019 and 2022, and the warmest night was in 1772 (27.5C)
Outside air temperature isn't an issue. It's not like people drop dead the moment it hits 40. The problem is that after a few days of that everything is heated up through and you have no place to escape it. That's new and hasn't been happening before.
But "somewhat longer heatwave" isn't as scary sounding as "HOTTEST EVER RECORDED TEMPERATURE IN $LOCALE!!!!!!" which is why all the scaremongers keep screaming the latter.
We're warned of heatwaves and given instructions on how to not die all the time now. Not once did this occur when I was a child where I live. Record temperatures are more shown as an almanac style this is what's happened today whenever I see them. Personally I wish more scaremongering were happening right now.
Yes, there have been hot days across northern Europe before; however, the frequency of very hot weather has increased substantially.
It may not have gotten the headlines of this year’s heatwave, but we were in Switzerland and Germany for a month last July. For three of those four weeks, it was stinking hot. The maximum temperatures weren’t so bad, but the nights were oppressive, and there was no letup. If that’s going to be the norm
most summers, it absolutely justifies investing in air conditioning.
German here:
you are not allowed to install anything thats visible from the outside without the owners aproval (70% of people Rent in Germany) or even the aproval of the Apartment Owner Association (Imagine HOA but for Apartments and every bit as dumb)
whoops sorry I think i mixed the numbers up with the EU average, which is close to 70% point in case is that its much much more than in other countries.
The Danish Building code has requirements for retaining heat in the house, which is great in the cold winters, but devastating in the heart of modern summers. Combined with rules that practically require large south-facing windows to satisfy the total energy requirement limits, it gets very, very hot. And air conditioning subtracts significantly from your energy rating, making it almost impossible to include AC in a new building and satisfy the emission rating that any new building must satisfy.
The code allows only 25 hours a year where indoor temperature exceeds 28 degrees, but the validation of a building uses old temperature data, so on practice it's more hours of higher temperatures, and for houses that, even if you want to add AC later, wasnt designed for that.
Abs to add insult to injury, if you renovate an older building, you _can_ be required to bring it up to modern specs. That can be so expensive that it's cheaper to tear it down and build a new building. Because you can't do something half-good?
The building code _is_ a real problem, and changes ... well, haven't happened yet, so the buildings built today will be unlivable for as long as they stand in the new hotter summers.
Yes. I don't get that hang up. I bought new apartment in 2024. It has triple pane windows, and 20cm of styrofoam on the external walls.
I can cool down entire 70 square meters apartment with single 3.5kw split; that has worked well in the recent 40 degree heatwave. It does not even use "higher gears" to maintain the 24-25 degrees inside.
Not to mention it's usage overwhelmingly correlates with sunshine availability.
These are excellent examples. Regulations are not inherently good or bad, and one of the issues we seem to have in the US is a lack of honest accounting, sometimes purposefully and sometimes due to a lack of state capacity, what the costs and benefits of different regulations are.
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
I keep seeing people say this but they don’t have any evidence, seen it tons online the last few weeks even on HN. What’s the deal? One person the other day went so far as to say that multiple EU nations have banned AC, which is completely false. You can absolutely have air-conditioning in Europe. Some places have stricter rules about permanent installation, such as HVACs in older areas, but there are plenty of air-conditioning units people can just pick up and use the same day in those cases. You can get AC units in European nations. You don’t have to just roast for no reason because of the government.
Just to add, the regulations you mention aren't even about AC, it's about modifying buildings' "looks". You can still install AC if you figure out where to put the outside unit - roof, balcony, inner yard, ...
Not everyone has the ability to install personal unit where they live, that's true, same way they can't install satellite dishes for example.
In short: AC in the home is legal in the UK subject to following regulations, both national and local. Councils are generally happy to tell you how to comply, in my experience with building control.
Reading that sort of thing is kind of amusing, e.g.:
> In most cases, planning permission is not required to install it for a small home if it would not materially affect the appearance of the building from outside.
Substantially all air conditioning units affect the appearance of the building from the outside because they require a coil or vent somewhere on the exterior of the building to expel heat.
> Building regulations already require new residential buildings, including houses, flats, student accommodation, residential care homes and children's homes, to be designed to minimise overheating.
If planning permission for aircon was denied, worry not, because the building code now requires measures that will keep some new buildings to a temperature ten or twenty degrees cooler than the older buildings (planning permission for aircon likewise denied), which is quite a difference when even the newer buildings are over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
They wouldn't need to spin it like this if there weren't actually buildings where people want to install air conditioning and are prohibited from it, because if that was the case they would have said that.
You're completely misreading regulations. "Materially affect" does not cover things like "puts a unit outside" because otherwise putting a satellite does would "materially affect the appearance of the building from outside," yet millions of people get Sky TV.
> If planning permission for aircon was denied
Again, this is not part of the article because it literally says you don't need planning permission! There are regulations you must follow about the size and location but, as long as those are followed, you don't need planning permission. At most, you alert Building Control who will tell you the process and, as long as you follow it, they will sign it off.
For the avoidance of doubt: getting work signed off by your council's Building Control department is not planning permission. As long as your work follows the regulations, they will sign it off. Planning permission is ONLY needed if you want to do work outside of what building regs normally allow for residential properties.
> They wouldn't need to spin it like this if there weren't actually buildings where people want to install air conditioning and are prohibited from it
They wouldn't need to spin it like this if the media and their useful idiots like you didn't outright lie about what was actually happening.
> "Materially affect" does not cover things like "puts a unit outside" because otherwise putting a satellite does would "materially affect the appearance of the building from outside," yet millions of people get Sky TV.
They're referring to regulations by the local council. All of them are different. Millions of people being able to install a satellite dish is entirely compatible with any number of different people in different localities being refused because the condenser is "ugly".
> Again, this is not part of the article because it literally says you don't need planning permission!
It literally says:
> In most cases, planning permission is not required to install it for a small home if it would not materially affect the appearance of the building from outside.
Which strongly implies both that there are cases when it's required anyway and there are cases when it would "materially affect the appearance of the building from outside" since otherwise they wouldn't need to qualify it.
"Ugly" is not part of planning regs. Local council planning regs cannot override statute and they don't deviate that much. You'd know this if you lived in the UK (which you don't).
> Which strongly implies both that there are cases when it's required anyway
I explained why you might need planning permission: because your planned work sits outside of building regs.
> there are cases when it would "materially affect the appearance of the building from outside"
Yes, those are things like "it's too big" or "it's a listed building." Instead of hand-waving about things you don't understand, put some fucking effort in and show these cases that are obviously reasonable but still being blocked.
A list of reasons air-conditioning might require planning permission. Are you telling me that you, Anthony, know more about building regs in the UK than:
* Residents of the UK who have to work with them when they want to building work on their home.
* Companies who work with building contractors in the UK.
The phrase "materially affect the appearance of the building" has a pretty strong implication that the aesthetic effect is regarded as undesirable.
> Yes, those are things like "it's too big" or "it's a listed building."
And what then happens in the cases where "it's too big" or "it's a listed building"?
It also includes things like "it's going on a pitched roof" or "it's too close to the property line".
> show these cases that are obviously reasonable but still being blocked.
Demanding "obviously reasonable" is the crux of the banality of evil. Many things are non-obviously reasonable.
Who needs to put the unit on a pitched roof? That's weird. Just put it on the ground. Unless you own a unit on the second floor of a building and someone else owns the yard, and then you can't.
Your link has "too close to the property line" at within a meter. That's really close, who would need to do that? Well, the UK has millions of terraced houses that directly abut the property line. Some of them don't have a yard at all (and then we're back to the roof), others have one so small that being that close to the property line may be the only available place to put it.
Are these cases "obviously reasonable"? Putting the unit on a pitched roof is still weird and ugly. It's not that hard to understand the neighbors not wanting it that close to the property line.
But there is nowhere else to put it and then July makes the building hot enough to be a danger to life. At which point a rule motivated by the aesthetics is doing something objectionable.
I’ll be honest, I’m not reading your comments any more until you can provide sources that there’s actually an issue in the UK. I’ve done you the good grace of showing you my receipts so until I see some text that starts with https:// I’m ignoring you. I didn’t even bother to read your reply here because it’s a waste of my time.
You’re just making up definitions and interpretations while this person is telling you exactly how it works. Playing steelman does not foster dialogue and understanding.
You can install AC in the UK. It’s not as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be.
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
There are very few laws which can say what you are allowed to do with your owned house. One of them is when it is of historical value. Then you aren’t allowed to change pretty much anything.
The rest are just landlords who want to fuck you over.
Are you agreeing with the parent and giving examples of regulations that have been debated? Or are you trying to give examples of some of the "strawmen" regulations?
A lot of these examples are pretty subjective or missing context...
Yes, the DMCA is a great example, but corporations write those regulations and bribe government to pass them. That's not really an example of evil government as much as it is an example of evil corporations, although it does illustrate how much work is needed to limit the influence of money in politics.
> That's not really an example of evil government as much as it is an example of evil corporations
It's the corporation's job to advocate for favorable regulations and the government's job to enact regulations that benefit the general public rather than special interests. Only one of them is bad at their job.
> although it does illustrate how much work is needed to limit the influence of money in politics.
It's actually the perfect example of something where "money in politics" isn't the problem. The companies that lobby for the DMCA are the media companies. They donate their share of money but by far the largest source of their influence is their ability to run sustained unfavorable coverage against politicians who cross them, which would continue to be the case even if they couldn't transfer a dime into the politician's own coffers.
Corporations aren't wild animals that just happen to have an anti-social nature. They are fictional entities / groups and people and are allowed to do whatever we want to allow them. It's perfectly valid to say that corporations that keep pushing for anti-society legislation get shut down entirely instead of having the government and voters have to continually resist them. We don't allow individuals to do whatever they want to further their own interests either and lock up or even execute the worst misbehavers.
Individual people are diverse and creative. The behavior of large organizations differs because that individual behavior is getting merged into an aggregate. The choices of any given individual are diluted to such an extent that the organizations then behave stochastically in response to incentives, and therefore the same as one another when they're operating under the same set of incentives.
Which corporation would you propose to shut down? It would have to be all of them, and then the ones that replace them again. And the government itself, since it too is a bureaucratic organization that will engage in regulatory capture to expropriate more funding/power.
You cannot prevent the incentive to seize power, which comes from human nature. What you need is a system which is structurally resilient against its concentration/centralization.
> It's the corporation's job to advocate for favorable regulations
Bribery is not advocacy.
> the government's job to enact regulations that benefit the general public rather than special interests.
No argument there, but so far companies and corrupt politicians have conned a large percentage of the public into accepting that it's okay and that any constraints on what a company wants to do is a terrible thing. We're currently under a very pro-bribery admin.
> The companies that lobby for the DMCA are the media companies. They donate their share of money but by far the largest source of their influence is their ability to run sustained unfavorable coverage against politicians who cross them
I'm not entirely convinced that media coverage is more influential than bribes, donations, and the revolving door. That argument also only works for the media industry and not the other countless industries which bribe government. The oil and gas industry have been getting their money's worth https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/05/10/energy-indu...
The revolving door is bribery, but now propose a solution to it that doesn't preclude every member of a politician's extended family from having a job in private industry regardless of whether that person had any say in their relative running for office.
Running issue ads pretty much the definition of advocacy.
> That argument also only works for the media industry and not the other countless industries which bribe government. The oil and gas industry have been getting their money's worth
The industries that it does work for are some of the biggest problem ones. Media consolidation is a major long-term problem that the government seems entirely incapable of redressing, and the same issue presents with tech companies. Twitter/Facebook/Google at this point have more influence over what people believe than CNN/MSNBC/Fox News.
Moreover, influence over the media is only one way that corporations influence politicians. Let's take your example. From soup to nuts, the US oil and gas industry employs more than 10 million people, and those people are concentrated in specific places. (This is also why coal in the US is dying and never coming back; employs less than 1% as many people.) The auto industry employs another 10 million Americans and has a strong preference for cheap gas.
The major alternatives to oil and gas are electric vehicles (majority of worldwide EV batteries made in China) and solar panels (made in China again). The US could make those things, but it would require significant taxpayer subsidies, since China subsidizes them too. Moreover, it will never be the same number of jobs because EVs and solar panels are simply less labor intensive. EVs are mechanically simpler and require less maintenance/repair than ICE powertrains and solar panels are essentially semiconductor manufacturing, which is not a major source of blue collar jobs.
Meanwhile the main argument against oil and gas is CO2, which is a huge international problem that countries have a poor incentive to tackle individually. So the political incentives to address it in the US are screwed regardless of whether the industry pays the politicians a cent, because the politicians don't want to lose millions of jobs and billions in tax revenue (which, despite the subsidies, the oil industry still pays on net).
More to the point, it's the media that keeps telling people that it could be fixed with campaign finance reform, even though it can't, because that's the one that privileges them as the ones who can run advocacy pieces without paying a third party to air them.
Whereas to actually make a dent in the part of the problem related to money being used to pay for attention, you need something more like antitrust so that you don't have megacorps like Comcast NBCUniversal, Google and Facebook in control of what such a large proportion of the public believes. Which is exactly what the media corporations don't want, so they redirect blame onto something else.
Only the regulation that doesn't evolve with the time or written so that it stays within the confines of a context that doesn't exists. Certain big country constitution is a prime example of that.
> You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about.
That's not really it.
The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by statute. It can't be the thing that saves you in the case where the government is prohibiting it.
To put it another way, the thing that would really reduce regulations is to get rid of copyright, but maybe we want to be pragmatic here and instead of demanding that it be abolished entirely, we just want the prohibition the government is imposing on the users to not be extended through an unconscionable power grab and destroy the rights of First Sale and Fair Use that have always belonged to the customer.
I wouldn't say competition is "most of the time", any market that saturates just turns to shit, incumbents can kill off any upstart competition while squeezing customers dry, not to mention fields that should have a baseline (e.i. healthcare), because squeezing customers dry there literally kills people
You're describing uncompetitive markets. That's what happens when the incumbents capture the government to pass regulations that inhibit competition. It's one of the biggest problems caused by regulations.
Healthcare in the US is a great example because the government is so thoroughly captured by the industry. There is no reason competition wouldn't be effective for non-emergency care, if it was allowed to operate. You need an MRI, every provider publishes their prices, you pick the one which is the right combination of affordable and a convenient distance from where you live. Naturally the existing regulations make that impossible -- the tax code has major incentives for employer-provided insurance rather than the employer paying you money and you choosing your plan or paying out of pocket, the insurance is given the incentive to inflate rather than control costs because their profit is capped by law at a specific percentage of claims (so more and bigger claims means more profit instead of less), the AMA lobbies to have the government limit the number of medical residency slots and sustain a doctor shortage, etc.
Notice that food is another market where "squeezing customers dry there literally kills people" but it has nothing like the same problems because it has much more competition.
> The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by statute.
Microsoft may have a monopoly on Minecraft, but they still have competition from other games (Roblox, Fortnite) and other forms of entertainment (social media, youtube, books, IRL friends).
To me, the problem is more one of the terms of the deal changing; if a person brought minecraft with a 'mojang' account and loses their purchase when those accounts disappear in favour of 'microsoft' accounts, for example.
> Microsoft may have a monopoly on Minecraft, but they still have competition from other games (Roblox, Fortnite) and other forms of entertainment (social media, youtube, books, IRL friends).
Which is not at all the same thing, not least because software has a network effect. It's like saying that a company having a monopoly on cars is fine because you can walk or take the bus.
If your claim was actually true then copyright would have no purpose since "granting a monopoly" is its mechanism of operation.
> To me, the problem is more one of the terms of the deal changing; if a person brought minecraft with a 'mojang' account and loses their purchase when those accounts disappear in favour of 'microsoft' accounts, for example.
How does that help you when the next game comes out, requiring a "Microsoft" account from the first day? The problem is inherently that you can't get the game from anyone -- even a used copy from an existing customer -- without subjecting yourself to the requirement you reject, or de facto being stripped of your rights under First Sale.
It's definitely a bad argument worthy of some sort of label. It seems to go "you believe this thing, which I won't engage with at all, but I'll assume that because of the way you said it, you also believe all this other stuff that I disagree with".
Yes; and to make it extremely politically explosive, I do enjoy observing American politics and seeing each side (there are, brilliantly, two, because there ARE only two sides to every story and they neatly correlate with each other 100%:) massively enlarge the government, apply massive new restrictive regulations, but one side claims they don't do that because of somewhat specific types of massive government regulations and enlargements they do :)
At its best, a government law/regulation/policy is people saying "Ouch, that hurt, let's not do THAT again!", or "Oooh, I like this, this is good for us, let's do more of THAT please!".
At its worst, its self-preserving bureaucracy run rampant.
Any oversimplifying platitude like "I'm against big government!" or "I'm against government regulation!" so tremendously lacks specifics as to be worse than worthless.
And this is an extremely complicated issue which a tiny minority of people care about that'd be ridiculously over-complicated to implement with huge difficulty in tracking and enforcing! But because where we are, it resonates with us, and we on Hacker News feel it's an obvious and easy policy to apply :). You know, unlike the minor issues of war and peace and hunger and poverty and economics and minority rights et cetera :)
100 internet points and tip of a hat to you sir :)
> a tiny minority of people care about [...] You know, unlike the minor issues of war and peace and hunger and poverty and economics and minority rights et cetera :)
The complexity and realism of some particular regulation aside, I honestly don't understand dismissing other people's opinions on the grounds that not a lot of people care about them. Should people not have an opinion because lots of other people don't share it? Or should those opinions just not be expressed?
Everybody's got their own personal interests and values. It's natural to express and even vouch for them. If they aren't shared by enough other people, they probably won't make it to the top in a democracy. That's how it works and it's fine. But I don't get the idea that someone shouldn't express an opinion about X because lots of other people don't care about X.
You seem to be arguing that government regulation, on its face, is default-good while the GP seems to be arguing that it is default-bad. I bet if you actually engage with the argument in good faith instead of dismissing your imaginary strawman there could be a good conversation! But no the GP disagrees with you, so is therefore a complete moron, so no discussion will be had I suppose.
> In Comments
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says
> You seem to be arguing that government regulation, on its face, is default-good while the GP seems to be arguing that it is default-bad
The GP did indeed seem to be arguing it's default-bad (though I note you didn't go off at them for this). The reply has said nothing about it being default-good: only that it's not necessarily default-bad. You're assuming a black-and-white binary & by extension you're seeing arguments that weren't made.
There's nothing bad faith about the commenters post & assuming the role of a moderator in a discussion you're inventing phantom arguments in isn't doing you any favours.
>All the oversight and regulation about everything you don't care and/or know about is big bad government overreach.
I can literally list all the stupid regulation that needs to be removed from my industry. A lot of it is incredibly boneheaded. There's exactly 1 thing I do like, and it was extremely situational and set down in the 90s to avoid a very specific potential failure, and could easily be repealed without issue right now.
I presume, based on the experience in an industry I am very familiar with, that at least 60% of the regulation put on other industries is likewise counter productive and boneheaded. And every now and then when I do a deep dive somewhere I tend to confirm that.
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.
He's right though. There's no reason to add even more annoying laws. Just get rid of the existing ones that are causing the problem. Getting rid of just the DMCA's anti-circumvention nonsense would probably be sufficient to take care of this problem. Game stops working? You can make it work.
I can't speak for the GP obviously, but lumping together all regulation is a mistake. This would be a situation of having regulation protect our rights rather than limit them. That's a huge distinction and the former isn't particularly common today, more often than not if someone is raising concerns over a new regulation its because the regulation is limiting their rights.
Not really. The issue is that even the basic current rules are not really enforced, because digital is somehow seen as more ephemeral and thus not real ( or at least, that is how it initially started ).
We don't have to have new regulation. We just need to enforced basic existing standards. Buy means buy. Rent means rent. Lease means lease. All have their place. But this is not what is happening now. We have an ecosystem that mischaracterizes not just type the type of sale, but user's rights and obligations under it.
All that is basically fraud. We just don't call it that. We call it innovation.
> 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 magically go bankrupt and cease to exist.
Then the onus would again put on the commuinity to break any encryption or otherwise reverse-engineer and preserve the games so they remain playable for legal owners. And the top-level companies would still be able to salvage and own the game franchise rights, so they would still be able to harass the game preservation community.
I don't think there's any workaround to stop this kind of cheating, other than mandating that (a) all DRM-protected or service-bound content needs to be submitted to an escrow organization (Library of Congress?) in a form that can be used to reproduce it locally, and (b) all submitted content is released to the public after X years.
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.
Government-mandated source code escrow is certainly a reasonable requirement for copyright protection but you could also just legislate that "licensing" a work for resale also means being ultimately liable to make third party buyers whole if they have not received a local copy before - at the threat of loosing copyright protection for the work entirely.
I saw something earlier today that showed the Sony agreement specifies you’re only licensing the games, even if you buy it on a disc. So the fine print means no one ever “buys” a game for the PS5. They are buying a license to use the game for some indefinite period of time that Sony, or some other rights holder, will determine at a later date.
This is why things really need to be DRM free from the start, and portable (have the ability to back them up, move them, etc). It’s the only way to ensure they can’t pull that kind of stuff.
This has been the case for software since the very beginning. And people have been complaining about it since the beginning. See the Free Software Foundation.
No matter what they wrote in the document, the fact was always that you had the game on a disc and nothing would stop you playing it in violation of the words in the document.
The only reason for that is because the physical disc has the right of first sale attached by being physical item, and there’s no practical/acceptable mechanism to prevent transfer of the license to someone else.
Traditionally the whole industry has been fine with it as long as direct media copying was too hard for the layperson, especially since lending games around was like word of mouth advertising.
Digital platforms change a whole bunch of these things.
I am not aware of a case where they disabled an already-playable game via a firmware update.
But they do require certain firmware updates to play games, at least they did in the PS3 days. If you hadn't updated to that firmware (say, because you didn't want certain features you used like the OtherOS installation to be deleted) your new physical media would not play. I bought Dark Souls on a disc and could not play it on my console.
AFAIK, every game that required a Firmware update included it in the PS3_UPDATE directory in the bluray, and it being there was part of the certification process. Maybe Dark Souls was just a rare error?
>nothing would stop you playing it in violation of the words in the document.
Thats not really the case. Windows Defender and other anti viruses will quarantine piracy tools (like no cd cracks, and how many cd/dvd readers are in modern computers) these days, not far from there to see them being paid to police license changes. Games are often more playable in their pirated versions. Like if you own the Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas discs that require games for windows live you are screwed, but the digital steam versions remove that requirement.
Then you have games like Metal Fatigue, released for Windows 98, suffering memory corruption issues since Windows XP. Microsofts Compatibility Toolkit offers a fix for some of the memory issues making the game vastly more playable, but then of course, Microsoft has set an EOL date for the toolkit, the last version of it was published for Windows 10, and theres an expectation that at some point Windows 11 will not permit it to be installed any longer.
Whether you buy a disc or pay for a download, you are still at the mercy of the entire ecosystem. If you completely freeze your ecosystem and never install anything you might get by. But that presents other risks.
I just bought Kinnectimals for my toddler, and it came with a warning that it needed connectivity to some random xbox server to update, straight out of the box. Thankfully, my 360 was still able to connect to it. But network protocols might change, the OS might get a new version that bricks the connectivity (potentially for good reason, there could be a vuln) or hundreds of other things. Theres no safety or security provided to me by owning the disc.
> 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 created and held in trust, then it's not trustworthy.
We should require companies to submit a DRM-free version of their product to the US copyright office in order to get copyright protection. If the company goes under, or the copyright term expires, the US Copyright office should then provide those files to the people free of charge.
If the Copyright Office doesn't have enough funding/infrastructure, a compromise would be that the company regularly provides encrypted copies into the public domain in advance, and the decryption key is in escrow.
The KISS version of regulation would be that stores are not allowed to use the word "buy" when you don't get full ownership and must use the word "license" instead.
Also it should be marked clearly that the company can rescind the license at any moment without giving any reason why.
I would love to see something like the Nutrition Facts label that states IN BLACK AND WHITE ALL CAPS THAT THE COMPANY CAN (NOT) RESCIND THE LICENSE AT ANY TIME. If the fact is very blatantly shown on the marketing/packaging instead of being relegated to tiny fine print, buyers will pay a lot more attention.
That's not relevant though. What is being demanded is that a new term that means "less than purchase" be used, making it overtly clear that you are only renting. A pointer indirection to the real word doesn't count.
I would argue that we don't need new regulations, we need to enforce existing laws against fraud. It is fraudulent to sell something and then later disable ones access to the thing you sold them access to.
Exactly, this is just application of property rights and enforcing existing consumer protection rights. You can’t tell someone they’re “buying” something if they don’t own it. Imagine someone doing that with house rentals or car leases, it would obviously be considered fraud.
Screw fraud, it should be considered theft punishable by time behind bars the same way it would if some junkie broke into my house and stole my games or movies off my bookshelf.
I would argue that it is likely fraudulent to sell with the intent to later reappropriate but separately illegal to actually do so. It’s some manner of theft or destruction of property.
It's really cocky of them to do this immediately after deleting everyone's purchased movies from their accounts. Nobody should have any illusions about what "buying" a game means when they can do this at will.
I don't see this as "regulation". I see this as extending the same consumer protections that existed in the era of analog physical media to the digital age.
Consumer protection is a type of regulation, but if you can brand a rule as "Consumer protection" it will poll better than "regulation" because that's how marketing works.
Maybe, but regularly reframing regulations that people like (consumer protections, OSHA, lemon laws, etc.) as regulations will hopefully remind/reinforce that the whole "pro/anti regulations" framing is a childish mindset.
Regulations that protect your rights are very different from those that limit them. In this case it would be the former, and no less it would be reinforcing a pretty fundamental right in our system, the right to own property.
They did this in California, now online stores in California only let you rent games for an indefinite term. Exactly the same as before but the button says "rent"
The problem of false advertising is resolved but the problem of consumer freedom remains. If all digital marketplaces for a particular art only offer rents, without any option to buy or any physical media to serve as an alternative, that would still be a problem even if the rents were presented honestly.
Not really. As long as it's clear that everything is a rental, consumers are free to go along or not.
Physical media offering near-permanent storage is also relatively new. 8-tracks, cassettes, and even CDs would wear out over time. Yes, I could hold a cassette in my hand, but I also knew it would wear out over time and I'd have to buy another one - and I did.
We need to change our language around buying something so it's clear that it's not permanent ownership, unless it really is. I suspect we would see services/media start to come to market that offer true ownership if the demand was there.
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.
Companies will keep doing what they're doing now - they'll just use another verb than "buy" or "purchase". Which would be a small improvement, I guess...
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..)
Looking through a shelf of well organized CDs, game disks or movie disks will always be far more satisfying than typing letters into a search box and wading through large numbers of titles on a TV or monitor.
While I agree it is pretty cool, I think they probably did that to avoid a class action lawsuit.
But that does also beg the question, if we do eventually regulate this better, do you own streamed products? IE with Google stadia (and I think Amazon Luna) you buy a game but the game data is streamed to your device. If they shut the service down (like Stadia did) then what happens to your game collection?
It's a hypothetical, but interesting to think about nonetheless
Especially one-time purchase apps, zero control from the user and they can enforce any number of unreasonable control mechanisms over you even once you've paid for the damn thing.
This makes no sense. You can't force them to sell you the game. They'll just say "this is a 5-year rental" and that'll be it. The regulation can't even be retroactive
All they have to do then is say that they license you a game, and you're not buying anything, despite paying for it. They already do that with online games.
One of the unstated points of this particular article is that these rules are ones that we as a society have. If we collectively decide that this isn’t something that should be allowed, we can make it so. There are some powerful interests that don’t want it so it’s not an easy path.
I remember saying the exact same thing here on HN like two weeks ago, which someone then promptly corrected me saying that Steam/Valve actually "explain" what their "Buy" means right before payment, and I think they were right, there is some greyed out text somewhere explaining you don't actually "Purchase a copy of the game" but you license it via Valve/Steam somehow, can't remember the details atm, later at the checkout process though.
You are 'buying' some thing, a licence that grant you some permissions (aka rights). That licence has some constraints, you don't like them, then don't buy the licence. It's literally how it works, you just don't seem to grasp that.
Now are the constraints on licences (aka agreement), not great, not consumer friendly .. different set of questions.
Except you don't rent, you buy a license with no expiry date, but which can be revoked one-sidedly. It's all covered by the legalese, else we would've had the major lawsuits and consequent legislation changes back when the first generation of digitally bought / DRM'd music was no longer available.
(iirc this was also Sony, ironically.
Fake edit, I looked it up; it was Sony that put a rootkit in its CDs, they were sued and settled out of court https://boingboing.net/2005/11/14/sony-anticustomer-te.html). Microsoft, Yahoo and Wal-Mart changed their services in such a way that music was no longer playable in 2008 (https://opensource.com/life/11/11/drm-graveyard-brief-histor...), with Yahoo even encouraging users to burn their music to CDs to keep it. In 2011 Rhapsody recommended to back up their older DRM'd RAX files to another format so they remain listenablle.
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 software do these days is much worrse. You have a license to use their "software installation service" and their "let me run the game" service until they decide to turn them off. At any point, at their discretion, they can remove your ability to install a new copy or even run it all together.
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.
right, but back in the 90s, the onus of maintaining a working copy of any software was on you. Now, Sony simply reaches into you home and can deny you access to software/movies you "bought".
Well, yes. Always online is a problem, but it doesn't change what one buys.
A thing that is easy to copy without destroying the original. So they invented licenses to contain the copying part.
Which is all detailed as something they can do in the licence you bought but obviously didn't understand (which is fine I don't read the details either).
You seem to have semantics you apply to the word 'buy' and think the world should align to that, it clearly does not.
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) refund your full money.
Now change "attend the cinema" with "play a videogame" in those phrases. We should be able to freely exchange games between us. I should be able to sell them to you. The medium (digital, physical) is irrelevant.
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.
The whole point of the discussion is that if we're moving to a digital world, we should not go to a worse state than before. So if we were able to lend a game disc before, we should still be able to lend a digital copy in this great new fully digitalized world. That we're not able to, is precisely what's wrong with the transition. We had physical ownership of a disc, and companies have replaced that with immensely more limited usage licenses, which is bad.
No but you don’t expect the cinema to stop the movie half way through without giving you a refund, and would expect that you could legally resell a purchased ticket to your friend if you can’t attend the screening.
But that's not what's happening here - Sony can't take physical disks you own away from you.
As for resale, interesting you bring up tickets as scalping / reselling them is a major issue, which is also hostile to consumers as they can pay multiples of the original selling price for high profile concerts and events, which has led to legislation and / or industry rules that prevent resale or at least prevent it through 3rd party services so that they can manage the resale price (and take their share a second time).
Scalping is not a serious risk with digital goods. When the company can sell an infinite number of licenses, there is zero risk of a third party coming in and buying up a significant fraction of the capacity and overcharging people.
Yeah the OP doesn't understand licensing, seems to only think of purchase in terms of physical goods, and is trying to poorly apply their reasoning based on that.
There's already a good solution to buying and owning digital media: you pay money to download files that are playable offline.
When you pay for content locked to a platform, you're not buying an asset, you're paying for a service. The platforms grow around not only providing a convenient service to the end user, but also to the content creators, who publish on them with the expectation that their content is protected by DRM. Creators are free to choose where they publish, and end users are free to choose which services they use.
I don't think it makes sense for the government to define what it means to own a digital asset or to force every service platform to become a retailer and ownership-tracker. Where there's demand for DRM-free downloads or physical media, the market will respond.
> Anything that you BUY needs to be your property.
This is obviously absurd as a universal rule. If I "buy" a night in a hotel room, I should own the hotel room? If I order a taxi, I should own the taxi? If I ride a bikeshare e-bike across town, I should own the bike?
Whether rent is appropriate or exploitative for a certain product or industry is a fair question, but to say renting should not exist as a concept at all for anything just doesn't work.
Digital sales overwhelmingly use "buy" as the term in their UI, not "rent". Rental is a separate thing, and I don't think roughly anyone is saying rentals should not exist in any form.
This I think is fair, consumers generally have a very poor understanding of licensing.
Too many still think in the old days of buying physical goods, you 'buy' a tin of beans, they are now in all sense my beans.
I'm all for helping people distinguish, when something is a straight forward property transaction, or an agreement based on permisions, constraints and obligations ... a license.
This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.
Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store? Does anyone really thing Buy here means they will be able to download the game onto their computer and play it there?
Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever. Will that relieve your sense of persecution? Or would just you find another way to cast game publishers as the conniving evil empire (market control, collusion to reduce consumer options, etc.) because they aren't giving you what you want?
Most of the World understands the difference between buying a product and buying a service.
Games (and other digital media), are sold as products, not services, mostly.
TFA is arguing this should persist and not be replaced as games as (subscription/licensed rental), services. It argues the move to digital is being used by businesses to switch to a services model under the hood, and that this should be resisted and it should remain a product model.
> Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store?
Demonstrably, provably: yes.
> Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever.
Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected?
Then they can stop pretending and actually sell it as a service. What they're doing now is doing one thing (selling it as a product), while getting the benefits of the other (selling it as a service).
That's not how I read your suggestions. Your suggestion to just rename the action, which isn't helpful. You're still buying a licence, one that is nominally permanent, meaning it's a product, on the same level as a CD or whatever.
Games are overwhelmingly not sold as services these days (MMOs being the exception, + a few others). The sale of a game as a product is built into the model of 'give money, get permanent access to game'. If that access is not permanent, then you need to set a time limit there. Subscriptions usually do it per month, but you can do whatever you want, except leave the field blank.
Evergreen licenses are incredibly common when selling software, not just games.
Your suggestions are either:
- make publishers distribute goods without anti-piracy protection
- make buyers pay for games on an ongoing basis rather than just once
Publishers and buyers are generally happy with the current exchange as is even if you aren't. Digital games sales are increasing rapidly ever year while physical sales are declining. Why do you get to be the gaming czar?
With renewal comes repayment, and there's still a set date when you renew. WoW is a service that works like that. The vast majority of games don't use evergreen licences, nor should they, since they usually aren't a service.
They don't have to provide a DRM-free version on day 1 if they don't want to. But they do have to provide for a way to use the game after end of support. Doing anything else is unreasonable.
But the issue is those terms are laid out in the agreement, and you willingly agreed to those terms, so what are arguing for is to welch on the deal you accepted?
In terms in consumer protection, at least in UK and Europe (not saying not elsewhere, just don't know much), there is an amount of regulation that tries to help consumers not get screwed in the legalese of these agreements, and some basic protections that can't override.
> so what are arguing for is to welch on the deal you accepted?
I'm arguing unfair terms shouldn't be upheld, or really in the agreement in the first place. This is on paper how it should work in Europe, but we (apparently) haven't quite figured that out yet.
Class actions are often barred by EULAs in favor of arbitration. Even if they're allowed, they are prohibitively expensive because courts aren't growing to meet demand, meaning justice is largely pay-to-play.
When you bought a VHS of a movie, you purchased the video cassette hardware, but also a license which was bundled with that object.
That license explicitly had some constraints on it, such as not broadcasting the IP in a public setting, even calling out specific locations like oil rigs.
Distinguishing between products and service, isn't great, as neither are well defined, and end up back in the same debates.
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 records and play them and pass them onto my children.
If media companies want to sell a license that has an expiry date, that’s fine, but it has to be explicitly communicated. Consumers have to be well informed about what they’re purchasing.
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.
Yeah, I can’t actually think of any contracts besides media licenses that are fixed payment for access to a resource for an indeterminate length of time. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it.
The discussion is not just about online multiplayer games though, it’s about games in general. There is no good reason why buying a singleplayer offline game need be a “service”.
There IS a reason they don't make it possible to download the game copies directly, which is it becomes trivially easy to perfectly replicate and distribute new copies online, which is not true of any physical good.
People who aren't overly-online forum denizens only care about this issue insofar as it affects them, and the only way it affects people in the real world is when they lose access to online games when the server shuts down. Offline games don't get access revoked in practice.
> This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.
At the end of the day words have to mean something. It is not pedantry to simply discuss what a word or phrase means. There are false advertising laws for a reason.
To that end, I would argue you've never bought a haircut, you've paid for a service.
The issue at hand here is exactly that the word "buy" is used when discussing the appropriation of a licence for content that in practical terms, is still controlled by someone else.
Maybe there are technical reasons for this to be the case, but then maybe the word "buy" should not be used in this instance.
Words like "buy" "own" and "purchase" have a specific connotation. These licenses upend that.
I am part of the Rock Band video game community. That scene is covered in the use of "buy" "own" "purchase" terminology. Now, granted, Harmonix went above and beyond when it came to ensure they had solid licenses, so even though today they've been delisting DLC because their original license to distribute the songs to new customers has begun lapsing, they also went way above and beyond to ensure that people who bought content in the Rock Band 1 days would still be able to play them across the whole same-console library, so much so that anyone who bought RB1/2/3 content on either Xbox 360 or PS3 were able to also play those songs on Rock Band 4 on Xbone and PS4. I think there might have been a small fee in some instances, like when exporting disc content to newer games, but outside of that they went far beyond what most companies do when handling licensing (and this is music licensing, one of the most notoriously hairy forms of licensing that one can do).
These licenses are also re-downloadable by anyone who "bought" them, at least until the platforms entirely shut down the legacy console access for re-download of content that was paid for. Fortunately, we as a community also have all of it preserved without the DRM in preparation for the day when you can no longer even re-download content you paid for. There are also tools that let you copy the content files directly from your console (where possible with or without mods) and convert or decrypt them yourself.
I think you misunderstood, the major issue is that companies are actually "renting", it's just at 100k words long terms of services where they redefine "purchase" as rental.
California has actually done something about this, you can longer claim that customers are "buying" when they're actually just renting.
If i claimed i sell a house for 500K but the in terms of sale redefine sale as rent the house for 500K and i can claim the property back anytime, that'd be crime yet it's somehow legal with digital goods.
While the majority of flats are leasehold, by far the vast majority of property in England is freehold. Only a fifth is leasehold.
While technically a leasehold has a fixed term and at the end of the lease (usually starts at 99 years) the land owner technically owns the property, in reality this scares most people so usually when someone sells the property (usually while there's still at least 80 years left on the lease) you try to extend the lease again back to 90 years. So while it is possible for the lease to run out and people lose their property, it's usually something you'd be expecting when you took over the lease (and so you'd pay a correspondingly lower price for the property). While the lease is active, there's usually an annual fee from between 100 and 10000 pounds. Obviously, the higher this is, the lower the sale price of the property is likely to be.
Personally, I wouldn't touch leasehold with a bargepole, and unless you want to live in the centre of a city there's usually plenty of freehold property available so you don't need to go down the leasehold route.
Interesting. Do the longer ones have some provision for increasing in line with inflation? AFAIK the 99 year leases are usually for a fixed amount every year, which obviously shrinks in real terms over time, but given that you'd want to renew it every 10 years or so anyway, would probably be renegotiated to a fair market rate at that time.
Personally i only purchase DRM free games, but it doesn't still change that fact that major digital storefronts use misleading terms. Maybe physical disks would maintain popularity if customers knew they'd be renting the product for unknown period time instead of owning it.
It's easy to forget that average joe doesn't understand the consequences when we're on our own bubbles.
Edit: The media outrage when Sony removed 550 movies, indicates the customers don't still understand the terms of the sale. It wouldnt make any noises if customers knew they were renting it.
As yes, the poor, ignorant average joe, who doesn't realize the game they buy on the PLAYSTATION store needs PLAYSTATION to work in order to play it. If only enough bloggers wrote enough articles to enlighten them, then they would join the mob and demand forever access to the games they play for 3 weeks then never play again.
I can still play my brother's old PlayStation games on his OG PlayStation. They cannot be revoked arbitrarily, nor their music dropped or swapped out. This a feature, and we'd feel quite cheated if that happened. In fact we still go back to old games from time to time.
I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
> Why carry water for billion companies?
All companies at a certain scale are billion dollar companies. Also, how much money a company has is unrelated to whether they violated consumer rights or not. But, tangentially, I do generally respect entities that fund creative endeavors moreso than I respect gamers who go online to bemoan how persecuted they are
> I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
If those were digital copies you might have chance, otherwise don't count on them to keep working for long. The carts Nintendo used were made with memory that degrades when just sitting on a shelf and people are already reporting that their DS games are failing. I've got an Atari 2600 that still works and plays games fine though. Never even had to replace the joystick, which easily beats the joycons which drift after 400 hours
> I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
Good luck! I cannot play any of the digital Wii games I bought. And that's kind of my point. You pay the same price as a physical copy, using the same verb, and yet are actually renting for an undisclosed amount of time that may at any point be cut off.
Blockbuster never said I was 'buying' a game which they could take away at any moment. So why do we let these companies use contradictory or obtuse language at our expense?
> how much money a company has is unrelated to whether they violated consumer rights or not
Billion dollar companies are less sympathetic. As a consumer I might take a worse deal if it meant supporting a small creator whom I knew was sacrificing a lot for art.
> As a consumer I might take a worse deal if it meant supporting a small creator whom I knew was sacrificing a lot for art.
do you see how you and people who buy skins have something in common? you are writing about this, you will PAY for people to NOTICE that you support indie game developers. okay, and 13 year olds will pay for people to notice their cool skins. there are many ways to monetize, you are telling us that you would be monetize in the same category of monetization as freemium games, so are they really so bad? is ownership really important, or does it really belong to the same "noticing" category of monetization?
I'm not talking about freeware games with paid cosmetics. I'm talking about paid products that are sold using words like "buy" which in reality are being rented out.
Pretty sure the answer to that is no, they haven't turned to rocks. I believe Amazon keeps a record of your book purchases, and Amazon isn't going away tomorrow, so you should be able to redownload your books (and probably even back them up). If so, all is good there (relatively speaking).
Sony also keeps records, but good luck redownloading your PSP game. Or your PS3 game for that matter. But at least in that case, if you already have it downloaded, you can still play your game. Sony couldn't come down from above and turn your game into a rock.
The Crew for PS4 on the other hand. You can (probably?) still redownload that, but that doesn't actually do you any good. Ubisoft did come down from above and turn that into a rock (there is no good reason to make a single-player gamemode online-only).
Amazon may not be going away tomorrow, but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore. If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device.
For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita - not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP. They'll probably jump on the Amazon revoke-download train eventually, though.
> but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore.
Well that's bad and also shouldn't happen. They should not be able to come down from heaven and turn your books into rocks.
> If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device.
This is functionally the same as the situation on consoles. You can play the game, but only if you've already downloaded it and kept it around. Not ideal, but at least it's possible to keep it around.
> For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita
Not for long.[1]
> not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP
Correct, but I don't expect Sony to keep those servers up for long when people can't even buy anything there. It's nothing but a cost centre for Sony at this point.
All your examples make clear to the customer that their access is temporary and conditional on their continued and ongoing payment, and that ownership of the good/service is retained by the seller.
On the other hand, "buying a game" is given the guise of ownership, despite true ownership still being retained by the seller, obscured by the fact you're making a one-time payment. It'd be reasonable if the terminology used was "rent" or "subscribe" to a game with a periodic payment, but that's not what's advertised.
It is now in California, as they passed more "useless" regulation requiring digital "sales" to use different terminology than "buy", yet what people are asking for is clearly not what they want because as predicted this terminology enforcement doesn't change a thing.
Clearly, more thoughtless regulation will solve the problem this time.
Don't blame "regulation" on this, as if politicians do this because they're dogmatically "pro-regulation". That is not a real political stance, and it's childish to frame these bills in that manner.
California AB 2426 is a very deliberate and well considered bill, because it does exactly what it was designed to do: feign consumer protections, while leaving easy loopholes for those companies the bill protects. Those legislators who signed it did not have consumer protections in mind. Gavin Newsom is not interested in rocking the boat of corporate power, and neither are the lobbyists who pushed for that bill.
Don't blame "regulations". Blame, and vote out, the authors and signers, because they clearly do not have your interests in mind.
Rent and Subscribe would NOT be clear because they imply ongoing payment. Consumers care mostly about if they are paying money once or on an ongoing basis, not abstract things like DRM.
> Rent and Subscribe would NOT be clear because they imply ongoing payment.
Yes, exactly. Video game distributors should be forced to choose a pricing model: "Sell", or "Rent". No more "License, until we or the DRM service decides to revoke access for any reason/we go out of business/the DRM service goes out of business".
What is becoming absurd is the inability of so many people to extrapolate the most obvious conclusions instead of reaching the most obtuse and unhelpful ones, which arguably takes more effort to do.
In all your examples you are buying a service, isn't it obvious? the counterpart of "products" in the phrase "products and services". And yes, you are buying the right of being entitled to receive it. Ideally, you should be able to sell and transfer that right, or gift it to someone else. And if the service is eventually cancelled before being delivered, a full refund for the price should be issued.
It's a Reddit effect. Short, quippy dismissals using a technicality attract upvotes, which reinforces the behavior, and the trained behavior carries over to other websites.
Fifteen years ago World of Warcraft was at its peak. You had 12 million people paying a monthly fee, plus buying the occasional expansion pack. No other gaming company had seen reoccurring revenue numbers like that before and it changed the industry. One aspect of this was that if you stopped paying you lost access to the game.
The industry has been looking for the next way to level up this subscription model on gaming. Battle Passes, Xbox Live, Game Pass, Playstation Plus, Stadia, Game Fly, and a ton of other ideas. Sony is now using the stick to directly attack ownership instead of the carrot to entice subscriptions. We'll see how this plays in the PS6, but I think they are overplaying their position, especially with how underwhelming the PS5 has been received by gamers.
I'm optimistic that the raise in PC gaming will act as a balance for the obvious greed of the consoles. It's becoming a larger and larger player in the non-mobile gaming market, and it's too big to be treated like a second class citizen anymore. The open platform prevents anyone from acting as a gatekeeper between game developers and players.
For me personally, I began losing interest in consoles the first time I had to install a console game to a hard drive. The plug and play magic just fell apart.
> I'm optimistic that the raise in PC gaming will act as a balance for the obvious greed of the consoles.
Why?
Steam has never done anything to support ownership of games, their policy completely bans transferring licenses or accounts to other people or leaving them to someone when you die. Their next CEO is someone who has only known extreme wealth their whole life and gets the job because daddy started the company, when has that been a catalyst for societal good?
GOG is the only one to have advocated a different status quo, but they have virtually no marketshare that could pressure developers and publishers to accept more equitable terms beyond eschewing DRM.
This was actually a funny question at work over lunch. A few of us have kids and like most tech guys over 30, our steam accounts have turned into collections. So I asked, who gets your steam account when you kick it. It’s difficult to think about and seems baffling to spend thousands of dollars and hours assembling a collection only for it to poof away into nothing.
Yeah but you need to put that in a package that unlocks in case of your demise, timely or not. Password database and two factor authentication (back-up codes at the very least). Possibly a secondary password database if your primary one contains stuff you don't want those that stay behind to know about.
Cue the scientific reports saying "Gamers have the longest life expectancy. Look at how many 100 year olds there are on Steam!" Same people who thought Okinawans were the longest lived people on earth, just because of the poor record keeping and social security fraud there.
There are many signals that will inform them you are dead and AI will easily detect them: the change to your gaming routine and purchasing habits and platform usage as they grind to a sudden and complete halt except for the occasional sign-in to play one of your games, and the "age of account" will inevitably betray you.
Haha. I actually back up my steam collection via torrents of GoG releases.
Now, I can to some extent automate the rip-out of steam integration, there are solutions. And thus not rely on torrents. But why would I if it's the same thing in the end, and torrents are that much simpler.
Lol, relatable. For me it's not the library (because I have backups of that), but the in-game items. And not even for their monetary worth (which is relatively low), but for sentimental value (the stats counted on them).
It’s steam, not stream. Normally, I’d assume it’s a simple typo, but I got worried when you wrote it twice. Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me… you can't get fooled again.
I'm optimistic about PC gaming because if Steam begins acting as an evil gatekeeper then game developers can adopt other avenues to deliver the games to their players. It's an open platform. People are using Steam now because it adds value. People will stop using Steam if it subtracts value.
I think the larger question is how do those marketplaces get the rights to distribute any games... this is something all Steam rivals struggle immensely with, and it's not a coding problem at all.
To play devils advocate, Steam has one of the most generous sharing functionality on all digital media. Steam Families.
The whole "we prohibit transferring accounts from dead people" is likely just a catchall to prevent liability and responsibility when people say "oh my brother cheated on my account" or "my brother said XYZ on Steam forums".
Why would Steam be unable to tell an event like cheating or saying something on a forum took place before you received ownership of the game? This is a trivial problem to solve, it doesn't necessitate everyone forfeiting all their digital possessions.
Is that online activation Steam or is it a third party thing? Steam allows selling games that have external DRM like that. I think they, themselves, don't do it.
Steamworks, the integration library for games to interact with Steam features, has an optional DRM component. It's not a particularly impressive one, so it's more about stopping people copy/pasting their steamapps folder than stopping dedicated pirates, hence why so many publishers use alternative solutions.
Steam haven't put shenanigans like this because they have many competitors and PC users would leave them, the have built trust within the gaming community
People still don't own their games with Steam, the main PC platform. I don't think its going under anytime soon and currently its reasonably customer friendly but as we have seen these big tech companies can turn on their customer base at any moment. GOG is about the only way to actually own the games since no DRM is applied and you can download the entire package and keep it and don't require their launcher.
PC already went digital no ownership for most people unfortunately. His argument that it isn't the same doesn't wash, you still can't sell them or lend them to someone else and you have to hack around Steam's DRM, which is a loophole that can be closed at any point.
Steam has gotten a free pass because they have a history of 20 years of not taking your games away. Even if something gets delisted they still allow you to download it if you already purchased.
Console manufactures have a history of shutting down the download and authentication servers after the consoles age. Sony just took away hundreds of movies consumers had purchased.
the catch was that steam used to have, or maybe it still has, crazy discount prices, i would be mad to lose access to a 15 year old game that costed me 80$, but i wouldnt be that mad if the game costed 10$...
Still, steam didnt prevent you from accessing games, the game publisher did, like "the crew" case happend.
You talk as if all Steam games use Steam DRM. No, it's not GOG but it's not the same category as Sony and Microsoft at all. It's starting to sound disingenuous when I see Steam lumped together with them.
It's always listed in the same spot on all the store page for games. Now why they haven't allowed us to filter games by DRM (like they have f2p) is another question. I'd love if they allowed this and published stats because I like most people assume I'm in the majority and would love to see that you're cutting off access to X% of your market if you include rootkits/aggressive drm.
I think it's a fair comparison. Steam can change their behavior to become much more user hostile at any point, and hold our triple digit steam libraries hostage.
Its not like we can sell or even lend the games from Steam that we have, not without breaking the licence terms and hacking around the DRM. Its precisely the same as what Sony is intending to enforce.
Can you sell or lend gog games, though? You can transfer the files obviously but if a steam game comes with no drm (which is pretty common for indies) you can do the same thing. GOG nicely requires everyone on their platform to do this but ultimately the devs have to want to not put in drm too.
I’m not nearly so optimistic. I think we have a generation of kids now who mostly never owned any physical media, having grown up with Netflix instead of vhs/dvd, Spotify instead of CDs, steam instead of retail games, etc.
I see nothing wrong with abandoning physical media - as storage got larger and internet faster, being limited by clunky disks has become kinda pointless unless you're specifically into collecting.
I see nothing wrong with moving on from them as long as it's towards local DRMless files.
Sure, but we didn’t go from physical media to online delivery of outright purchased digital goods. We overwhelmingly transitioned to subscription streaming or “purchasing” revocably licensed copies with no guarantee of future delivery and drm on any downloaded copy.
I don't think it's generational. I got the impression it's a share of about every age group.
Also, ownership can be a side effect for even those who don't care, just because they're used to not paying for things. For example, when I got Minecraft for free as a little kid, it was because nobody would buy it for me, while in hindsight this also meant no account that could potentially be lost when transition to Microsoft accounts began.
Ideally, they want cabinet in every home, you pay electricity for it, you buy overpriced Bluey skins, you buy your lives, you buy ads, and pay them every second for the pleasure, while not owning even the cabinet.
> the model was you go to an arcade cabinet and you get charged every time you died
Worse, some arcade games drained your health continuously while you played so no matter how good you were you'd have to keep plugging quarters into the machine.
One thing we can say for certain from 30+ years of history is that gamers will never hold to a boycott, and will always put up with worse and worse treatment from the companies.
Yes. Look at the market research. It's growing specifically fast in Asia, but there is also strong growth with North America.
Having a PC to check your email, order off amazon, and download recipes is dying. Buying a PC and using it for video games is raising. The PC hardware is getting more expensive, but the upgrade cycles are also extending. If you look at the steam hardware survey most gamers are 1-3 GPU generations behind.
If you look at the total cost of ownership PC gaming is not awful compared to consoles. It's higher, but not as high as the initial price tag makes it look. There is no monthly Playstation Plus or Xbox Live subscription. These can run between $80/yr to $240/yr. PC games often have access to deeper discounts. The PC has additional utility, and modern PC components are holding exceptional resell value.
I think the effect of Twitch/YouTube can't be ignored. PC games are easier content source for streamers, and PC remains better platform for viewers for watching streams. Consoles are still quite focused on single task content consumption.
For the kinds of games where DRM free matters, where they don't have a prominent online/multiplayer side or the equivalent of playing the game 'from the disc', is the console subscription really an issue? I don't have a console myself, but from when I've looked into it there's a bunch of mainly free to play games where that subscription isn't needed as both the publisher and Sony/MS get their money from purchases.
1. An Xbox Live/Playstation Plus is required for any online multiplayer functionality.
2. DRM Free still matters with multiplayer games. Minecraft is a perfect example, where you can run your own client/server and play with people, and there really doesn't need to be any other middle man involved.
3. With how good home internet is now, it's not a big deal to host game servers from your home on an old computer. Running big central servers really only matters if you care about matchmaking or games with a lot of simultaneous players.
MS would love to kill off custom Minecraft clients and servers, and have attempted to turn minecraft into a subscription service but they risk losing their entire community if they go too DRM heavy so Minecraft Java edition has remained very open
PC hardware companies are struggling. The ones that sell fans, cases, thermal paste etc because no one is building a new PC right now. But everyone still has the PC they had before the last 2 years and can still play and buy games.
Game developers simply have to stop pushing the minimum specs up for releases over the next few years.
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...?
Unfortunately the AI bubble means we are witnessing the death of PC gaming. Watch the GamersNexus video, The Collapse of Personal Computing: https://youtu.be/zyQwAhppWj8
Costs are driving manufacturers out of business. Essential components for PCs are becoming out of reach for the average consumer.
This is true for consoles as well. Console prices are increasing, I think this is the first time I witness that. Console prices used to go down until the next generation comes out.
I would recommend looking at a wide variety of sources of information. Some YouTube channels, GamersNexus being one, focus heavily on spinning a gloomy narrative. By wide variety of information channels, I don't mean a different YouTube channel.
1. Q1-26 wasn't the worst performing YoY quarter for new PC sales since Covid.
2. The biggest sector hit was the low end computers. That's not usually what we are talking about with pc gaming.
3. Costs go up on PC gaming, but the costs are going up for consoles too.
4. New memory fabs are going to start coming online in 2027 and 2028. This is a short term crunch.
5. The whole interviewing someone in their living room about their bad professional experience and representing it as journalism feels icky to me.
GamersNexus is an entertainment channel rather than informative. He likes to talk about conspiracies with no real foundation.
AI demand price hikes are affecting everything including consoles, and the hardware for game streaming. It's an everything price increase rather than just PC. nVidia isn't secretly hoarding GPUs to make you rent them from streaming platforms, they simply make more money selling them to AI companies instead.
It does not rally matter if there is a conspiracy behind or not. You can't buy a phone that has a new powerful processor, dual-sim, sd-card and 3.5mm jack. It is just does not exist.
As user I don't care if it is a cartel or just "more profitable", but if this situation destroys companies that makes business from consoles or pc-gaming. Then it will be the colapse of the industry. First will be the hardware, once the hardware is gone, will be the software...
"But most people use Steam anyway, I hear you say. That's true, but you can still own your games on Steam. Very easily, in fact! Steam doesn't apply a hard DRM for games on their platform, you can bypass it and play your games offline without the launcher if you know what you're doing."
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When it comes to PC games, the real peace of mind comes from cracks and piracy.
Sure, a single player game that requires an online service to start up could become unplayable if the company running that online service decides to end it without providing a patch. If that happens, somebody will crack it so the game can be run. Sure, a game could be yanked from Steam without notice, but you can always pirate it. Sure, Steam could go under, but the internet is my backup drive. I know what I've paid for.
I don't have actual legal ownership of the titles I buy, but I also have recourse if I feel I've been ripped off. That recourse may be abused by some, but game companies have no moral right to oppose it until they start respecting the rights of their paying customers. Taking away something that was paid for is theft. Ownership rights for downloaded titles is a critical stepping stone if game companies are serious about reducing piracy.
>When it comes to PC games, the real peace of mind comes from cracks and piracy.
I still have nocds for some of the old GTA and Warcraft games. Pretty sure you can't play the originals any other way now with all the "definitive" and "reforged" editions having taken their place.
You might be able to mount an image of the original CD and let it detect that, depending on how schmancy their copy protection scheme is. To be fair though, I used nocd mods back when some of these games were released just so I wouldn't have to keep swapping CD's.
It's basically impossible to find any game that isn't on GOG that is not shared as a repack. You don't get the installer, you don't get the original media, you have to trust that the repack is not filled with malware. (and also the repack process somewhat confuses wine/lutris. More than once i couldn't make the repack run on my linux box, but if i managed to find the genuine install medium.. or if i ended up buying the game on sale, then no problem)
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 relationship.
Beyond that, there's still more at play. In tech, and specifically on this site, I see a lot more complicity and fatigue when discussing these issues. I can't help but think that also contributes. I'm not saying everyone should always be mad at everything. But it does seem like there's a generational component to this where we haven't passed down an essential feature of a hacker, namely the anti-establishment bent.
I suppose that's collateral damage of a culture tolerating lots of people rushing in to grab their bag of cash and then get out.
>What's different? How do we get back to how it was before?
Elect people who regulate business and break up closed platforms. That's what different. Happened to TV too. In the early 1980s TV programming was regulated. Program-length commercials were banned, host-selling was banned, etc. Then Reagan put Mark Fowler in charge of the FCC who thought TVs are "toasters with pictures" and the free market should handle it and you got modern ad-infested, anti-consumer TV.
Gaming hardly was ever subject to any rules to begin with because it grew up after that shift. There's no great mystery, you hand your society over to unaccountable megacorporations and the market and you get exactly what anyone on the street would have told you would happen.
We’ve been boiled in water like frogs, or however the saying goes. Even cars these days have subscription pricing for features which is insane to me but the average consumer is accustomed to this garbage. If they tried this 20 years ago it wouldn’t fly.
Someone once said that if libraries were invented today they would be illegal and that feels more true every day.
The uproar was around 2013 when Xbox tried to do this and Playstation made it their marketing to mock this. It's been a decade since and most people have moved digital. Physical games started getting too large to fit on disks, or they shipped with some buggy pre release version that was expected to day one update to a usable release.
Physical games as they exist today are more just license keys already. It's likely all the console makers wanted to ditch physical a while ago but put it off after the outrage over xbox.
IMO Empathy. Empathy used to exist up until around 2015 in businesses where losing a customer was a really big deal, there used to be a cost in losing a customer, and a cost in gaining a customer, so empathy was the building block in helping a business build and maintain their customers. While that's still generally true for small companies, once you reach a global reach, for the most part the cost of gaining and losing a customer is FAR FAR less, so the empathy is lost too.
I also think politics is a pretty big factor in this too, as regulation was used when companies and customers had an impasse, and well, gestures everywhere look at the general global political client right now. Not much empathy going around these days...
You are naive. Nothing to do with empathy. Everything is cash - warm little cash. No what's lost is - people stopped voting with their wallets. When someone did something atrocious, people stopped buying it. Now - first of all, half of the consumers don't care if PS5 titles are on disc already. And they will not stop when they stop putting things on discs. So why would Sony stop?
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.
This is the result of all the "culture wars" we've had in recent years. At the beginning of it, companies hedged and pulled back if there were any sort of mass PR event due to them taking a stance in the Culture War Topic of the Day. As time went on and there was Culture War after Culture War after Culture War, either consumers got tired of tracking who was "bad" or companies realized they could get away with anything and it didn't seemingly affect their bottom line.
It's either that or companies don't really have to worry because there is essentially zero competition in the current economy with all the pro-monopoly administrations we've had for the past 16+ years.
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 that my ratio of digital purchases to physical ones (by dollar amount) is 7:1. I would buy 90% of my content physically if I could, but I can't. And now with the upcoming changes, I'm going to end up buying 0% physically and 0% digitally.
I think what's different is that there aren't any/many dissenting companies building products without the bullshit.
In the past if consumers didn't like something they could shift their business to another company that wasn't doing that thing. Companies had to compete
I don't think I see much actual competition among companies anymore. They're all just trying to build as much lock-in as they can. For example, I think HP printers don't compete with Brother printers really, they just keep trying to milk HP customers more instead of winning new business.
I've been running a small game dev studio for ~20 years, and the one change I think must be made, is to ban the usage of "buy" when it comes to games. Games are licensed, not bought, and that should be crystal clear to those who are paying.
Most of the games people play runs using proprietary software and/or licenses, and often on very specific hardware, with game features that makes sense for the amount of players the game has. Requiring that people should be able to play such games if the company stops running it would completely change and limit how games are developed, and in many cases require a completely different version of the game to be co-developed in case people stop playing it. It would with 100 % certainty result in slower development, fewer games, and worse games.
I do of course think that developers should try to make games playable without the company being involved, within reason. Some games that do not have licensing issues or complicated server backends as a requirement could be made available without too much work. But for things like e.g. MMORPGs it's nearly impossible. If your ever developed bigger software systems you know how many moving parts are involved, so just imagine the difficulty of making it work on consumer machines...
You are talking about online games here which are a subset of games. And I agree they exist in the moment since they rely on external servers and other players.
Most games aren't online games though and those would realistically last forever if it wasn't for companies shutting down activation servers or download servers. There's also a problem where old games get delisted. If you want to play an old game today you can just buy the disk of ebay. Now the only way to buy a game is through the digital store which won't be selling the game forever, with no way to officially transfer copies between players.
> It would with 100 % certainty result in slower development, fewer games, and worse games
No, it won't. People used to develop games without requiring publisher's services. The issue of "it's hard to do nowadays" is self made. It's only hard because you made it this way. You can design a game that will be playable when its publisher or developer close their doors.
Changing the verbiage would be better in that it would be honest, but I still find it absolutely despicable that the very concept of owning a game basically disappeared.
Tons of games people play do NOT have notable online features outside leaderboards, cosmetics or other inconsequential mechanics.
> If anything, video games were late compared to something like the music industry, where not owning your music has been the status quo for a while now!
My perception is that the music industry is better than other parts of the entertainment industry in this regard. I imagine what the author is thinking of is streaming, which I treat as a sort of on-demand radio. There is an understanding that it is ephemeral. A customer concerned with “owning” their music would not be confused by this and seek another avenue, which in the case of the music industry is both wider, richer and more free than those of adjacent industries.
The common dedicated formats used for distribution: the compact disc and vinyl record, do not have copy protection, which is a better situation than what movies and video games are in. Online music stores invariably deliver you music as a simple computer file, with no copy protection or platform or connectivity requirements. This is the rule rather than the exception, which is not the case when making movie or video game purchases on these types of stores.
Thats easy to do (on paper). Dont let copyright owners revoke/expire their licenses (or if its revokable mark and price it clearly). Once a product containing it is purchased, its owned till product ceases to exist (or similar).
All these music behemoths are way too powerful and they twist entire society globally to dance as they want. Not a fraction of a worry for pirates of course, just for decent paying fools.
> Eventually someone important enough will force digital resales to become reality
Honest question: why? Why would anyone important enough to hold that power actually use it to force resales to exist? Who actually has the incentives to make this happen?
This is the correct KYC. Plenty of apps use it besides banking. Depending on the perspective, this is either the perfect solution to a lot of digital legal problems, or the distopian solution because of the numerous ways this can and will be abused when it is expected by many vendors outside of banking.
This is a large part of why I went with a Retroid Pocket over buying a Switch 2. It’s not nearly as powerful but it’ll run Linux and most indie games I buy on GOG. It’s more work of course but knowing that the games I buy I’ll be able to play into the future on any number of devices is worth it.
I'll second this approach. I've been using my Miyoo Mini+ quite a bit recently and the complete lack of this sort of bullshit has been very refreshing. No multi-GB game or system updates to download before you can start playing or nags to sign into online services. I can just pick it up and start playing.
I will have to look into the Retroid Pocket. Thanks for the plug.
> Because PC is an open platform, people have figured this out and will continue to figure out bypasses in case things go south (which they haven't so far, thankfully
Actually not quite, as security measures keep increasing across macOS and Windows.
Before someone brings Linux into the picture, most folks don't know Tuxedo, System 76 and co exist, what matters is what is on display at Media Markt, Saturn, FNAC, Publico,....
Who cares what people know about? PC is still an open platform for you to boot alternative software.
Most people don’t know how to even “acquire” software without the DRM. It’s not really anyone’s job to spread news and tell people to go learn.
If they get interested and care that much to preserve what they have, they can google and learn. Many have learnt about Linux due to the recent PS5 jailbreak for instance.
I agree with you because this incentive to learn has motivated so many young people in the past to learn how their computers work. The incentive of jailbreaking games or being able to get software for free should push people to learn these things and free themselves from walled gardens.
Yep, agreed. Recurring, consistent revenue is the ultimately a common-sense business best interest. It can be extremely unfortunate for consumers as there's an unaligned incentive here.
This can still be acceptable if they give HW for free. but paying up to 1k for console and then full price for games which often have their own paid loot boxes/whatever... yeah good luck no thank you,
I can afford it trivially, but its like paying say 20 bucks for a standard bread or bottle of milk. Insulting
I mean making something and selling the same thing millions times is good business model too, this is how Microsoft become rich. The problem is the model that chase infinite growth which is impossible to achieve and can't coexist with normal business models.
I completely agree. This isn't about physical discs vs. digital stores. It's about ownership. When I, as a customer, pay a lot of money for something and get nothing more than a temporary right of use, then something is going seriously wrong here. And no, I don't think you can compare it to movie streaming. With streaming, I pay a monthly fee for access to the platform. I don't pay for every single movie I watch. That's a completely different deal.
If Sony offered a flat-rate gaming subscription for a monthly fee (and no, PlayStation Plus isn't that), then I'd be totally fine with losing access to the games included there after canceling the sub. But if I, as a customer, am expected to shell out 70-80 bucks for a single game, I want to actually own that game - physical or digital copy regardless!
I've built up a pretty large collection of physical games over the years on two shelves behind me. And every now and then, I really enjoy playing some of those older titles. It took me almost half a year just to get a disc drive for my PS5 Pro. Half a year where I couldn't play my favorite games anymore and had a useless new console just sitting there next to me. I'm actually a bit worried about the next console generation - is it going to make my entire game collection unplayable and useless?
If you think in terms of ownership, even then digital is not that bad. I’ve owned digital games since Xbox 360 and I can still play them to this day on my Xbox series X.
But not all of my physical games CD/DVDs are in mint condition and some have scratches.
To take a different perspective than ownership as "right to re-sell" or ownership as "the right to use in perpetuity," I think there is also value in considering ownership as responsibility to maintain those rights.
When one owns property, they get benefits from it, but they also have the responsibility to maintain the property or else it wastes away. Sometimes this incurs costs you wouldn't get with leasing, and sometimes it makes ownership more expensive than renting. But still I think that responsibility is a virtue in itself. Not everything should be consumable.
You can play them, but the license gives you no right to transfer ownership. This feels like a huge problem to me, especially with ebooks.
I’d love to see regulation around guaranteeing consumers the ability to transfer ownership of digital goods in a similar way to the analog counterpart.
I think this is a big element. I’ve been feeling this a bit too. I’ve been a physical-game buyer in the past - usually saving money by buying used games.
But I’m not going to keep a collection of old consoles in my living room, so at this point it feels more likely that I will be able to actually play games further into the future if I buy digitally.
This is the opposite of what proponents of physical media heavily argue - indeed, many here are making it their only argument - but I suspect it’s how lots of ‘regular people’ that aren’t saturated in digital rights politics feel.
I own a decent library of retro games, sized in the hundreds.
Part of my intake process is to rip my games onto a digital format. Owning the physical media, and acquiring the backup legally, gives me a strong legal foothold for creating backup discs or using emulation.
Sure, but they keep raising the price of everything. And in a world where ram and STORAGE are at a multiple premium, deleting high density discs is completely outside of reality
Games are much cheaper in real terms (even in terms of percentage of wages/income, if you don’t believe that’s kept up with inflation generally) than they’ve ever been.
Video game companies still remember when they owned the arcade machines and players were required to constantly insert money into the machines to keep playing. They've been chasing that high ever since.
The key to owning modern multiplayer online games is to have private servers run by human persons on their own owned computers. But except for TF2 no one has been able to (or cared enough) allow private servers alongside the much much more important microtransactions. This is what is killing ownership.
> Video game companies still remember when they owned the arcade machines and players were required to constantly insert money into the machines to keep playing.
I know Sega and Namco operated some arcades, but mostly companies sold arcade machines and operators ran them. Coin boxes didn't connect to the developer except that games with good earnings sold well.
This is why so many machines now have accounts and global saved progress. It provides actual value for the player, to be able to pick up their saved progress (e.g. on a rhythm game with thousands of songs on it), but it also means the arcade is beholden to the game manufacturer for an expected feature, and pays for that on an ongoing basis.
Even private servers doesn't quite solve the issue. Minecraft is an example where you can run the server but it requires clients to login to the microsoft account. I think you can still bypass the check on the server but clients have to be cracked or previously authorised for offline play which only lasts for a certain timeframe. So Microsoft can take away the ability to play minecraft despite the game server binary being available.
Whereas a game like Arma 3 has its own dedicated servers and has no such login requirement so theoretically you could still play that in 50 years time, but that might still depend on Steam DRM.
We have a lot of client side controls right now on DRM and logins which make the dedicated server only part of the problem.
With Minecraft, there isn't even a need for Microsoft to do anything. The authentication servers experience regular periods of downtime/inaccessibility, making you unable to join any server, even if you have already launched the game and have joined a server in that session before. It's extremely frustrating.
With Microsoft "Minecraft", sure. But not that actual Minecraft game. Microsoft is an exception, a bad one, and they added this after they bought the popular game. It is not in any way intrinsic to the Minecraft game experience.
It's not just the arcade machine implementation. The owners of these companies want to go all the way and move everything to data centers so they can rent compute time, similar to the idea of the time-sharing days of the 60s.
The model for DLC that's present, carried as patch updates, but unlocked for an additional fee annoys me.
However, allow me to ignore my opinion for a moment and play the Devils Advocate for a thought experiment.
What if, cosmetics and other unlockables (which should be part of the base gameplay) were instead evaluated on other people's computers. That is, rendering client side, authentication for use also server side.
Hats / Skins / Other -- Render some 'humiliating' cosmetic if authentication fails. Circumvention would require compromise on all client devices.
Core game assets -- Levels / 'mods' that require auth a similar path, except client/server verification mismatch. Do note the license server as a possible cause.
At end of life all of those checks should be patched in a final release to fail enabled. No more auth server, archive mode releases all use.
> But except for TF2 no one has been able to (or cared enough) allow private servers alongside the much much more important microtransactions
The pirate community does wherever it's possible. We had a blast in college playing Halo MCC LAN parties back when it got launched on PC - by design it needed Xbox accounts for everyone but we worked around it with Goldberg's crack and got the classic experience.
I want the most minimum amount of regulation that doesn’t reason much about the type of media or transport method.
Require clear communication of meaning of words like “purchase” and require software “licenses” to indicate “access for at least 5 years” or whatever.
Basically, “you don’t own this. You’re buying the right to access it for least x years” vs. “You are purchasing a key that is fully transferable and provides indefinite access to this product.”
Then let the market sort out the rest, including buyer sentiment.
He has a point; it makes sense for greedy corporations to try
to eliminate second sale markets. But to me this is a much more
fundamental attack that is going here. I also can't help but
notice the age sniffing attack vector right now, but probably
these two issues are not directly related.
Companies try to make it illegal to have physical copies. This is
very similar to those who oppose the right-to-repair movement.
They don't want you to control anything - they want to control
everything. By not producing physical copies, they force you
into their control. Now I am not the target audience, because
these companies do not get any money from me anyway, but after
the digital-only dictatorship I would be even less inclined to
give them any MORE money now. Because I would support this new
mafia scheme and that goes against my ethics - even though this
is hypothetical as they already don't get me money anyway. I
think it is time to forbid certain practices by companies. They
should be REQUIRED to yield physical copies too. What the format
is, how, and so forth is secondary, though they also may not abuse
this for driving up outrageous prices either.
That's corpo-technofeudalism, it is unfortunately on the rise. They want to get rid of your control and opinion and strip your freedom away, forever enslaved to their system and pay rents In some sense it is comparable to religions but under different corpo-warbanner
License is not an ownership - It's limited right to use something. Any action anyone does that isn't covered by license (in software) is called "piracy".
Games were never sold. Mediums were sold with attached licenses. And most of the licenses as early as 2000 contained something like:
"This license is personal to you and may not be assigned, sublicensed, or transferred."
Selling game with such license was just as big of a "violation" as straight copying and giving it out (not having right to do something doesn't equal to crime though, even if some companies, coughMicrosoftcough, want you to think otherwise).
The only difference today is that licenses are enforced better. They can be held on license-server and new user can be denied usage after transfering was detected.
But it doesn't matter if it's downloaded, on disc, or embedded on a spoon.
Don't make people believe they ever owned a game. They didn't. You don't own games as well. Never owned them. You rented them.
The only way to get out of it with winning hand is to side with reputable vendor that didn't cheat people out of licenses. Reason why I side with Steam is because I have my licenses intact even though they have 25 years, I know big corps that just make licenses go poof and pretended in never happened.
I don't think people not understanding licenses are the problem.
Licenses are.
It's just that for the longest time people didn't have to think about them, because if you had a license to consume a game/movie/album and also had a copy of it on physical media it was basically impossible for the media owner to take it away from you.
But when everything is digital only, doing exactly that is easy as pie.
This feels like how sometimes laws from the 1800s are used to convict people of computer-related crimes. Maybe that was always possible, but it still seems unfair.
I'll emphasize that using something without a legal base isn't a crime.
It isn't even about legality (because laws usually don't regulate how one can interact with entity they have no legal ties to) but only about litigation risk.
There are no legal or moral obligations requiring valid license. Only interested organizations are brainwashing people into thinking otherwise.
But I don't think licenses are the problem. It's quite obvious. You have 100 works of art (music, graphics, code and text). You want to make money. If you sell it - you lose all the rights. You can give it out but then there's no profit.
The only way to not transfer ownership and give away for free is exact middle ground called the license.
For most games sold on physical media I was under the strong impression that selling/trading the physical media would automatically transfer the license, as the licensee was the owner of the physical media.
Basically one would by a CD-ROM containing a licensed copy of a game, and would then be the owner of the CD-ROM but only a licensee for the game. Selling/trading the CD-ROM would transfer the licensee status to the new CD-ROM owner.
I mean yes, you never “owned” the IP, but this doesn’t change anything. You also never owned any movie on a DVD, song on a vinyl, or text in a book. Software is a strange beast in the world of copyright law, but, at least in my lay understanding, video game discs still have had protection under the first-sale doctrine, which means you were always allowed to resell, rent, give away, or destroy your copy. Ownership of the medium is still something.
> video game discs still have had protection under the first-sale doctrine
Not true unfortunately. See: Vernor v. Autodesk; which was first ruled in favor of first-sale doctrine but later reversed by a federal court. There haven't been cases for video game discs specifically but I don't see a reason who it wouldn't be the same as this software, since they also explicitly mention you're being sold a license, not ownership.
I view the killing of physical game media as having two aspects that, while intertwined, are separate in some ways.
The first is the loss of the physical item. I like organizing carts and discs, looking at them on my shelves, reminiscing, easily putting one in a console to replay. Same with other media for me: I buy books, only read physical ones. I listen to digital music (generally downloaded from sites like Bandcamp) but for albums and artists I like the most I buy vinyl. I get that this isn't a big deal for most people, but it is something that is permanently lost when you get rid of physical media.
The second aspect is control and ownership. This is indeed intertwined with the physical aspect, since you can do things like resell a cartridge or disc and let someone easily borrow it. But control is possible with purely digital games, they just need to not be locked down with DRM. And companies like Sony want to kill physical games because it allows them to keep those DRM locks on digital-only copies so you cannot resell your games, which is connected to the second point, control.
I also agree that the issue of control is more important. How do we continue to make sure our games, that we bought, aren't just taken away from us? What happens if you lose your account with Sony/MS/Nintendo? What happens if your old console that you downloaded a game on breaks? The death of physical games is also a step on the way to subscription-only services, where you won't even be able to play something unless you are actively giving money to a company regardless of how much you gave them before.
The ways forward that I see are legislation that would do things like force companies to allow people to always download games they bought in perpetuity, regardless of account status, and if the company dies the successor company must do the same or release the game into the public domain. But given the power of large corporations and current intellectual property laws, this isn't happening anytime soon.
Practically, then, the only way I see is to either have a console that is hacked in some way, or only play games on an open platform like PC. And there you can only buy DRM-free games or, at worse, if you lose access to game in some service (e.g., Steam) you can still pirate it (which I'd feel morally fine doing if I bought it already of course, but that does bring legal risks depending on where you live).
And the later option still doesn't address the larger issue of preservation, as the OP's blog post notes: games will be made for locked-down consoles in the future and will be lost forever unless the hardware is hacked or a law demands the game's preservation.
> The death of physical games is also a step on the way to subscription-only services, where you won't even be able to play something unless you are actively giving money to a company regardless of how much you gave them before.
Also a step towards surveillance. All of your engagement will be tracked and sold to advertisers or used to re/train some LLM. All in the service of _enhancing your experience_, of course.
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...
Rent vs own is about price. If you want to own something, digital, physical, information, goods, then a vendor will charge more, sometimes a lot more, to sell you an infinite ownership vs you get limited rights.
Most everything I buy needs to fight for my money. Of course some vendor specific things, such as a specific movie, are not replaceable, but since very few things, if any, are so important to me that I won't spend elsewhere if a good is too much.
With that competition for $, vendors generally are competitive, and don't tend to have extremely high profit margins.
I prefer the limited rights, since I can try far more things that way, with finite budget. And I don't get stuck with higher prices on things I ended up not wanting/using after I got it. I can simply cancel.
I think the general disconnect is people too often assume they handed out money so should get infinite rights, while ignoring the nuances of economics/pricing.
As hard as it is to admit, the used market hurts developers the most. If I buy a game and then resell it to a friend for more money than what the game store would offer, but less than what they'd pay at retail. The actual developer of the game sees no profit. It's a win-win for the gamers, not so much for the developers.
Digital assets don't degrade like an appliance or a used car might, so the used market really cuts into the profits of game companies.
I don't believe the solution to this is to go all digital and cut off access to physical media entirely. What we need are stronger digital economies that can grow organically with a community.
Digital media needs the backing of cryptocurrency to remain viable. We need digital assets and economies that either grow or shrink in value based on demand. Rather than fake digital currencies that have no value outside of the world they're used in, we need real cryptocurrencies that are traded on open markets like stocks to bolster the digital economy and make the economics of building fun, lasting games a reality.
I'm tired of spending money on digital points for games that have no real value. Everything should be a cryptocurrency at this point.
I think an oft-forgotten possible major driver for the moves away from discs[1] must be scary legal warnings universally seen in paid contents during 2010s. None of currently popular platforms have those stern unrelatable messages that customers looking for relaxing contents were forced to observe. It didn't took hard data for anyone to see disc sales disappearing in sync with DRMs and tones progressively more obnoxious and harsh in the period.
Sony is likely not shutting down physical discs to tighten control over consumers, but it's more likely that they just don't see disc manufacturing as a viable business as a hardware factory that it always was. That goes beyond games or movies, and it should be discussed more often as to why they didn't take actions but to quietly watch the golden goose slaughtered.
Consoles are a significant investment, to only be able to buy content from one source creates monopolies. An equivalent would be if TVs were sold by Netflix or Disney, and only played content purchased from those entities. The second hand game disc market prevented those monopolies from taking prices to stratospheric highs.
I believe this is why digital distribution has seen little push-back on PC, because we have the convenience without the monopolies. Steam is huge, but Epic, Ubisoft, EA, gog.com, and others provide plenty of competition.
If consoles go digital only, from a single source, I think we'll see >$100 games quickly, we'll see subscriptions required to play be much more prevalent, and we'll see the death of consoles within a generation.
> Consoles are a significant investment, to only be able to buy content from one source creates monopolies.
It used to be that consoles were generally the cheaper alternative to a gaming PC, which was subsidized by the price of games, which in turn stimulated the second hand market as people tried to recoup their investment in games, not the system itself.
But now that it's no longer really true, and system prices keep going up for little in return, it's really the worst of all worlds: expensive systems, expensive games, no way to resell, and two of the big three are acting increasingly worse (the jury's still out on what will Nintendo do next, but their ridiculed key-on-a-card system at least allows for reselling).
And this is on top of Sony outright lying about the reality as various leaks and scraps of that indicate that physical sold very well, better than digital.
Maybe you think gaming/media companies are greedy and should make less money. But if you want the industry to continue in the current state, keep in mind the price of games needs to be adjusted:
price *= (total game sales / avg player count)
If there's a million sales but only 10 thousand people playing at a time, the price of the game needs to be multiplied by ~100x, because these copies can be shared, and the sales would be divided by 100x if the copies can be efficiently shared. The modern internet would make this buttery smooth to do (companies that make this easy will pop up overnight).
I'm not arguing either way, but this is the back of the napkin math to consider, and how that would ripple across the industry, for better or worse.
The kinds of buyers who purchase pre-owned "used" games often CANNOT or WILL NOT shell out $70-100 for a new game. Social peer pressures might impact this (hey poor kid, do you really wanna lose your friends?)
The equivalent of a "used" game now is a game that was release more than a year ago and is on sale or at least has a price tag cheaper than it used to be.
The playstore is a bit more dynamic than real stores with physical disks which means it's easier to get lower prices for some games.
On complaint I have is that storage is extremely expensive, but I can't blame that on Sony.
I pardon to disagree, it is a physical vs digital problem, and it is our fault.
Companies started pushing digital content and we accepted it, Xbox GamePass has been a cancer (I am Xbox player) with all the games destroyed because of it.
Nobody can disagree that digital games is convenient, turn your PC/Console on and that is it, load the game, start playing something else, etc, without leaving your sofa.
We never thought about the consequences of that, look what happened with DVD, Bluray had luck coz its post-peak era happened by the time people started going back to physical disks over streaming services and the downfall of such services.
This is also related to how everything nowadays is digital, requires subscription which removes features like BMW heated seats, firmware update and what not.
Companies made us addicted to everything digital, that gives them full control, higher price for less, Amazon Prime without ADs requires a higher tier, Sygic Offline mobile app now requires higher tier to have access to features that were once part of the lower tier.
Gaming studios until recently were focused on live services over single player games, it is digital, content is behind paywall, etc and etc.
Digital DLCs over releasing a new game coz that would force physical release.
This is our fault and we might have gone past the point of no return!!
The distinction is not physical vs (entirely) digital.
If you buy games at GOG, you get entirely non-physical products, but you own and control those bits. You can download the game and keep playing it as long as you can provide it with a suitable runtime environment
The things you don't own are because they require an online service to work. No matter what you do, short of removing the dependency, aka "cracking", it will only work as long as the online service allows it to work.
Any feature of.a consoles with OTA software updates are in that category. Even if you own the hardware, you don't _control_ the software.
I would argue further: it's not just about ownership only, but about control on a different level, that the industry can dictate what you can play by mass revoking the license, in order to force a next "hype" by getting rid of your independence.
Physical media was always one of the selling points for consoles. While PC has essentially been digital-only for a long time (with NONE of the wish list the author here wants, mind you - you can't sell or lend games to random people on Steam, besides a limited "family sharing" feature), consoles were where you go when you want to play a game and then sell it quickly if you don't like it. Physical media accounts for 50% of Switch game sales. I feel that Sony is in panic mode because they released a bunch of stinker first-party games and now they think that removing the disc drive from the PS6 will save them some money. It'll probably lose them a lot of customers.
Sony removing the disc drive from PS6 will save them a lot of money if Xbox also removes it. I wonder if they’re back channel colluding on that right now?
> We don't want physical media, we want digital ownership rights! Don't confuse the argument!
I don't know who's "we" for the author, but I DO want physical media. I want to have the feeling when I reach to my video game disc, take it out and put it into my console. Besides DRM-free digital purchase doesn't guarantee that the thing you bought won't disappear - digital game store can you bankrupt, video game publisher might legally force its title to be removed, etc., the list goes on and on.
Exactly. Let them sell games on GOG DRM-free. You buy it, it's yours as long as you back it up. No one stops you from storing it on any physical media you want. Just use an HDD.
When things on the other are presented as rent only, it's very bad.
What's scary is how quickly the lack of ownership of things we used to own can become a "new normal".
Forget about explainin to the youngins. My girlfriend is 7 years younger than me and barely grasps the concept of why I'd have 20,000 mp3s on my phone that I ripped off CDs I owned. Why not just pay for a subscription? She doesn't understand the utility of anything being hers.
So I say, send me a song. And she sends a link.
It's hard to even explain to someone who doesn't know what it means to have anything that isn't rented.
What do we "regular folk" really own in our lives? Our houses are rented or loaned (via mortgage), the car is paid off in installments, everything is a subscription or license. Many people I know purchase their clothes and electronics through buy-now-pay-later services and stream all media they watch. We lend our time and effort to our employer if we are salaried, as we don't get paid at the end of the day but at the end of the month.
How can someone who has never owned anything of value in their lives understand what it means to have something that isn't rented?
That is just such a defeatist attitude. It reminds me of the classic Gen X complaint when I was growing up (we're the first generation to have a lower living standard and worse job prospects than our parents) but we didn't just give up. I'm regular folk. I waited tables and drove taxis for years and coded in my spare time. I started somewhere between 5 to 10 failed companies depending on what counts as a "company".
The one thing I learned when I was young was never buy anything on credit. I was up to about $20k of debt when I dropped out of college. I cut up my credit card and I paid it off and did not buy anything on credit again until my late 30s when I bought a house and the first car I ever owned that I didn't pay cash for (which I quickly paid off).
There were long periods in my life where I lived on staple foods like rice, worked 12-16 hours a day, and spent half my income on rent. I also spent 12 years backpacking when I got myself into a situation where I could write software remotely, and I realized that This is completely normal in the world. Living within your means is normal. Living hand to mouth and saving a little is normal. No one had it as good as the boomers in America, ever. No one will again. Being able to buy anything on credit is a wild abberation that cannot last. But I live like my grandparents. Frugally.
I've only ever owned 2 pairs of shoes, 4 pairs of jeans, 8 shirts and 8 pairs of underwear. I replace them when they wear out. I also own a house now, mostly paid off, and have about half a million dollars in the bank. Does that make me rich? I don't feel like it. Every day I go out of my way to earn and save instead of spending.
Make money and save it. Don't buy shit you don't need. Don't rent anything you don't have to, and don't fall for the credit trap. When you buy things, fix them instead of replacing them. Don't sell anything.
And don't look at what other people have and wish it was yours. I'm not religious, but there's a reason that covetousness and sloth are cousins in the list of ways you can ruin your own soul.
If you refuse to use credit, and you live well under whatever your income is, you will be able to afford things of value once you pay off the mistake of taking on debt in the first place.
There's another story about a game that died and was resurrected, Runescape. It launched with a big fanfare of version 3.0 back in 2008 and was met with total disaster. Fans were quitting, private servers of the pre-EOC update, etc. Jagex heard this and stuck a solo dev onto re-launching an instance of '2007 scape' which was basically an old backup they found and a few server instances. They incorporated features of the platform like voting, where votes require strong consent (75% in some cases) to get new features, and it's a seriously community driven game where both sides have something to gain. Now branded "old school runescape" the game has more players than the "runescape 3" that still exists today as Runescape. A win all around.
And "people" seemingly hated NFT so much, but the basic idea of it, like in this case, would've given sony an opportunity to cash in on every resale of the given physical disc. But, oooh the underlying forces that steer our society towards a dead end didn't like that idea.
Same applies to graphics artists. They sell a painting and if it ever changes hands it would've netted them X percent from the given transactions. But NO, that's not the way this should be handled. The elite doesn't want people to earn easily.
Digital vs physical is the same bs just from a different angle.
I mean of course. If the person who sold you something is able to enforce terms on it, that's not ownership. The prospective NFT-sellers in your example are on the side of Sony, not the customers.
Not to mention all the other failures of NFTs at achieving the goal. The NFT can't know that you've handed over the physical object, or copied/screenshotted the PNG or whatever. It can't enforce that a transfer of the object is paired with a transfer of the NFT - you'd need a contract for that. And once you have a contract, what good does the NFT do for you?
"looking at you movie industry" - i think 'indie' movies are coming. there's a wave coming and the early signs are the likes of obsession and iron lung. all hope is not lost
usual shortsightedness from bean counters, while studio do lost revenue on second hand trades they gained another player! I can't believe they think that's not a worth while trade. Games are like books, the amount of time people spent on it far outweighs their opportunity cost in earnings, and you only have such a short window to capture that audience so do it however you can, allowing piracy is a legit business strategy, let alone trading second hand games!
this is one of the few areas i feel like a blockchain-style solution could work. Mint a token, transfer it on sale or resale to the new wallet. Validate a wallet with the key is associated with the account. Same for old-school MSFT licenses or other systems where you buy a license key.
There's probably a shortcoming I'm missing here, but it's the only genuine case I could see a blockchain having use above other technical solutions
I made a hard switch from all digital to all physical (when available) after I tried to introduce old games to my kids. I found many of them were no longer downloadable.
What are the odds that PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox servers will be around in 2040? 2050? It’s certainly not 100%. Those companies may not even exist. If there’s any dependency, there is a chance that one day you won’t have access any more.
I’ve always wondered what the major industry players’ theoretical price would be for offering transferable licenses, and how many people who say they want to be able to resell would pay it. It’s also interesting to me that we got all the way to 2026 and one of them officially going all-digital and we never saw price differentiation for physical copies.
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.
The difference is you're buying games vs licensing software. There should be a clear difference between buying and licensing softwares/games and should be told upfront.
Most of us know what is it about. The problem is Sony and other companies have plenty of money for lobbying governments. What options do we have? I know it’s mostly technical forum but is there any lawyer or government representative who can help?
At the core of this customers have a right to choose what they spin money on.
Access to an online based experience which will be discontinued in the future, that's what Roblox or Fortnite is.
When I spend money in a F2P game, I understand I don't have any rights outside of using it after the publisher ends support.
I don't want the government to tell me how to spend my money.
I do want all these gamers making noise to spend a fraction of the effort making community driven open source games.
I dream often of high quality open source games. The community would raise funds for development with an understanding of everything being released under MIT or GPL later.
FOSS is ownership.
Everything else is a temporary license to use which can be terminated without cause at any time. I just brought Marathon and it's fun.
But because Sony only sold me a license , they have a right to switch off the servers and make it useless tomorrow.
The only regulation I'd support here is a minimum service commitment at purchase. Something like " Your access to this product will terminate in June of 2029. Extensions to this service may be granted at publisher discretion."
This needs to be BIG RED PRINT when I hand over my money. Not hidden on page 15 of a service agreement.
I am surprised at all this shock the decision has garnered.
Is it shitty and consumer-hostile? Yes. Was it inevitable looking at the current trajectory of game distribution logistics? Also yes. Forced digitization should have in no way been surprising.
the resale market for disk has been on a downtrend for years, you can sign into someone's else psn account too and share games, you are a washed up gamer, its okay I am washed up too.
I’ve come to realize there are definitely people out there who have no interest in playing games, they just want to own them.
A child doesn’t think about ownership, he picks up a controller and plays a game. And when the child has grown bored of the game, one day they just never touch it again like a discarded toy, moving on to something else.
It is adults, reminded of their own feeble mortality and impermanence in the world who try to grasp at things like permanent ownership, they long for something that can’t just be torn away from them on a whim. But in life, everything is ultimately torn away from you, there is nothing you can do about it.
Some try to disguise their hoarding as “preservation”. Nobody cares. Even if you had some carefully curated museum, these old games would just be exhibits people look at for a bit with passing curiosity. Nothing more. You didn’t even make these games, why do you care so much?
Focus on enjoying games now, in the time when they are relevant. No matter how hard you try, all those games will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
I'm in the same boat with the sibling comment. I currently play games that have been released 20+ years ago. In 20 years I want to be able to play the games that are being released now. That's what preservation is, not hoarding. Should I just stop playing older games because I wouldn't be able to play newer ones in some years? This seems entirely unreasonable to me. I can read books that have been written hundreds of years ago, I can watch movies that have been made 100 years ago. The same should be with video games. And it used to be this way.
The vast majority of consumers don't care or think about this at all. It's a loud and tiny minority who imagine this great injustice will lead to some groundswell of rallied consumer support if they just write more blog posts about it.
In reality, if people get continual access to a digital game, the hypothetical case where they might lose access to it isn't all that troubling. And even if the license was specifically a year-term rental or something, most people wouldn't flinch because they go on with their lives after finishing a game.
It's also so convenient to ignore all the reasons the current system is the way it is.
1. Digital goods are just bits and free to copy and distribute online. Publishers use DRM because piracy is otherwise prevent, and they have a right to protect their IP.
2. Publishers can distribute the content that they develop however they see fit. Gamers who didn't make the game aren't owed something by right. Don't purchase the game if the license terms aren't amenable to you. It's a game, not a vital good.
3. Disk drives are a pointless pain-in-the-ass to manufacture if most people don't want them anyway.
> Don't purchase the game if the license terms aren't amenable to you
Unfortunately, terms can change. Publisher can promise 10-year support for the game and then drop it after 1 year. So when we purchase the game, we don't know what will happen in the future.
> Focus on enjoying games now, in the time when they are relevant. No matter how hard you try, all those games will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
I've enjoyed games that came out 20 years before I actually played them. Many games I enjoy are years old by the time I play them. I wanted to play The Crew. Doing that officially is literally impossible now. Maybe I'll get to play it if the pirates can do their magic.
Somebody needs to preserve these games so that people like me can play and enjoy them in their own time. I'd like other people to share in that same joy.
Would you write this comment, if you were speaking of books instead of games? It comes of as incredibly thoughtless to think of games as nothing more than discarded toys, when they are complete creative experiences filled with artistic value. Games are worthy of preservation for the same reasons books are. It's a shame people like you haven't realised that.
Most books are lost in time. The ones that survive are just popular enough to stay in circulation.
Like you will most likely always have some kind of access to something like GTA 6 in some way. Only obscure titles get truly lost. They are obscure for a reason.
> Only obscure titles get truly lost. They are obscure for a reason.
They can be obscure for many reasons, only one of which are it's quality as a piece of art.
There was an album, "Begin", released by a group of session musicians calling themselves The Millennium. Released in 1968, it was a borderline experimental sunshine pop rock in the vein of Sgt. Peppers and Pet Sounds, with songwriting and production in the same ballpark. It completely flopped, having landed a bit too late, and made virtually zero impact on music history. It only started to get rediscovered by the public after some CD releases in the early 90s, but that mostly got it out of total obscurity into being an extremely deep cut.
But it's fantastic and in spite of it being out of it's time when it released in terms of genre, did a lot of cool experimental stuff that makes it sound shockingly modern. It's seen some greater recognition in recent years, but we're in literally another century. I found out about it through a Spotify recommendation and based on searches, so did a lot of other people. When it got recommended to me in the late 2010s the play count for most of the songs was in the low thousands, but it's gotten a bit higher now.
The album didn't get re-issued because of it's quality, but because CDs were booming and labels were looking for any old junk. There was also a resurgence of interest in baroque pop in that era. If the circumstances weren't just right, it would never have been re-issued, it'd likely have continued to be completely forgotten and I wouldn't have ended up listening to it and loving it.
I know this is a topic de jour for submitters lately, but it seems weird for hacker news, a website for and by founders who primarily offer software-as-a-service. I also think it seems weird for a website whose patrons are seemingly predominantly against private property / property ownership. At least the vocal ones seem to feel that way.
I get that HN is made up of a variety of people with a variety of opinions, and different confluences of events lead to different groups being more or less vocal at different times. So maybe this is just that in action.
Most of HN has rarely had anything but hateful comments for SaaS business models. The majority of people commenting are never interested in the business side of anything unless they see a chance to wedge their politics in.
This submission is explicitly asking for a discussion against SaaS. This isn't "weird for HN" nor has there been a "variety of opinions" since around 2016.
I question how much of this discussion is really being driven by gamers.
Those who wanted change made it happen. There are indie games and remakes without these restrictions. Most of classic gaming preservation has been successful with its goals apart from some legal gray areas and chasing rarities.
These discussions then fixate on the cutoff year for classic gaming and whether everything beyond that is even worth saving. The conclusion is always the same. Nobody really cares about the slop.
All that remains to discuss is politics. That's always the most vocal part drowning out everyone else. Who keeps banging this drum?
This isn't just isn't as clearcut as people make it. A lot of it is based on a historic idea of an SNES cartridge or PS1 disk that contained the complete game, which was played locally and was entirely self-contained. It makes sense that you'd "own" that.
But we don't live in that world anymore. An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it? If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly? Even with games like CoD that have a campaign, the game would degrade by losing online services.
Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down? Or does it need to be available to download forever? If so, who hosts that?
As another example, I can probably from some old DVDs with games like GTA4 on them if I dig in boxes. I have since bought most on Steam since but ignore that. Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up. What happens then? What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists? What exactly do you "own"?
For digital TV shows and movies, this is far easier. I've never bought any of these. Years ago, you couldn't even download movies again from iTunes. If you lost it, bad luck. They reversed course on that I believe. But all these cases where the digital store lost the digital icense, which is going to happen, what did you think was going to happen?
What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained? By whom? You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle.
But games are tougher for the reasons I described.
Here's something else to consider: part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail. This degradation is built into the pricing model.
I honestly don't know what the solution is here but this just isn't as clearcut as people are making it out to be.
> An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it?
You should.
> If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly?
You should also own a copy of the server software so you can host your own Fortnite lobby.
> Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down?
The real-world solution for this is 'jailbreak your console and download the game from the web'. There could also be sanctioned backup solutions which negate that issue. So long as the user is given a chance to back up and thus keep the game, you don't need a download server to be maintained.
> Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up.
The real world solution are patches made by people who care, and those usually work. The better solution would be that that connectivity doesn't break the whole game. If it's just for the online half of a game, it should degrade gracefully.
> What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists?
VMs exist.
> What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained?
Provide a DRM-free copy if you shut down the servers.
> You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle.
A battle worth fighting [pirate flag emoji].
> part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail.
Is this a significant part of the model? How many resales were they expecting per 1000 normal sales? It can't be many. This to me seems like it could be rounded down to 0.
Tale as old as time. See also: Richard Stallman. Yes, we're back to arguing the fundamentals. What exactly does "owning" the hardware mean? What exactly does "owning" software that runs on that hardware mean? Only when we hit the limits of those terms will we know what we can and cannot do to it.
Unfortunately ownership on console has been down the drain for a long time. Even if you have the disc you still have mandatory downloads, patches, one-time download codes that tie the content to your account and of course DLC. What is even the point of having the disc anymore? Might as well go full digital and avoid the plastic waste.
I do own a PS4 and I have to do research every time I want to play a game. The website https://www.doesitplay.org/ is quite useful. But it's all so tiresome, it really makes me want to just check out of console gaming altogether. With full-on digital at least there won't be any ambiguity. It's not what I wanted, but all it means for me is that they won't be getting any of my money anymore.
You think you have it tough now, huh? When I was a kid I had to rewind my Apple ][ games on casette tape before returning them to the library, or I'd get a hefty fine, and it was uphill both ways!
Tldr: Walled gardens suck. I can't lend you or sell you my iPhone app either. Physicsl media is cool because it offers both a unit of authenticity and ownership. Second hand games were fine as having the game when it came out was the value, like a movie vs. watching free a year later on TV.
I care about having access to my games 20 years from now. I've been playing more older games for the past few years (most of them were released 20+ years ago). And I want to be able to play games that are being released now and that I have missed because I was playing older games. It's a normal expectation.
We rent time at a football field. We buy tickets to watch a single match. There are parallels here to not owning video games. I don’t really understand why one is so heinous.
Let’s say there’s a new rule implemented by the NBA that no one likes (similar to a fear of live service games changing). How is that resolved there and why can’t that solution work for video games?
I think a big thing we’re currently missing here is something like a community field or park. Why are there no open-source, community-run Diablo projects for example? If no one cares enough to do that, maybe this isn’t so big of an issue.
1. Video games are not a spectator sport. You buy tickets for a match to pay the players to perform for you. You can buy a football and goals and play with your family until the equipment itself literally wears out (which is a very, very long time - functionally near infinite if you take care of it).
2. Video games (especially console) don't, as a rule, receive important major updates, nor do gamers expect and demand that. This means that charging over and over again for 'access to them' every month is transparent greed, as opposed to a mobile game which has to keep being updated to keep up with iOS's yearly breaking releases, where you can argue very fairly that someone has to be paying developers to maintain those games, and the library of games to update would be too big if they had to keep updating all games written from 2008-2026 when 99% of them were no longer bringing in any sales revenue.
> Let’s say there’s a new rule implemented by the NBA that no one likes (similar to a fear of live service games changing).
Personally, the games where they charge for the MMO aspect (even if that comprises the entire game, e.g. WoW), I'm honestly ok with. It's a gamble to invest your time in something like that, but the alternative, where paying for a WoW client once legally obligates them to run the server without ANY rule/gameplay changes, for eternity, seems completely unfair and unsustainable. Though I think it's a moderate position to argue that if Blizzard wants to cancel WoW's servers, making the server specs open source and enabling the client to connect to community-run servers should maybe be incentivized somehow, though mandating as much seems a bit extreme.
With a video game it's not clear that you're purchasing a revocable license. That's why it's called "buying" a video game. If online stores were clear that you were actually leasing a game, I don't think this would be a problem.
Publishers and storefronts need to be clear that what you're doing isn't buying, or start selling tickets (season passes) that have a clear end date, or use some other mechanism that isn't "buying".
The fundamental problem is that it's unclear what you're buying, and the contract can change at any time. Are you buying an item, a ticket, leasing, a subscription like an MMO, etc. These are all different things, and it misleads consumers when they're conflated.
The terms are also very one-sided, and your "purchase" can be ended by one party at will with very limited notice. Even basic consumer protection like requiring six months notice before ending your software lease would help.
If someone goes to the playstation store to buy a playstation game, you don't think it's clear that they can only play the game on playstation? I think consumers understand what they are buying even if they don't think in terms like revocable licenses and drm. They aren't ignorant just because they don't care about these abstract issues that don't affect their lives at all, practically speaking.
Yes, but first sale doctrine on physical goods means that I can take my Playstation game, which only works on Playstations, and sell it to.a friend after I'm done playing it, or pick up a copy 5-10 years after the game was originally published for cheap from a second hand store like Goodwill. People do understand that, and are understandably pissed off that those same rights don't transfer to the digital realm. If I paid $60 for a copy of GTA IV when it was new but now I can buy a copy for $5 from the used bin, why shouldn't that be true for GTA VI in 15 years after it comes out?
I am understandably pissed that Apple no longer makes small 5-inch iphones because I like them. But other consumers like the bigger phones, so Apple discontinued the mini line.
Is Apple doing me an injustice by not selling me the good that I want?
Is this a question of rights or consumer preferences?
Geez man. I've seen your replies in this thread multiple times. At this point, I have to wonder: why are you so against legislating the actual sale of ownership of video games? How could enacting this theoretical legislation, that you believe is a consumer "preference" (hard disagree, but I'll allow for argument) be in any way detrimental to you? What compels you to lick the boot to a polished shine?
Sort of like how Diary Queen aren’t allowed to call their desserts “Ice Cream” because there isn’t enough dairy, we need to force retailers to start calling them game-licenses? This feels like a whole lot of a big fuss over something like that. I really feel like there must be something deeper going on.
Well the goal is to stop killing games, to make it possible for people to run their own games indefinitely. That's a lot harder than baseline consumer protections though.
Agree. The only way "buying" is understood in English to mean a temporary entitlement is when combined with those terms like "ticket" or "pass."
The choice of language is deliberately made to deceive. If an auto manufacturer tried that, offering to "sell you" a car but the 3-page "Sales contract" had a clause buried in there that said "We can come to your house with 30 days' notice and just take the car back and you have no recourse besides stopping your payments" this would be ruled as grand theft auto (no pun intended) not "the terms and conditions allow it"
Back in the old days, we would be pooling resources like that to host a server for the clan. And I wonder if the reason those games are less popular has more to do with marketers being good at their job than a change in the base gameplay.
There are local clubs available but everyone wants to play on the nice FIFA field, which is the one that has to be rented.
There is a difference between a service and a good.
It doesnt make sense to "own" a massage just the same way it doesnt make sense to "own" spectating a game in person. The video recording of people playing a sport is a good that you can own however. This is why an online/multiplayer game is harder to separate because it straddles the line of both a service and a good, but other cases are much more clear cut. (also, a quick google does reveal multipke open source diablo projects fyi)
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 the sale. This means that a company cannot "revoke" your access at a later time. Specifically for content that is DRM locked, if they decide to sunset that service (store, DRM server, whatever), no problem! just offer DRM free (or generally lock-free copies). 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.
(Multiplayer games that require server infrastructure are a bit more complex, and I'd leave aside for now).
This should apply equally to video games, movies, books, music. Any digital content.
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 democracies. Kings were the ultimate rent-seekers: every citizen was the product.
It’s not like this is some special case. People make the exact same arguments against John Deere, Tesla, Apple etc. And it’s a major reason many understand we should favor local (or local-capable/open-weight) AI/LLMs. I think “for any product whose support is discontinued, with more than X users, either open source all relevant software and hardware schematics, or provide a binary that will work on the hardware in perpetuity without DRM checks, based on industry” is a miniscule request in the face of any of these industries. I’d say, for instance, weights for discontinued Claude and OpenAI versions would fit. And it’s exactly the type of problem (functioning) democracies are meant 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 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.
Members of parliament who owned stock in the East India company bailing it out by allowing it to sell tea directly to the American colonies?
No taxation without representation?
Also: Those ownership/privacy obligations to customers should come first in bankruptcy proceedings, ahead of other debts.
IANABankrupcyLawyer, but I believe the status-quo is that various promises like "we'll open-source the server in the end" or "we'll never sell your data" can become voided in the name of making a buck to repay the landlord or business-partner.
Reasonable compromise: do this or your copyright is voided.
I think the obligation should be transfer to the copyright holder in the case of bankruptcy. They can then choose to either make individual buyers whole or give up copyright protection.
That might work for static videos and music where the thing isn't interactive, but I don't think it maps cleanly to things like games with an online component, or "we won't sell your private data" SaaS promises.
For example, imagine an MMO, where the buyer says: "I want the trademark and the copyright to all textures and 3D models, but I am not buying the copyright to the source code because I'm going to make a sequel."
>>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.
This is why I love Hacker News; I feel you genuinely believe this - that designing and enforcing the law around digital property rights is the easy, straightforward, and the priority/important law :).
(I don't disagree! I'm a computer geek too, this stuff is important and visible to me as well. But let's have awareness of a) the actual complications around crafting and implementing laws around something so massively complex and constantly changing, and b) where the actual priorities for vast majority of people in the world may be:)
a) no one said it was easy. I'd just like some progress on it instead of another 30 years of slowly losing rights to things I buy.
b) yes, there are more important regulations to take into account. But governments also deal with hundreds of proposals. I can want proper digital ownership and still care about building more housing, creating stronger labor protections, and overhaulijg urban development.
A simple law: everything the customer buys must always behave *in favor of the customer over anything else*. If the product/service contradicts this, it must be fully stated before the purchase and cannot be updated. <= This would be a sane balance.
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 only holds until it's your obligation to the customer on the line. "In favor of the customer over anything else" is not a legally viable clause.
> 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.
It's not that I don't agree, but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy" in such a way that it is distinguishable from a perpetual lease with a cancellation clause _to buyers_, without also disallowing a lot of actually useful leasing agreements.
The thing is, you never did _buy_ that Steam game. And you never bought the software on the TV, which you did buy the hardware of, you bought a software lease along with the hardware.
The latter case I can see something to do about - define the software and its functionality as an "essential component" of the hardware, and require companies to not break essential components of hardware they sell. They can stop offering online services, but the rest of the device should keep working.
For pure software leases, I don't see a good way to not have them be whatever the contract say they are, not without reclassifying them as something else than a copyrighted work. (But then "sellers" should be very clear what you're "buying".)
A lease should have a clear timetable. How long am I leasing this thing for? 1 year? 3 years?
I'm fine with companies leasing software. I don't like it, and I much prefer buying, but that's fine. That is what software subscriptions are, the terms and conditions are clear.
"Buying" something where access can be revoked at any time, for any reason, needs to become illegal.
> It's not that I don't agree, but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy" in such a way that
One fundamental thing would be to make it illegal to lawyer redefinitions of common words. If the sales of a game uses the word "buy" it should not be legal to redefine "buy" in that context to actually mean lump-sum lease or something.
I'm pretty sure the game studios wouldn't like me to buy their games if I were to amend the terms of sale with a clause in fine print that the term "pay" means "setting up a temporary IOU for which I reserve the right to have it resolved into nothing at my discretion". So, I'll pay later if I decide pay, maybe never. That's effectively what their "buy" means.
> it should not be legal to redefine "buy"
Your post made me go on a thought exercise: imagine a world where you could either own or lease software products. Game developers could decide whether their customers can actually buy the product (which involves ownership) or just the traditional licensing/leasing, which is the prevailing model today.
How would ownership actually work? What does ownership of digital goods mean? Can they even be owned? You get 1 copy of the bytes? How is this enforced? What's to stop you from just selling it multiple times?
If you can't resell it, then what do you actually own? The right to use the product in perpetuity? But that's just another form of lease, no?
Am I getting bogged down in semantics?
Just get the crypto bros involved. Track the license using blockchain. Should allow transferal of the license without allowing endless duplication.
“distinguishable from a perpetual lease with a cancellation clause”
Perpetual lease is not a valid concept. I mean it is, just like perpetual employment is - we call it serfdom or slavery.
Iy serves no legitimate purpose. It’s just a workaround.
If you cannot define meaning of “Buy” then you cannot govern at all.
You never bought the movie on a DVD either or the text in a book. Yet everyone understands what is meant. This isn't really something that needs complex legislation.
>but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy"
Why would they ask me? I'm a nobody.
Now, I'm sure some disciplined software lobbyist have spent a very long time and can answer such questions in legslese that protects the customers. Let's find them.
Slave owners, such as all of the so-called founding fathers, were as much rent seekers as any king
not all of them, as 15 of the 56 signers of the Declaration did not own slaves.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_and_the_United_States_...
Of those 15, it might be illuminating to know how many did not on grounds of principle versus merely that the cost/benefit didn't favour it for them at that time?
Slavery was a controversy from the beginning that finally bubbled over into the Civil War. It was not, as this question seems to imply, a near universally approved of practice where a few just didn't happen to need slaves.
That doesn't justify allowing it for almost a century. The US was comparable to the rest of the West, in this regard. The final abolition of slavery in Britain wasn't until 1833.
I don't think the above commenter disagreed with the need for regulation and the justification for it in this context. But that regulation isn't just for the things you think should be regulated and everything else shouldn't be.
>’s not like this is some special case. People make the exact same arguments against John Deere, Tesla, Apple etc
I think the apple sympathizers are a great case on some of the hypocrisy, actually. Seeing people condemn the DMA definitely shows some people will play favorites when push comes to shove.
Hear, hear! One of the best comments I've read in over a decade on this site
This is an impressively uncharitable read of GP, and in my view totally uncalled for.
People who "generally" oppose "regulation", in my experience, very often have very good reasons for having adopted that stance, that are rooted in examination (or at least knowledge) of several actually existing regulations. And I would hope we all agree that there are plenty of really bad regulations out there. (If not: I invite you to check out the book https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp... , and consider how this legal state of affairs could come about.)
The entirely unfounded allegation of cronyism ("and the ones where you have friends that work there") is especially absurd. Where the guidelines say
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
this is the exact mechanism for "trampling curiousity" I imagine the site staff have in mind. Why would anyone who can offer you an alternative point of view, want to participate in an environment where responses read like this?
I agree that the characterization was uncalled for in the post you replied to. But I don't agree with your statement that most people who generally oppose regulation have good reasons for doing so. Conservative media outlets have pushed that stance for decades now and it gets regurgitated all the time. Ask most of them what specific regulations they want to see gone and you'll get a blank stare.
I am criticizing a common pattern of thought that I observe, including in the post I responded to. "I'm against X in general, but in this case X is warranted" is a very dangerous thought process, and I believe a good way to try to dispel it is to ask "are all the special cases just ones that you understand and affect you personally, and all the 'in general' ones that you don't?". It doesn't need to be 100% accurate to be a good challenge of the thought pattern.
Yes, there are really bad regulations out there. Some of them are well-intended but poorly thought out, but even more are regulatory capture that is enabled by the same "they're all bad anyway" attitude. Let's work on improving regulations. In my experience, the people who are "against regulation in general" are not the ones who are interested in improving the regulatory body as a whole, and in fact work directly against it.
> The entirely unfounded allegation of cronyism ("and the ones where you have friends that work there") is especially absurd
I was not accusing anyone of cronyism. I was saying that people who have friends who work at, say, USGS, probably talk about what they do and understand that they actually serve a useful function. I am challenging those people to consider the fact that perhaps agencies they've barely heard of also serve a useful function, and they would also support the existence of that agency if they had had conversations with people who work there. Cronyism has nothing to do with it, only familiarity, understanding, and a personal connection.
"Criticizing a common pattern of thought that I observe" is just weasel language for strawmanning and/or ad hominem. Your initial comment is extremely uncharitable, breaks a ton of HN rules, and is completely fallacious with zero (edit: negative, because it actively degrades discourse on HN) value to it. Suggest not doing that.
Your comment trying to defend yourself is also full of fallacies and emotional manipulation. Don't do that either.
You did a summary of conservative ideology. All laws should be abolished so I can do whatever I want, but laws should regulate everything I do not like and the punishment should be harsh.
It is an ideology based in short-term self interest. It is the way toddlers think about the world before growing up.
Laws should help to create a well functioning society where everybody can participate and benefit from it in a fair system. Regulations are part of a functional society.
Digital ownership is not different from anything else. Regulate it correctly or the most powerful people will just take away everything from you.
I think it's an accurate description of a common way of thinking, though I wouldn't call it conservative in the global sense.
Another is some of the domestic manufacturing or hard tech movement people who present lofty ideals about jobs and sovereignty and so on. But there's a claim that when the surface is scratched a bit, it devolves into a want to keep their imported cheap input materials tax / toll free while introducing taxes and tolls to their foreign competitors' end products. I mean who would pay for domestic materials, they're much more expensive, there'd be no margin!
> I think it's an accurate description of a common way of thinking, though I wouldn't call it conservative in the global sense.
It's not a common way of thinking, not in my observation.
Conservative / neo-liberal narratives push strongly against any form of "bigger picture view", more explicitly against solidarity, fueling this mindset of "I only support what profits me personally", i.e. "everyone's taxes should be used for roads (because I have a car), public transport is a waste of money (everyone should buy a car)".
-> It's a vertical word-view, where others are seen either above you (appease them) or below you (disregard them, they should appease you)
--
Liberal citizens still (try to) build on a sense of solidarity, of common investments for the "greater good" of a just (future) society, i.e. "I do have a car, but a stronger public transport system is a benefit to me and my peers"
-> It's a horizontal world-view, where others are seen equal to you and people are much more willing to stand up for each other and unite their voice for a cause.
--
I'm aware that this is not that visible in US, because there are only two major parties here, which both try to please the maximum of the middle spectrum. So both follow a rather conservative narrative and tend to pay lip-service only.
In countries with more than two major political parties it's more visible because the "center-left" democratic party is also threatened by competition from the "left", not just from the "center-right"/"right" party, so they need to acknowledge that citizens raise DEMANDS to them and are willing to walk away if they are not met.
IMO it is extremely common. It is practically the default way people think government should work when they have done no reflection on it (which is still a pretty high number of people, few people reflect that much on how government works or is structured). This is why everyone bitches about how taxes are high and doesn't even know what's in the government budget, or whether or not taxes are ACTUALLY higher than X years ago. They just know that money gets spent and its *THEIR* money so by golly are they gonna get mad when something doesn't work how they want it because it's so *obvious* how to do it right.
I understand his comment as being against dumb regulation that only ads unnecessary bureaucracy or stops/limits progress. But he would support a regulation for this because it's a violation against the property of the buyer.
Dumb regulation being subjective
Subjective being subjective
The word subjective is not itself subjective. People understand the definition of the word subjective.
https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/2007-12-11
What people deem to be subjective is very often subjective. You disagreeing simply proves the point.
> being against dumb regulation that only ads unnecessary bureaucracy or stops/limits progress
Does such strawman regulation even exist? Some regulation is intentionally designed to limit “progress”, where “progress” happens to have negative externalities.
It’s kind of a self-legitimizing opinion. Of course anyone would be against unnecessary regulations. I think the real world is not arguing about whether a regulation is necessary, but rather if the economic burden it creates is worth the positive impact it has on society, which is highly contentious, highly subjective debate.
It takes a minimum of 600 hours of training to get licensed to cut hair in California.
Pex plumbing is banned in Chicago as a union protectionist regulation.
The "chicken tax" regulation scheme has screwed up the US truck market for decades.
Electrical code requirements for the wiring of kitchen islands have changed drastically with very small justification within a short span of time.
To this day it is illegal to trade onion futures in Chicago due to an attempt to corner the market on onions decades ago(probably over a century can't be bothered to check).
Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
The affordable care act is written in such a way that the only way for insurers to increase their profit margin on health plans is to increase the cost they pay out to providers ("gold plating")
CAFE fuel economy standards have lead to the arms race of increased vehicle sizes for unnecessary reasons.
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer
Cite your sources.
There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership.
And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts of northern Europe with weird hangups about air conditioning.
But as best I can tell this claim is false; the biggest reason why air conditioning is not so widespread in Northern Europe as in the United States is that the climate simply hasn’t, until recently, required it.
> biggest reason why air conditioning is not so widespread in Northern Europe as in the United States
It certainly is a transitional period where each summer more and more people realize that eventually something needs to be done, "maybe a/c next year" for many years until the year of installation finally comes.
In Northern Europe it certainly is still a rare occurrence that everything gets heated so warm that the air does no longer cool during the night and you can't cool down for the next day. Yes, we do get heat waves but they don't last very long. Yes, summers are mostly getting hotter but it's still nothing like in southern Europe. We might have several weeks of 25-28C with a lot of lakes and sea to dip into.
Admittedly it can be tormenting in city apartments where you might not have a place for A/C even if you wanted to, and where you might not have enough outside walls to effectively cross-ventilate. Further, the stone and pavement in a city absorb heat like a sponge which keeps the average a few degrees warmer than greenleaf areas across the hot season.
Yet I think maybe half-ish of households (or at least detached houses) already do have A/C. Installations have been steadily creeping up in the last 25 years. But those units aren't there because of their cooling capacity (which isn't necessarily always even used). Those are air-to-air heat pumps that keep the house warm in the winter, and can be used for cooling in the summer.
> climate simply hasn’t, until recently, required it.
I would qualify that as it hasn't required it since the invention of air conditioning.
Which also isn't strictly true; the high temperature for Paris on July 1st this year is identical to the high for the same day back in 2015[1], and there are several times since 1970 that the temperature was over 30C.
Other sources[2] indicate 1947 was just as brutal as 2019 and 2022, and the warmest night was in 1772 (27.5C)
[1] https://weatheronthisday.com/intl/paris/7/1
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Paris (standard Wikipedia reliability warning applies)
Outside air temperature isn't an issue. It's not like people drop dead the moment it hits 40. The problem is that after a few days of that everything is heated up through and you have no place to escape it. That's new and hasn't been happening before.
But "somewhat longer heatwave" isn't as scary sounding as "HOTTEST EVER RECORDED TEMPERATURE IN $LOCALE!!!!!!" which is why all the scaremongers keep screaming the latter.
We're warned of heatwaves and given instructions on how to not die all the time now. Not once did this occur when I was a child where I live. Record temperatures are more shown as an almanac style this is what's happened today whenever I see them. Personally I wish more scaremongering were happening right now.
> Personally I wish more scaremongering were happening right now.
You might be the first person in history to say that
Yes, there have been hot days across northern Europe before; however, the frequency of very hot weather has increased substantially.
It may not have gotten the headlines of this year’s heatwave, but we were in Switzerland and Germany for a month last July. For three of those four weeks, it was stinking hot. The maximum temperatures weren’t so bad, but the nights were oppressive, and there was no letup. If that’s going to be the norm most summers, it absolutely justifies investing in air conditioning.
German here: you are not allowed to install anything thats visible from the outside without the owners aproval (70% of people Rent in Germany) or even the aproval of the Apartment Owner Association (Imagine HOA but for Apartments and every bit as dumb)
German here: 53% of the Germans lives in a rented home.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...
whoops sorry I think i mixed the numbers up with the EU average, which is close to 70% point in case is that its much much more than in other countries.
So then in Europe you are just as banned from installing an AC unit as I was here in the states in a rented apartment.
Hint: that's not "It's banned in Europe", that's "Landlords generally suck in any possible way"
Person living in Germany here: everyone does it anyway, if it's a temporary installation.
I have seen enough people complaining about someone putting up an AC even the Midea Portasplit.
> https://www.build.aau.dk/report-from-aau-warns-danish-homes-...
The Danish Building code has requirements for retaining heat in the house, which is great in the cold winters, but devastating in the heart of modern summers. Combined with rules that practically require large south-facing windows to satisfy the total energy requirement limits, it gets very, very hot. And air conditioning subtracts significantly from your energy rating, making it almost impossible to include AC in a new building and satisfy the emission rating that any new building must satisfy.
The code allows only 25 hours a year where indoor temperature exceeds 28 degrees, but the validation of a building uses old temperature data, so on practice it's more hours of higher temperatures, and for houses that, even if you want to add AC later, wasnt designed for that.
Abs to add insult to injury, if you renovate an older building, you _can_ be required to bring it up to modern specs. That can be so expensive that it's cheaper to tear it down and build a new building. Because you can't do something half-good?
The building code _is_ a real problem, and changes ... well, haven't happened yet, so the buildings built today will be unlivable for as long as they stand in the new hotter summers.
Practices that retain heat usually also retain cold, or?
Yes. I don't get that hang up. I bought new apartment in 2024. It has triple pane windows, and 20cm of styrofoam on the external walls.
I can cool down entire 70 square meters apartment with single 3.5kw split; that has worked well in the recent 40 degree heatwave. It does not even use "higher gears" to maintain the 24-25 degrees inside.
Not to mention it's usage overwhelmingly correlates with sunshine availability.
Only if you have cold to retain...
These are excellent examples. Regulations are not inherently good or bad, and one of the issues we seem to have in the US is a lack of honest accounting, sometimes purposefully and sometimes due to a lack of state capacity, what the costs and benefits of different regulations are.
> decades ago(probably over a century can't be bothered to check).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act passed in 1958, just FYI.
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
I keep seeing people say this but they don’t have any evidence, seen it tons online the last few weeks even on HN. What’s the deal? One person the other day went so far as to say that multiple EU nations have banned AC, which is completely false. You can absolutely have air-conditioning in Europe. Some places have stricter rules about permanent installation, such as HVACs in older areas, but there are plenty of air-conditioning units people can just pick up and use the same day in those cases. You can get AC units in European nations. You don’t have to just roast for no reason because of the government.
Just to add, the regulations you mention aren't even about AC, it's about modifying buildings' "looks". You can still install AC if you figure out where to put the outside unit - roof, balcony, inner yard, ...
Not everyone has the ability to install personal unit where they live, that's true, same way they can't install satellite dishes for example.
I’ll take your word on the other points but this one:
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
Needs some debunking. In fact, I think you may have been fed lies because the UK government felt the need to specifically call this out:
https://mhclgmedia.blog.gov.uk/2026/06/25/air-conditioning-r...
In short: AC in the home is legal in the UK subject to following regulations, both national and local. Councils are generally happy to tell you how to comply, in my experience with building control.
Reading that sort of thing is kind of amusing, e.g.:
> In most cases, planning permission is not required to install it for a small home if it would not materially affect the appearance of the building from outside.
Substantially all air conditioning units affect the appearance of the building from the outside because they require a coil or vent somewhere on the exterior of the building to expel heat.
> Building regulations already require new residential buildings, including houses, flats, student accommodation, residential care homes and children's homes, to be designed to minimise overheating.
If planning permission for aircon was denied, worry not, because the building code now requires measures that will keep some new buildings to a temperature ten or twenty degrees cooler than the older buildings (planning permission for aircon likewise denied), which is quite a difference when even the newer buildings are over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
They wouldn't need to spin it like this if there weren't actually buildings where people want to install air conditioning and are prohibited from it, because if that was the case they would have said that.
You're completely misreading regulations. "Materially affect" does not cover things like "puts a unit outside" because otherwise putting a satellite does would "materially affect the appearance of the building from outside," yet millions of people get Sky TV.
> If planning permission for aircon was denied
Again, this is not part of the article because it literally says you don't need planning permission! There are regulations you must follow about the size and location but, as long as those are followed, you don't need planning permission. At most, you alert Building Control who will tell you the process and, as long as you follow it, they will sign it off.
For the avoidance of doubt: getting work signed off by your council's Building Control department is not planning permission. As long as your work follows the regulations, they will sign it off. Planning permission is ONLY needed if you want to do work outside of what building regs normally allow for residential properties.
> They wouldn't need to spin it like this if there weren't actually buildings where people want to install air conditioning and are prohibited from it
They wouldn't need to spin it like this if the media and their useful idiots like you didn't outright lie about what was actually happening.
> "Materially affect" does not cover things like "puts a unit outside" because otherwise putting a satellite does would "materially affect the appearance of the building from outside," yet millions of people get Sky TV.
They're referring to regulations by the local council. All of them are different. Millions of people being able to install a satellite dish is entirely compatible with any number of different people in different localities being refused because the condenser is "ugly".
> Again, this is not part of the article because it literally says you don't need planning permission!
It literally says:
> In most cases, planning permission is not required to install it for a small home if it would not materially affect the appearance of the building from outside.
Which strongly implies both that there are cases when it's required anyway and there are cases when it would "materially affect the appearance of the building from outside" since otherwise they wouldn't need to qualify it.
> the condenser is "ugly".
"Ugly" is not part of planning regs. Local council planning regs cannot override statute and they don't deviate that much. You'd know this if you lived in the UK (which you don't).
> Which strongly implies both that there are cases when it's required anyway
I explained why you might need planning permission: because your planned work sits outside of building regs.
> there are cases when it would "materially affect the appearance of the building from outside"
Yes, those are things like "it's too big" or "it's a listed building." Instead of hand-waving about things you don't understand, put some fucking effort in and show these cases that are obviously reasonable but still being blocked.
Here, let me add yet more research since you won't do it yourself: https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/expert-advice/air-condition...
A list of reasons air-conditioning might require planning permission. Are you telling me that you, Anthony, know more about building regs in the UK than:
* Residents of the UK who have to work with them when they want to building work on their home.
* Companies who work with building contractors in the UK.
* The UK Government.
> "Ugly" is not part of planning regs.
The phrase "materially affect the appearance of the building" has a pretty strong implication that the aesthetic effect is regarded as undesirable.
> Yes, those are things like "it's too big" or "it's a listed building."
And what then happens in the cases where "it's too big" or "it's a listed building"?
It also includes things like "it's going on a pitched roof" or "it's too close to the property line".
> show these cases that are obviously reasonable but still being blocked.
Demanding "obviously reasonable" is the crux of the banality of evil. Many things are non-obviously reasonable.
Who needs to put the unit on a pitched roof? That's weird. Just put it on the ground. Unless you own a unit on the second floor of a building and someone else owns the yard, and then you can't.
Your link has "too close to the property line" at within a meter. That's really close, who would need to do that? Well, the UK has millions of terraced houses that directly abut the property line. Some of them don't have a yard at all (and then we're back to the roof), others have one so small that being that close to the property line may be the only available place to put it.
Are these cases "obviously reasonable"? Putting the unit on a pitched roof is still weird and ugly. It's not that hard to understand the neighbors not wanting it that close to the property line.
But there is nowhere else to put it and then July makes the building hot enough to be a danger to life. At which point a rule motivated by the aesthetics is doing something objectionable.
I’ll be honest, I’m not reading your comments any more until you can provide sources that there’s actually an issue in the UK. I’ve done you the good grace of showing you my receipts so until I see some text that starts with https:// I’m ignoring you. I didn’t even bother to read your reply here because it’s a waste of my time.
You’re just making up definitions and interpretations while this person is telling you exactly how it works. Playing steelman does not foster dialogue and understanding.
You can install AC in the UK. It’s not as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be.
> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer.
There are very few laws which can say what you are allowed to do with your owned house. One of them is when it is of historical value. Then you aren’t allowed to change pretty much anything.
The rest are just landlords who want to fuck you over.
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Are you agreeing with the parent and giving examples of regulations that have been debated? Or are you trying to give examples of some of the "strawmen" regulations?
A lot of these examples are pretty subjective or missing context...
> Does such strawman regulation even exist?
Yes, the DMCA is a great example, but corporations write those regulations and bribe government to pass them. That's not really an example of evil government as much as it is an example of evil corporations, although it does illustrate how much work is needed to limit the influence of money in politics.
> That's not really an example of evil government as much as it is an example of evil corporations
It's the corporation's job to advocate for favorable regulations and the government's job to enact regulations that benefit the general public rather than special interests. Only one of them is bad at their job.
> although it does illustrate how much work is needed to limit the influence of money in politics.
It's actually the perfect example of something where "money in politics" isn't the problem. The companies that lobby for the DMCA are the media companies. They donate their share of money but by far the largest source of their influence is their ability to run sustained unfavorable coverage against politicians who cross them, which would continue to be the case even if they couldn't transfer a dime into the politician's own coffers.
Corporations aren't wild animals that just happen to have an anti-social nature. They are fictional entities / groups and people and are allowed to do whatever we want to allow them. It's perfectly valid to say that corporations that keep pushing for anti-society legislation get shut down entirely instead of having the government and voters have to continually resist them. We don't allow individuals to do whatever they want to further their own interests either and lock up or even execute the worst misbehavers.
Corporations are like wild animals.
Individual people are diverse and creative. The behavior of large organizations differs because that individual behavior is getting merged into an aggregate. The choices of any given individual are diluted to such an extent that the organizations then behave stochastically in response to incentives, and therefore the same as one another when they're operating under the same set of incentives.
Which corporation would you propose to shut down? It would have to be all of them, and then the ones that replace them again. And the government itself, since it too is a bureaucratic organization that will engage in regulatory capture to expropriate more funding/power.
You cannot prevent the incentive to seize power, which comes from human nature. What you need is a system which is structurally resilient against its concentration/centralization.
> It's the corporation's job to advocate for favorable regulations
Bribery is not advocacy.
> the government's job to enact regulations that benefit the general public rather than special interests.
No argument there, but so far companies and corrupt politicians have conned a large percentage of the public into accepting that it's okay and that any constraints on what a company wants to do is a terrible thing. We're currently under a very pro-bribery admin.
> The companies that lobby for the DMCA are the media companies. They donate their share of money but by far the largest source of their influence is their ability to run sustained unfavorable coverage against politicians who cross them
I'm not entirely convinced that media coverage is more influential than bribes, donations, and the revolving door. That argument also only works for the media industry and not the other countless industries which bribe government. The oil and gas industry have been getting their money's worth https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/05/10/energy-indu...
> Bribery is not advocacy.
The revolving door is bribery, but now propose a solution to it that doesn't preclude every member of a politician's extended family from having a job in private industry regardless of whether that person had any say in their relative running for office.
Running issue ads pretty much the definition of advocacy.
> That argument also only works for the media industry and not the other countless industries which bribe government. The oil and gas industry have been getting their money's worth
The industries that it does work for are some of the biggest problem ones. Media consolidation is a major long-term problem that the government seems entirely incapable of redressing, and the same issue presents with tech companies. Twitter/Facebook/Google at this point have more influence over what people believe than CNN/MSNBC/Fox News.
Moreover, influence over the media is only one way that corporations influence politicians. Let's take your example. From soup to nuts, the US oil and gas industry employs more than 10 million people, and those people are concentrated in specific places. (This is also why coal in the US is dying and never coming back; employs less than 1% as many people.) The auto industry employs another 10 million Americans and has a strong preference for cheap gas.
The major alternatives to oil and gas are electric vehicles (majority of worldwide EV batteries made in China) and solar panels (made in China again). The US could make those things, but it would require significant taxpayer subsidies, since China subsidizes them too. Moreover, it will never be the same number of jobs because EVs and solar panels are simply less labor intensive. EVs are mechanically simpler and require less maintenance/repair than ICE powertrains and solar panels are essentially semiconductor manufacturing, which is not a major source of blue collar jobs.
Meanwhile the main argument against oil and gas is CO2, which is a huge international problem that countries have a poor incentive to tackle individually. So the political incentives to address it in the US are screwed regardless of whether the industry pays the politicians a cent, because the politicians don't want to lose millions of jobs and billions in tax revenue (which, despite the subsidies, the oil industry still pays on net).
More to the point, it's the media that keeps telling people that it could be fixed with campaign finance reform, even though it can't, because that's the one that privileges them as the ones who can run advocacy pieces without paying a third party to air them.
Whereas to actually make a dent in the part of the problem related to money being used to pay for attention, you need something more like antitrust so that you don't have megacorps like Comcast NBCUniversal, Google and Facebook in control of what such a large proportion of the public believes. Which is exactly what the media corporations don't want, so they redirect blame onto something else.
Only the regulation that doesn't evolve with the time or written so that it stays within the confines of a context that doesn't exists. Certain big country constitution is a prime example of that.
dumb regulation meaning any regulation they don't understand the purpose of is the point.
It's a stretch rather than a point.
> You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about.
That's not really it.
The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by statute. It can't be the thing that saves you in the case where the government is prohibiting it.
To put it another way, the thing that would really reduce regulations is to get rid of copyright, but maybe we want to be pragmatic here and instead of demanding that it be abolished entirely, we just want the prohibition the government is imposing on the users to not be extended through an unconscionable power grab and destroy the rights of First Sale and Fair Use that have always belonged to the customer.
I wouldn't say competition is "most of the time", any market that saturates just turns to shit, incumbents can kill off any upstart competition while squeezing customers dry, not to mention fields that should have a baseline (e.i. healthcare), because squeezing customers dry there literally kills people
You're describing uncompetitive markets. That's what happens when the incumbents capture the government to pass regulations that inhibit competition. It's one of the biggest problems caused by regulations.
Healthcare in the US is a great example because the government is so thoroughly captured by the industry. There is no reason competition wouldn't be effective for non-emergency care, if it was allowed to operate. You need an MRI, every provider publishes their prices, you pick the one which is the right combination of affordable and a convenient distance from where you live. Naturally the existing regulations make that impossible -- the tax code has major incentives for employer-provided insurance rather than the employer paying you money and you choosing your plan or paying out of pocket, the insurance is given the incentive to inflate rather than control costs because their profit is capped by law at a specific percentage of claims (so more and bigger claims means more profit instead of less), the AMA lobbies to have the government limit the number of medical residency slots and sustain a doctor shortage, etc.
Notice that food is another market where "squeezing customers dry there literally kills people" but it has nothing like the same problems because it has much more competition.
> The main case against regulation is that it shouldn't be used when competition would do it better, which is most of the time. The trouble in this case is that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, which means this isn't one of those times, because competition is being foreclosed by statute.
Microsoft may have a monopoly on Minecraft, but they still have competition from other games (Roblox, Fortnite) and other forms of entertainment (social media, youtube, books, IRL friends).
To me, the problem is more one of the terms of the deal changing; if a person brought minecraft with a 'mojang' account and loses their purchase when those accounts disappear in favour of 'microsoft' accounts, for example.
> Microsoft may have a monopoly on Minecraft, but they still have competition from other games (Roblox, Fortnite) and other forms of entertainment (social media, youtube, books, IRL friends).
Which is not at all the same thing, not least because software has a network effect. It's like saying that a company having a monopoly on cars is fine because you can walk or take the bus.
If your claim was actually true then copyright would have no purpose since "granting a monopoly" is its mechanism of operation.
> To me, the problem is more one of the terms of the deal changing; if a person brought minecraft with a 'mojang' account and loses their purchase when those accounts disappear in favour of 'microsoft' accounts, for example.
How does that help you when the next game comes out, requiring a "Microsoft" account from the first day? The problem is inherently that you can't get the game from anyone -- even a used copy from an existing customer -- without subjecting yourself to the requirement you reject, or de facto being stripped of your rights under First Sale.
I genuinely can't understand why this comment was downvoted.
Because a lot of people aren't libertarians?
Though your point may have some value, your comment comes across as meanspirited and ad hominem.
Also, regulation is not universally supported by knowledgeable consumers. Often quite the opposite, in fact.
Mean spirited sure, ad hominem, no. It's satirizing the argument, not personal traits unrelated to the argument
It's definitely a bad argument worthy of some sort of label. It seems to go "you believe this thing, which I won't engage with at all, but I'll assume that because of the way you said it, you also believe all this other stuff that I disagree with".
The term you are looking for is straw man
No, satire would involve an attempt to pretend to make the same argument while exposing flaws. This was just a bunch of uncharitable strawmen.
I stand corrected.
Yes; and to make it extremely politically explosive, I do enjoy observing American politics and seeing each side (there are, brilliantly, two, because there ARE only two sides to every story and they neatly correlate with each other 100%:) massively enlarge the government, apply massive new restrictive regulations, but one side claims they don't do that because of somewhat specific types of massive government regulations and enlargements they do :)
At its best, a government law/regulation/policy is people saying "Ouch, that hurt, let's not do THAT again!", or "Oooh, I like this, this is good for us, let's do more of THAT please!".
At its worst, its self-preserving bureaucracy run rampant.
Any oversimplifying platitude like "I'm against big government!" or "I'm against government regulation!" so tremendously lacks specifics as to be worse than worthless.
And this is an extremely complicated issue which a tiny minority of people care about that'd be ridiculously over-complicated to implement with huge difficulty in tracking and enforcing! But because where we are, it resonates with us, and we on Hacker News feel it's an obvious and easy policy to apply :). You know, unlike the minor issues of war and peace and hunger and poverty and economics and minority rights et cetera :)
100 internet points and tip of a hat to you sir :)
> a tiny minority of people care about [...] You know, unlike the minor issues of war and peace and hunger and poverty and economics and minority rights et cetera :)
The complexity and realism of some particular regulation aside, I honestly don't understand dismissing other people's opinions on the grounds that not a lot of people care about them. Should people not have an opinion because lots of other people don't share it? Or should those opinions just not be expressed?
Everybody's got their own personal interests and values. It's natural to express and even vouch for them. If they aren't shared by enough other people, they probably won't make it to the top in a democracy. That's how it works and it's fine. But I don't get the idea that someone shouldn't express an opinion about X because lots of other people don't care about X.
I agree ; that's the principle of democracy :)
And it works both ways - people are allowed to care about something, express that, and others are allowed to not care about it, and express that :)
(in this case, as I mentioned in sibling comment, I care about the same cause as well:).
You seem to be arguing that government regulation, on its face, is default-good while the GP seems to be arguing that it is default-bad. I bet if you actually engage with the argument in good faith instead of dismissing your imaginary strawman there could be a good conversation! But no the GP disagrees with you, so is therefore a complete moron, so no discussion will be had I suppose.
> In Comments
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says
> Please don't post shallow dismissals
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> You seem to be arguing that government regulation, on its face, is default-good while the GP seems to be arguing that it is default-bad
The GP did indeed seem to be arguing it's default-bad (though I note you didn't go off at them for this). The reply has said nothing about it being default-good: only that it's not necessarily default-bad. You're assuming a black-and-white binary & by extension you're seeing arguments that weren't made.
There's nothing bad faith about the commenters post & assuming the role of a moderator in a discussion you're inventing phantom arguments in isn't doing you any favours.
>All the oversight and regulation about everything you don't care and/or know about is big bad government overreach.
I can literally list all the stupid regulation that needs to be removed from my industry. A lot of it is incredibly boneheaded. There's exactly 1 thing I do like, and it was extremely situational and set down in the 90s to avoid a very specific potential failure, and could easily be repealed without issue right now.
I presume, based on the experience in an industry I am very familiar with, that at least 60% of the regulation put on other industries is likewise counter productive and boneheaded. And every now and then when I do a deep dive somewhere I tend to confirm that.
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.
He's right though. There's no reason to add even more annoying laws. Just get rid of the existing ones that are causing the problem. Getting rid of just the DMCA's anti-circumvention nonsense would probably be sufficient to take care of this problem. Game stops working? You can make it work.
I can't speak for the GP obviously, but lumping together all regulation is a mistake. This would be a situation of having regulation protect our rights rather than limit them. That's a huge distinction and the former isn't particularly common today, more often than not if someone is raising concerns over a new regulation its because the regulation is limiting their rights.
I didn't take their comment like that. A brain surgeon doesn't excise a leg tumor the same way as you don't comment on things outside your wheelhouse.
You’re making an equally nebulous point, as if all govt regulation is good and overreach doesn’t exist by definition or something.
Not really. The issue is that even the basic current rules are not really enforced, because digital is somehow seen as more ephemeral and thus not real ( or at least, that is how it initially started ).
We don't have to have new regulation. We just need to enforced basic existing standards. Buy means buy. Rent means rent. Lease means lease. All have their place. But this is not what is happening now. We have an ecosystem that mischaracterizes not just type the type of sale, but user's rights and obligations under it.
All that is basically fraud. We just don't call it that. We call it innovation.
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If buying isn't ownership, than piracy isn't stealing.
Government can do what they want, but if they ain't for the people, I ain't for the Government.
It is still, as far as I am aware, possible to steal a rental car.
No one renting a car is being told they are buying it and walking (driving) away under the assumption that they have.
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> 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 magically go bankrupt and cease to exist.
Then the onus would again put on the commuinity to break any encryption or otherwise reverse-engineer and preserve the games so they remain playable for legal owners. And the top-level companies would still be able to salvage and own the game franchise rights, so they would still be able to harass the game preservation community.
I don't think there's any workaround to stop this kind of cheating, other than mandating that (a) all DRM-protected or service-bound content needs to be submitted to an escrow organization (Library of Congress?) in a form that can be used to reproduce it locally, and (b) all submitted content is released to the public after X years.
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.
Government-mandated source code escrow is certainly a reasonable requirement for copyright protection but you could also just legislate that "licensing" a work for resale also means being ultimately liable to make third party buyers whole if they have not received a local copy before - at the threat of loosing copyright protection for the work entirely.
Surely judges would not be fooled by these completely transparent shenanigans?
I saw something earlier today that showed the Sony agreement specifies you’re only licensing the games, even if you buy it on a disc. So the fine print means no one ever “buys” a game for the PS5. They are buying a license to use the game for some indefinite period of time that Sony, or some other rights holder, will determine at a later date.
This is why things really need to be DRM free from the start, and portable (have the ability to back them up, move them, etc). It’s the only way to ensure they can’t pull that kind of stuff.
This has been the case for software since the very beginning. And people have been complaining about it since the beginning. See the Free Software Foundation.
No matter what they wrote in the document, the fact was always that you had the game on a disc and nothing would stop you playing it in violation of the words in the document.
The only reason for that is because the physical disc has the right of first sale attached by being physical item, and there’s no practical/acceptable mechanism to prevent transfer of the license to someone else.
Traditionally the whole industry has been fine with it as long as direct media copying was too hard for the layperson, especially since lending games around was like word of mouth advertising.
Digital platforms change a whole bunch of these things.
Well those changes shouldn't favor corporations over consumers at every turn, that's the point.
I agree, my statement is more of a plain observation.
> and nothing would stop you playing it
Not true for PS5 games. Sony can push a firmware update to disable games, even if you own the disc.
Is there any evidence of this?
They can delist a game from the PS store, but I doubt they would make a game unplayable if it's already installed or if you own it physically.
They said “can”, not “has”. Given that it’s a closed platform that Sony has complete control over, they certainly can do it.
You can doubt that they will, but that’s just hope rather than a legal or technical guarantee.
> You can doubt that they will, but that’s just hope rather than a legal or technical guarantee.
It's not based on a legal or technical guarantee. But it's based on what Sony did in the past:
P.T. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.T._(video_game) ) was pulled from the PS store. But Sony didn't make it unplayable if it was already installed. In fact, the wikipedia article says:
> After the cancellation, PlayStation 4 consoles with P.T. installed were listed on eBay for over $1,000
I am not aware of a case where they disabled an already-playable game via a firmware update.
But they do require certain firmware updates to play games, at least they did in the PS3 days. If you hadn't updated to that firmware (say, because you didn't want certain features you used like the OtherOS installation to be deleted) your new physical media would not play. I bought Dark Souls on a disc and could not play it on my console.
AFAIK, every game that required a Firmware update included it in the PS3_UPDATE directory in the bluray, and it being there was part of the certification process. Maybe Dark Souls was just a rare error?
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.
New firmware can easily come with new security checks though, and I think other consoles have done this in the past.
use your brain
Not true for Blu-Ray movies, either. Just saying that's how it used to be.
That's an argument why the DCMA anti-circumvention clauses should be repealed, not an argument for adding more of that crap in the digital realm.
>nothing would stop you playing it in violation of the words in the document.
Thats not really the case. Windows Defender and other anti viruses will quarantine piracy tools (like no cd cracks, and how many cd/dvd readers are in modern computers) these days, not far from there to see them being paid to police license changes. Games are often more playable in their pirated versions. Like if you own the Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas discs that require games for windows live you are screwed, but the digital steam versions remove that requirement.
Then you have games like Metal Fatigue, released for Windows 98, suffering memory corruption issues since Windows XP. Microsofts Compatibility Toolkit offers a fix for some of the memory issues making the game vastly more playable, but then of course, Microsoft has set an EOL date for the toolkit, the last version of it was published for Windows 10, and theres an expectation that at some point Windows 11 will not permit it to be installed any longer.
Whether you buy a disc or pay for a download, you are still at the mercy of the entire ecosystem. If you completely freeze your ecosystem and never install anything you might get by. But that presents other risks.
I just bought Kinnectimals for my toddler, and it came with a warning that it needed connectivity to some random xbox server to update, straight out of the box. Thankfully, my 360 was still able to connect to it. But network protocols might change, the OS might get a new version that bricks the connectivity (potentially for good reason, there could be a vuln) or hundreds of other things. Theres no safety or security provided to me by owning the disc.
The same is true of digital downloads, insofar as both the disc and the digital download don't have DRM.
In other words, you completely missed the point that this is about DRM and not physical vs digital.
However in the EU end users have the right to resell that license.
A license doesn’t have to be for an indefinite time period. It can be irrevocable
enforcement of legality is on the victim in the grift economy.
> 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 created and held in trust, then it's not trustworthy.
We should require companies to submit a DRM-free version of their product to the US copyright office in order to get copyright protection. If the company goes under, or the copyright term expires, the US Copyright office should then provide those files to the people free of charge.
If the Copyright Office doesn't have enough funding/infrastructure, a compromise would be that the company regularly provides encrypted copies into the public domain in advance, and the decryption key is in escrow.
"Current copyright holder is ultimately liable for making all buyers whole." Problem solved.
Yep, putting a DRM free version in escrow should be a legal requirement.
This is absolutely what the SKG movement would have fast tracked - combined with all the Hollywood accounting that comes with it.
The KISS version of regulation would be that stores are not allowed to use the word "buy" when you don't get full ownership and must use the word "license" instead.
Also it should be marked clearly that the company can rescind the license at any moment without giving any reason why.
That would be pointless, since a consumer always buys a license, not the software itself.
I would love to see something like the Nutrition Facts label that states IN BLACK AND WHITE ALL CAPS THAT THE COMPANY CAN (NOT) RESCIND THE LICENSE AT ANY TIME. If the fact is very blatantly shown on the marketing/packaging instead of being relegated to tiny fine print, buyers will pay a lot more attention.
I'm sure in the various services' Ts&Cs they explain that what you buy is a license to the game, not the game itself.
That's not relevant though. What is being demanded is that a new term that means "less than purchase" be used, making it overtly clear that you are only renting. A pointer indirection to the real word doesn't count.
I would argue that we don't need new regulations, we need to enforce existing laws against fraud. It is fraudulent to sell something and then later disable ones access to the thing you sold them access to.
Exactly, this is just application of property rights and enforcing existing consumer protection rights. You can’t tell someone they’re “buying” something if they don’t own it. Imagine someone doing that with house rentals or car leases, it would obviously be considered fraud.
Screw fraud, it should be considered theft punishable by time behind bars the same way it would if some junkie broke into my house and stole my games or movies off my bookshelf.
I would argue that it is likely fraudulent to sell with the intent to later reappropriate but separately illegal to actually do so. It’s some manner of theft or destruction of property.
Which is exactly why Sony claims not to "sell" you the game but only to license it.
Are you sure? I'm pretty sure the button says 'buy' or something similiar, not 'rent'.
It's really cocky of them to do this immediately after deleting everyone's purchased movies from their accounts. Nobody should have any illusions about what "buying" a game means when they can do this at will.
https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/psvideocontent/
Copyright protection is regulation. Limiting it ins't increasing regulation; it's decreasing regulation.
I don't see this as "regulation". I see this as extending the same consumer protections that existed in the era of analog physical media to the digital age.
Customer protection absolutely is regulation. Saying otherwise is a No True Scotsman.
Good regulation is good. Bad regulation is bad. Being anti-regulation is dogmatic.
Consumer protection is a type of regulation, but if you can brand a rule as "Consumer protection" it will poll better than "regulation" because that's how marketing works.
Maybe, but regularly reframing regulations that people like (consumer protections, OSHA, lemon laws, etc.) as regulations will hopefully remind/reinforce that the whole "pro/anti regulations" framing is a childish mindset.
Regulations that protect your rights are very different from those that limit them. In this case it would be the former, and no less it would be reinforcing a pretty fundamental right in our system, the right to own property.
Then it shouldn't be allowed to call it "buy" they should be forced to call it "rent".
They did this in California, now online stores in California only let you rent games for an indefinite term. Exactly the same as before but the button says "rent"
You're implying that's the same but it's obviously better. Nothing wrong with renting when you're told you're renting.
The problem of false advertising is resolved but the problem of consumer freedom remains. If all digital marketplaces for a particular art only offer rents, without any option to buy or any physical media to serve as an alternative, that would still be a problem even if the rents were presented honestly.
> consumer freedom remains
Not really. As long as it's clear that everything is a rental, consumers are free to go along or not.
Physical media offering near-permanent storage is also relatively new. 8-tracks, cassettes, and even CDs would wear out over time. Yes, I could hold a cassette in my hand, but I also knew it would wear out over time and I'd have to buy another one - and I did.
We need to change our language around buying something so it's clear that it's not permanent ownership, unless it really is. I suspect we would see services/media start to come to market that offer true ownership if the demand was there.
Which online stores? I don't see that in Steam.
Good. At least they're honest about what you're paying for.
That's good, since you are renting them.
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.
Companies will keep doing what they're doing now - they'll just use another verb than "buy" or "purchase". Which would be a small improvement, I guess...
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..)
Looking through a shelf of well organized CDs, game disks or movie disks will always be far more satisfying than typing letters into a search box and wading through large numbers of titles on a TV or monitor.
> 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 could also be fixed by removing regulation.
I bought a bunch of games on google stadia when that was a thing, and when they closed the service down i was fully refunded on all games. pretty cool
While I agree it is pretty cool, I think they probably did that to avoid a class action lawsuit.
But that does also beg the question, if we do eventually regulate this better, do you own streamed products? IE with Google stadia (and I think Amazon Luna) you buy a game but the game data is streamed to your device. If they shut the service down (like Stadia did) then what happens to your game collection?
It's a hypothetical, but interesting to think about nonetheless
>pretty cool
Is it? It's the bare minimum and if you replace games with anything else it might not look so "pretty cool" anymore.
My hairdresser forcefully bleached/uncut my hair but pretty cool that i got my money back.
Ford forcefully impounded my car without my consent but pretty cool that i got my money back
Realtor kicked me out of my house but pretty cool that i got my money back
Especially one-time purchase apps, zero control from the user and they can enforce any number of unreasonable control mechanisms over you even once you've paid for the damn thing.
This makes no sense. You can't force them to sell you the game. They'll just say "this is a 5-year rental" and that'll be it. The regulation can't even be retroactive
> They'll just say "this is a 5-year rental" and that'll be it.
And that's ok since everyone will understand the deal going in. Consumers can decide if it's worth paying the price for a 5 year rental or not.
Has self regulation ever worked in the tech world when it comes to consumer/user rights.
Yes, up until it didn't.
Most importantly you should be able to use it even if you break all ties with the vendor.
All they have to do then is say that they license you a game, and you're not buying anything, despite paying for it. They already do that with online games.
One of the unstated points of this particular article is that these rules are ones that we as a society have. If we collectively decide that this isn’t something that should be allowed, we can make it so. There are some powerful interests that don’t want it so it’s not an easy path.
That is literally what most online digital goods already do, like steam.
Sure, but UI needs to reflect that too. I just opened Steam to verify - it definitely says 'Buy {game_name} - Add to Cart'
I remember saying the exact same thing here on HN like two weeks ago, which someone then promptly corrected me saying that Steam/Valve actually "explain" what their "Buy" means right before payment, and I think they were right, there is some greyed out text somewhere explaining you don't actually "Purchase a copy of the game" but you license it via Valve/Steam somehow, can't remember the details atm, later at the checkout process though.
>greyed out text
You mean the full color box thats for all practical purposes the same size and prominence as the cart you're checking out?
https://imgur.com/a/0fkh4l3
You are 'buying' some thing, a licence that grant you some permissions (aka rights). That licence has some constraints, you don't like them, then don't buy the licence. It's literally how it works, you just don't seem to grasp that.
Now are the constraints on licences (aka agreement), not great, not consumer friendly .. different set of questions.
At least that would be honest....
It should just say "Rent" instead of "Buy"
Except you don't rent, you buy a license with no expiry date, but which can be revoked one-sidedly. It's all covered by the legalese, else we would've had the major lawsuits and consequent legislation changes back when the first generation of digitally bought / DRM'd music was no longer available.
(iirc this was also Sony, ironically.
Fake edit, I looked it up; it was Sony that put a rootkit in its CDs, they were sued and settled out of court https://boingboing.net/2005/11/14/sony-anticustomer-te.html). Microsoft, Yahoo and Wal-Mart changed their services in such a way that music was no longer playable in 2008 (https://opensource.com/life/11/11/drm-graveyard-brief-histor...), with Yahoo even encouraging users to burn their music to CDs to keep it. In 2011 Rhapsody recommended to back up their older DRM'd RAX files to another format so they remain listenablle.
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 software do these days is much worrse. You have a license to use their "software installation service" and their "let me run the game" service until they decide to turn them off. At any point, at their discretion, they can remove your ability to install a new copy or even run it all together.
Very different and quite recent.
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.
right, but back in the 90s, the onus of maintaining a working copy of any software was on you. Now, Sony simply reaches into you home and can deny you access to software/movies you "bought".
These are not the same situation.
Well, yes. Always online is a problem, but it doesn't change what one buys. A thing that is easy to copy without destroying the original. So they invented licenses to contain the copying part.
Which is all detailed as something they can do in the licence you bought but obviously didn't understand (which is fine I don't read the details either).
You seem to have semantics you apply to the word 'buy' and think the world should align to that, it clearly does not.
i am curious - why are you not in favour of adding regulation? The point of most good regulation is to avoid consumer-hostile situations like this.
> I am generally not in favor of adding regulation
Then let the market decide.
This looks like a job for NFTs
Nah, licenses are already a thing - just because you have a license (or an NFT) does not guarantee you can do the thing that the license applies to.
It's a job for piracy.
Need to smear some A1 on those NFTs to get the job done properly.
"Anything that you BUY needs to be your property."
do you own the film when you buy ticket to cinema ????
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) refund your full money.
Now change "attend the cinema" with "play a videogame" in those phrases. We should be able to freely exchange games between us. I should be able to sell them to you. The medium (digital, physical) is irrelevant.
"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
The whole point of the discussion is that if we're moving to a digital world, we should not go to a worse state than before. So if we were able to lend a game disc before, we should still be able to lend a digital copy in this great new fully digitalized world. That we're not able to, is precisely what's wrong with the transition. We had physical ownership of a disc, and companies have replaced that with immensely more limited usage licenses, which is bad.
No but you don’t expect the cinema to stop the movie half way through without giving you a refund, and would expect that you could legally resell a purchased ticket to your friend if you can’t attend the screening.
But that's not what's happening here - Sony can't take physical disks you own away from you.
As for resale, interesting you bring up tickets as scalping / reselling them is a major issue, which is also hostile to consumers as they can pay multiples of the original selling price for high profile concerts and events, which has led to legislation and / or industry rules that prevent resale or at least prevent it through 3rd party services so that they can manage the resale price (and take their share a second time).
Scalping is not a serious risk with digital goods. When the company can sell an infinite number of licenses, there is zero risk of a third party coming in and buying up a significant fraction of the capacity and overcharging people.
No, we were talking about cinemas, not live shows. Stop moving the goal posts.
Yeah the OP doesn't understand licensing, seems to only think of purchase in terms of physical goods, and is trying to poorly apply their reasoning based on that.
There's already a good solution to buying and owning digital media: you pay money to download files that are playable offline.
When you pay for content locked to a platform, you're not buying an asset, you're paying for a service. The platforms grow around not only providing a convenient service to the end user, but also to the content creators, who publish on them with the expectation that their content is protected by DRM. Creators are free to choose where they publish, and end users are free to choose which services they use.
I don't think it makes sense for the government to define what it means to own a digital asset or to force every service platform to become a retailer and ownership-tracker. Where there's demand for DRM-free downloads or physical media, the market will respond.
> Anything that you BUY needs to be your property.
This is obviously absurd as a universal rule. If I "buy" a night in a hotel room, I should own the hotel room? If I order a taxi, I should own the taxi? If I ride a bikeshare e-bike across town, I should own the bike?
Whether rent is appropriate or exploitative for a certain product or industry is a fair question, but to say renting should not exist as a concept at all for anything just doesn't work.
Digital sales overwhelmingly use "buy" as the term in their UI, not "rent". Rental is a separate thing, and I don't think roughly anyone is saying rentals should not exist in any form.
These days, they mostly don't. California passed a law that required clarity (good), and now most things accurately say "license" instead of "buy."
(Not universally, but in many cases.)
This I think is fair, consumers generally have a very poor understanding of licensing.
Too many still think in the old days of buying physical goods, you 'buy' a tin of beans, they are now in all sense my beans.
I'm all for helping people distinguish, when something is a straight forward property transaction, or an agreement based on permisions, constraints and obligations ... a license.
This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.
Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store? Does anyone really thing Buy here means they will be able to download the game onto their computer and play it there?
Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever. Will that relieve your sense of persecution? Or would just you find another way to cast game publishers as the conniving evil empire (market control, collusion to reduce consumer options, etc.) because they aren't giving you what you want?
Most of the World understands the difference between buying a product and buying a service.
Games (and other digital media), are sold as products, not services, mostly.
TFA is arguing this should persist and not be replaced as games as (subscription/licensed rental), services. It argues the move to digital is being used by businesses to switch to a services model under the hood, and that this should be resisted and it should remain a product model.
> Are consumers confused in practice by what happens when they click "Buy" on the playstation store?
Demonstrably, provably: yes.
> Fine, pass a regulation that makes online stores change the word to license or whatever.
Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected?
An online server is a service. People don't lose access to offline games, generally speaking.
> Why not make the store change what they sell from being a license and making it a product as the consumer expected?
Because we have a free market not a command economy? Publishers can sell whatever they want
Then they can stop pretending and actually sell it as a service. What they're doing now is doing one thing (selling it as a product), while getting the benefits of the other (selling it as a service).
That is what I suggested. The other poster said what you are suggesting shouldn't be allowed, not me.
That's not how I read your suggestions. Your suggestion to just rename the action, which isn't helpful. You're still buying a licence, one that is nominally permanent, meaning it's a product, on the same level as a CD or whatever.
Games are overwhelmingly not sold as services these days (MMOs being the exception, + a few others). The sale of a game as a product is built into the model of 'give money, get permanent access to game'. If that access is not permanent, then you need to set a time limit there. Subscriptions usually do it per month, but you can do whatever you want, except leave the field blank.
Evergreen licenses are incredibly common when selling software, not just games.
Your suggestions are either:
- make publishers distribute goods without anti-piracy protection
- make buyers pay for games on an ongoing basis rather than just once
Publishers and buyers are generally happy with the current exchange as is even if you aren't. Digital games sales are increasing rapidly ever year while physical sales are declining. Why do you get to be the gaming czar?
With renewal comes repayment, and there's still a set date when you renew. WoW is a service that works like that. The vast majority of games don't use evergreen licences, nor should they, since they usually aren't a service.
They don't have to provide a DRM-free version on day 1 if they don't want to. But they do have to provide for a way to use the game after end of support. Doing anything else is unreasonable.
> Publishers can sell whatever they want.
Indeed. They just can't commit fraud or false advertising.
Using the word "Buy" to mean buy a license, then having an agreement where the details of the license are explained isn't fraud lol
That agreement can be filled with unfair terms, and often is. I'd call that fraud.
But the issue is those terms are laid out in the agreement, and you willingly agreed to those terms, so what are arguing for is to welch on the deal you accepted?
In terms in consumer protection, at least in UK and Europe (not saying not elsewhere, just don't know much), there is an amount of regulation that tries to help consumers not get screwed in the legalese of these agreements, and some basic protections that can't override.
> so what are arguing for is to welch on the deal you accepted?
I'm arguing unfair terms shouldn't be upheld, or really in the agreement in the first place. This is on paper how it should work in Europe, but we (apparently) haven't quite figured that out yet.
If the terms are unfair, then don't agree to them, that is a consumer choice, don't agree to agreements you disagree with!
People agree to fraud all the time. That doesn't mean people shouldn't get their money back.
Organize a class action then if you believe so. Fraud is illegal
Instead of a class action after the fact, what if we tried prevention... say, some form of regulation?
Class actions are often barred by EULAs in favor of arbitration. Even if they're allowed, they are prohibitively expensive because courts aren't growing to meet demand, meaning justice is largely pay-to-play.
I would if I had money.
No not really.
When you bought a VHS of a movie, you purchased the video cassette hardware, but also a license which was bundled with that object.
That license explicitly had some constraints on it, such as not broadcasting the IP in a public setting, even calling out specific locations like oil rigs.
Distinguishing between products and service, isn't great, as neither are well defined, and end up back in the same debates.
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 records and play them and pass them onto my children.
If media companies want to sell a license that has an expiry date, that’s fine, but it has to be explicitly communicated. Consumers have to be well informed about what they’re purchasing.
> 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.
Yeah, I can’t actually think of any contracts besides media licenses that are fixed payment for access to a resource for an indeterminate length of time. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it.
Access to an online server is clearly a service, hence the word "server"
The discussion is not just about online multiplayer games though, it’s about games in general. There is no good reason why buying a singleplayer offline game need be a “service”.
There IS a reason they don't make it possible to download the game copies directly, which is it becomes trivially easy to perfectly replicate and distribute new copies online, which is not true of any physical good.
People who aren't overly-online forum denizens only care about this issue insofar as it affects them, and the only way it affects people in the real world is when they lose access to online games when the server shuts down. Offline games don't get access revoked in practice.
> This is just pedantry, and incorrect pedantry at that. BUY does not always mean you gain ownership. You can BUY a license or a haircut and you don't own anything.
At the end of the day words have to mean something. It is not pedantry to simply discuss what a word or phrase means. There are false advertising laws for a reason.
To that end, I would argue you've never bought a haircut, you've paid for a service.
The issue at hand here is exactly that the word "buy" is used when discussing the appropriation of a licence for content that in practical terms, is still controlled by someone else.
Maybe there are technical reasons for this to be the case, but then maybe the word "buy" should not be used in this instance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)
Words like "buy" "own" and "purchase" have a specific connotation. These licenses upend that.
I am part of the Rock Band video game community. That scene is covered in the use of "buy" "own" "purchase" terminology. Now, granted, Harmonix went above and beyond when it came to ensure they had solid licenses, so even though today they've been delisting DLC because their original license to distribute the songs to new customers has begun lapsing, they also went way above and beyond to ensure that people who bought content in the Rock Band 1 days would still be able to play them across the whole same-console library, so much so that anyone who bought RB1/2/3 content on either Xbox 360 or PS3 were able to also play those songs on Rock Band 4 on Xbone and PS4. I think there might have been a small fee in some instances, like when exporting disc content to newer games, but outside of that they went far beyond what most companies do when handling licensing (and this is music licensing, one of the most notoriously hairy forms of licensing that one can do).
These licenses are also re-downloadable by anyone who "bought" them, at least until the platforms entirely shut down the legacy console access for re-download of content that was paid for. Fortunately, we as a community also have all of it preserved without the DRM in preparation for the day when you can no longer even re-download content you paid for. There are also tools that let you copy the content files directly from your console (where possible with or without mods) and convert or decrypt them yourself.
I think you misunderstood, the major issue is that companies are actually "renting", it's just at 100k words long terms of services where they redefine "purchase" as rental.
California has actually done something about this, you can longer claim that customers are "buying" when they're actually just renting.
If i claimed i sell a house for 500K but the in terms of sale redefine sale as rent the house for 500K and i can claim the property back anytime, that'd be crime yet it's somehow legal with digital goods.
>i claimed i sell a house for 500K but the in terms of sale redefine sale as rent the house for 500K
Ironically this is almost how it works in England: https://homemove.com/content/what-is-leasehold-property-comp...
"almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here...
While the majority of flats are leasehold, by far the vast majority of property in England is freehold. Only a fifth is leasehold.
While technically a leasehold has a fixed term and at the end of the lease (usually starts at 99 years) the land owner technically owns the property, in reality this scares most people so usually when someone sells the property (usually while there's still at least 80 years left on the lease) you try to extend the lease again back to 90 years. So while it is possible for the lease to run out and people lose their property, it's usually something you'd be expecting when you took over the lease (and so you'd pay a correspondingly lower price for the property). While the lease is active, there's usually an annual fee from between 100 and 10000 pounds. Obviously, the higher this is, the lower the sale price of the property is likely to be.
Personally, I wouldn't touch leasehold with a bargepole, and unless you want to live in the centre of a city there's usually plenty of freehold property available so you don't need to go down the leasehold route.
Lots of leaseholds now start at 999 years.
It’s a weird system. The previous and current governments have been looking to modernise it.
Interesting. Do the longer ones have some provision for increasing in line with inflation? AFAIK the 99 year leases are usually for a fixed amount every year, which obviously shrinks in real terms over time, but given that you'd want to renew it every 10 years or so anyway, would probably be renegotiated to a fair market rate at that time.
players have options. they are welcome to wait for releases on GOG.
Personally i only purchase DRM free games, but it doesn't still change that fact that major digital storefronts use misleading terms. Maybe physical disks would maintain popularity if customers knew they'd be renting the product for unknown period time instead of owning it.
It's easy to forget that average joe doesn't understand the consequences when we're on our own bubbles.
Edit: The media outrage when Sony removed 550 movies, indicates the customers don't still understand the terms of the sale. It wouldnt make any noises if customers knew they were renting it.
As yes, the poor, ignorant average joe, who doesn't realize the game they buy on the PLAYSTATION store needs PLAYSTATION to work in order to play it. If only enough bloggers wrote enough articles to enlighten them, then they would join the mob and demand forever access to the games they play for 3 weeks then never play again.
Why carry water for billion dollar companies?
I can still play my brother's old PlayStation games on his OG PlayStation. They cannot be revoked arbitrarily, nor their music dropped or swapped out. This a feature, and we'd feel quite cheated if that happened. In fact we still go back to old games from time to time.
I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
> Why carry water for billion companies?
All companies at a certain scale are billion dollar companies. Also, how much money a company has is unrelated to whether they violated consumer rights or not. But, tangentially, I do generally respect entities that fund creative endeavors moreso than I respect gamers who go online to bemoan how persecuted they are
> I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
If those were digital copies you might have chance, otherwise don't count on them to keep working for long. The carts Nintendo used were made with memory that degrades when just sitting on a shelf and people are already reporting that their DS games are failing. I've got an Atari 2600 that still works and plays games fine though. Never even had to replace the joystick, which easily beats the joycons which drift after 400 hours
> I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
Good luck! I cannot play any of the digital Wii games I bought. And that's kind of my point. You pay the same price as a physical copy, using the same verb, and yet are actually renting for an undisclosed amount of time that may at any point be cut off.
Blockbuster never said I was 'buying' a game which they could take away at any moment. So why do we let these companies use contradictory or obtuse language at our expense?
> how much money a company has is unrelated to whether they violated consumer rights or not
Billion dollar companies are less sympathetic. As a consumer I might take a worse deal if it meant supporting a small creator whom I knew was sacrificing a lot for art.
> As a consumer I might take a worse deal if it meant supporting a small creator whom I knew was sacrificing a lot for art.
do you see how you and people who buy skins have something in common? you are writing about this, you will PAY for people to NOTICE that you support indie game developers. okay, and 13 year olds will pay for people to notice their cool skins. there are many ways to monetize, you are telling us that you would be monetize in the same category of monetization as freemium games, so are they really so bad? is ownership really important, or does it really belong to the same "noticing" category of monetization?
I'm not talking about freeware games with paid cosmetics. I'm talking about paid products that are sold using words like "buy" which in reality are being rented out.
Even if I only read a book once after buying it, it shouldn't turn into a rock just because I never intend to read it again.
Have any of the books bought on Kindle turned into rocks or can their buyers read them again if they want to?
Pretty sure the answer to that is no, they haven't turned to rocks. I believe Amazon keeps a record of your book purchases, and Amazon isn't going away tomorrow, so you should be able to redownload your books (and probably even back them up). If so, all is good there (relatively speaking).
Sony also keeps records, but good luck redownloading your PSP game. Or your PS3 game for that matter. But at least in that case, if you already have it downloaded, you can still play your game. Sony couldn't come down from above and turn your game into a rock.
The Crew for PS4 on the other hand. You can (probably?) still redownload that, but that doesn't actually do you any good. Ubisoft did come down from above and turn that into a rock (there is no good reason to make a single-player gamemode online-only).
Amazon may not be going away tomorrow, but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore. If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device.
For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita - not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP. They'll probably jump on the Amazon revoke-download train eventually, though.
> but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore.
Well that's bad and also shouldn't happen. They should not be able to come down from heaven and turn your books into rocks.
> If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device.
This is functionally the same as the situation on consoles. You can play the game, but only if you've already downloaded it and kept it around. Not ideal, but at least it's possible to keep it around.
> For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita
Not for long.[1]
> not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP
You can't.[2]
[1] https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta...
[2] https://www.techspot.com/news/90316-psp-store-officially-clo...
Per your link, Sony will soon be disallowing new purchases, but has not set a date for disallowing downloads of existing purchases.
Correct, but I don't expect Sony to keep those servers up for long when people can't even buy anything there. It's nothing but a cost centre for Sony at this point.
All your examples make clear to the customer that their access is temporary and conditional on their continued and ongoing payment, and that ownership of the good/service is retained by the seller.
On the other hand, "buying a game" is given the guise of ownership, despite true ownership still being retained by the seller, obscured by the fact you're making a one-time payment. It'd be reasonable if the terminology used was "rent" or "subscribe" to a game with a periodic payment, but that's not what's advertised.
It is deceiving, unnecessary, and anti-consumer.
It is now in California, as they passed more "useless" regulation requiring digital "sales" to use different terminology than "buy", yet what people are asking for is clearly not what they want because as predicted this terminology enforcement doesn't change a thing.
Clearly, more thoughtless regulation will solve the problem this time.
Don't blame "regulation" on this, as if politicians do this because they're dogmatically "pro-regulation". That is not a real political stance, and it's childish to frame these bills in that manner.
California AB 2426 is a very deliberate and well considered bill, because it does exactly what it was designed to do: feign consumer protections, while leaving easy loopholes for those companies the bill protects. Those legislators who signed it did not have consumer protections in mind. Gavin Newsom is not interested in rocking the boat of corporate power, and neither are the lobbyists who pushed for that bill.
Don't blame "regulations". Blame, and vote out, the authors and signers, because they clearly do not have your interests in mind.
Rent and Subscribe would NOT be clear because they imply ongoing payment. Consumers care mostly about if they are paying money once or on an ongoing basis, not abstract things like DRM.
> Rent and Subscribe would NOT be clear because they imply ongoing payment.
Yes, exactly. Video game distributors should be forced to choose a pricing model: "Sell", or "Rent". No more "License, until we or the DRM service decides to revoke access for any reason/we go out of business/the DRM service goes out of business".
What is becoming absurd is the inability of so many people to extrapolate the most obvious conclusions instead of reaching the most obtuse and unhelpful ones, which arguably takes more effort to do.
In all your examples you are buying a service, isn't it obvious? the counterpart of "products" in the phrase "products and services". And yes, you are buying the right of being entitled to receive it. Ideally, you should be able to sell and transfer that right, or gift it to someone else. And if the service is eventually cancelled before being delivered, a full refund for the price should be issued.
It's a Reddit effect. Short, quippy dismissals using a technicality attract upvotes, which reinforces the behavior, and the trained behavior carries over to other websites.
Absolutely this.
Fifteen years ago World of Warcraft was at its peak. You had 12 million people paying a monthly fee, plus buying the occasional expansion pack. No other gaming company had seen reoccurring revenue numbers like that before and it changed the industry. One aspect of this was that if you stopped paying you lost access to the game.
The industry has been looking for the next way to level up this subscription model on gaming. Battle Passes, Xbox Live, Game Pass, Playstation Plus, Stadia, Game Fly, and a ton of other ideas. Sony is now using the stick to directly attack ownership instead of the carrot to entice subscriptions. We'll see how this plays in the PS6, but I think they are overplaying their position, especially with how underwhelming the PS5 has been received by gamers.
I'm optimistic that the raise in PC gaming will act as a balance for the obvious greed of the consoles. It's becoming a larger and larger player in the non-mobile gaming market, and it's too big to be treated like a second class citizen anymore. The open platform prevents anyone from acting as a gatekeeper between game developers and players.
For me personally, I began losing interest in consoles the first time I had to install a console game to a hard drive. The plug and play magic just fell apart.
> I'm optimistic that the raise in PC gaming will act as a balance for the obvious greed of the consoles.
Why?
Steam has never done anything to support ownership of games, their policy completely bans transferring licenses or accounts to other people or leaving them to someone when you die. Their next CEO is someone who has only known extreme wealth their whole life and gets the job because daddy started the company, when has that been a catalyst for societal good?
GOG is the only one to have advocated a different status quo, but they have virtually no marketshare that could pressure developers and publishers to accept more equitable terms beyond eschewing DRM.
This was actually a funny question at work over lunch. A few of us have kids and like most tech guys over 30, our steam accounts have turned into collections. So I asked, who gets your steam account when you kick it. It’s difficult to think about and seems baffling to spend thousands of dollars and hours assembling a collection only for it to poof away into nothing.
Who says anyone needs to inform Valve of your passing? Make sure your children have access to the email backing the account and they're good to go.
What happens when faceID or biometrics is required? Quickly gets very creepy if your kids want to keep playing your games
Yeah but you need to put that in a package that unlocks in case of your demise, timely or not. Password database and two factor authentication (back-up codes at the very least). Possibly a secondary password database if your primary one contains stuff you don't want those that stay behind to know about.
If this continues long enough there will be plenty of 140-year-olds rocket-jumping through levels in TF...
Cue the scientific reports saying "Gamers have the longest life expectancy. Look at how many 100 year olds there are on Steam!" Same people who thought Okinawans were the longest lived people on earth, just because of the poor record keeping and social security fraud there.
There are many signals that will inform them you are dead and AI will easily detect them: the change to your gaming routine and purchasing habits and platform usage as they grind to a sudden and complete halt except for the occasional sign-in to play one of your games, and the "age of account" will inevitably betray you.
What happens if Valve don't exist?
Haha. I actually back up my steam collection via torrents of GoG releases.
Now, I can to some extent automate the rip-out of steam integration, there are solutions. And thus not rely on torrents. But why would I if it's the same thing in the end, and torrents are that much simpler.
Technically legal since Steam grants ownership?
They explicitly do not.
> The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.
https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement
When we were in college, one of my friends joked that their stream library was their largest financial asset.
When stream trading was more of a thing, and we had a ramen diet, it was probably true
Lol, relatable. For me it's not the library (because I have backups of that), but the in-game items. And not even for their monetary worth (which is relatively low), but for sentimental value (the stats counted on them).
It’s steam, not stream. Normally, I’d assume it’s a simple typo, but I got worried when you wrote it twice. Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me… you can't get fooled again.
George, is it you?
I'm optimistic about PC gaming because if Steam begins acting as an evil gatekeeper then game developers can adopt other avenues to deliver the games to their players. It's an open platform. People are using Steam now because it adds value. People will stop using Steam if it subtracts value.
I'm optimistic that devs empowered by LLMs and local LLM will fight back and create new platforms if gatekeeping gets too out of hand
The expensive part of a storefront is not the UI front-end. And of thars all you care about, we have quite a few front ends that can do that job.
Why would anyone use slop alternatives though? I don't think people wouldn't be creating non-slop ones.
I think the larger question is how do those marketplaces get the rights to distribute any games... this is something all Steam rivals struggle immensely with, and it's not a coding problem at all.
To play devils advocate, Steam has one of the most generous sharing functionality on all digital media. Steam Families.
The whole "we prohibit transferring accounts from dead people" is likely just a catchall to prevent liability and responsibility when people say "oh my brother cheated on my account" or "my brother said XYZ on Steam forums".
Why would Steam be unable to tell an event like cheating or saying something on a forum took place before you received ownership of the game? This is a trivial problem to solve, it doesn't necessitate everyone forfeiting all their digital possessions.
The same reason you can be pessimistic?
Maybe if you look for evidence to be pessimistic, you find that, and if you look for evidence to be optimistic you find that.
I'd rather choose the more positive, hopeful perspective than the negative, downer one. What about you?
What evidence is there to be optimistic about?
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Can't you download your game off steam and play it forever; and if it can't connect to the service, it will just let you play offline?
Sure, that loses out on the ability to transfer it to a friend, but it's better.
Some of them do, the Total War games I play the most require weekly online activation.
But that's just using what you payed for, it only very slightly overlaps with what actually owning something entails.
Is that online activation Steam or is it a third party thing? Steam allows selling games that have external DRM like that. I think they, themselves, don't do it.
That doesn't invalidate your other point.
Steamworks, the integration library for games to interact with Steam features, has an optional DRM component. It's not a particularly impressive one, so it's more about stopping people copy/pasting their steamapps folder than stopping dedicated pirates, hence why so many publishers use alternative solutions.
Steam haven't put shenanigans like this because they have many competitors and PC users would leave them, the have built trust within the gaming community
People still don't own their games with Steam, the main PC platform. I don't think its going under anytime soon and currently its reasonably customer friendly but as we have seen these big tech companies can turn on their customer base at any moment. GOG is about the only way to actually own the games since no DRM is applied and you can download the entire package and keep it and don't require their launcher.
PC already went digital no ownership for most people unfortunately. His argument that it isn't the same doesn't wash, you still can't sell them or lend them to someone else and you have to hack around Steam's DRM, which is a loophole that can be closed at any point.
Steam has gotten a free pass because they have a history of 20 years of not taking your games away. Even if something gets delisted they still allow you to download it if you already purchased.
Console manufactures have a history of shutting down the download and authentication servers after the consoles age. Sony just took away hundreds of movies consumers had purchased.
the catch was that steam used to have, or maybe it still has, crazy discount prices, i would be mad to lose access to a 15 year old game that costed me 80$, but i wouldnt be that mad if the game costed 10$...
Still, steam didnt prevent you from accessing games, the game publisher did, like "the crew" case happend.
You talk as if all Steam games use Steam DRM. No, it's not GOG but it's not the same category as Sony and Microsoft at all. It's starting to sound disingenuous when I see Steam lumped together with them.
Until Steam starts telling me before I buy which games have their DRM and which doesn't, they belong in the same category as Sony and Microsoft.
It's always listed in the same spot on all the store page for games. Now why they haven't allowed us to filter games by DRM (like they have f2p) is another question. I'd love if they allowed this and published stats because I like most people assume I'm in the majority and would love to see that you're cutting off access to X% of your market if you include rootkits/aggressive drm.
Only additional third-party DRM is listed there, not Steam's own DRM.
Also the steam DRM on a lot of single player games can be removed very easily. https://github.com/atom0s/Steamless
and is a recommended step for engine modding games like skyrim.
I think it's a fair comparison. Steam can change their behavior to become much more user hostile at any point, and hold our triple digit steam libraries hostage.
Its not like we can sell or even lend the games from Steam that we have, not without breaking the licence terms and hacking around the DRM. Its precisely the same as what Sony is intending to enforce.
Can you sell or lend gog games, though? You can transfer the files obviously but if a steam game comes with no drm (which is pretty common for indies) you can do the same thing. GOG nicely requires everyone on their platform to do this but ultimately the devs have to want to not put in drm too.
I’m not nearly so optimistic. I think we have a generation of kids now who mostly never owned any physical media, having grown up with Netflix instead of vhs/dvd, Spotify instead of CDs, steam instead of retail games, etc.
I see nothing wrong with abandoning physical media - as storage got larger and internet faster, being limited by clunky disks has become kinda pointless unless you're specifically into collecting. I see nothing wrong with moving on from them as long as it's towards local DRMless files.
Sure, but we didn’t go from physical media to online delivery of outright purchased digital goods. We overwhelmingly transitioned to subscription streaming or “purchasing” revocably licensed copies with no guarantee of future delivery and drm on any downloaded copy.
I don't think it's generational. I got the impression it's a share of about every age group.
Also, ownership can be a side effect for even those who don't care, just because they're used to not paying for things. For example, when I got Minecraft for free as a little kid, it was because nobody would buy it for me, while in hindsight this also meant no account that could potentially be lost when transition to Microsoft accounts began.
I'm pessimistic about physical media yes. That's a legacy technology at this point.
> Fifteen years ago World of Warcraft was at its peak.
Sixty years ago the model was you go to an arcade cabinet, and you get charged every time you died (Credit: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2026/07/03/returnal-3).
Ideally, they want cabinet in every home, you pay electricity for it, you buy overpriced Bluey skins, you buy your lives, you buy ads, and pay them every second for the pleasure, while not owning even the cabinet.
> the model was you go to an arcade cabinet and you get charged every time you died
Worse, some arcade games drained your health continuously while you played so no matter how good you were you'd have to keep plugging quarters into the machine.
Heck, even 60 years ago, you could still buy that arcade cabinet! Sure, it costs a fortune, but it was at least possible.
I think you mean 50 years ago. 60 years ago you were largely limited to SPACEWAR! and Tennis for 2.
One thing we can say for certain from 30+ years of history is that gamers will never hold to a boycott, and will always put up with worse and worse treatment from the companies.
Is there really a rise in PC gaming going on? Isn't that dependent on people having PCs and hardware?
Yes. Look at the market research. It's growing specifically fast in Asia, but there is also strong growth with North America.
Having a PC to check your email, order off amazon, and download recipes is dying. Buying a PC and using it for video games is raising. The PC hardware is getting more expensive, but the upgrade cycles are also extending. If you look at the steam hardware survey most gamers are 1-3 GPU generations behind.
If you look at the total cost of ownership PC gaming is not awful compared to consoles. It's higher, but not as high as the initial price tag makes it look. There is no monthly Playstation Plus or Xbox Live subscription. These can run between $80/yr to $240/yr. PC games often have access to deeper discounts. The PC has additional utility, and modern PC components are holding exceptional resell value.
I think the effect of Twitch/YouTube can't be ignored. PC games are easier content source for streamers, and PC remains better platform for viewers for watching streams. Consoles are still quite focused on single task content consumption.
For the kinds of games where DRM free matters, where they don't have a prominent online/multiplayer side or the equivalent of playing the game 'from the disc', is the console subscription really an issue? I don't have a console myself, but from when I've looked into it there's a bunch of mainly free to play games where that subscription isn't needed as both the publisher and Sony/MS get their money from purchases.
1. An Xbox Live/Playstation Plus is required for any online multiplayer functionality.
2. DRM Free still matters with multiplayer games. Minecraft is a perfect example, where you can run your own client/server and play with people, and there really doesn't need to be any other middle man involved.
3. With how good home internet is now, it's not a big deal to host game servers from your home on an old computer. Running big central servers really only matters if you care about matchmaking or games with a lot of simultaneous players.
MS would love to kill off custom Minecraft clients and servers, and have attempted to turn minecraft into a subscription service but they risk losing their entire community if they go too DRM heavy so Minecraft Java edition has remained very open
> 1. An Xbox Live/Playstation Plus is required for any online multiplayer functionality.
This is false. Free-to-Play titles like Fortnite don't require a subscription to play online.
Hmm I see, that's interesting. Seems like the games industry it self is in a pretty bad state despite that
PC hardware companies are struggling. The ones that sell fans, cases, thermal paste etc because no one is building a new PC right now. But everyone still has the PC they had before the last 2 years and can still play and buy games.
Game developers simply have to stop pushing the minimum specs up for releases over the next few years.
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...?
Unfortunately the AI bubble means we are witnessing the death of PC gaming. Watch the GamersNexus video, The Collapse of Personal Computing: https://youtu.be/zyQwAhppWj8
Costs are driving manufacturers out of business. Essential components for PCs are becoming out of reach for the average consumer.
You will own nothing and be happy.
This is true for consoles as well. Console prices are increasing, I think this is the first time I witness that. Console prices used to go down until the next generation comes out.
I would recommend looking at a wide variety of sources of information. Some YouTube channels, GamersNexus being one, focus heavily on spinning a gloomy narrative. By wide variety of information channels, I don't mean a different YouTube channel.
1. Q1-26 wasn't the worst performing YoY quarter for new PC sales since Covid.
2. The biggest sector hit was the low end computers. That's not usually what we are talking about with pc gaming.
3. Costs go up on PC gaming, but the costs are going up for consoles too.
4. New memory fabs are going to start coming online in 2027 and 2028. This is a short term crunch.
5. The whole interviewing someone in their living room about their bad professional experience and representing it as journalism feels icky to me.
GamersNexus is an entertainment channel rather than informative. He likes to talk about conspiracies with no real foundation.
AI demand price hikes are affecting everything including consoles, and the hardware for game streaming. It's an everything price increase rather than just PC. nVidia isn't secretly hoarding GPUs to make you rent them from streaming platforms, they simply make more money selling them to AI companies instead.
It does not rally matter if there is a conspiracy behind or not. You can't buy a phone that has a new powerful processor, dual-sim, sd-card and 3.5mm jack. It is just does not exist.
As user I don't care if it is a cartel or just "more profitable", but if this situation destroys companies that makes business from consoles or pc-gaming. Then it will be the colapse of the industry. First will be the hardware, once the hardware is gone, will be the software...
"But most people use Steam anyway, I hear you say. That's true, but you can still own your games on Steam. Very easily, in fact! Steam doesn't apply a hard DRM for games on their platform, you can bypass it and play your games offline without the launcher if you know what you're doing."
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When it comes to PC games, the real peace of mind comes from cracks and piracy.
Sure, a single player game that requires an online service to start up could become unplayable if the company running that online service decides to end it without providing a patch. If that happens, somebody will crack it so the game can be run. Sure, a game could be yanked from Steam without notice, but you can always pirate it. Sure, Steam could go under, but the internet is my backup drive. I know what I've paid for.
I don't have actual legal ownership of the titles I buy, but I also have recourse if I feel I've been ripped off. That recourse may be abused by some, but game companies have no moral right to oppose it until they start respecting the rights of their paying customers. Taking away something that was paid for is theft. Ownership rights for downloaded titles is a critical stepping stone if game companies are serious about reducing piracy.
>When it comes to PC games, the real peace of mind comes from cracks and piracy.
I still have nocds for some of the old GTA and Warcraft games. Pretty sure you can't play the originals any other way now with all the "definitive" and "reforged" editions having taken their place.
You might be able to mount an image of the original CD and let it detect that, depending on how schmancy their copy protection scheme is. To be fair though, I used nocd mods back when some of these games were released just so I wouldn't have to keep swapping CD's.
And then you have repacks.
It's basically impossible to find any game that isn't on GOG that is not shared as a repack. You don't get the installer, you don't get the original media, you have to trust that the repack is not filled with malware. (and also the repack process somewhat confuses wine/lutris. More than once i couldn't make the repack run on my linux box, but if i managed to find the genuine install medium.. or if i ended up buying the game on sale, then no problem)
Are repacks just binaries?
compressed binaries
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 relationship.
Beyond that, there's still more at play. In tech, and specifically on this site, I see a lot more complicity and fatigue when discussing these issues. I can't help but think that also contributes. I'm not saying everyone should always be mad at everything. But it does seem like there's a generational component to this where we haven't passed down an essential feature of a hacker, namely the anti-establishment bent.
I suppose that's collateral damage of a culture tolerating lots of people rushing in to grab their bag of cash and then get out.
>What's different? How do we get back to how it was before?
Elect people who regulate business and break up closed platforms. That's what different. Happened to TV too. In the early 1980s TV programming was regulated. Program-length commercials were banned, host-selling was banned, etc. Then Reagan put Mark Fowler in charge of the FCC who thought TVs are "toasters with pictures" and the free market should handle it and you got modern ad-infested, anti-consumer TV.
Gaming hardly was ever subject to any rules to begin with because it grew up after that shift. There's no great mystery, you hand your society over to unaccountable megacorporations and the market and you get exactly what anyone on the street would have told you would happen.
We’ve been boiled in water like frogs, or however the saying goes. Even cars these days have subscription pricing for features which is insane to me but the average consumer is accustomed to this garbage. If they tried this 20 years ago it wouldn’t fly.
Someone once said that if libraries were invented today they would be illegal and that feels more true every day.
The uproar was around 2013 when Xbox tried to do this and Playstation made it their marketing to mock this. It's been a decade since and most people have moved digital. Physical games started getting too large to fit on disks, or they shipped with some buggy pre release version that was expected to day one update to a usable release.
Physical games as they exist today are more just license keys already. It's likely all the console makers wanted to ditch physical a while ago but put it off after the outrage over xbox.
IMO Empathy. Empathy used to exist up until around 2015 in businesses where losing a customer was a really big deal, there used to be a cost in losing a customer, and a cost in gaining a customer, so empathy was the building block in helping a business build and maintain their customers. While that's still generally true for small companies, once you reach a global reach, for the most part the cost of gaining and losing a customer is FAR FAR less, so the empathy is lost too.
I also think politics is a pretty big factor in this too, as regulation was used when companies and customers had an impasse, and well, gestures everywhere look at the general global political client right now. Not much empathy going around these days...
You are naive. Nothing to do with empathy. Everything is cash - warm little cash. No what's lost is - people stopped voting with their wallets. When someone did something atrocious, people stopped buying it. Now - first of all, half of the consumers don't care if PS5 titles are on disc already. And they will not stop when they stop putting things on discs. So why would Sony stop?
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.
This is the result of all the "culture wars" we've had in recent years. At the beginning of it, companies hedged and pulled back if there were any sort of mass PR event due to them taking a stance in the Culture War Topic of the Day. As time went on and there was Culture War after Culture War after Culture War, either consumers got tired of tracking who was "bad" or companies realized they could get away with anything and it didn't seemingly affect their bottom line.
It's either that or companies don't really have to worry because there is essentially zero competition in the current economy with all the pro-monopoly administrations we've had for the past 16+ years.
Companies have realized that they can just call the bluff and the vocal minority of customers rarely matter.
The ultimate leverage a consumer has is to not by something if they don't like the terms.
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 that my ratio of digital purchases to physical ones (by dollar amount) is 7:1. I would buy 90% of my content physically if I could, but I can't. And now with the upcoming changes, I'm going to end up buying 0% physically and 0% digitally.
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> What's different
I think what's different is that there aren't any/many dissenting companies building products without the bullshit.
In the past if consumers didn't like something they could shift their business to another company that wasn't doing that thing. Companies had to compete
I don't think I see much actual competition among companies anymore. They're all just trying to build as much lock-in as they can. For example, I think HP printers don't compete with Brother printers really, they just keep trying to milk HP customers more instead of winning new business.
I've been running a small game dev studio for ~20 years, and the one change I think must be made, is to ban the usage of "buy" when it comes to games. Games are licensed, not bought, and that should be crystal clear to those who are paying.
Most of the games people play runs using proprietary software and/or licenses, and often on very specific hardware, with game features that makes sense for the amount of players the game has. Requiring that people should be able to play such games if the company stops running it would completely change and limit how games are developed, and in many cases require a completely different version of the game to be co-developed in case people stop playing it. It would with 100 % certainty result in slower development, fewer games, and worse games.
I do of course think that developers should try to make games playable without the company being involved, within reason. Some games that do not have licensing issues or complicated server backends as a requirement could be made available without too much work. But for things like e.g. MMORPGs it's nearly impossible. If your ever developed bigger software systems you know how many moving parts are involved, so just imagine the difficulty of making it work on consumer machines...
You are talking about online games here which are a subset of games. And I agree they exist in the moment since they rely on external servers and other players.
Most games aren't online games though and those would realistically last forever if it wasn't for companies shutting down activation servers or download servers. There's also a problem where old games get delisted. If you want to play an old game today you can just buy the disk of ebay. Now the only way to buy a game is through the digital store which won't be selling the game forever, with no way to officially transfer copies between players.
> It would with 100 % certainty result in slower development, fewer games, and worse games
No, it won't. People used to develop games without requiring publisher's services. The issue of "it's hard to do nowadays" is self made. It's only hard because you made it this way. You can design a game that will be playable when its publisher or developer close their doors.
Changing the verbiage would be better in that it would be honest, but I still find it absolutely despicable that the very concept of owning a game basically disappeared.
Tons of games people play do NOT have notable online features outside leaderboards, cosmetics or other inconsequential mechanics.
> If anything, video games were late compared to something like the music industry, where not owning your music has been the status quo for a while now!
My perception is that the music industry is better than other parts of the entertainment industry in this regard. I imagine what the author is thinking of is streaming, which I treat as a sort of on-demand radio. There is an understanding that it is ephemeral. A customer concerned with “owning” their music would not be confused by this and seek another avenue, which in the case of the music industry is both wider, richer and more free than those of adjacent industries.
The common dedicated formats used for distribution: the compact disc and vinyl record, do not have copy protection, which is a better situation than what movies and video games are in. Online music stores invariably deliver you music as a simple computer file, with no copy protection or platform or connectivity requirements. This is the rule rather than the exception, which is not the case when making movie or video game purchases on these types of stores.
Ownership as in resale-able.
Eventually someone important enough will force digital resales to become reality, changing everything to require KYC.
Resale-able maybe, unable to be revoked I think is more important.
As in you can't wake up one morning and your game is gone overnight because copyright around in-game music changed.
Thats easy to do (on paper). Dont let copyright owners revoke/expire their licenses (or if its revokable mark and price it clearly). Once a product containing it is purchased, its owned till product ceases to exist (or similar).
All these music behemoths are way too powerful and they twist entire society globally to dance as they want. Not a fraction of a worry for pirates of course, just for decent paying fools.
Abhorable business.
Can you download and resell a digital copy of a game you purchase?
If not, this doesn't seem to fix all of the issues it just feels like finger pointing at "evil copyright laws".
Yeah maybe we can change those to, but what about making it so if you pay for something you can do whatever you like with it.
Say if I buy a copy of a movie from Amazon I should be able to sell it to my friend who doesn't have an amazon account..
> Eventually someone important enough will force digital resales to become reality
Honest question: why? Why would anyone important enough to hold that power actually use it to force resales to exist? Who actually has the incentives to make this happen?
Some kid will grow up after not getting access to their parent's collection.
KYC? The only context I know it from is 'Know your customer' in banking.
This is the correct KYC. Plenty of apps use it besides banking. Depending on the perspective, this is either the perfect solution to a lot of digital legal problems, or the distopian solution because of the numerous ways this can and will be abused when it is expected by many vendors outside of banking.
If digital games are basically equivalent to a currency, in comes the regulations.
I'm sad that Gabe Newell will retire one day, and Steam's benevolent dictatorship will go down the same route Sony just did.
The convenience of digital game storefronts can cut both ways. For now Steam is on our side, but there is no guarantee it will stay that way.
This is a large part of why I went with a Retroid Pocket over buying a Switch 2. It’s not nearly as powerful but it’ll run Linux and most indie games I buy on GOG. It’s more work of course but knowing that the games I buy I’ll be able to play into the future on any number of devices is worth it.
I reckon the Switch 2 still has cartridges although not all of them actually contain the game.
I'll second this approach. I've been using my Miyoo Mini+ quite a bit recently and the complete lack of this sort of bullshit has been very refreshing. No multi-GB game or system updates to download before you can start playing or nags to sign into online services. I can just pick it up and start playing.
I will have to look into the Retroid Pocket. Thanks for the plug.
> Because PC is an open platform, people have figured this out and will continue to figure out bypasses in case things go south (which they haven't so far, thankfully
Actually not quite, as security measures keep increasing across macOS and Windows.
Before someone brings Linux into the picture, most folks don't know Tuxedo, System 76 and co exist, what matters is what is on display at Media Markt, Saturn, FNAC, Publico,....
Who cares what people know about? PC is still an open platform for you to boot alternative software.
Most people don’t know how to even “acquire” software without the DRM. It’s not really anyone’s job to spread news and tell people to go learn.
If they get interested and care that much to preserve what they have, they can google and learn. Many have learnt about Linux due to the recent PS5 jailbreak for instance.
I agree with you because this incentive to learn has motivated so many young people in the past to learn how their computers work. The incentive of jailbreaking games or being able to get software for free should push people to learn these things and free themselves from walled gardens.
Still is the magic word here.
>Everyone wants to be Netflix
This is the most perfect sentence about this situation
Yep, agreed. Recurring, consistent revenue is the ultimately a common-sense business best interest. It can be extremely unfortunate for consumers as there's an unaligned incentive here.
This can still be acceptable if they give HW for free. but paying up to 1k for console and then full price for games which often have their own paid loot boxes/whatever... yeah good luck no thank you,
I can afford it trivially, but its like paying say 20 bucks for a standard bread or bottle of milk. Insulting
I mean making something and selling the same thing millions times is good business model too, this is how Microsoft become rich. The problem is the model that chase infinite growth which is impossible to achieve and can't coexist with normal business models.
I completely agree. This isn't about physical discs vs. digital stores. It's about ownership. When I, as a customer, pay a lot of money for something and get nothing more than a temporary right of use, then something is going seriously wrong here. And no, I don't think you can compare it to movie streaming. With streaming, I pay a monthly fee for access to the platform. I don't pay for every single movie I watch. That's a completely different deal. If Sony offered a flat-rate gaming subscription for a monthly fee (and no, PlayStation Plus isn't that), then I'd be totally fine with losing access to the games included there after canceling the sub. But if I, as a customer, am expected to shell out 70-80 bucks for a single game, I want to actually own that game - physical or digital copy regardless!
I've built up a pretty large collection of physical games over the years on two shelves behind me. And every now and then, I really enjoy playing some of those older titles. It took me almost half a year just to get a disc drive for my PS5 Pro. Half a year where I couldn't play my favorite games anymore and had a useless new console just sitting there next to me. I'm actually a bit worried about the next console generation - is it going to make my entire game collection unplayable and useless?
If you think in terms of ownership, even then digital is not that bad. I’ve owned digital games since Xbox 360 and I can still play them to this day on my Xbox series X.
But not all of my physical games CD/DVDs are in mint condition and some have scratches.
To take a different perspective than ownership as "right to re-sell" or ownership as "the right to use in perpetuity," I think there is also value in considering ownership as responsibility to maintain those rights.
When one owns property, they get benefits from it, but they also have the responsibility to maintain the property or else it wastes away. Sometimes this incurs costs you wouldn't get with leasing, and sometimes it makes ownership more expensive than renting. But still I think that responsibility is a virtue in itself. Not everything should be consumable.
You can play them, but the license gives you no right to transfer ownership. This feels like a huge problem to me, especially with ebooks.
I’d love to see regulation around guaranteeing consumers the ability to transfer ownership of digital goods in a similar way to the analog counterpart.
I think this is a big element. I’ve been feeling this a bit too. I’ve been a physical-game buyer in the past - usually saving money by buying used games.
But I’m not going to keep a collection of old consoles in my living room, so at this point it feels more likely that I will be able to actually play games further into the future if I buy digitally.
This is the opposite of what proponents of physical media heavily argue - indeed, many here are making it their only argument - but I suspect it’s how lots of ‘regular people’ that aren’t saturated in digital rights politics feel.
I own a decent library of retro games, sized in the hundreds.
Part of my intake process is to rip my games onto a digital format. Owning the physical media, and acquiring the backup legally, gives me a strong legal foothold for creating backup discs or using emulation.
Sure, but they keep raising the price of everything. And in a world where ram and STORAGE are at a multiple premium, deleting high density discs is completely outside of reality
they keep raising the price of everything
Games are much cheaper in real terms (even in terms of percentage of wages/income, if you don’t believe that’s kept up with inflation generally) than they’ve ever been.
Video game companies still remember when they owned the arcade machines and players were required to constantly insert money into the machines to keep playing. They've been chasing that high ever since.
The key to owning modern multiplayer online games is to have private servers run by human persons on their own owned computers. But except for TF2 no one has been able to (or cared enough) allow private servers alongside the much much more important microtransactions. This is what is killing ownership.
> Video game companies still remember when they owned the arcade machines and players were required to constantly insert money into the machines to keep playing.
I know Sega and Namco operated some arcades, but mostly companies sold arcade machines and operators ran them. Coin boxes didn't connect to the developer except that games with good earnings sold well.
A per-play revenue share is not uncommon in some markets, especially for games with frequent updates or more complicated network features.
This is why so many machines now have accounts and global saved progress. It provides actual value for the player, to be able to pick up their saved progress (e.g. on a rhythm game with thousands of songs on it), but it also means the arcade is beholden to the game manufacturer for an expected feature, and pays for that on an ongoing basis.
Even private servers doesn't quite solve the issue. Minecraft is an example where you can run the server but it requires clients to login to the microsoft account. I think you can still bypass the check on the server but clients have to be cracked or previously authorised for offline play which only lasts for a certain timeframe. So Microsoft can take away the ability to play minecraft despite the game server binary being available.
Whereas a game like Arma 3 has its own dedicated servers and has no such login requirement so theoretically you could still play that in 50 years time, but that might still depend on Steam DRM.
We have a lot of client side controls right now on DRM and logins which make the dedicated server only part of the problem.
With Minecraft, there isn't even a need for Microsoft to do anything. The authentication servers experience regular periods of downtime/inaccessibility, making you unable to join any server, even if you have already launched the game and have joined a server in that session before. It's extremely frustrating.
With Microsoft "Minecraft", sure. But not that actual Minecraft game. Microsoft is an exception, a bad one, and they added this after they bought the popular game. It is not in any way intrinsic to the Minecraft game experience.
It's not just the arcade machine implementation. The owners of these companies want to go all the way and move everything to data centers so they can rent compute time, similar to the idea of the time-sharing days of the 60s.
The model for DLC that's present, carried as patch updates, but unlocked for an additional fee annoys me.
However, allow me to ignore my opinion for a moment and play the Devils Advocate for a thought experiment.
What if, cosmetics and other unlockables (which should be part of the base gameplay) were instead evaluated on other people's computers. That is, rendering client side, authentication for use also server side.
Hats / Skins / Other -- Render some 'humiliating' cosmetic if authentication fails. Circumvention would require compromise on all client devices.
Core game assets -- Levels / 'mods' that require auth a similar path, except client/server verification mismatch. Do note the license server as a possible cause.
At end of life all of those checks should be patched in a final release to fail enabled. No more auth server, archive mode releases all use.
> But except for TF2 no one has been able to (or cared enough) allow private servers alongside the much much more important microtransactions
The pirate community does wherever it's possible. We had a blast in college playing Halo MCC LAN parties back when it got launched on PC - by design it needed Xbox accounts for everyone but we worked around it with Goldberg's crack and got the classic experience.
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I want the most minimum amount of regulation that doesn’t reason much about the type of media or transport method.
Require clear communication of meaning of words like “purchase” and require software “licenses” to indicate “access for at least 5 years” or whatever.
Basically, “you don’t own this. You’re buying the right to access it for least x years” vs. “You are purchasing a key that is fully transferable and provides indefinite access to this product.”
Then let the market sort out the rest, including buyer sentiment.
He has a point; it makes sense for greedy corporations to try to eliminate second sale markets. But to me this is a much more fundamental attack that is going here. I also can't help but notice the age sniffing attack vector right now, but probably these two issues are not directly related.
Companies try to make it illegal to have physical copies. This is very similar to those who oppose the right-to-repair movement. They don't want you to control anything - they want to control everything. By not producing physical copies, they force you into their control. Now I am not the target audience, because these companies do not get any money from me anyway, but after the digital-only dictatorship I would be even less inclined to give them any MORE money now. Because I would support this new mafia scheme and that goes against my ethics - even though this is hypothetical as they already don't get me money anyway. I think it is time to forbid certain practices by companies. They should be REQUIRED to yield physical copies too. What the format is, how, and so forth is secondary, though they also may not abuse this for driving up outrageous prices either.
That's corpo-technofeudalism, it is unfortunately on the rise. They want to get rid of your control and opinion and strip your freedom away, forever enslaved to their system and pay rents In some sense it is comparable to religions but under different corpo-warbanner
Geez, people have no idea how licenses work...
License is not an ownership - It's limited right to use something. Any action anyone does that isn't covered by license (in software) is called "piracy".
Games were never sold. Mediums were sold with attached licenses. And most of the licenses as early as 2000 contained something like:
Selling game with such license was just as big of a "violation" as straight copying and giving it out (not having right to do something doesn't equal to crime though, even if some companies, coughMicrosoftcough, want you to think otherwise).The only difference today is that licenses are enforced better. They can be held on license-server and new user can be denied usage after transfering was detected.
But it doesn't matter if it's downloaded, on disc, or embedded on a spoon.
Don't make people believe they ever owned a game. They didn't. You don't own games as well. Never owned them. You rented them.
The only way to get out of it with winning hand is to side with reputable vendor that didn't cheat people out of licenses. Reason why I side with Steam is because I have my licenses intact even though they have 25 years, I know big corps that just make licenses go poof and pretended in never happened.
I don't think people not understanding licenses are the problem. Licenses are.
It's just that for the longest time people didn't have to think about them, because if you had a license to consume a game/movie/album and also had a copy of it on physical media it was basically impossible for the media owner to take it away from you. But when everything is digital only, doing exactly that is easy as pie.
This feels like how sometimes laws from the 1800s are used to convict people of computer-related crimes. Maybe that was always possible, but it still seems unfair.
I'll emphasize that using something without a legal base isn't a crime.
It isn't even about legality (because laws usually don't regulate how one can interact with entity they have no legal ties to) but only about litigation risk.
There are no legal or moral obligations requiring valid license. Only interested organizations are brainwashing people into thinking otherwise.
But I don't think licenses are the problem. It's quite obvious. You have 100 works of art (music, graphics, code and text). You want to make money. If you sell it - you lose all the rights. You can give it out but then there's no profit.
The only way to not transfer ownership and give away for free is exact middle ground called the license.
For most games sold on physical media I was under the strong impression that selling/trading the physical media would automatically transfer the license, as the licensee was the owner of the physical media.
Basically one would by a CD-ROM containing a licensed copy of a game, and would then be the owner of the CD-ROM but only a licensee for the game. Selling/trading the CD-ROM would transfer the licensee status to the new CD-ROM owner.
I mean yes, you never “owned” the IP, but this doesn’t change anything. You also never owned any movie on a DVD, song on a vinyl, or text in a book. Software is a strange beast in the world of copyright law, but, at least in my lay understanding, video game discs still have had protection under the first-sale doctrine, which means you were always allowed to resell, rent, give away, or destroy your copy. Ownership of the medium is still something.
> video game discs still have had protection under the first-sale doctrine
Not true unfortunately. See: Vernor v. Autodesk; which was first ruled in favor of first-sale doctrine but later reversed by a federal court. There haven't been cases for video game discs specifically but I don't see a reason who it wouldn't be the same as this software, since they also explicitly mention you're being sold a license, not ownership.
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I view the killing of physical game media as having two aspects that, while intertwined, are separate in some ways.
The first is the loss of the physical item. I like organizing carts and discs, looking at them on my shelves, reminiscing, easily putting one in a console to replay. Same with other media for me: I buy books, only read physical ones. I listen to digital music (generally downloaded from sites like Bandcamp) but for albums and artists I like the most I buy vinyl. I get that this isn't a big deal for most people, but it is something that is permanently lost when you get rid of physical media.
The second aspect is control and ownership. This is indeed intertwined with the physical aspect, since you can do things like resell a cartridge or disc and let someone easily borrow it. But control is possible with purely digital games, they just need to not be locked down with DRM. And companies like Sony want to kill physical games because it allows them to keep those DRM locks on digital-only copies so you cannot resell your games, which is connected to the second point, control.
I also agree that the issue of control is more important. How do we continue to make sure our games, that we bought, aren't just taken away from us? What happens if you lose your account with Sony/MS/Nintendo? What happens if your old console that you downloaded a game on breaks? The death of physical games is also a step on the way to subscription-only services, where you won't even be able to play something unless you are actively giving money to a company regardless of how much you gave them before.
The ways forward that I see are legislation that would do things like force companies to allow people to always download games they bought in perpetuity, regardless of account status, and if the company dies the successor company must do the same or release the game into the public domain. But given the power of large corporations and current intellectual property laws, this isn't happening anytime soon.
Practically, then, the only way I see is to either have a console that is hacked in some way, or only play games on an open platform like PC. And there you can only buy DRM-free games or, at worse, if you lose access to game in some service (e.g., Steam) you can still pirate it (which I'd feel morally fine doing if I bought it already of course, but that does bring legal risks depending on where you live).
And the later option still doesn't address the larger issue of preservation, as the OP's blog post notes: games will be made for locked-down consoles in the future and will be lost forever unless the hardware is hacked or a law demands the game's preservation.
> The death of physical games is also a step on the way to subscription-only services, where you won't even be able to play something unless you are actively giving money to a company regardless of how much you gave them before.
Also a step towards surveillance. All of your engagement will be tracked and sold to advertisers or used to re/train some LLM. All in the service of _enhancing your experience_, of course.
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...
Yeah, I was going to say that. Somebody has to pedantically state that it's a pretty silly terminology.
Maybe "virtual" games. Or simply "non-pysical" games.
Downloaded game? You can't download a disc.
Perfect!
Rent vs own is about price. If you want to own something, digital, physical, information, goods, then a vendor will charge more, sometimes a lot more, to sell you an infinite ownership vs you get limited rights.
Most everything I buy needs to fight for my money. Of course some vendor specific things, such as a specific movie, are not replaceable, but since very few things, if any, are so important to me that I won't spend elsewhere if a good is too much.
With that competition for $, vendors generally are competitive, and don't tend to have extremely high profit margins.
I prefer the limited rights, since I can try far more things that way, with finite budget. And I don't get stuck with higher prices on things I ended up not wanting/using after I got it. I can simply cancel.
I think the general disconnect is people too often assume they handed out money so should get infinite rights, while ignoring the nuances of economics/pricing.
As hard as it is to admit, the used market hurts developers the most. If I buy a game and then resell it to a friend for more money than what the game store would offer, but less than what they'd pay at retail. The actual developer of the game sees no profit. It's a win-win for the gamers, not so much for the developers.
Digital assets don't degrade like an appliance or a used car might, so the used market really cuts into the profits of game companies.
I don't believe the solution to this is to go all digital and cut off access to physical media entirely. What we need are stronger digital economies that can grow organically with a community.
Digital media needs the backing of cryptocurrency to remain viable. We need digital assets and economies that either grow or shrink in value based on demand. Rather than fake digital currencies that have no value outside of the world they're used in, we need real cryptocurrencies that are traded on open markets like stocks to bolster the digital economy and make the economics of building fun, lasting games a reality.
I'm tired of spending money on digital points for games that have no real value. Everything should be a cryptocurrency at this point.
I think an oft-forgotten possible major driver for the moves away from discs[1] must be scary legal warnings universally seen in paid contents during 2010s. None of currently popular platforms have those stern unrelatable messages that customers looking for relaxing contents were forced to observe. It didn't took hard data for anyone to see disc sales disappearing in sync with DRMs and tones progressively more obnoxious and harsh in the period.
Sony is likely not shutting down physical discs to tighten control over consumers, but it's more likely that they just don't see disc manufacturing as a viable business as a hardware factory that it always was. That goes beyond games or movies, and it should be discussed more often as to why they didn't take actions but to quietly watch the golden goose slaughtered.
1: https://support.apple.com/en-us/100749
It's also about competition.
Consoles are a significant investment, to only be able to buy content from one source creates monopolies. An equivalent would be if TVs were sold by Netflix or Disney, and only played content purchased from those entities. The second hand game disc market prevented those monopolies from taking prices to stratospheric highs.
I believe this is why digital distribution has seen little push-back on PC, because we have the convenience without the monopolies. Steam is huge, but Epic, Ubisoft, EA, gog.com, and others provide plenty of competition.
If consoles go digital only, from a single source, I think we'll see >$100 games quickly, we'll see subscriptions required to play be much more prevalent, and we'll see the death of consoles within a generation.
> Consoles are a significant investment, to only be able to buy content from one source creates monopolies.
It used to be that consoles were generally the cheaper alternative to a gaming PC, which was subsidized by the price of games, which in turn stimulated the second hand market as people tried to recoup their investment in games, not the system itself.
But now that it's no longer really true, and system prices keep going up for little in return, it's really the worst of all worlds: expensive systems, expensive games, no way to resell, and two of the big three are acting increasingly worse (the jury's still out on what will Nintendo do next, but their ridiculed key-on-a-card system at least allows for reselling).
And this is on top of Sony outright lying about the reality as various leaks and scraps of that indicate that physical sold very well, better than digital.
Never heard of Nintendo's patent for digitally signing and transferring game ownersbip. Thanks for sharing. Hope it gets implemented!
Maybe you think gaming/media companies are greedy and should make less money. But if you want the industry to continue in the current state, keep in mind the price of games needs to be adjusted:
If there's a million sales but only 10 thousand people playing at a time, the price of the game needs to be multiplied by ~100x, because these copies can be shared, and the sales would be divided by 100x if the copies can be efficiently shared. The modern internet would make this buttery smooth to do (companies that make this easy will pop up overnight).I'm not arguing either way, but this is the back of the napkin math to consider, and how that would ripple across the industry, for better or worse.
The kinds of buyers who purchase pre-owned "used" games often CANNOT or WILL NOT shell out $70-100 for a new game. Social peer pressures might impact this (hey poor kid, do you really wanna lose your friends?)
The equivalent of a "used" game now is a game that was release more than a year ago and is on sale or at least has a price tag cheaper than it used to be.
The playstore is a bit more dynamic than real stores with physical disks which means it's easier to get lower prices for some games.
On complaint I have is that storage is extremely expensive, but I can't blame that on Sony.
I pardon to disagree, it is a physical vs digital problem, and it is our fault.
Companies started pushing digital content and we accepted it, Xbox GamePass has been a cancer (I am Xbox player) with all the games destroyed because of it.
Nobody can disagree that digital games is convenient, turn your PC/Console on and that is it, load the game, start playing something else, etc, without leaving your sofa.
We never thought about the consequences of that, look what happened with DVD, Bluray had luck coz its post-peak era happened by the time people started going back to physical disks over streaming services and the downfall of such services.
This is also related to how everything nowadays is digital, requires subscription which removes features like BMW heated seats, firmware update and what not.
Companies made us addicted to everything digital, that gives them full control, higher price for less, Amazon Prime without ADs requires a higher tier, Sygic Offline mobile app now requires higher tier to have access to features that were once part of the lower tier.
Gaming studios until recently were focused on live services over single player games, it is digital, content is behind paywall, etc and etc.
Digital DLCs over releasing a new game coz that would force physical release.
This is our fault and we might have gone past the point of no return!!
The distinction is not physical vs (entirely) digital. If you buy games at GOG, you get entirely non-physical products, but you own and control those bits. You can download the game and keep playing it as long as you can provide it with a suitable runtime environment
The things you don't own are because they require an online service to work. No matter what you do, short of removing the dependency, aka "cracking", it will only work as long as the online service allows it to work.
Any feature of.a consoles with OTA software updates are in that category. Even if you own the hardware, you don't _control_ the software.
I would argue further: it's not just about ownership only, but about control on a different level, that the industry can dictate what you can play by mass revoking the license, in order to force a next "hype" by getting rid of your independence.
Physical media was always one of the selling points for consoles. While PC has essentially been digital-only for a long time (with NONE of the wish list the author here wants, mind you - you can't sell or lend games to random people on Steam, besides a limited "family sharing" feature), consoles were where you go when you want to play a game and then sell it quickly if you don't like it. Physical media accounts for 50% of Switch game sales. I feel that Sony is in panic mode because they released a bunch of stinker first-party games and now they think that removing the disc drive from the PS6 will save them some money. It'll probably lose them a lot of customers.
Sony removing the disc drive from PS6 will save them a lot of money if Xbox also removes it. I wonder if they’re back channel colluding on that right now?
There is no next xbox. They are killing the brand while they wait for ARM to get better
> We don't want physical media, we want digital ownership rights! Don't confuse the argument!
I don't know who's "we" for the author, but I DO want physical media. I want to have the feeling when I reach to my video game disc, take it out and put it into my console. Besides DRM-free digital purchase doesn't guarantee that the thing you bought won't disappear - digital game store can you bankrupt, video game publisher might legally force its title to be removed, etc., the list goes on and on.
Exactly. Let them sell games on GOG DRM-free. You buy it, it's yours as long as you back it up. No one stops you from storing it on any physical media you want. Just use an HDD.
When things on the other are presented as rent only, it's very bad.
What's scary is how quickly the lack of ownership of things we used to own can become a "new normal".
Forget about explainin to the youngins. My girlfriend is 7 years younger than me and barely grasps the concept of why I'd have 20,000 mp3s on my phone that I ripped off CDs I owned. Why not just pay for a subscription? She doesn't understand the utility of anything being hers.
So I say, send me a song. And she sends a link.
It's hard to even explain to someone who doesn't know what it means to have anything that isn't rented.
What do we "regular folk" really own in our lives? Our houses are rented or loaned (via mortgage), the car is paid off in installments, everything is a subscription or license. Many people I know purchase their clothes and electronics through buy-now-pay-later services and stream all media they watch. We lend our time and effort to our employer if we are salaried, as we don't get paid at the end of the day but at the end of the month.
How can someone who has never owned anything of value in their lives understand what it means to have something that isn't rented?
That is just such a defeatist attitude. It reminds me of the classic Gen X complaint when I was growing up (we're the first generation to have a lower living standard and worse job prospects than our parents) but we didn't just give up. I'm regular folk. I waited tables and drove taxis for years and coded in my spare time. I started somewhere between 5 to 10 failed companies depending on what counts as a "company".
The one thing I learned when I was young was never buy anything on credit. I was up to about $20k of debt when I dropped out of college. I cut up my credit card and I paid it off and did not buy anything on credit again until my late 30s when I bought a house and the first car I ever owned that I didn't pay cash for (which I quickly paid off).
There were long periods in my life where I lived on staple foods like rice, worked 12-16 hours a day, and spent half my income on rent. I also spent 12 years backpacking when I got myself into a situation where I could write software remotely, and I realized that This is completely normal in the world. Living within your means is normal. Living hand to mouth and saving a little is normal. No one had it as good as the boomers in America, ever. No one will again. Being able to buy anything on credit is a wild abberation that cannot last. But I live like my grandparents. Frugally.
I've only ever owned 2 pairs of shoes, 4 pairs of jeans, 8 shirts and 8 pairs of underwear. I replace them when they wear out. I also own a house now, mostly paid off, and have about half a million dollars in the bank. Does that make me rich? I don't feel like it. Every day I go out of my way to earn and save instead of spending.
Make money and save it. Don't buy shit you don't need. Don't rent anything you don't have to, and don't fall for the credit trap. When you buy things, fix them instead of replacing them. Don't sell anything.
And don't look at what other people have and wish it was yours. I'm not religious, but there's a reason that covetousness and sloth are cousins in the list of ways you can ruin your own soul.
If you refuse to use credit, and you live well under whatever your income is, you will be able to afford things of value once you pay off the mistake of taking on debt in the first place.
There's another story about a game that died and was resurrected, Runescape. It launched with a big fanfare of version 3.0 back in 2008 and was met with total disaster. Fans were quitting, private servers of the pre-EOC update, etc. Jagex heard this and stuck a solo dev onto re-launching an instance of '2007 scape' which was basically an old backup they found and a few server instances. They incorporated features of the platform like voting, where votes require strong consent (75% in some cases) to get new features, and it's a seriously community driven game where both sides have something to gain. Now branded "old school runescape" the game has more players than the "runescape 3" that still exists today as Runescape. A win all around.
And "people" seemingly hated NFT so much, but the basic idea of it, like in this case, would've given sony an opportunity to cash in on every resale of the given physical disc. But, oooh the underlying forces that steer our society towards a dead end didn't like that idea.
Same applies to graphics artists. They sell a painting and if it ever changes hands it would've netted them X percent from the given transactions. But NO, that's not the way this should be handled. The elite doesn't want people to earn easily.
Digital vs physical is the same bs just from a different angle.
I mean of course. If the person who sold you something is able to enforce terms on it, that's not ownership. The prospective NFT-sellers in your example are on the side of Sony, not the customers.
Not to mention all the other failures of NFTs at achieving the goal. The NFT can't know that you've handed over the physical object, or copied/screenshotted the PNG or whatever. It can't enforce that a transfer of the object is paired with a transfer of the NFT - you'd need a contract for that. And once you have a contract, what good does the NFT do for you?
It could be woven into existing - and crumbling - legal systems.
"looking at you movie industry" - i think 'indie' movies are coming. there's a wave coming and the early signs are the likes of obsession and iron lung. all hope is not lost
usual shortsightedness from bean counters, while studio do lost revenue on second hand trades they gained another player! I can't believe they think that's not a worth while trade. Games are like books, the amount of time people spent on it far outweighs their opportunity cost in earnings, and you only have such a short window to capture that audience so do it however you can, allowing piracy is a legit business strategy, let alone trading second hand games!
PC games are physical. I have my games right here on this thumb drive in my hand. If I sell it to you, and you plug it in, you can play my games.
this is one of the few areas i feel like a blockchain-style solution could work. Mint a token, transfer it on sale or resale to the new wallet. Validate a wallet with the key is associated with the account. Same for old-school MSFT licenses or other systems where you buy a license key.
There's probably a shortcoming I'm missing here, but it's the only genuine case I could see a blockchain having use above other technical solutions
I made a hard switch from all digital to all physical (when available) after I tried to introduce old games to my kids. I found many of them were no longer downloadable.
What are the odds that PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox servers will be around in 2040? 2050? It’s certainly not 100%. Those companies may not even exist. If there’s any dependency, there is a chance that one day you won’t have access any more.
I’ve always wondered what the major industry players’ theoretical price would be for offering transferable licenses, and how many people who say they want to be able to resell would pay it. It’s also interesting to me that we got all the way to 2026 and one of them officially going all-digital and we never saw price differentiation for physical copies.
Once you buy something (physical or digital), ownership of it should rest solely with the purchaser and no one else.
Should according to you, as it serves you best that way. Not how the world works, and for sound economic reasons.
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.
The difference is you're buying games vs licensing software. There should be a clear difference between buying and licensing softwares/games and should be told upfront.
Most new games are worse than old games anyway
Most of us know what is it about. The problem is Sony and other companies have plenty of money for lobbying governments. What options do we have? I know it’s mostly technical forum but is there any lawyer or government representative who can help?
At the core of this customers have a right to choose what they spin money on.
Access to an online based experience which will be discontinued in the future, that's what Roblox or Fortnite is.
When I spend money in a F2P game, I understand I don't have any rights outside of using it after the publisher ends support.
I don't want the government to tell me how to spend my money.
I do want all these gamers making noise to spend a fraction of the effort making community driven open source games.
I dream often of high quality open source games. The community would raise funds for development with an understanding of everything being released under MIT or GPL later.
FOSS is ownership.
Everything else is a temporary license to use which can be terminated without cause at any time. I just brought Marathon and it's fun.
But because Sony only sold me a license , they have a right to switch off the servers and make it useless tomorrow.
The only regulation I'd support here is a minimum service commitment at purchase. Something like " Your access to this product will terminate in June of 2029. Extensions to this service may be granted at publisher discretion."
This needs to be BIG RED PRINT when I hand over my money. Not hidden on page 15 of a service agreement.
physical vs digital is a spectrum:
- a physical disc, playable as-is
- physical, with major flaws without online updates
- physical, was playable on release, now requires updates
- physical, unplayable without updates
- physical, contains only a launcher to download full game
- physical box without disc, contains download code only
- digital
I am surprised at all this shock the decision has garnered.
Is it shitty and consumer-hostile? Yes. Was it inevitable looking at the current trajectory of game distribution logistics? Also yes. Forced digitization should have in no way been surprising.
Related:
Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456
the resale market for disk has been on a downtrend for years, you can sign into someone's else psn account too and share games, you are a washed up gamer, its okay I am washed up too.
I’ve come to realize there are definitely people out there who have no interest in playing games, they just want to own them.
A child doesn’t think about ownership, he picks up a controller and plays a game. And when the child has grown bored of the game, one day they just never touch it again like a discarded toy, moving on to something else.
It is adults, reminded of their own feeble mortality and impermanence in the world who try to grasp at things like permanent ownership, they long for something that can’t just be torn away from them on a whim. But in life, everything is ultimately torn away from you, there is nothing you can do about it.
Some try to disguise their hoarding as “preservation”. Nobody cares. Even if you had some carefully curated museum, these old games would just be exhibits people look at for a bit with passing curiosity. Nothing more. You didn’t even make these games, why do you care so much?
Focus on enjoying games now, in the time when they are relevant. No matter how hard you try, all those games will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
I'm in the same boat with the sibling comment. I currently play games that have been released 20+ years ago. In 20 years I want to be able to play the games that are being released now. That's what preservation is, not hoarding. Should I just stop playing older games because I wouldn't be able to play newer ones in some years? This seems entirely unreasonable to me. I can read books that have been written hundreds of years ago, I can watch movies that have been made 100 years ago. The same should be with video games. And it used to be this way.
The vast majority of consumers don't care or think about this at all. It's a loud and tiny minority who imagine this great injustice will lead to some groundswell of rallied consumer support if they just write more blog posts about it.
In reality, if people get continual access to a digital game, the hypothetical case where they might lose access to it isn't all that troubling. And even if the license was specifically a year-term rental or something, most people wouldn't flinch because they go on with their lives after finishing a game.
It's also so convenient to ignore all the reasons the current system is the way it is.
1. Digital goods are just bits and free to copy and distribute online. Publishers use DRM because piracy is otherwise prevent, and they have a right to protect their IP.
2. Publishers can distribute the content that they develop however they see fit. Gamers who didn't make the game aren't owed something by right. Don't purchase the game if the license terms aren't amenable to you. It's a game, not a vital good.
3. Disk drives are a pointless pain-in-the-ass to manufacture if most people don't want them anyway.
> Don't purchase the game if the license terms aren't amenable to you
Unfortunately, terms can change. Publisher can promise 10-year support for the game and then drop it after 1 year. So when we purchase the game, we don't know what will happen in the future.
> Focus on enjoying games now, in the time when they are relevant. No matter how hard you try, all those games will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
I've enjoyed games that came out 20 years before I actually played them. Many games I enjoy are years old by the time I play them. I wanted to play The Crew. Doing that officially is literally impossible now. Maybe I'll get to play it if the pirates can do their magic.
Somebody needs to preserve these games so that people like me can play and enjoy them in their own time. I'd like other people to share in that same joy.
Would you write this comment, if you were speaking of books instead of games? It comes of as incredibly thoughtless to think of games as nothing more than discarded toys, when they are complete creative experiences filled with artistic value. Games are worthy of preservation for the same reasons books are. It's a shame people like you haven't realised that.
Most books are lost in time. The ones that survive are just popular enough to stay in circulation.
Like you will most likely always have some kind of access to something like GTA 6 in some way. Only obscure titles get truly lost. They are obscure for a reason.
> Only obscure titles get truly lost. They are obscure for a reason.
They can be obscure for many reasons, only one of which are it's quality as a piece of art.
There was an album, "Begin", released by a group of session musicians calling themselves The Millennium. Released in 1968, it was a borderline experimental sunshine pop rock in the vein of Sgt. Peppers and Pet Sounds, with songwriting and production in the same ballpark. It completely flopped, having landed a bit too late, and made virtually zero impact on music history. It only started to get rediscovered by the public after some CD releases in the early 90s, but that mostly got it out of total obscurity into being an extremely deep cut.
But it's fantastic and in spite of it being out of it's time when it released in terms of genre, did a lot of cool experimental stuff that makes it sound shockingly modern. It's seen some greater recognition in recent years, but we're in literally another century. I found out about it through a Spotify recommendation and based on searches, so did a lot of other people. When it got recommended to me in the late 2010s the play count for most of the songs was in the low thousands, but it's gotten a bit higher now.
The album didn't get re-issued because of it's quality, but because CDs were booming and labels were looking for any old junk. There was also a resurgence of interest in baroque pop in that era. If the circumstances weren't just right, it would never have been re-issued, it'd likely have continued to be completely forgotten and I wouldn't have ended up listening to it and loving it.
> Most books are lost in time.
And that's a bad thing.
> Only obscure titles get truly lost.
We can do better.
It is about memory. Same reason people wish to own the photographs they take.
It is the right to trigger your own neurons and synapses irrespective of your capital value.
I know this is a topic de jour for submitters lately, but it seems weird for hacker news, a website for and by founders who primarily offer software-as-a-service. I also think it seems weird for a website whose patrons are seemingly predominantly against private property / property ownership. At least the vocal ones seem to feel that way.
I get that HN is made up of a variety of people with a variety of opinions, and different confluences of events lead to different groups being more or less vocal at different times. So maybe this is just that in action.
> a website for and by founders who primarily offer software-as-a-service
Liking the Everything as a Subscription model when you get to be the rentier but not when you don't seems perfectly apropos.
Most of HN has rarely had anything but hateful comments for SaaS business models. The majority of people commenting are never interested in the business side of anything unless they see a chance to wedge their politics in.
This submission is explicitly asking for a discussion against SaaS. This isn't "weird for HN" nor has there been a "variety of opinions" since around 2016.
or, of getting rid of "intellectual property" legally so information is just shared more freely and widely
I question how much of this discussion is really being driven by gamers.
Those who wanted change made it happen. There are indie games and remakes without these restrictions. Most of classic gaming preservation has been successful with its goals apart from some legal gray areas and chasing rarities.
These discussions then fixate on the cutoff year for classic gaming and whether everything beyond that is even worth saving. The conclusion is always the same. Nobody really cares about the slop.
All that remains to discuss is politics. That's always the most vocal part drowning out everyone else. Who keeps banging this drum?
This is the exact kind of cause that triggers the social media algorithms. Part nostalgia, part underdog battle, and no problematic elements.
This isn't just isn't as clearcut as people make it. A lot of it is based on a historic idea of an SNES cartridge or PS1 disk that contained the complete game, which was played locally and was entirely self-contained. It makes sense that you'd "own" that.
But we don't live in that world anymore. An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it? If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly? Even with games like CoD that have a campaign, the game would degrade by losing online services.
Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down? Or does it need to be available to download forever? If so, who hosts that?
As another example, I can probably from some old DVDs with games like GTA4 on them if I dig in boxes. I have since bought most on Steam since but ignore that. Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up. What happens then? What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists? What exactly do you "own"?
For digital TV shows and movies, this is far easier. I've never bought any of these. Years ago, you couldn't even download movies again from iTunes. If you lost it, bad luck. They reversed course on that I believe. But all these cases where the digital store lost the digital icense, which is going to happen, what did you think was going to happen?
What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained? By whom? You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle.
But games are tougher for the reasons I described.
Here's something else to consider: part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail. This degradation is built into the pricing model.
I honestly don't know what the solution is here but this just isn't as clearcut as people are making it out to be.
> An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it?
You should.
> If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly?
You should also own a copy of the server software so you can host your own Fortnite lobby.
> Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down?
The real-world solution for this is 'jailbreak your console and download the game from the web'. There could also be sanctioned backup solutions which negate that issue. So long as the user is given a chance to back up and thus keep the game, you don't need a download server to be maintained.
> Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up.
The real world solution are patches made by people who care, and those usually work. The better solution would be that that connectivity doesn't break the whole game. If it's just for the online half of a game, it should degrade gracefully.
> What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists?
VMs exist.
> What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained?
Provide a DRM-free copy if you shut down the servers.
> You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle.
A battle worth fighting [pirate flag emoji].
> part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail.
Is this a significant part of the model? How many resales were they expecting per 1000 normal sales? It can't be many. This to me seems like it could be rounded down to 0.
Tale as old as time. See also: Richard Stallman. Yes, we're back to arguing the fundamentals. What exactly does "owning" the hardware mean? What exactly does "owning" software that runs on that hardware mean? Only when we hit the limits of those terms will we know what we can and cannot do to it.
Unfortunately ownership on console has been down the drain for a long time. Even if you have the disc you still have mandatory downloads, patches, one-time download codes that tie the content to your account and of course DLC. What is even the point of having the disc anymore? Might as well go full digital and avoid the plastic waste.
I do own a PS4 and I have to do research every time I want to play a game. The website https://www.doesitplay.org/ is quite useful. But it's all so tiresome, it really makes me want to just check out of console gaming altogether. With full-on digital at least there won't be any ambiguity. It's not what I wanted, but all it means for me is that they won't be getting any of my money anymore.
Actual digital ownership is what i hoped from NFTs.
we gotta accept that "owning" a digital asset will be a thing of the past. ppl need to update their mental model and evolve.
You think you have it tough now, huh? When I was a kid I had to rewind my Apple ][ games on casette tape before returning them to the library, or I'd get a hefty fine, and it was uphill both ways!
if a game has a download update bigger than 1GB then the physical copy is useless
imo GameStop ruined it for everyone. Nearly all their profits are from reselling games.
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Tldr: Walled gardens suck. I can't lend you or sell you my iPhone app either. Physicsl media is cool because it offers both a unit of authenticity and ownership. Second hand games were fine as having the game when it came out was the value, like a movie vs. watching free a year later on TV.
Does anyone here remember owning games on disk?
It was a royal pain in the ass!
You had to inset the disk every time you wanted to play game. The disks got scratched, destroyed, or rearranged by the wife.
Steam has saved me from all of that. Plus I can share my whole library with my family members.
Sure I might lose access to them all when I die, but 20 years from now who is going to care?
I care about having access to my games 20 years from now. I've been playing more older games for the past few years (most of them were released 20+ years ago). And I want to be able to play games that are being released now and that I have missed because I was playing older games. It's a normal expectation.
I support the ability to copy the data from the disk and store it digitally, which should resolve all of those concerns.
We rent time at a football field. We buy tickets to watch a single match. There are parallels here to not owning video games. I don’t really understand why one is so heinous.
Let’s say there’s a new rule implemented by the NBA that no one likes (similar to a fear of live service games changing). How is that resolved there and why can’t that solution work for video games?
I think a big thing we’re currently missing here is something like a community field or park. Why are there no open-source, community-run Diablo projects for example? If no one cares enough to do that, maybe this isn’t so big of an issue.
1. Video games are not a spectator sport. You buy tickets for a match to pay the players to perform for you. You can buy a football and goals and play with your family until the equipment itself literally wears out (which is a very, very long time - functionally near infinite if you take care of it).
2. Video games (especially console) don't, as a rule, receive important major updates, nor do gamers expect and demand that. This means that charging over and over again for 'access to them' every month is transparent greed, as opposed to a mobile game which has to keep being updated to keep up with iOS's yearly breaking releases, where you can argue very fairly that someone has to be paying developers to maintain those games, and the library of games to update would be too big if they had to keep updating all games written from 2008-2026 when 99% of them were no longer bringing in any sales revenue.
> Let’s say there’s a new rule implemented by the NBA that no one likes (similar to a fear of live service games changing).
Personally, the games where they charge for the MMO aspect (even if that comprises the entire game, e.g. WoW), I'm honestly ok with. It's a gamble to invest your time in something like that, but the alternative, where paying for a WoW client once legally obligates them to run the server without ANY rule/gameplay changes, for eternity, seems completely unfair and unsustainable. Though I think it's a moderate position to argue that if Blizzard wants to cancel WoW's servers, making the server specs open source and enabling the client to connect to community-run servers should maybe be incentivized somehow, though mandating as much seems a bit extreme.
It sounds like your opinion is that status quo is ok when: there is a spectator mode, it’s on a mobile device, there is multiplayer.
I still don’t quite understand in which cases the status quo is not ok though.
With a video game it's not clear that you're purchasing a revocable license. That's why it's called "buying" a video game. If online stores were clear that you were actually leasing a game, I don't think this would be a problem.
Publishers and storefronts need to be clear that what you're doing isn't buying, or start selling tickets (season passes) that have a clear end date, or use some other mechanism that isn't "buying".
The fundamental problem is that it's unclear what you're buying, and the contract can change at any time. Are you buying an item, a ticket, leasing, a subscription like an MMO, etc. These are all different things, and it misleads consumers when they're conflated.
The terms are also very one-sided, and your "purchase" can be ended by one party at will with very limited notice. Even basic consumer protection like requiring six months notice before ending your software lease would help.
If someone goes to the playstation store to buy a playstation game, you don't think it's clear that they can only play the game on playstation? I think consumers understand what they are buying even if they don't think in terms like revocable licenses and drm. They aren't ignorant just because they don't care about these abstract issues that don't affect their lives at all, practically speaking.
Yes, but first sale doctrine on physical goods means that I can take my Playstation game, which only works on Playstations, and sell it to.a friend after I'm done playing it, or pick up a copy 5-10 years after the game was originally published for cheap from a second hand store like Goodwill. People do understand that, and are understandably pissed off that those same rights don't transfer to the digital realm. If I paid $60 for a copy of GTA IV when it was new but now I can buy a copy for $5 from the used bin, why shouldn't that be true for GTA VI in 15 years after it comes out?
I am understandably pissed that Apple no longer makes small 5-inch iphones because I like them. But other consumers like the bigger phones, so Apple discontinued the mini line.
Is Apple doing me an injustice by not selling me the good that I want?
Is this a question of rights or consumer preferences?
Geez man. I've seen your replies in this thread multiple times. At this point, I have to wonder: why are you so against legislating the actual sale of ownership of video games? How could enacting this theoretical legislation, that you believe is a consumer "preference" (hard disagree, but I'll allow for argument) be in any way detrimental to you? What compels you to lick the boot to a polished shine?
Sort of like how Diary Queen aren’t allowed to call their desserts “Ice Cream” because there isn’t enough dairy, we need to force retailers to start calling them game-licenses? This feels like a whole lot of a big fuss over something like that. I really feel like there must be something deeper going on.
Well the goal is to stop killing games, to make it possible for people to run their own games indefinitely. That's a lot harder than baseline consumer protections though.
Agree. The only way "buying" is understood in English to mean a temporary entitlement is when combined with those terms like "ticket" or "pass."
The choice of language is deliberately made to deceive. If an auto manufacturer tried that, offering to "sell you" a car but the 3-page "Sales contract" had a clause buried in there that said "We can come to your house with 30 days' notice and just take the car back and you have no recourse besides stopping your payments" this would be ruled as grand theft auto (no pun intended) not "the terms and conditions allow it"
There is no perfect word. Ticket and pass imply a fixed duration lease, not an indefinite one. Membership implies continual payments.
You don't rent your football field from FIFA. You can, if you wish, own the field you play at.
You may have heard of football clubs: If it's too expensive you can pool resources with your friends.
Back in the old days, we would be pooling resources like that to host a server for the clan. And I wonder if the reason those games are less popular has more to do with marketers being good at their job than a change in the base gameplay.
There are local clubs available but everyone wants to play on the nice FIFA field, which is the one that has to be rented.
There is a difference between a service and a good.
It doesnt make sense to "own" a massage just the same way it doesnt make sense to "own" spectating a game in person. The video recording of people playing a sport is a good that you can own however. This is why an online/multiplayer game is harder to separate because it straddles the line of both a service and a good, but other cases are much more clear cut. (also, a quick google does reveal multipke open source diablo projects fyi)
Video games are far more alike to other media like books, not live sports.
For single-player games, those are definitely media. For multiplayer games, that feels a lot closer to a sport.
Video games ar software, this has only digital form.
And AFAIR all software is sold as a license since way back.