this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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I'd be a lot less bothered if the UI for services like Sony didn't use words like "buy" to describe what customers are doing when they pay for content. It would be a lot more honest to describe it as a rental for an indefinite time period. But of course then very few people would choose that option.
I agree, it feels like this is a place where the law or regulation needs to come in and enforce something like - rent vs lease vs buy.
The average consumer thinks "buy" means forever, and that's just not the case in these scenarios. It really is more like leasing it.
Looking at you Steam
I have 15 years of rented video games
We don't fully know what would happen if Steam decided to turn evil. But, so far they've been pretty reluctant to remove people's purchases. Even when something is no longer available for sale on Steam, if it's in your library you get to keep playing it. The bigger issue is when servers for old games go offline. Especially annoying when it's not multiplayer games, but DRM-type servers for single-player games.
Steam already tried to argue before EU courts that they're leasing, not selling, and it's not flying not because any wording but because they sell stuff for fixed rates, not recurring fees.
They're still appealing that "you have to let players sell games" decision, maybe another two or three years until they have to cave. Not sure how much of that is steam wanting to do that vs. steam wanting to look good in the eyes of publishers who of course dislike the 2nd hand market much more than stores, those can earn a buck off it by being a middleman.
Or knowing that it's essentially impossible to do with 99.99% of games currently on Steam. So, it might just be that they want to avoid the massive headache of having to renegotiate deals with thousands of publishers over millions of games.
The publisher wouldn't be able to enforce that stuff, doing that would be illegal for the same reason as Steam not allowing sales. Neither is permitted to keep end user licenses hostage.
Still pissed I can't play Mercenaries 2 anymore since I don't have the correct console to play offline, since playing online freezes the game when it attempts to connect to servers.
I tried all the workarounds on the 360, too. None of them worked so I just resigned to disconnecting my Xbox whenever I wanted to play. Which wouldn't be a problem now, but back then it was the worst to have to get up and unplug something and be unable to talk to my friends while I play.
Also that option is always like 4 times more expensive for no real reason