Discussion summary
Discussions centered on the concept of ownership in gaming, comparing digital licenses to physical media and other entertainment forms. Participants debated whether digital games are truly owned or merely licensed, and the implications for access and transfer.
What the discussion says
- Physical media offers a sense of ownership and transferability.
- Digital games are often viewed as revocable licenses, not ownership.
- Some compare game ownership to owning a book or a sports ticket.
- Concerns about digital rights management and access longevity.
“Video games are more like books than live sports.”
“It's about whether you truly own the game or just have a license.”
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- Hacker News
- 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.by trescenzi
- > 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.
by password4321 - 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...
- 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.
- "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.
by beloch - 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.
by hx8 - 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.
by jbombadil