This is where the US Federal Gov should step in. But the pols are too busy counting donations (bribes) from these companies.
If I buy digital content, I should be able to download it on removal media and use it off-line (esp. in the case with movies/music). I should be able to sell it (which is still legal). But these companies want you to "rent" instead of own.
So I never buy digital anything. No wonder many people head to pirate bay because of the rights they loose.
I hope the US Gov (and other govs) wake up to this, but as always donations (bribes) trumps people's rights all the time. (no pun intended).
The government should forbid the labeling of “buy” or “purchase” of anything that can be revoked after the sale.
If it can be revoked, then it should be labeled “rent”, with the appropriate time frame. Even if it means businesses have to label it “rent - until an unknown time in the future when we go out of business or drop the license or decide to ban you”.
I agree completely. Also in practice there is almost no such thing as a perpetual license as companies can go bankrupt or just revoke your license whenever they want. They should make the exact nature of the agreement known visibly before you spend any money.
Eventually prices would have to drop to reflect that you are merely temporarily licensed things. A digital game is not going to be perceived as a $60 value when it is more obviously a temporary license regardless of the length. If a physical copy of a game is valued at $60 that can be sold then a digital temporary license is going to have to be less. In my opinion a lot less.
I’m fine with digital products being a license, but then they’re a universal license. Meaning that if I bought the license to play Mortal Kombat via Steam, I should be allowed to freely download it on Xbox and PlayStation too.
Right now companies gives us all the disadvantages of both a product and a license.
Idk, porting isn't free, especially good ports. It seems less likely for eg a successful indie game to contract out a port, if all existing owners have to get it for free.
It would be very user-friendly and am quite happy to have also gotten some mobile versions on Humble bundle
Seems like an easy workaround. Steam sold “Mortal Kombat Alpha”, but PlayStation sells “Mortal Kombat Beta”. Many electronics use a similar strategy to prevent price matching between stores where each market gets a specific SKU.
> ... "and the price should reflect it's non-perpetual nature." (emphasis, mine)
This is one thing that bugs the hell outta me for some game publishers. They used to sell a given ("AAA" or whatever) game for like $60, and you got a disc you could use "forever" (as long as the disc lasted, and compatibility with system updates held out), a fancy manual, slick packaging, and sometimes even a poster or other extra goodie. These days, some (many?) of those companies sell a digital download, hosted by Steam's delivery servers, and often nothing else at all, for the same or sometimes even higher price as physical media. For many of these games, reliance on remote DRM services mean that game can disappear any random time in the future for <reasons>. I generally refuse to support them in doing that, so those companies will only ever see my purchase during a sale that brings the price more in line with the reality. I'd rather spend my money with the publishers / developers that value their customers a bit more than as a "fleshy cash machine".
> I’m fine with digital products being a license, but then they’re a universal license. Meaning that if I bought the license to play Mortal Kombat via Steam, I should be allowed to freely download it on Xbox and PlayStation too.
Eh, I don't think that's fair to the companies paying for the bandwidth and storage costs for those games. They typically take a cut for purchasing on their respective storefronts that cover those costs, so either you pay per MB downloaded or a monthly subscription for access to the library (but not the licenses themselves)
I'd be happy if we started with forcing them to allow the PC version run on any PC. It's bullshit that only some games run on the NVidia cloud (forgot the name) cause the publishers sued them. I bought the game. I can run the game wherever I want.
> Eventually prices would have to drop to reflect that you are merely temporarily licensed things.
I understand that you think that would be fair. I also agree that that would be fair, but I’m not so optimistic about it happening.
The cost of digital content has much more to do with how much faff it is to pirate said content and how desireable the content is preceived to be.
Sorr if this is too depressing, but the whole thing is a bit of “I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.” from the content producers as far as I can see. But! Hope you will be right.
There is literally nothing in possibility of bankruptcy that conflicts with a perpetual license - honoring the license is neither some goodwill that a company may voluntarily abandon if it's in financial hardship, nor something that bankruptcy courts will void.
The relevant consumer rights laws should simply assert that if you sell a license, then it's irrevocable, no matter what your fine print says.
And also there's nothing inherently wrong with temporarily licensed things as long as you make it clear up front. If you're offering a three-year license, that's just as valid as a monthly subscription, but you shouldn't be permitted to sell a license for the period of "as long as I wish".
That's probably preferable, but would increase the cost to the consumer, as Sony (or whoever) would need to negotiate permanent deals with Disney (or whoever) instead of the current system.
I'm sort of mostly ok with paying $15 for a semi-permanent license to a movie. I'm not ok with paying $40 for a true permanent purchase. Big guess on those prices, as I mostly just stream whatever is available today, so I'm not the target audience either way, I suppose.
Increase cost compared to what? You can't compare it to current rental systems, you have to compare it to Blu-ray etc. If the cost of buying a digital copy is significantly higher than Blu-ray then people will just stick with Blu-ray.
If they don't want to issue such deals at all then that's fine too, but they just can't use the words "buy" or "purchase" at all and can only say "rent".
Makes sense for objects, but I think they're classifying these goods as services. Would you call it "renting" a massage, because if something happens and they have to stop part-way though you don't get the full massage as expected?
Perhaps the "buy" option should have an implied lifetime of ownership, and anything less they have to pay you back (keeping all those sales $ in escrow would sure be a pain)
I'm pretty sure if I pay for a massage and it has to be interrupted early for reasons that aren't my fault, I can reasonably expect to get a refund or replacement.
This is for the non technical, non professional customer who is sitting at home on their TV deciding to “rent” a movie. When presented with two options, Buy or Rent, the former is obviously incorrect if it can be yanked away. Both options are rent, with different durations.
Bait and switch: a scam to mislead buyers, whereby a seller advertises an appealing but ingenuine offer to sell a product or service that the seller does not actually intend to sell (emphasis mine)
The "digital good" is the bait. It makes you think you are purchasing ownership like you would with a physical book, or dvd, or game. The bait is effective because it tries to tie itself to the legitimate form and tries to create a false equivalency of buying a physical copy (in some cases, claiming to be "superior" because its greener or whatnot).
The solution would be for companies to be explicit in what is actually happening: you are purchasing an indefinite lease on the content subject to terms and exceptions. But I imagine they don't want to do that because it would cause a dent in their business.
"rent" is the most common mental model that most accurately describes the transaction.
It may not have 100% fidelity, but people understand what renting means instinctively.
A different term, even "licensing", loses that impact (which is precisely why different language is preferred by the contract holders, to hide the true intent).
Rent usually has an explicit end (like a home lease is for a year or two, sometimes with an auto-renew clause).
I posted in a sibling, but I'd do something like "buy" (actually buy, can download, use offline), license (implied forever, but streaming and revokable), and "rent" (streaming, explicit time period). Not set on those phrases, but something like that framework makes more sense that what we have today.
"Indefinitely" is a vague term. I'm serious - if we really want the FTC or some other more appropriate agency to step in and force a change in terminology, we must have something that is very clear and precise. Otherwise it would never survive a legal challenge.
Why is it a problem that it's a vague term? It's defining a vague clause in the contract. You get certain rights until such time as the company decides you don't get them anymore.
Look it up in the dictionary. In some interpretations, "rent indefinitely" has effectively the same meaning as buy. In others, it could mean what you described.
Such transactions would now mean different things to different people. That's not an improvement, and it is unlikely that the federal judiciary would agree that the federal government has the authority to force corporations to make such a change.
I'll allow Steam's platform a little room here, but not too much. They've been reliable since 2003, with the promise of backing up games to play offline if the service goes the way of Athenian gods.
However, to your point, I'll easily find my way to (insert a random pirate site - non-disclosed) download something that I own just because it's ONLY available exclusively through a platform like EA Play or Ubisoft. GOG's Galaxy platform is what I wish all gaming platforms to be. I'm getting too old to care about such nuisances, but would like to think that preservation of any game (rather written: any software) culminates into preservation of DRM-free archives.
I love and stand by Steam, but all that needs to happen is that Gabe Newell retires, or the company is purchased. Once that happens, kiss it all goodbye. (And probably also kiss awesome Linux compatibility goodbye as well.)
I think there's zero chance they can make a halflife 3 that'd live up to the hype and actually feel like halflife, and that's likely why they haven't made it.
It's a similar situation to what happened to the fallout series. Bethesda took a stab at it, but, if you loved fallout 1 and 2, nothing they made really felt like fallout, even if they were good games.
Not quite on the level of duke nukem forever, mainly because apogee was mismanaged at it's very core, and valve, well, hard to say that it's not managed well.
The thing is, making a good game is not really necessary here. They could make a mediocre halflife3, get slaughtered in the reviews, and still make a ton of profit, Gaben just won't do it because he doesn't want to go out like that. Understandable, but, it's mostly his fault that he's in this situation. If they released 3 a couple years after the episodes, they could have continued that incremental release pattern more or less indefinitely, it's just that at the time they were focused on other things (that turned out to be more profitable) and by the time they got back to making games again, it was too late, too much hype to live up to, so on the shelf it goes.
> Gaben just won't do it because he doesn't want to go out like that.
I just don't think he cares. half life 3 can sell 100m copies at $70 a pop (so, 7 billion dollars in raw revenue before various fees) and it still wouldn't touch Steam, which has estimated 9 billion dollar revenue in 2022 alone. Maybe it'd make even more as a service game or by integrating steam marketplace stuff like TF2/Counterstrike, but the number of games that make steam level revenues year after year can be counted on one hand.
For some reference, Fortnite hit 6b in 2022 and 26b in 6 years leading up to 2022. very strong average of 4.3b, but fortnite's game team is twice* the number of employees Valve has in the entire studio. A lot of labor needed to maintain one of the highest earning games out there, and Steam still comes out on top in raw revenue.
(I can't find exact Valve numbers, but LinkedIn still lists them with "200-500" employees. And since Epic has at least half of its 4000 staff on Fortnite...)
> Beat Hazard 2 - online DRM. The game can't be started at all without being online. It is fully DRM-ed!
> Fishing: North Atlantic - Scallops Expansion. - does not work without Galaxy. In other words: this DLC is COMPLETELY DRM-ED! (Update 08/2022: GOG said that it was fixed, but it's only partially. The DLC can be installed and played offline, but it still requires Galaxy running in the background to be recognized as installed.)
> King of Seas - Possibly a bug, but it isn't possible to save the game without Galaxy.
> Spellforce 3 - Skirmishes against the AI require an online connection.
> Tempest - crashes when started without Galaxy since the last update. Possibly a bug, but so far GOG's only solution is 'Use Galaxy'.
> Two Point Hospital - part of the single-player content is gated through online connectivity. I.e. one has to register online and be online to unlock. Plus: core gameplay mechanics (staff handling, diagnostics) are bugged in offline mode.
> Northgard - solo mode required Galaxy. But according to GOG and the devs, that was a bug and as of 02.04.2021 the solo mode is DRM-free again. ... However, it was still not possible to select opponents for skirmishes in offline mode. You need to be online to select an opponent for offline skirmish mode. But as of 05.06.2022 solo mode now doesn't require Galaxy to select opponents anymore. Northgard is finally DRM-free again.
> Absolver - Boss re-matches are locked behind an online requirement. Boss loot too. As well as some techniques that can be used in offline play but can only be learned online. Absolver also installs the invasive EAC anti-cheat software even for single player and won't start without it.
> A list of multiplayer games with DRM will get very, very long.
> just assume that all multiplayer games, that aren't on the 'DRM-free multiplayer list', are DRM-ed.
The only feature that requires Galaxy to operate is registering Galaxy achievements.
Galaxy is adding almost zero value for players. And we keep getting games that won't run unless it's running. (Or -- forgive me if I overspoke -- games that will run but won't let you save the game.)
The cost-benefit balance is very clearly far into the negatives. Why would you want another platform to implement something similar?
who cares about the warning if its extremely inconvenient. Tell you what, I'm going to format your computer on Jan 1. You have plenty of warning so no big woop.
>who cares about the warning if its extremely inconvenient.
1. you're not mandated to use Windows 10/11. you can use Mac or Linux
2. Windows 7 got its last security update almost 4 years ago. This isn't even about Steam at this point; more and more software will be incompatible and you're more and more vulnerable to breaches as you use that OS. You should probably change to something receiving updates. I don't particular care what.
>Tell you what, I'm going to format your computer on Jan 1.
I didn't know now being able to get security updates from a 3rd party application equated to formating your hard drive. Should probably fix that since you're 4 years out of date with Windows 7.
There is no world in which supporting an operating system for 14 years, 8 years past the support of the vendor, can be described as “extremely inconvenient”. Again, they are not deleting anything off of your computer so your snark about wiping my machine is disingenuous and irrelevant.
You can do all that when you buy digital content. The problem is that most stores aren't selling you the content - they're selling you a non-perpetual license to access the content while it's available from the store you bought it from. That's what needs to change. People need to actually buy the content and not rent it.
It’s for this reason that I only rent on Amazon. ˜$2-$5 feels pretty reasonable to me, and I know I’m not owning it. I generally don’t buy any content with DRM in it, since I know I haven’t really purchased it. It doesn’t seem like consumers are very interested actual digital ownership, and smartphones tend to push the boundary even further here. It’s not impossible to put your own digital files on a smart phone and view them, but it seems significantly more difficult and annoying than doing the same on a personal computer. I believe smart phones and embedded devices (smart TVs, Rokus, etc) are doing a lot to set the “rental-only” expectation with consumers. Many consumers may have never experienced a real digital alternative to “rental-only."
> It’s not impossible to put your own digital files on a smart phone and view them, but it seems significantly more difficult and annoying than doing the same on a personal computer.
Plex. It's an app. And you don't even have to put the files on the phone... you just stream to the phone from hardware at home. Problem's already been solved on the technology end of it.
I'm not saying that _I_ can't manage to do it. But I want it to be as easy as it is on a computer. Plug in a USB, navigate the file system. Drop the files where I want. I don't want to set up a streaming server in my house just because smart phones are terrible.
are you kidding? the government LOVES this. Now they can also tell companies to block your content and all of your purchases with the flick of a switch. Say something the US government doesnt like, and all of those youtube movie purchases are gone with 1 ban.
> This is where the US Federal Gov should step in. But the pols are too busy counting donations (bribes) from these companies.
Freakonomics once asked a corruption researcher who is more corrupt, China or America? She said: Well in America you can't really call it corruption if it's legal.
>Freakonomics once asked a corruption researcher who is more corrupt, China or America? She said: Well in America you can't really call it corruption if it's legal.
Are we reading the same article?
>ANG: So if we compare it to the standard index, the similarity that we see is that the United States, overall, total corruption is much lower than in China, and that’s totally expected. But what the U.C.I. is able to add is that it unbundles this total score into four categories, and by doing so, we can see more nuance and we can see that first of all, in both countries, the United States is much lower on petty theft, grand theft, and speed money than in China. But they have roughly the same amount of access money.
> ANG: I think it’s more complicated in this country. Corruption in China is still of an illegal form. But corruption in this country has become so legalized and institutionalized, it’s hard to say that it’s “corrupt.” Some people would be really offended by the word.
If I buy digital content, I should be able to download it on removal media and use it off-line (esp. in the case with movies/music). I should be able to sell it (which is still legal). But these companies want you to "rent" instead of own.
So I never buy digital anything. No wonder many people head to pirate bay because of the rights they loose.
I hope the US Gov (and other govs) wake up to this, but as always donations (bribes) trumps people's rights all the time. (no pun intended).