We've all been there right? You paid for a game, it required an active internet connection and a couple of years later the publisher decided they're done with it and shut it down leaving you with a broken game. Annoying.
And it shouldn’t be just games, any time it says “buy,” that should be understood to mean complete ownership of that thing. That means:
DRM will be stripped in a reasonable time frame (say, 2-3 years)
for physical goods, no prevention of availability of parts
any server components will be made available for private hosting when the vendor is no longer interested in supporting it (ideally FOSS, but any source-available license should work)
And so on. If the product is intended to be available for a limited time, they should instead say “lease,” because that’s what that means.
and I 100% guarantee they dont want to say lease cause they know people wont be willing to pay 70 fucking dollars for a game that they are renting for a time to be dictated by the developer/publisher, which you have no knowledge of. Is it 3 months? 6 months? 12 years? Who knows!
Yup, that’s why they hide this nonsense in the TOS or whatever. If the intent was clear upfront, they’d have to reduce prices. So that means people don’t really understand what exactly they’re buying.
I’d like to add that anything I own, I should be able to sell. Whether the platform supports it is another story, and I think it’s acceptable for the platform to take a cut since there’s work involved moving licenses, but if I own it, I should be able to lend, sell, or gift my copy to someone else.
And it shouldn’t be just games, any time it says “buy,” that should be understood to mean complete ownership of that thing. That means:
And so on. If the product is intended to be available for a limited time, they should instead say “lease,” because that’s what that means.
Agree with everything you said.
and I 100% guarantee they dont want to say lease cause they know people wont be willing to pay 70 fucking dollars for a game that they are renting for a time to be dictated by the developer/publisher, which you have no knowledge of. Is it 3 months? 6 months? 12 years? Who knows!
Yup, that’s why they hide this nonsense in the TOS or whatever. If the intent was clear upfront, they’d have to reduce prices. So that means people don’t really understand what exactly they’re buying.
I’d like to add that anything I own, I should be able to sell. Whether the platform supports it is another story, and I think it’s acceptable for the platform to take a cut since there’s work involved moving licenses, but if I own it, I should be able to lend, sell, or gift my copy to someone else.
this part of it is really frustrating for me.
step 1. purchase game that looks cool
step 2. disagree with TOS
step 3. too bad, get fucked
:(