This is in response to the new California law that forces stores to clearly disclose that the customer is buying a temporary license.
Just like the EU, California does a lot for global customer protection.
Except the cancer warning thing which didn't exactly have the desired effect. Good intent, bad execution.
Honesty is good.
I still hate the future.
I'd rather own the games that I pay for than "rent" them in the first place. Sure, this is useful. But it doesn't really solve the issue of not owning anything you buy these days. If anything this will just give them an excuse when they decide to take games you paid for away from you.
I’d rather own the games that I pay for than “rent” them in the first place.
But people will still pay up anyway.
corporations would make breathing a subscription service if they could
When you are six hours into playing Battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip, and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you're really not very price sensitive at that point in time. A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10,20,30,50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high. But it is a great model and I think it represents a substantially better future for the industry.
I was reminded of this. They would if they could. I am glad i am not living in that timeline.
When you are six hours into playing Battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip, and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you’re really not very price sensitive at that point in time
Forgot how evil that was. God, if i was 6 hours in, and they asked me a dollar to reload, i'd uninstall the game, and go play some minecraft or something.
I am glad i am not living in that timeline.
Yet
Wait. They did this?!
This was always the case. The only difference is the words they use.
The only difference is the words they have to use. They aren't making this change by choice
I find it indescribably funny that no matter what, every news site somehow manages to always put a mobile app install screen with the company's product as the banner image for their articles, even in this case, when I think most people would have probably never even thought of Steam as a mobile app, only as PC software.
Company complies with the law.
PCMR: Wow, what a great company!
Good. I like transparency and this has always been the truth. And I'm glad Valve isn't doing much to fight against it.
I feel like there needs to be some kind of way of recording what games have been purchased (licensed) so that if a store were using goes out of business we should be able to get it from another store, at least for a very reduced price just to cover their costs.
This isn't up to the stores. It's up to the gaming developers who own the right to license the games. I have been making this argument for years, and explaining digital (and physical) content licensing to people on the internet for years and almost always get downvoted because they don't like facts that interfere with their sense of righteousness.
I don't disagree that is scummy practice to randomly end a license and take something someone paid for out of their library or otherwise deny them access to it. but I cannot stress enough that this is the fault of both parties or the licensing agreement (the license seller and the entity that agrees to allow the license seller to sell licenses to the content). People will always blame Sony or Amazon or Apple. But never Universal, or Disney, or Paramount or whoever. It's both. They're both assholes in this scenario. One of them is limited by the law. The other one can offer that content by other means to people who have already purchased it once but won't because capitalism and greed.
If gamers weren't so against it, honestly NFTs could actually be that thing.
I just really want to pass on my game library to my kids one day. Can licenses be passed on, or is inheriting entertainment just dead now?
According to the EULA, no. According to common sense, leave the steam password in your will and you're fine.
If i remember correctly, gog allows this
Buy from GOG, download and archive the installers yourself.
thepiratebay.org
Is it a blanket statement for every purchase regardless of what game it is?
If so, that's completely useless.
It informs customers, that licensing a game on Steam is not like buying a pair of pants on pantsshop24.org. That's what it's meant to do.
I thought it would only apply to certain games. I feel like it's just normalizing it rather than really being educational. Now companies can go fullboar with games only being a license and just point to the disclaimer as an excuse.
You only buy a license to watch/listen media private in most cases. Even if yo buy a DRM free copy of a film/track/game, you only have a license to consume it private. If you want to show (or share) with public, you need another (way more expensive) license to do that legally.
The only difference is, when you only stream the media or there is DRM on the files, it is not possible to archive it easily and the danger of lost media is far greater.
Dude, you just cannonballed into the Achualy pool. You know that's not what we're all talking about.
Well, in this case, it is actually Valve that does the licensing. I don't think the original companies have much to do with it, other than maybe being more willing to sell through Steam than e.g. GOG or itch.io.
But all in all, yes, it would be a much more useful law, if it declared such a licensing model void.
I'm guessing, they didn't tackle that problem, because there are more legitimate uses of a licensing model, like World of Warcraft only giving you access while you're paying the monthly fee.
Nothing unsolvable, but you need some solid laws and it'd be a lot less likely that you'd get support from enough political parties to carry this into actual law.
Not really. If you buy the game on gog, you own it.
GOG themselves literally said that you do not, even very recently. You own a license like every other customer, and it can be revoked at their discretion.
GOG choose to exclusively sell games for which they can sell DRM-free versions, which is a great option for consumers. It is not a straightforward decision however as this is, whether it is a priority or not, a tradeoff for the things that Steam integration provides - cloud backup, mod workshops, multiplayer functionality etc.
Steam also sells plenty of DRM-free games, and offer customers the informed choice when selling Steam DRM and Third-Party DRM controlled game licenses.
This is not an argument that Steam or GOG are objectively better. But it is a straightforward lie to state that the license you buy from GOG is legally different from the one you buy from Steam. What is different is the possibility or otherwise of DRM software being used to control your adherence to the license.
You're like one of three people on Lemmy that understands this. I always get piled on whenever I bring it up.
It is usually also followed by "but I can download my installers and then I can have them whenever I like" as if it's a sane idea to store terabytes of offline installers for the day that GOG goes out of business.
I mean, I also have terabytes of offline installers for the day that Steam or GOG go down. On other people's computers. In a, uh, distributed distribution system.
Just like popups about cookies!
Those are like a real life Navi from Zelda.
"Hey! Link!" one every site is annoying.
That crap really needs to be a browser setting.
If you didn’t already know this 20 years ago then you are special.
Oor you dont pay attention to tech news.
Theres a reason california passed that law, its not clear enough that you dont own the games
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