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What's the problem with this ? I'm not familiar with accounting.

• martin-adams 5y ago
  It means that all revenue could at some point trigger a refund, for example if they want to exit the media distribution business and shutdown the services. That would be an expensive thing to do. I suspect any law would state it has an availability period before refunds are not eligible.
  • MereInterest 5y ago
    That's only if they design the distribution system such that it relies on the existence of the servers. If I start up Age of Empires 2 (assume in a computer or older VM such that compatibility isn't an issue), I can start a multiplayer game through LAN without any issue. If I start up a game of Overwatch, I cannot play against somebody in the same room without connecting through Blizzard's servers. It is perfectly reasonable for a company to be liable for refunds if they want to deliberately take products or features away from users. In order for a company to avoid this liability, they must provide a way for those features to still be available to users, even if the company no longer supports the product. This is pretty easy and straightforward to legislate. A media company that provides distribution of individual works (like Steam or Apple, as opposed to subscription services like Netflix), must provide a method for users to easily and automatically back up all purchased content. A company that runs servers necessary to the use of a program (e.g. matchmaking servers for video games) must provide the server executable, in a form that can run on currently-available commodity hardware, and must allow the client to select a privately-owned software. Companies that don't meet these requirements would still hold full liability for refunds if they remove product features later on.