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If I buy something, I expect to own it. The implementation details and challenge incurred to the vendor are not my problem. They took part in this transaction f

If I buy something, I expect to own it. The implementation details and challenge incurred to the vendor are not my problem. They took part in this transaction fully knowing this, while I had no way to know how "durable" my dlc are.. I understand how the cost-benifit analysis today favours shutting down servers and retroactively taking away recently sold products. This is probably why the previous comment suggested the need for legislation.

SllX 4y ago
You do. You own the disc. Or you own a copy of the virtual equivalent on a disk that you have. You also own the equipment serving as the runtime environment. What you don’t own are the servers running the server side features or the software not on the disc you bought.
- db48x 4y ago
  I think that is overly reductive; just ask anyone who bought Dark Spore. The single-player campaign is entirely on the disk that they own, but the game contacts a server that tracks your progress. It then doesn't allow you to go back to any level you have already played. There's no way to start over or replay any part of it. This is simply abusive; they should have been required to state up front, in very clear terms, that the player had not actually purchased anything, and that they could only play the game once. It is true that the players do not own the servers, but it should also be illegal for game companies to abuse their customers using that asymmetry. This is true even though Dark Spore was apparently a pretty dull game (I never played it myself).
  - SllX 4y ago
    I don’t think that it is. I’m unfamiliar with Darkspore (spelling I found when searching conjoined it), but part of being an informed consumer is knowing what you are buying. If you’re buying a game with a substantial single player game, LAN-based multiplayer, and online multiplayer, the part you don’t get to keep is the latter portion when the game ends. You’ve effectively bought a game and a ticket, and you should know you bought a ticket because business entities don’t have the obligation to keep existing or to continue owning their assets beyond whatever their contracts require (and there’s even ways to sell those out depending on the contract). But you still own the rest. In the case of a MMORPG or live service game, all you own is a ticket. And even then it’s not as if you can’t be banned from accessing the servers effectively at-will but usually for cheating or harassment. You have to know the difference, because an online game is an experience in entertainment terms where as an offline game is a re-runnable piece of media. That’s not to discount the scummy things software shops can do, but check the original article; they’re shutting down the servers mostly for games 9+ years old, one that’s only a few years old but is online-only (never heard of it, must not have been too successful), and I have no idea what Ubisoft is doing with the access to DLC part in some of those titles. The article didn’t explain that part very well which is basically what I expect from game journalism, but is this DLC that is intrinsically part of the online experience? Is it offline DLC you can still keep, but not redownload? Is this a little bit of column A or a little bit of column B? Point is, for some things that you “buy”: when the music stops, the band goes home and the stage gets taken down.
    - db48x 4y ago
      This has nothing to do with multiplayer. This was a single player game that vanished as soon as you played it; even if you liked it, still had the disk and a computer to run it in, it was gone. It was sold as an ordinary computer game, not as a concert that happens exactly once. (Even concerts are given dozens of times in a year, rather than one single time.)
      - SllX 4y ago
        I’m going to just have to take your word on that one. That frankly sounds like a case of actual fraud that I’ve been unable to verify, despite finding plenty of other controversies around the title, and basically an unproductive outlier to this discussion. I will note the DRM server shenanigans are something I think should be illegal (on the basis that’s it’s a kind of fraud, but different than what you wrote about) though, and I’m surprised you didn’t bring that up.
        db48x 4y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2pdvh4uiaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2pdvh4uiaM
        SllX 4y ago
        Well I’ll be damned! That’s a terrible way to sell a game. Chalk that up to another reason not to buy from EA. That said, did people continue buying this game knowing that? Was there any backlash or controversy? Because despite the DRM activation servers going down I did see some enthusiasm around keeping this game going.
        db48x 4y ago
        The controversy was mixed up with the overall dislike of single–player games that required you to have a constant internet connection, which had gotten started a few years earlier. SimCity, released by EA in 2013, got a lot more hate because of it than Darkspore did, but at least you could have more than one city at a time and when you finished with one you could still play it as many times as you wanted. If you could stomach it. Darkspore just didn’t have the cachet that SimCity did, so it didn’t attract as much attention.
Zerverus 4y ago
Oh you own Apple headphones alright too until they die a year later in forced battery death.

SllX 4y ago

You do. You own the disc. Or you own a copy of the virtual equivalent on a disk that you have. You also own the equipment serving as the runtime environment. What you don’t own are the servers running the server side features or the software not on the disc you bought.

db48x 4y ago
I think that is overly reductive; just ask anyone who bought Dark Spore. The single-player campaign is entirely on the disk that they own, but the game contacts a server that tracks your progress. It then doesn't allow you to go back to any level you have already played. There's no way to start over or replay any part of it. This is simply abusive; they should have been required to state up front, in very clear terms, that the player had not actually purchased anything, and that they could only play the game once. It is true that the players do not own the servers, but it should also be illegal for game companies to abuse their customers using that asymmetry. This is true even though Dark Spore was apparently a pretty dull game (I never played it myself).
- SllX 4y ago
  I don’t think that it is. I’m unfamiliar with Darkspore (spelling I found when searching conjoined it), but part of being an informed consumer is knowing what you are buying. If you’re buying a game with a substantial single player game, LAN-based multiplayer, and online multiplayer, the part you don’t get to keep is the latter portion when the game ends. You’ve effectively bought a game and a ticket, and you should know you bought a ticket because business entities don’t have the obligation to keep existing or to continue owning their assets beyond whatever their contracts require (and there’s even ways to sell those out depending on the contract). But you still own the rest. In the case of a MMORPG or live service game, all you own is a ticket. And even then it’s not as if you can’t be banned from accessing the servers effectively at-will but usually for cheating or harassment. You have to know the difference, because an online game is an experience in entertainment terms where as an offline game is a re-runnable piece of media. That’s not to discount the scummy things software shops can do, but check the original article; they’re shutting down the servers mostly for games 9+ years old, one that’s only a few years old but is online-only (never heard of it, must not have been too successful), and I have no idea what Ubisoft is doing with the access to DLC part in some of those titles. The article didn’t explain that part very well which is basically what I expect from game journalism, but is this DLC that is intrinsically part of the online experience? Is it offline DLC you can still keep, but not redownload? Is this a little bit of column A or a little bit of column B? Point is, for some things that you “buy”: when the music stops, the band goes home and the stage gets taken down.
  - db48x 4y ago
    This has nothing to do with multiplayer. This was a single player game that vanished as soon as you played it; even if you liked it, still had the disk and a computer to run it in, it was gone. It was sold as an ordinary computer game, not as a concert that happens exactly once. (Even concerts are given dozens of times in a year, rather than one single time.)
    - SllX 4y ago
      I’m going to just have to take your word on that one. That frankly sounds like a case of actual fraud that I’ve been unable to verify, despite finding plenty of other controversies around the title, and basically an unproductive outlier to this discussion. I will note the DRM server shenanigans are something I think should be illegal (on the basis that’s it’s a kind of fraud, but different than what you wrote about) though, and I’m surprised you didn’t bring that up.
      - db48x 4y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2pdvh4uiaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2pdvh4uiaM
        SllX 4y ago
        Well I’ll be damned! That’s a terrible way to sell a game. Chalk that up to another reason not to buy from EA. That said, did people continue buying this game knowing that? Was there any backlash or controversy? Because despite the DRM activation servers going down I did see some enthusiasm around keeping this game going.
        db48x 4y ago
        The controversy was mixed up with the overall dislike of single–player games that required you to have a constant internet connection, which had gotten started a few years earlier. SimCity, released by EA in 2013, got a lot more hate because of it than Darkspore did, but at least you could have more than one city at a time and when you finished with one you could still play it as many times as you wanted. If you could stomach it. Darkspore just didn’t have the cachet that SimCity did, so it didn’t attract as much attention.

Zerverus 4y ago

Oh you own Apple headphones alright too until they die a year later in forced battery death.