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As much as I hate to defend Ubisoft on basically anything... Yeah reading that article it's very clear he's discussing this in the context of their subscription

As much as I hate to defend Ubisoft on basically anything... Yeah reading that article it's very clear he's discussing this in the context of their subscription service. It's no crazier than someone wouldn't own their games through acquired via Ubisoft subscription than movies via Netflix or music via Spotify. Is the trend of non-ownership a good thing? I don't think so. And yet I also begrudgingly admit that I listen to a much wider variety of music via streaming than was ever available in my cd/mp3 collection...

devjab 3y ago
I don’t mind steam, but it’s not like you really “own” your library even on that platform. So it has probably been a while since most of us actually owned a video game the way it was 30 years ago. Sure, the subscription services are taking it even further, but as long as you’re not in total control of the stuff you own, it’s not really yours. At least in my opinion.
- ghaff 3y ago
  As a practical matter, if I had a 30+ year old game still up in my attic, it would probably take more time/knowledge/money in many cases to get it running usefully than most people would reasonably put in.
  - pierat 3y ago
    That would be in the realm of Total Annihilation (middle 1990s). I installed that a few weeks ago from the CDs provided on archive.org It took a few minutes to download AND install. What it really boils down to is the ever-downward trend to destroy ownership by converting as much as possible to a service or hidden rental. Me? I prefer to own games that work now or 30 years from now.
    - robinsonb5 3y ago
      > What it really boils down to is the ever-downward trend to destroy ownership by converting as much as possible to a service or hidden rental. The phrase I use for that is "erecting toll-booths".
  - bobmaxup 3y ago
    Not if you still had the original system as well. I imagine it is not the norm though.
- tokai 3y ago
  Yes you do. You can backup and run (most[0]) games without steam. [0] when you can't its because of publishers purposefully blocking it.
  - TillE 3y ago
    Yeah tons of games on Steam have zero DRM, many have trivially weak Steam DRM, and a handful have serious third-party DRM. Whatever the specific license may say about your rights, it's usually easy to make a completely portable backup.
- worble 3y ago
  Honestly, as talking about "ownership" in terms of the law I find to be an argument that just goes round in circles. Like yes, you don't own the game because the EULA says so, but no EULA's aren't legally binding, but yes because they can revoke the game without recourse, etc etc. What's more interesting is ownership in practical terms, in my opinion. And I don't think you can really blanket all the game in Steam under one rule here - some have absolutely 0 DRM and you can back them up and run them just fine anywhere and some have Steam DRM which is trivial to crack; these games you practically own. And then there are games which use Denuvo or other DRM means, where unless its one of the rare games that get a crack. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, regardless of anything else, digital ownership to me boils down to "Can I copy these bytes to a hard drive, and then 20 years later still use them?"
  - ufocia 3y ago
    You're really talking about digital possession not ownership.
RajT88 3y ago
Streaming does let you discover lots of new music which I like. But musically for my "daily driver" playlist I want to go way down a particular rabbit hole and find new stuff. It is less good for that. I am happy streaming exists. On PC I am totally digital download. Consoles, I am more of a collector, so I prefer physical games which I actually own. Eventually having a disc will be the only legal way to play those games if you did not download them. (Some not even then like Destiny)
jstummbillig 3y ago
> Is the trend of non-ownership a good thing? I would argue, on average, it actually is. Because it's not that we are getting nothing in return: We are getting stewardship. Let us at least acknowledge this part of the equation: Hosting things securely and reliably is only naively easy and cheap, and on top only like drawing a picture is easy, if you are Picasso. Sure, you can put those years of professional devops experience to use to maintain a private data haven – but that's not something that will work for most people and it is fairly obvious that, on average, our collective data would be a lot less safe if rolling hosting became everyones favorite passion project.
- howenterprisey 3y ago
  That is certainly a convenience that is gained by renting something, but (1) the significance of that convenience is minimal compared to the threat of the company taking away what you've bought, intentionally or not, and (2) paid backup services exist. It is far from obvious that people renting things instead of owning them makes our collective data a lot more safe. It seems to me that the data would be a lot more vulnerable to companies deciding to make (more) money.
  - jstummbillig 3y ago
    > It is far from obvious that people renting things instead of owning them makes our collective data a lot more safe. You would probably reconsider if you spent more time around the, to this day, ocean of outdated and unmaintained-until-physical-failure-windows-2000ish-servers sprinkled throughout fairly touchy parts of our society, connected to the, gasp, internet. > It seems to me that the data would be a lot more vulnerable to companies deciding to make (more) money. If I have to chose between Google and a free ticket to built vast botnets on perpetually legacy, unmaintained infra, I will, until further notice, gladly have the former every time and let legislation take it from there.
    - howenterprisey 3y ago
      I'm confused. We're talking about video games and other digital media. You would put those on an external drive or similar. Why would the vulnerabilities of such a solution have any overlap with windows 2000-era servers used for infrastructure? What does infrastructure have in common with personal backups?
palata 3y ago
> It's no crazier than someone wouldn't own their games through acquired via Ubisoft subscription than movies via Netflix or music via Spotify. Which doesn't say it is not crazy :-). > Is the trend of non-ownership a good thing? At least with movie/audio it's easy to download. I tend to be okay paying their subscription if I can download it on BitTorrent later. For games it may be a bit harder? Not sure.
ufocia 3y ago
It's not a non-ownership tend. There never was ownership of the content. It was a dillusion. Content was licensed. The thing that's changing is the licensing model, from, arguably, perpetual to a short term with indefinite options for renewal.
georgeecollins 3y ago
If streaming were a better deal for consumers than ownership do you think streamers would push it so hard? Every time I try to buy an MP3 I hit a bunch of anti-patterns trying to get me to click on get this with a subscription. People think of it as the price of a subscription today vs the price of ownership today. The problem is that every service model business has learned to boil the frog slowly.

devjab 3y ago

I don’t mind steam, but it’s not like you really “own” your library even on that platform. So it has probably been a while since most of us actually owned a video game the way it was 30 years ago. Sure, the subscription services are taking it even further, but as long as you’re not in total control of the stuff you own, it’s not really yours. At least in my opinion.

ghaff 3y ago
As a practical matter, if I had a 30+ year old game still up in my attic, it would probably take more time/knowledge/money in many cases to get it running usefully than most people would reasonably put in.
- pierat 3y ago
  That would be in the realm of Total Annihilation (middle 1990s). I installed that a few weeks ago from the CDs provided on archive.org It took a few minutes to download AND install. What it really boils down to is the ever-downward trend to destroy ownership by converting as much as possible to a service or hidden rental. Me? I prefer to own games that work now or 30 years from now.
  - robinsonb5 3y ago
    > What it really boils down to is the ever-downward trend to destroy ownership by converting as much as possible to a service or hidden rental. The phrase I use for that is "erecting toll-booths".
- bobmaxup 3y ago
  Not if you still had the original system as well. I imagine it is not the norm though.
tokai 3y ago
Yes you do. You can backup and run (most[0]) games without steam. [0] when you can't its because of publishers purposefully blocking it.
- TillE 3y ago
  Yeah tons of games on Steam have zero DRM, many have trivially weak Steam DRM, and a handful have serious third-party DRM. Whatever the specific license may say about your rights, it's usually easy to make a completely portable backup.
worble 3y ago
Honestly, as talking about "ownership" in terms of the law I find to be an argument that just goes round in circles. Like yes, you don't own the game because the EULA says so, but no EULA's aren't legally binding, but yes because they can revoke the game without recourse, etc etc. What's more interesting is ownership in practical terms, in my opinion. And I don't think you can really blanket all the game in Steam under one rule here - some have absolutely 0 DRM and you can back them up and run them just fine anywhere and some have Steam DRM which is trivial to crack; these games you practically own. And then there are games which use Denuvo or other DRM means, where unless its one of the rare games that get a crack. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, regardless of anything else, digital ownership to me boils down to "Can I copy these bytes to a hard drive, and then 20 years later still use them?"
- ufocia 3y ago
  You're really talking about digital possession not ownership.

RajT88 3y ago

Streaming does let you discover lots of new music which I like. But musically for my "daily driver" playlist I want to go way down a particular rabbit hole and find new stuff. It is less good for that. I am happy streaming exists. On PC I am totally digital download. Consoles, I am more of a collector, so I prefer physical games which I actually own. Eventually having a disc will be the only legal way to play those games if you did not download them. (Some not even then like Destiny)

jstummbillig 3y ago

> Is the trend of non-ownership a good thing? I would argue, on average, it actually is. Because it's not that we are getting nothing in return: We are getting stewardship. Let us at least acknowledge this part of the equation: Hosting things securely and reliably is only naively easy and cheap, and on top only like drawing a picture is easy, if you are Picasso. Sure, you can put those years of professional devops experience to use to maintain a private data haven – but that's not something that will work for most people and it is fairly obvious that, on average, our collective data would be a lot less safe if rolling hosting became everyones favorite passion project.

howenterprisey 3y ago
That is certainly a convenience that is gained by renting something, but (1) the significance of that convenience is minimal compared to the threat of the company taking away what you've bought, intentionally or not, and (2) paid backup services exist. It is far from obvious that people renting things instead of owning them makes our collective data a lot more safe. It seems to me that the data would be a lot more vulnerable to companies deciding to make (more) money.
- jstummbillig 3y ago
  > It is far from obvious that people renting things instead of owning them makes our collective data a lot more safe. You would probably reconsider if you spent more time around the, to this day, ocean of outdated and unmaintained-until-physical-failure-windows-2000ish-servers sprinkled throughout fairly touchy parts of our society, connected to the, gasp, internet. > It seems to me that the data would be a lot more vulnerable to companies deciding to make (more) money. If I have to chose between Google and a free ticket to built vast botnets on perpetually legacy, unmaintained infra, I will, until further notice, gladly have the former every time and let legislation take it from there.
  - howenterprisey 3y ago
    I'm confused. We're talking about video games and other digital media. You would put those on an external drive or similar. Why would the vulnerabilities of such a solution have any overlap with windows 2000-era servers used for infrastructure? What does infrastructure have in common with personal backups?

palata 3y ago

> It's no crazier than someone wouldn't own their games through acquired via Ubisoft subscription than movies via Netflix or music via Spotify. Which doesn't say it is not crazy :-). > Is the trend of non-ownership a good thing? At least with movie/audio it's easy to download. I tend to be okay paying their subscription if I can download it on BitTorrent later. For games it may be a bit harder? Not sure.

ufocia 3y ago

It's not a non-ownership tend. There never was ownership of the content. It was a dillusion. Content was licensed. The thing that's changing is the licensing model, from, arguably, perpetual to a short term with indefinite options for renewal.

georgeecollins 3y ago

If streaming were a better deal for consumers than ownership do you think streamers would push it so hard? Every time I try to buy an MP3 I hit a bunch of anti-patterns trying to get me to click on get this with a subscription. People think of it as the price of a subscription today vs the price of ownership today. The problem is that every service model business has learned to boil the frog slowly.