3 ms·

You can pay for services and you may use the term “buy”, but it is clear you’re receiving a service, and a service in its nature is temporary. Buy a night in a

You can pay for services and you may use the term “buy”, but it is clear you’re receiving a service, and a service in its nature is temporary. Buy a night in a hotel, dinner in a restaurant, haircut, shoe shine. These are all services. Buying of digital services like games, films, and music is an evolution of buying dvds, cds or records. There is an expectation that you now own something. I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children. If media companies want to sell a license that has an expiry date, that’s fine, but it has to be explicitly communicated. Consumers have to be well informed about what they’re purchasing.

nfw2 3mo ago
Access to an online server is clearly a service, hence the word "server"
- fizwidget 3mo ago
  The discussion is not just about online multiplayer games though, it’s about games in general. There is no good reason why buying a singleplayer offline game need be a “service”.
  - nfw2 3mo ago
    There IS a reason they don't make it possible to download the game copies directly, which is it becomes trivially easy to perfectly replicate and distribute new copies online, which is not true of any physical good. People who aren't overly-online forum denizens only care about this issue insofar as it affects them, and the only way it affects people in the real world is when they lose access to online games when the server shuts down. Offline games don't get access revoked in practice.
smelendez 3mo ago
Yeah, I can’t actually think of any contracts besides media licenses that are fixed payment for access to a resource for an indeterminate length of time. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it.
matwood 3mo ago
> I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children. What if you lost or otherwise destroyed/damaged the record, should you still have access through some other means or be forced to buy it again?
- tikkabhuna 3mo ago
  I think that's on you. I'd expect it to be on me. If I bought another physical product (a bike, football, scissors, knives), I'd expect to buy a replacement if I couldn't fix it. That's definitely a perk of digital media. And for the record, I'm not against digital media. There are a ton of benefits. I think there just needs to be better communication of the expectations between producer and consumers. Reading this thread and seeing that California requires the use of "License" instead of "Buy" is a good example of emphasising the difference between paying for digital media and physical media.

nfw2 3mo ago

Access to an online server is clearly a service, hence the word "server"

fizwidget 3mo ago
The discussion is not just about online multiplayer games though, it’s about games in general. There is no good reason why buying a singleplayer offline game need be a “service”.
- nfw2 3mo ago
  There IS a reason they don't make it possible to download the game copies directly, which is it becomes trivially easy to perfectly replicate and distribute new copies online, which is not true of any physical good. People who aren't overly-online forum denizens only care about this issue insofar as it affects them, and the only way it affects people in the real world is when they lose access to online games when the server shuts down. Offline games don't get access revoked in practice.

smelendez 3mo ago

Yeah, I can’t actually think of any contracts besides media licenses that are fixed payment for access to a resource for an indeterminate length of time. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it.

matwood 3mo ago

> I can dig out my dad’s old records and play them and pass them onto my children. What if you lost or otherwise destroyed/damaged the record, should you still have access through some other means or be forced to buy it again?

tikkabhuna 3mo ago
I think that's on you. I'd expect it to be on me. If I bought another physical product (a bike, football, scissors, knives), I'd expect to buy a replacement if I couldn't fix it. That's definitely a perk of digital media. And for the record, I'm not against digital media. There are a ton of benefits. I think there just needs to be better communication of the expectations between producer and consumers. Reading this thread and seeing that California requires the use of "License" instead of "Buy" is a good example of emphasising the difference between paying for digital media and physical media.