I wonder if the author sees the dichotomy of the title, while preserving games for a platform that can choose to lock you out at their discretion.
That aside it's surprising to hear about the features-behind-an-app behaviour from Bosch, they've normally been a trusted name in appliances for a long time and it seems even that is no longer going to be true.
I mostly play solo games. I "obtain" a DRM-free copy of every game I own and put them in a private S3 for posterity. Just like I inherited a massive collection of SciFi books from my dad, I hope to pass everything I enjoyed to my kids, if I ever have some.
A company runs an online game. The actual online infrastructure is a bunch of different services that are held together with string. They have licenced some propriatry database. The studio runs out of money and lays off all the staff.
i bought GTAV and some assassin's creed. I dont want to play, i just like to roam around the virtual world to relax. But i can't relax anymore because every time they launch they need to download 1 full day of updates that i dont need.
I think the bulk of this is kind of a silly semantic argument
"After all, I didn't click 'Rent now'. I paid 60 bucks and clicked a button that said 'Buy'"
With all the Terms of Service, you rarely actually "own" a piece of software. If all the "Buy" buttons were replaced with "Lease License" buttons - would that really change everything..? everyone would suddenly stop complaining？ I doubt it
B/c the core issue is people/consumers feel entitled to relive childhood experiences. But just like you don't have some inaliable right to go see Terminator in theaters because you did it once as a kid. I don't see why you have a right to emulate and replay a game. You don't own a right to enjoy other people's work. If they want to show it to you once and then burn it in a fire - that's their right. They have the right to distribute it the way they see fit.
I think it's easier to think of the mortality when it's not a big mega corporation and think of it as a singular person's creation and you as a passive consumer asserting your rights to what they made and how they should share it
The secondary issue of "owned" and "leased" being not clearly labeled.. I think is an issue. You should know a priori what you're getting in to - and at the moment it's really unclear at times (ex the washing machine example)
> I bought a Bosch 500 series because our old one broke, and we needed one quick.
Slightly OT (or maybe not) older dishwashers are usually not very hard to fix (depending on the problem). My dishwasher is over ten years old. The pump broke: I replaced it. It was easy and cheap (EUR 60).
It wasn't even the pump that was broken, just the heating resistance attached to it that had fried. You can replace only the resistor if you're skilled enough to reattach a new one. I couldn't: removing the old one was easy, but I couldn't put it back in place so I bought a whole pump instead.
Likewise, my laundry machine is over 15 years old. I just replaced the carbon brushes: they last for something like 10 years and cost less than EUR 10 a pair.
I don't think I will buy a new machine any time soon, or if I have to, it will be a used one.
I have lots of games on steam (epic and Gog) too. I fear death of these platforms or removal or games that I 'own' already. I only recently started buying games, even bought the games out of guilt that I previously played pirated.
I think best is to buy a game from these platforms, and as a permanent backup, download a pirated copy of that game.
From what I’ve been seeing lately: “If buying isn’t owning, then pirating isn’t stealing.”
I holeheartedly agree with it. I used to have a Netflix subscription until about 3 years ago. Then, the quantity and quality of content got so bad, I’ve reverted back to a trusty radarr + sonarr + BitTorrent solution.
Not only it’s faster to have it all hosted locally, but I also don’t go through mindless binge watching as the only content available is that I’ve previously willingly tag it for download.
Now, the only content I pay is when I go to the cinema sometimes when a movie really seems worth it.
This is not a new phenomenon. Back in the late 90s, Virgin Interactive released my all time favourite game: Subspace. I bought the boxed edition. Not long after, they shut down their servers leaving a lot of people disappointed.
The community stepped up and started running their own servers. Eventually the game client proper was also rewritten (by one of the guys who would go on to create Kazaa and Skype).
I don't think anyone expects companies to keep servers running for free forever. But if a community steps up, the IP holders should let it.
I am much more sympathetic to the concerns about classic appliances becoming IOT slop, GNU, and stuff like right-to-repair, as these concern expensive, nearly non-negotiable, things you have to interact with.
But I honestly just don't care about video games. If a game company pisses me off, I'm just gonna not play it, and opt for one of the thousands of other games that came out this year. This is needless regulation, and will probably be counterproductive to your interests in the long run.
Not only that, this is such a small problem in the grand scale of things, that I don't know why we're giving it breath. Law makers have far more important things to concern themselves with. This feels like a South Park parody of hand-wringing nerds crying about video games because they have nothing else worthwhile in their life.
What people keep failing to understand about Stop Killing Games is that the proposal is intentionally vague and doesn't fully specify its demands. The intent is to open a conversation, not think through every corner case.
Of course, the logical minds here will want to tear it apart and analyze it from every direction, but don't forget that it still needs to be "transformed" into an actual non-vague version.
Part of me worries it'll get transformed into some onerous GDPR-style law that just adds a new annoying banner when you install a game that warns you that you accept whatever end of life plan the game has, which no one will read...
Stop killings games is reasonable, but why can’t “you” stop demanding free labour? This whole thing is categorisation and labelling issue. The terms of transaction must be made clear with as big and bold letters as possible. Game devs should be free to create and sell games as they wish provided the terms of transaction are clear. If they don’t want to sell server binaries or open source code, then it is crazy to force them to do so.
Platforms can encourage games which have a clear sunset plan over those that don’t. Eventually the market should come up with viable solutions rather than a law made by untrained people over what and how software should be created.
21 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 44.0 ms ] threadThat aside it's surprising to hear about the features-behind-an-app behaviour from Bosch, they've normally been a trusted name in appliances for a long time and it seems even that is no longer going to be true.
What happens?
"After all, I didn't click 'Rent now'. I paid 60 bucks and clicked a button that said 'Buy'"
With all the Terms of Service, you rarely actually "own" a piece of software. If all the "Buy" buttons were replaced with "Lease License" buttons - would that really change everything..? everyone would suddenly stop complaining？ I doubt it
B/c the core issue is people/consumers feel entitled to relive childhood experiences. But just like you don't have some inaliable right to go see Terminator in theaters because you did it once as a kid. I don't see why you have a right to emulate and replay a game. You don't own a right to enjoy other people's work. If they want to show it to you once and then burn it in a fire - that's their right. They have the right to distribute it the way they see fit.
I think it's easier to think of the mortality when it's not a big mega corporation and think of it as a singular person's creation and you as a passive consumer asserting your rights to what they made and how they should share it
The secondary issue of "owned" and "leased" being not clearly labeled.. I think is an issue. You should know a priori what you're getting in to - and at the moment it's really unclear at times (ex the washing machine example)
Slightly OT (or maybe not) older dishwashers are usually not very hard to fix (depending on the problem). My dishwasher is over ten years old. The pump broke: I replaced it. It was easy and cheap (EUR 60).
It wasn't even the pump that was broken, just the heating resistance attached to it that had fried. You can replace only the resistor if you're skilled enough to reattach a new one. I couldn't: removing the old one was easy, but I couldn't put it back in place so I bought a whole pump instead.
Likewise, my laundry machine is over 15 years old. I just replaced the carbon brushes: they last for something like 10 years and cost less than EUR 10 a pair.
I don't think I will buy a new machine any time soon, or if I have to, it will be a used one.
When does software become a videogame?
I think best is to buy a game from these platforms, and as a permanent backup, download a pirated copy of that game.
I holeheartedly agree with it. I used to have a Netflix subscription until about 3 years ago. Then, the quantity and quality of content got so bad, I’ve reverted back to a trusty radarr + sonarr + BitTorrent solution.
Not only it’s faster to have it all hosted locally, but I also don’t go through mindless binge watching as the only content available is that I’ve previously willingly tag it for download.
Now, the only content I pay is when I go to the cinema sometimes when a movie really seems worth it.
The community stepped up and started running their own servers. Eventually the game client proper was also rewritten (by one of the guys who would go on to create Kazaa and Skype).
I don't think anyone expects companies to keep servers running for free forever. But if a community steps up, the IP holders should let it.
But I honestly just don't care about video games. If a game company pisses me off, I'm just gonna not play it, and opt for one of the thousands of other games that came out this year. This is needless regulation, and will probably be counterproductive to your interests in the long run.
Not only that, this is such a small problem in the grand scale of things, that I don't know why we're giving it breath. Law makers have far more important things to concern themselves with. This feels like a South Park parody of hand-wringing nerds crying about video games because they have nothing else worthwhile in their life.
I don’t think passing laws is the right thing to do
https://archive.org/details/libreelec-raspberry-pi-5
Of course, the logical minds here will want to tear it apart and analyze it from every direction, but don't forget that it still needs to be "transformed" into an actual non-vague version.
Part of me worries it'll get transformed into some onerous GDPR-style law that just adds a new annoying banner when you install a game that warns you that you accept whatever end of life plan the game has, which no one will read...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44445880
Platforms can encourage games which have a clear sunset plan over those that don’t. Eventually the market should come up with viable solutions rather than a law made by untrained people over what and how software should be created.