Comment on New Storefront Law Tells Us What We All Should Know: We Don't Own Digital Games | Time Extension

LifeOfChance@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I think this law is already going in the right direction. If something can be downloaded to have it indefinitely (like what GOG offers) it is all right. Sure, you have to provide the physical medium yourself, but without the law (or nice stores) you wouldn’t even have the chance.

  And even physical media has often been DRM encumbered. Remember the Sony Rootkit? So I prefer offering a permanent DRM free download I have to backup myself.

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• Kelly@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The bill text is concise and surprisingly readable.

  …legislature.ca.gov/…/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_i…

  They will either need “affirmative acknowledgment from the purchaser” of their rights or provide a “clear and conspicuous statement” clarifying the buying a digital good is a licence situation.

  They provide this definition:

  “Clear and conspicuous” means in a manner that clearly calls attention to the language, such as in larger type than the surrounding text, or in contrasting type, font, or color to the surrounding text of the same size, or set off from the surrounding text of the same size by symbols or other marks.

  For “affirmative acknowledgment” my guess is something like PlayStation does currently might become common. Every time I checkout their purchase button is disabled until I tick a checkbox with this statement:

  I request immediate access to my purchase and acknowledge that I will not be able to cancel my purchase once I start downloading or streaming the content.

  Both of these scenarios should be displayed as part of the checkout flow, not hidden away in the ToS/EULA.

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• sirico@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Or just don’t spend your money on anything non-physical, you don’t need half that shit anyway put it in an EFT fund let em die :D

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  • vhj@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Another problem is that physical is a red herring. You don’t own modern physical games any more than you own digital ones, as the famous The Crew shitshow has demonstrated. It doesn’t matter if you still have the fancy disc, if you can’t even go past the main menu when the publisher decides to shut down the game. In the end DRM is the only deciding factor, not if the game is digital or physical.

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    • xyzzy@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      You mean The Crew, the online-only racing game?

      “It doesn’t apply to an online game, therefore it doesn’t apply to any situation.”

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      • vhj@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        It doesn’t apply to any situation with these kinds of aggressive DRM, like other games such as the latest Gran Turismo. Or games that don’t come full on disc, the OG release of the Spyro trilogy comes to mind (thankfully that’s been fixed).

        In any case my point was for people to check each case before assuming physical is safe from publisher meddling. Since in many cases you don’t own much more than a fancy installer in a pretty box.

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  • grue@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I need you to understand that not only do boycotts not work, suggesting them as some kind of substitute for consumer protection regulation is a corporate bootlicker stance.

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    • sirico@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Boycotts as a grand gesture don’t work, I agree I often use the COD boycott as examples, but neither does giving money to things you don’t agree with. We’ve been doing the Lisa Lionheart story line for the last 20 years, and they know it.

      This law hopefully will provide a bit more clarity to people buying… sorry, licencing games. My comment is the only one I sadly think they’d understand, as Ubisoft are finding out at the moment. Funny how quickly they can change things and give away all these assets we used to get by default when the share prices start dropping.

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