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

• vhj@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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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      • xyzzy@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        You said:

        Another problem is that physical is a red herring. You don’t own modern physical games any more than you own digital ones, This is false. Most games do have the full game data on disc (or card). There are some specific examples, usually AAA titles like Hogwarts and Jedi Survivor, where there is either online DRM (I gather you mean online DRM, add that is the only thing that would make sense in context) or the title was too big to fit on one disc and they cheaped out. This is somewhat more common with Xbox hybrid discs; the disc will generally contain the Xbox One version, while the Series X version is a download. PlayStation 5 games generally have the full game on disc. Switch cards have the full game.

        For the most part, if you buy a physical game, it has the game data on it.

        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.

        If it’s an online-only game, of course it’s not playable if the servers shut down. Don’t want to pay for a time-limited game? Don’t buy them. (I don’t.)

        In the end DRM is the only deciding factor, not if the game is digital or physical. This is also false. DRM (again, presumably you mean online DRM in this discussion) is not the deciding factor. The actual deciding factors are the things are cited above.

        When you say that physical and digital are equivalent, you’re just factually wrong. There are certain cases where the physical disc isn’t sufficient, but by and large, this sweeping statement is incorrect.

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• grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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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