Sony refunded everyone who bought the game though.
Comment on Sony cracks down on Concord custom servers, issues DMCA takedowns on gameplay videos
FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
How dare they try and play a game they paid for.
Meruten@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
A seller doesn’t get to walk in your home, hand you a check and take your couch. The same should not be allowed for digital goods. A voluntary refund should never revoke ownership rights. But we don’t actually have ownership rights any more, do we? Or any rights.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
Digital ownership is probably going to happen, but it’s going to take a generation of politicians to die off. Once we get more people that understand computers and digital goods aren’t magic, there can be change.
Chozo@fedia.io 14 hours ago
But we don’t actually have ownership rights any more, do we?
When it comes to video games, we've never had ownership rights. Buying a game has always been just buying a license. The only thing that's changed is that now publishers have a mechanism with which to enforce it.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Fuck that, when I bought Chrono Trigger for the SNES, I owned that game. I still own that game. Nintendo has not broken into my home to rescind my license to a physical cartridge that I purchased.
hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
That is absolutely untrue. Games used to be sold as a physical object containing the game files. No serial numbers to redeem, no servers, no downloads or updates. Sometimes you’d get a booklet with the game that had some codes in it that the game would ask for on startup to make making copies a little more difficult, but that was it.
You’d literally have everything you need just on the CD, disk, or cartridge. We 100% owned the game and the system it was played on, and the only way to revoke that would have been to physically break into your house and steal it.
This whole games as services thing is about 20 years old tops, and it wasn’t even remotely approaching the standard for quite a while after that.
4am@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
I’m not sure why you are downvoted, this is 100% correct.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 12 hours ago
I don’t see why I should pay for a license, especially when it can be revoked any time for any reason. That’s just not a valuable product
4am@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
In case you weren’t away, we’ve never had digital ownership. All software has been licensed since the dawn of software, including physical media you’ve bought
Are you using a product that is no longer sold because you have the physical media? If the rights holder decides to go after you to compel you to stop or even try to collect damages, they fucking can.
They historically haven’t because it’s a terrible PR move and they might not have a chance in court due to the physical nature of the transaction; but you’ve never “owned” software in the same way you’ve never owned a movie or music. The sale has always been a license and a physical copy.
The problem has always been the pesky physical copy, which couldn’t be revoked. Since we’ve moved to digital, boomers don’t recognize that this is theft in the digital world they’d never stand for in the real world, and the elite take advantage.
FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
There was a physical release
nyankas@lemmy.ml 15 hours ago
To be fair, everyone was offered a refund for that game. So technically they probably haven‘t payed for it anymore.
I still totally agree that Sony shouldn‘t go after private Concord servers. This game is very interesting, because it was an unbelievable failure despite having pretty solid gameplay. And preserving that on private servers provides a great way for other developers to learn, and maybe prevent, the tons of other issues leading to the game‘s failure.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
This is 100% proof Sony is going to write this off as a tax write off
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 14 hours ago
I firmly believe that anything “written off” in that manner - this includes movies, too, in particular - should have to be released into the public domain as part of that process.
Any business that’s paying less taxes is harming the public good; we should at least benefit in some small way from that.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
It’s more likely they have contractual obligations with marketing companies, retailers, data centers, etc. If a product is discontinued they can get out of those obligations. Sure they will write off a loss and reduce the taxes they pay, but it’s not as if a bigger loss nets them more money somehow.
Really what needs to be regulated is all of the excessive exclusive B2B contracts which mean a company can’t just sell a product for a small amount of money to someone to maintain it when they’re done with that product.
Ulrich@feddit.org 13 hours ago
How does community-run servers prevent them from writing off their losses?
Hadriscus@jlai.lu 11 hours ago
I guess the loss could be argued against in court given that there is player activity, even though it’s not endorsed nor hosted by them. Just speculation
uninvitedguest@piefed.ca 10 hours ago
You’ve said something with such absolute certainty that is not making sense to me.
Now I’m not versed in Japanese tax law, but Japan does follow International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). I’m also not versed in the capitalization of video game development expenses.
A business is going to write down their asset based on their ability to generate future revenue from it. With Concord dead on arrival, it would be fair to say that they would write down everything related to the individual game development. If they left any asset on the books it would be related to the IP/trademarks/copyrights/etc (maybe some transferrable technology if they are getting really specific).
I’m not able to make the connection between issuing takedowns on community servers/videos and the accounting write off of an impaired asset. Issuing takedowns seems more in line with IP protection.
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
This is likely going to be the main reason for the takedown notices, Sony will be exercising their legal rights in order to defend their trademarks & copyrights on Concord assets.
If a company doesn’t defend them vigorously, then any unlicensed works that are allowed to exist are then used as legal precedent moving forward to null/void such copyrights and trademarks.
As an aside, Sony is a global corporation and can likely choose to write down these losses in the most preferred region to maximise the tax offset - so likely either the US, or Ireland.