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.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 15 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.
missingno@fedia.io 15 hours ago
Legally speaking, you own the physical cartridge, but you only own a license to the software on the cartridge.
Practically speaking, no one will break into your house to control what you do with the cartridge.
4am@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
You’ve never owned Chrono Trigger.
Sorry, another way in which the world was a lie.
But as the other person replying said, with physical media they’d have to break into your house; probably not happening without them wining some kind of devastating lawsuit against you.
Anyway the point we’re all making by pointing out this seemingly pedantic distinction is that digital media is sold in the same way physical was (just, without the need to transport a physical object to provide access to the media); this is what allows media companies to now take advantage. Whether it’s losing all your “owned” movies when the PS3 store shut down, or your games being “stolen” when Ubisoft shuts down the license server, etc.
Laws haven’t caught up because this transition happened gradually and without such poor practices; and now through regulatory capture will largely be ignored.
It’s a class war and they’re winning, even though they have no idea what the consequences will be as long as they get to live in opulence and control for now.