this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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You've never owned games. You've always owned a license to run a game. The license used to be tied to a piece of physical media. Now it's not. But the underlying legal model never changed.
I swear you people would start defending Monsanto licenses if they had sales for video games and supported porting games to Linux.
Removing the license from the actual media means that there is no used game market. It is a pretty significant step.
There already was no used game market for PC games before Steam. The vast majority of publishers were already requiring you to activate your CD key, and limiting the number of times a key could be activated.
I can tell you that there used to be, I was a part of it. But I’m talking about 20+ years ago.
Having online verification for offline video games was something that Valve pioneered and made the standard for all PC games. So much of todays shitty gaming climate was pioneered by Valve including loot boxes, achievements and always on drm.
Bullshit. You could sell your physical copy on the second hand market. This is protected by the "doctrine of first sale." When you buy a a copy of a work, you have the right to lend it, trade it, or sell it. This right was functionally eliminated by platforms like Steam.
First sale doctrine applied because the license is tied to the physical media.
If you were to make a copy of your DVD and then sell the physical media on to someone else- that's always been considered piracy In the eyes of the law.
I'm not making value statements on what's right and wrong here; I just want to clear up some of the misconceptions around how we currently talk about it.
My personal belief is that digital licenses should be transferrable just like physical ones, and that any company that wants to offer DRM such that a license key becomes invalid shall allow a license key to be transferred to another user without restriction.
On a deeper level, the US needs a rethink on the laws surrounding software and copyright, balancing two truths: digital content creators need to make money; and buying a license or right to use any form of digital media IS ownership, and should come with all the same protections as, e.g., buying a physical book.