They Are Destroying Your Games - Don't Let Them

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If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing!

This problem goes much further than just video games. The idea of ownership itself is being erased.

Thanks a bunch for the mention! Just to clarify, options are unfortunately minimal for people in the USA (unless you own The Crew), a whole of this is focused on other countries, since those were the only openings I found. That said, the more complaints get filed, the more likely something will be done about this. Also, governments are dragging their asses on opening initiatives we submitted over 3 weeks ago, but as soon as they open up, more people can take action in more countries.

You used to purchase games. Now you lease or rent them. 'You will own nothing & be happy'.

Most irritating thing about the shift to digital is how many times I've bought a disc box for a game, only for a gamecode to be inside instead of a disc.

That's why acquiring games through "alternative" means is not just okay, it's our duty until our rights are protected by the consumer laws.

"Games as a service" truly is a disease. Just a couple of days ago, I launched a single-player session of Conan Exiles just to find a couple of items I had on me (warpaints, to be specific), were gone. Turns out it's because I wasn't connected to the game's store/servers. Unfortunately, you have 2 kinds of people when it comes to digital media: the ones that don't care that they don't own the things they buy, or the kind of people who say "just buy physical" (which isn't even an option for everybody) and act like it's a lost battle.

Worth noting that this is not just a shift within the video game industry. The automotive industry putting seat heating behind paywalls, or cars that refuse to start if they cannot install software updates. The smartphone industry making us ever more reliant on their services to the point we are no longer allowed to break open the shell of one to repair them ourselves, this same goes for other electronic/smart devices. The creative industries too, with corporations like Adobe no longer selling physical licenses to their products, and instead selling us revocable "services", renting out their software instead. All of these industries and more have shifted or are shifting toward the "live service" trend, taking away our rights as users in the process.

I don't buy live service games. The anti-consumer trends aren't on me.

If they're entering the grey area then so am I. The last few years I've started pirating some games I've already paid for simply because I don't want to lose them. Luckily we have amazing developers like Larian who make their games DRM free so it's as simple as copying the game folder to a backup drive. Owning the products you've paid for, what a crazy concept!

Remember when dedicated servers were a thing?

It's kinda funny that 'Gordon Freeman' of all people, had to raise his voice so people started doing something about this.

This is why GOG is one of the few actually good competetors to steam. Those games will last forever. That doesn't solve always online games though, they need offline patches

oh, if it were only games. Everything is becoming a live service. Your car, your tv, your computer, everything. It is the recurrent revenue model: If you're not paying x% of your income to us you cannot have a normal life. The sad part is when we arrive at that point, where more people will be affected and start complaining it will be too late. Games is just easier because it is so unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But the worst offenders are people who say: "That's how the world is. Nothing we can do about it"

Piracy is not morally wrong if publishers can just delist games from your library or shut down servers or close your account that contains your games library.

Push for laws that protect you. Ones where "Terms of Service" are removed or cannot be changed. Laws that state if a game you purchased is changed afterwards, it is considered a bait and switch entitling you to compensation, and laws where companies must offer a full refund of every dollar you paid into it should you ever be denied access to it.

All of this is without mentioning the fact that the cost of running servers long term could be completely eliminated by including the ability for players to host their own server, which is how online games used to work back in the early 2000s specifically of how expensive server hosting is.

Here's the thing though: unless the GAME is literally a subscription service (so not a one time purchase), then it is by international law a PRODUCT. It's an international agreement called the "Nice agreement", which recognizes software as a product. And as a product, you OWN it, even if it's software. By OWN, we understand ownership of the INSTANCE of the product that you bought. So it's technically illegal for them to not allow you to download the game anymore, or to not play it anymore. All we need is some ballsy people suing these assholes and starting precedents.

Building an offline mode at the end life cycle of these games would be a very good thing for anyone wanting to play them even after theyre gone.