PlayStation keeps reminding us why digital ownership sucks
www.theverge.com
Time to buy physical games again?

I’d like to get the community’s feedback on this. I find it very disturbing that digital content purchased on a platform does not rightfully belong to the purchaser and that the content can be completely removed by the platform owners. Based on my understanding, when we purchase a show or movie or game digitally, what we’re really doing is purchasing a “license” to access the media on the platform. This is different from owning a physical copy of the same media. Years before the move to digital media, we would buy DVDs and Blu-Rays the shows and movies we want to watch, and no one seemed to question the ownership of those physical media.

Why is it that digital media purchasing and ownership isn’t the same as purchasing and owning the physical media? How did it become like this, and is there anything that can be done to convince these platforms that purchasing a digital copy of a media should be equivalent to purchasing a physical DVD or Blu-Ray disc?

P.S. I know there’s pirating and all, but that’s not the focus of my question.

    • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
      9·
      11 months ago

      With the trend of everything these days, I’m beyond tired of our station in this world—during our ONE FUCKING life we get, we’re nothing more than pockets. And when those pockets are empty, you’re nothing.

      A chaotic world of post-societal-collapse would be fuckin awful, but at least we’d be free of bought/paid-for capitalist “living.” We’re not living under capitalism, we are churned for capitalism. It’s so goddamn frustrating and tragic.

    • godzillabacter@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      11 months ago

      I think the point is more so why are digital purchased DRM’ed and prohibited from local storage in so many ways. The historical argument is “well you’re not buying it, you’re buying a license to use it for as long as we wish to provide it”, but why does it necessarily need to be that way. And more generally, from the standpoint of artistic/media preservation, as BluRay releases continue to decrease and console video game releases become continually more digital-only, these non-archivable or locked-without-server-license-validation media results in IP that at some point in time, this media could be permanently lost.

      Personally, I feel this is unacceptable. The media we consume forms a huge portion of our culture, and is just as much an example of artistic expression as painting. While I thoroughly believe artists/companies should be able to charge for these properties, I do not believe that when it is no longer profitable for them to support the system, that these pieces of media should simply be discarded with no method for future recovery and preservation.

      • Chadus_Maximus@lemm.eeEnglish
        31·
        11 months ago

        Simple. When you license your show to a streaming platform, it is more lucrative to put in an arbitrary end date on the off-chance the platform decides to renew the license. Consumers have no say in this so they just have to take what is given.

        Want to stream it forever? Be prepared to pay an exorbitant amount of money because the showrunnere REALLY don’t want that.

        • godzillabacter@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          11 months ago

          Yes, but most DRM has been circumvented in one way or another. DRM primarily continues to keep law-abiding citizens from easily acquiring a copy of media they rightfully own as opposed to preventing piracy.

          Though if institutions insist on utilizing DRM for prevention of privacy, I do think that DRM should be built to fail after a meaningful timeframe, at worst the expiry of the copyright for the material. Unfortunately many pieces of media, particularly video games, are abandoned and unsupported long before their copywriter expires. Abandonware in general is not well handled by modern copywrite law.

    • sederx@programming.devEnglish
      11·
      11 months ago

      If you want to keep your data forever, buy a Blu-Ray.

      which will degrade and become unusable in what? 20 years?

  • MacAttak8@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    11 months ago

    I’m surprised that no one has mentioned this but a lot of physical discs nowadays are nothing more than glorified license checks, especially with games. Even buying the physical version does not guarantee you safety from these problems.

          • Alexstarfire@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            That’s not the digital being talked about. Though, you’re technically correct. That’s why I’ve got bookshelves of DVDs and Blu-Rays. But, they also have DRM in various forms. Only difference is you “own” it. Pretty sure decrypting the contents to copy it is technically illegal. Sure, they can’t take that copy away, but it doesn’t last forever either. I’ve already had a few DVDs crap out on me.

  • FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    Piracy will always win whether corporations like it or not. I’ll always try and buy physical copies of games. But movies and TV shows need to be on my hard drive if the price isn’t right for a physical copy.

    I have my fair share of streaming services. Peacock for WWE, prime video well cause of Amazon prime. But if I do wanna watch a movie or show, then I will have to sail the high seas.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    71·
    11 months ago

    Expect, there is no future in digital ownership.

    You will own nothing and you WILL be happy.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    31·
    11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Affected users who may have spent years building a robust digital library were suddenly left without access to content they had bought through no fault of their own.

    Even though downloading and accessing digital content is often easier than trudging to a retail store to buy a physical copy of a game, you’re putting your faith in the platform holders to maintain their digital storefronts, the content on those storefronts, and their account systems so that your access keeps working.

    The recent closure of Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS eShops was a stark reminder that companies have the power to decide when you can buy digital content.

    While you can still redownload Wii U and 3DS games that you’ve purchased, it seems inevitable that Nintendo will stop letting you do that one day.

    And Sony isn’t offering any compensation for titles you’ve already bought or a way to transfer those purchases to another store.

    The PlayStation account bans were as swift as they were unexpected, and while resolution for most arrived within a few hours, Sony still hasn’t shared any public communication about what happened or why users should continue to trust the platform.

    The original article contains 525 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1028·
    11 months ago

    Im gonna use a bad word, but NFTs would help with this issue

    True digital ownership thats censor proof is pretty legit imo

    • echo64@lemmy.worldEnglish
      192·
      11 months ago

      Nfts don’t give you ownership over anything but the nft itself. Everything else is a license system that says, “You can have this because you have an nft,” you know, the exact same system we have now but will more bullshit .

      • NekuSoul@lemmy.nekusoul.deEnglish
        91·
        11 months ago

        It’s quite amazing that these people don’t realize that they’re just reinventing DRM, but worse.

      • ryannathans@aussie.zoneEnglish
        24·
        11 months ago

        Less shit. You could actually trade your fucking games and would not be limited to one platform

        • echo64@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          11 months ago

          you’re still limited to one platform, the vendor has to recognise the NFT, and vendors are only going to recognise their own NFT’s that they saw value from selling.

          there is no benefit to bullshit NFT tokens, unless you are running a ponzi scheme.

        • Chadus_Maximus@lemm.eeEnglish
          12·
          11 months ago

          Then those games would be subject to Gresham’s law LMAO. I would never trust a company that allows transfers between platforms.

            • Chadus_Maximus@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              You would have a platform to trade games, and another to keep them. The trading platform will be able to undercut the holding platform due to practices such as exclusivity deals. This, in turn, will make the holding platform require a commission fee whenever a game is transferred to it.

              If you could get a game for free in the Epic store and transfer it to Steam, where does Steam get the money from?

                • Chadus_Maximus@lemm.eeEnglish
                  1·
                  11 months ago

                  Will I suppose that’s where we gotta disagree then. I cannot ever imagine exclusivity deals going away. Unless we somehow manage to get a government-subsidized middleman to track and enforce parity, you’ll always have platforms attracting prospective developers with exclusivity deals. Then you don’t have to compete with pricing at all!

                  As for your last point, I believe most gamers would tell any company charging for downloads to fuck off. But I can see this actually happening in the future.

        • echo64@lemmy.worldEnglish
          61·
          11 months ago

          So? If the licence holder wanted, they could just put an option in for you to sell what you have. The nft does not matter. It is not needed and is just added bullshit

            • echo64@lemmy.worldEnglish
              72·
              11 months ago

              Force? No one said force. I am talking about something like steam letting you sell your game. They could if they wanted and it doesn’t need nfts. Nfts are just bullshit coins that serve no real purpose.

              Everything you might claim you can do with nfts, you can do today without nfts, or it’s a ponzi scheme.

              • ryannathans@aussie.zoneEnglish
                44·
                11 months ago

                NFTs are a necessary prerequisite for trading games with peers without being locked into some bullshit monopoly like steam community trading

                • echo64@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  41·
                  11 months ago

                  you’re still locked in because the licence provider has to recognise the NFT, the lock-in is with the licence provider. all the NFT is, is a ticket that says “I’m allowed”.

                  it’s the exact same thing but will added bullshit.

                  if you want a tradable token that doesn’t require lock-in, that token has to have intrinsic value. Like with a physical disk with a movie on it. there is no lock-in to a vendor system, it’s got everything it needs right there. it has intrinsic value.

                  NFT’s are a bullshit ticket that says “please give me access, you pwomised”, that you can sell if you want. but you could just do the same thing inside the vendors own system and it’s all exactly the same because the vendor has to say yes/no in the end, as the nft has no value.

    • Gray@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      11 months ago

      Or just let us download the actual game/movie/song like the good old days.

    • SnuggleSnail@ani.socialEnglish
      31·
      11 months ago

      So… you have the full game encoded in an NFT? That sounds like a shit ton of overhead.