alt Hacker NewsThis isn't just isn't as clearcut as people make it. A lot of it is based on a historic idea of an SNES cartridge or PS1 disk that contained the complete game, which was played locally and was entirely self-contained. It makes sense that you'd "own" that.
But we don't live in that world anymore. An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it? If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly? Even with games like CoD that have a campaign, the game would degrade by losing online services.
Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down? Or does it need to be available to download forever? If so, who hosts that?
As another example, I can probably from some old DVDs with games like GTA4 on them if I dig in boxes. I have since bought most on Steam since but ignore that. Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up. What happens then? What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists? What exactly do you "own"?
For digital TV shows and movies, this is far easier. I've never bought any of these. Years ago, you couldn't even download movies again from iTunes. If you lost it, bad luck. They reversed course on that I believe. But all these cases where the digital store lost the digital icense, which is going to happen, what did you think was going to happen?
What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained? By whom? You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle.
But games are tougher for the reasons I described.
Here's something else to consider: part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail. This degradation is built into the pricing model.
I honestly don't know what the solution is here but this just isn't as clearcut as people are making it out to be.
> An extreme example is Fortnite. This is free (with paid cosmetics) but imagine if it cost $20. Do you own it?
You should.
> If they shut down the Fortnite servers, the game is pretty much worthless. What do you "own" exactly?
You should also own a copy of the server software so you can host your own Fortnite lobby.
> Even for an offline game that's bought online, there will have been patches. If your console dies or you buy a new one, where do you download it from once the service shuts down?
The real-world solution for this is 'jailbreak your console and download the game from the web'. There could also be sanctioned backup solutions which negate that issue. So long as the user is given a chance to back up and thus keep the game, you don't need a download server to be maintained.
> Years ago I had tried to install GTA4 on a PC and it basically didn't work. It relied on some infrastructure ("Games for Windows"?) that had since been discontinued. I think if I persisted I could've patched it to work but I just gave up.
The real world solution are patches made by people who care, and those usually work. The better solution would be that that connectivity doesn't break the whole game. If it's just for the online half of a game, it should degrade gracefully.
> What about when it requires an OS that no longer exists?
VMs exist.
> What about DRM (for TV shows/movies as well as games)? There are DRM servers. Do these need to be maintained?
Provide a DRM-free copy if you shut down the servers.
> You might take the purist approach of "no DRM" but that's really a losing battle.
A battle worth fighting [pirate flag emoji].
> part of the distribution model for physical media is that the media doesn't last forever (liek a digital copy does). Disks scratch, get broken, get lost, etc. Electronics in cartridges fail. SD cards fail.
Is this a significant part of the model? How many resales were they expecting per 1000 normal sales? It can't be many. This to me seems like it could be rounded down to 0.