Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" (08 Dec 2023)
Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" (08 Dec 2023)
Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" (08 Dec 2023)::undefined
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Forget about features and prices, how about actual content?
2017 I buy this space shooter game called "Destiny 2". It has some problems, but it's decent enough. $60 buy in. The single player story missions took you through four initial planets/moons, the European Dead Zone, Titan, Nessus, and Io, recovering your power and kicking the asses of the space turtles who tried to kill everyone.
Expansion 1, 2, 3 and 4 come out widening the story, adding more locations, Mercury, Mars, The Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City, the Moon... with all the associated story missions, strikes, raids...
And I bought in on those too. Some hundreds of dollars.
Roll forward to 2020, almost 2,000 hours in game. Bungie decides they're done with story missions and removes them from the game. They also decide that the game is "too big" for new players to get into, and seeking a Fortnite, free to play style audience, removes 1/2 of the content from the game.
Existing players like me drop the game because content we paid good money for and hours we spent exploring, collecting and curating gear, just went up in smoke.
New players now have no onboarding point and are incredibly confused because there's no story and no real way to get into the game.
So Bungie managed to completely alienate both their existing user base, and the one they hoped to attract.
Oh, and they have now promised not to do it again, but at the same time, haven't brought the content back either.
It's an online service as a game too, so piracy is not an option. The only way to experience the original content is through YouTube videos.
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I was interested in playing at some point and it was around when they took out content that I was considering it. Then I find out it's missing the beginning and because of FOMO I'm like, nah I won't even bother then because if I do end up liking the game I'll just end up sad or annoyed that there's parts I'll never get to experience.
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I buy this space shooter game called “Destiny 2”.
Here's how they get you; did you buy "Destiny 2" or did you acquire a limited use license subject to change at the publishers discretion?
I haven't bought a game since Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG. Sure I've "perpetually leased" some games on Steam since then, but I didn't buy them. They can be taken away from me by the owner at any time and I'm very aware of this.
The only way to experience the original content is through YouTube videos.
Very sad, people should be able to buy games to own, keep and share those treasured memories throughout their lives. I can still whip out Final Fantasy 7 on original disks if the kids ever want to see how we did it in "ye olde days". Destiny 2-players can never do such a thing.
Makes me question if it's even the same type of products.
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I see this argument a lot.
I’m someone who has been gaming since the C-64 days (load “*”,8,1), and honestly I think I’ve lost more games through data corruption on the physical media, simply losing a disk, having a compatible operating system go away, or having the physical media hardware no longer be supported. I actually like the fact that I can just re-download a game whenever I want to play it.
I’ve had a bit less luck with streaming audio, where a service will have licenses for some but not all of the tracks of an album (that’s really annoying), but the trade off there is that I’m not actually buying it, and as a result I have access to god knows how many artists and albums.
The one that really gets me is the fragmentation of video content among a dozen or more services, but hopefully we will start to see a move back towards consolidation there.
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I agree love being able to just download games.
But with those old games, I'll bet most of them you could play again via an emulator or something similar.
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Fair point. If I get the itch to play something old, I’ll usually just check gog to see if it’s been ported. It’s probably been about ten years ago now, but I finally went through my old software box that had been sitting in a closet forever and tossed games like Wasteland on 3.5” floppies. Oddly, one of the toughest ones to toss was Darklands, which I would never play again but which at the time sucked me in like few other games ever had.
And now apparently it’s available on Steam and works on the Deck, so I might actually try it out again…
But, again, that’s my point.
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Steam is exceptionally good at this though as I don't know of a single game that has been removed permanently ever. They have delisted and stopped selling a bunch, sure, but you can still download and play them. Even those that simply don't work anymore as the servers are dead - by no fault of Valve.
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Sure. I hope I didn't come across as claiming that I've lost any games I licensed through Steam. Just that it's a possibility.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/EVH865r2J8k
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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20 comments