this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Absolutely insane.
I can understand extreme cases, like some sort of disputed IP where their contact to sell the content turns out not to be with the actual rights holder, resulting in no longer serving the content (with an unconditional full refund). But past that they should be legally required to host the content until the heat death of the universe.
Yeah this is one of the reasons I've been slowly moving my gaming time over to Steam as they very rarely do stuff like this and if they delist the game, if you've already purchased the game you can still play it 99.99% of time. Sad to see Playstation go down this route.
This is all movie/show content. It’s still BS, but it’s licensed TV/movie content that’s the problem. The dumb laws we have really are the problem.
Steam is the same. It's just a license to play the game. GOG is better in this regard.
Kinda, but its not black and white. For a start steam has a much longer track record of nearly 20 years not doing this, I've heard of them de-listing games and not allowing them to be sold any more but never of revoking games that have been sold. Secondly there are many games on steam that stream cant just revoke, games that use no DRM or DRM that isnt integrated into steamworks they cant just delete if you back it up.
But that being said there is the possibility of something like this happening on steam, which is why I'm glad there is still an active game piracy scene even if I dont use it any more.
How do you back up a drm free steam game on steam deck?
I dont have one, but I'm pretty sure you can drop to a desktop that you can do whatever you want with the files on the system just like any other linux distro.
Unfortunately it’s the same situation on steam. You are only buying licenses to games you don’t actually own it, they can be taken away at any time with no recourse. Steam might be doing good now in this regard but it’s hard to say if it will stay like this forever.
The day Gabe Newell no longer owns Valve/Steam things will begin to change, I'm sure.
Your point?
Give it another 10 years, you won’t “own” anything. It’ll be “licensed.” Weird tho. Digital content is endless. But you can’t consume it into extinction; physical things are finite, but we’re like here take it! It’s yours! Call a cop or shoot anyone trying to take it.
Seems backwards to me.
Wrong, Sony could issue full refunds to customers or ask WB the royalties back. Sony should had a clause in their contract with discovery that allowed them to host the video files indefinitely, if it was voided all the royalties to be refunded as a penalty fee.
When Google closed their digital magazine store, they let users download the PDF or to get a full refund.
Google again, closed stadia and everyone got a full refund even if all the devs were paid
When a game is delisted on Steam, Valve continues to host the files for previous customers.
But here no, they already got the money, they know that console users are used to just STFU, they saw that they can save a lot of money by deleting hundreds of TB of video content, and seized the opportunity
At least have the decency to do a partial refund where only the royalties paid to Discovery are kept. Or if not a money refund a store credit as goodwill. Or a prorated refund/store credit according to how many times it was viewed. Never viewed = full refund, viewed once, keep the price of a rental, and so on. Or force WB to transfer the license in another digital locker.
But no, nothing.
Had I purchased that video content just to see it disappear from my archive, I wouldn't ever trust them anymore for future purchases and exclusively resort to piracy. (Well I do it already but this is an example) It's a lose-lose situation for Sony and for WB. The rightholders do extensive campaigns "please pay for movies and show, don't steal them", then if someone believes them and *purchases" the video content, he is the one that will actually get something stolen
That, or Sony didn’t want to pay the fee to extend the licensing agreement. Sony has a history of screwing over their customers and being a cheap skate. (Removing Linux from PS3, releasing controllers without force feedback because they didn’t want to pay the license fee, installing root kit malware on PCs of buyers of their CDs)