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The difference here is that Game makers they want the video model - entirely DRM encumbered on DVD or BluRay (trivially broken, but still...) or streamed with an ongoing cost, as opposed to the audio model where you have the option of downloading DRM-free content from multiple sources (Bandcamp, Bleep, Qobuz, etc.) or buying it without DRM on CD.

There are some DRM-free gaming - GoG for example, and while Valve still has DRM, Steam hasn't been caught up in forcing people to go to perpetual streaming models.

From a preservationist standpoint, I really want media available in ways that will last through corporate shenanigans, and platform DRM limited or streaming-only isn't it.

I see both arguments here. Games just aren’t the same as music or video - when an album or a movie is finished, what you get can be frozen in time and still work without the film or record company again.

Games used to be entirely this way, and some still are, but any manner of live-service game can’t realistically work in that model for an indefinite period of time like movies and music can. This is also true to a lesser extent for patches and DLC, although they shouldn’t be necessary (but day one patches are a thing, I imagine the games companies aren’t unhappy about this, as there’s an incentive to release a broken game with a day-one patch as a future copy protection measure).

Even standalone games can have operating system and hardware dependencies. Not all of course. A few years ago, I went through a few months when I tried getting back into some older Windows games. They ran--mostly, often with patches--but it was all too flaky and crash-prone to be much fun and I mostly gave up.

Btw, if you are ever in that situation again, Linux + Wine/Proton is now often the better stack to run old games than newer versions of native Windows, both in terms of backward compatibility and performance. Not always, but often.

This is a perplexing situation as Microsoft used to be the queens and kings of backward compat (due to true invested engineering effort), but even they had to let go of some things, gimp an API or two by quick-porting them to newer infra, etc. due to finite resources.

On the other hand perhaps not that surprising. Just as with projects like MAME or ScummVM or Dosbox, preservation activities are perhaps best placed in the community, the Commons, vs. a commercial business with commercial pressures of the present-day market. But then it's important the community has the legal conditions and stability to do the work, of course.

> but any manner of live-service game can’t realistically work in that model for an indefinite period of time like movies and music can

I'm not sure why you think that? A "live service" game is just a game that's updated a lot and is backed by a server. So whenever they stop updating it, that's the finished product.

The main issue is that they then turn off the servers without any alternative method of playing and tell players to go f themselves when they want to continue to play it.

Well yes that’s what I was saying above. Selling you a product one time for a fixed fee isn’t going to fund keeping servers supported and online forever, and even if it did, the games company has no incentive to do so once you’ve already paid and they’ve met whatever legally mandated warranty periods exist in that country.

But why can't them let the players host it themselves? It isn't like hosting a game server is expensive, plenty of people have done so with unofficial servers for games.

There is no reason to host MP servers themselves. They can just release a dedicated server executable.

I mean, maybe, but if the game relies solely on matchmaking and doesn’t allow a server browser then it becomes way more complicated. The companies don’t want to be liable for what little Timmy might see or hear on a server they don’t control for a game they no longer support and have already moved on from.

Live service games are closer to social media, IMO - they're a version of Twitter/FB with better graphics and things to do, and as you say that can't be turned into a static product.

There are plenty of folks trying to reverse engineer the protocols used for older live gaming environments - for example the Dreamcast/Gamecube Phantasy Star Online has a fan-run server here: https://schtserv.com/ , but that's the exception, not the rule.

When internet infrastructure was much less advanced, the server application used to be part of the delivered product so you could host it yourself at a LAN party.

I understand that packaging, documenting and supporting an additional application is a cost that the company would rather avoid if possible. But upon shutting down a game's servers, it would cost them nothing to provide the discontinued app code "as is" with no warranty or support, to let fans figure out how to run or improve it themselves. I doubt most game companies have any incredibly valuable and cutting-edge networking code worth protecting.

One issue here is that the game servers may be encumbered by 3rd party, proprietary licensed code.

The company can’t just give up functional source code if it’s built on top of some licensed tech.

GP did not mention source code at all.

Middleware with limited licenses is also a problem the developer chose. If there was a legal requirement to publish the code (source code escrow should be required for copyright to be enforceable IMO) then developers would take care not to fall into that trap.

That's moving the goalposts. That may be true for a small fraction of games, e.g. MMOs, but for the vast majority of games, they could easily be frozen.

> Games used to be entirely this way, and some still are, but any manner of live-service game can’t realistically work in that model for an indefinite period of time like movies and music can.

Which is why the industry keeps pushing these and why we should oppose them.

> This is also true to a lesser extent for patches and DLC, although they shouldn’t be necessary (but day one patches are a thing, I imagine the games companies aren’t unhappy about this, as there’s an incentive to release a broken game with a day-one patch as a future copy protection measure).

Patches can be distributed as standalone installers that are fixed once released just like the original version remains fixed. This is how things used to work.

Being able to go back to earlier versions even if the developer wants to change things (for whatever reason) is precisely why we need archivable games.

The implied length of the service, and rights that ownership confers after it's terminated, could be a lot less murky.

"How long do you expect to run the necessary online components for me to be able to use this?"

"What will you do when you turn off the online components required for me to be able to use this?"

Are important questions that most services haven't provided clear answers to.

Getting a global right-to-jailbreak after service is terminated by the owner would go a long way towards making me comfortable.

And as tech folks, we all know how insane it would be in the B2B space to suggest that the service provider can end their service at any time, not refund you anything, and have no liability. We should have MSAs with defined SLAs and contract terms for consumer SaaS (like video games and streaming) as well.

Exactly, and equally critically -- the death provision.

Given we're on the first generation to purchase licenses-instead-of-physical, it will be some years before this starts to snowball.

But when it does, I expect the mismatch between customer expectations and company policies are going to make for some bad PR.

"Grandmother left me her collection of music, and then Amazon took it away" isn't a rosy headline.

And I refuse to believe that most streaming media/game services don't already have actuaries in their pricing departments, and so have already thought very hard about this.

> They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection

GenXer here: I'm not comfortable not owning my CD collection. I still either buy CDs, or at least high quality DRM-free digital files that I can archive. Unfortunately, some bands that I really like don't issue CDs in thr US anymore, or sell good quality files, so I've had to buy CDs from outside the US and have them shipped here.

Discogs is a godsend for that. I end up getting a lot of CDs shipped from France/Germany/Japan - all for very reasonable prices.

> One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games].

"Needs to happen" is a pretty strong statement. Why does it "need" to happen? Are current customer behaviors/preferences some kind of existential threat to humanity? Nothing needs to happen. The company might want it to happen, but that's different. Companies talking about a mass [and profitable] shaping of population behavior as being "necessary" should alert our antennas a little.

Current consumer protection laws are lacking in the digital world. Purchase should mean ownership. Rent and lease should mean non-ownership.

We still don't have a quality definition of ownership. Example would be that the ability to edit the OS "hosts" file to prevent a device from accessing say "twitter.com" should be a requirement in ownership.

Owned / purchased content should not be able to be revoked. Such as Ubisoft locking your account and preventing you from playing the games you purchased. Rental and leased content would fall into the account locking ability by Ubisoft.

There is a misunderstanding among consumers, be it individuals or corporations, that by purchasing a physical medium you simultaneously purchase a perpetual license. While in gross majority of consumer cases that was true, or at least implied, it certainly was not true in the commercial space where plenty of software was licensed for term. The SaaS model only made that more apparent/transparent.

While I personally loathe the general corporate subscriptionism, it does have its benefits and drawbacks which in most cases can be addressed by market forces. The ultimate pressure on video games publisher's subscriptionism may be to touch the grass.

It will likely take centuries to reinvent digital ownership.

The top-down influence is too strong to have nice things.

Considering that digital ownership is only a few decades old, I doubt it will take centuries to reinvent.

> "They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection."

This isn't what happened at all.

People got used to streaming services which is a different product entirely.

Many people stopped buying movies and music altogether, and those that still do are rightfully outraged when, say, Sony deletes a movie from their library.

There is also a difference between games and movies/tv shows… if a streaming service removes a movie I like, I can either buy it or get it from a different streamer and I have lost nothing.

If a gaming service removes a game, will I be able to keep my save history when I buy it from somewhere else?

We should get away from using the term buy with respect to media. What you're actually doing is licensing in. Why not just say the latter, even if it sounds awkward? At the very least it will build awareness of the actual nature of the transaction.

No, we should continue to use the term "buy", and clarify in the law that copyright shenanigans don't trump purchase rights and consumer protection obligations. In the meantime, since the law is wrong and makes a mockery of its legitimacy, people should treat it as optional and follow it to the extent they personally feel fair and appropriate.

Everyone knows it would be absurd if you bought a chair, and then you opened the box and there was a piece of paper inside that said actually you're just renting it indefinitely and the manufacturer has the right to take it back at any time. Likewise if the outside of box said you get an indefinite "license"; the expectation would be that the seller is acting in good faith and that that's the same thing as perpetual. Taking the chair back would be called a scam. Any government that goes along with the scam is a clown show and deserves the contempt of its citizenry.

I see your point. On the other hand, modern games usually max out any DVD or even Blu-ray.

While I cannot image C64 games in the cloud, I also cannot imagine modern games on a DVD.

Even with physical access to a device, there are hurdles. Who still owns a C64? A 386 with floppy drive?

It is tricky.

I don’t think any of that is relevant.

The publishers don’t have to provide physical media, just the ability to install it at any arbitrary point later. So an install file is fine (even if it’s 100GB) and backing that up can be up to the consumer.

In terms of your argument with older devices this exists even with physical media. Who still has reel to reel or laserdisc? The publishers don’t have to make it future proof, just make themselves only necessary at the purchase step.

"The service will exist"

Bull.shit. I call bullshit. Will it exist after the company goes bankrupt?

What an idiotic thing to say to people. It's one thing to have a company do this, but to argue that an entire industry will make sure that their services will exist in perpetuity is madness.

You know what can exist for a long time though?

A disc with a game that you own.

You own the disc, you don't own the game.

What’s weird about this statement is that gamers on platforms like Steam and PS Store already have that confidence. No Steam customer is worried about losing their library. PlayStation gamers see a PS3 store that is still functional and have confidence in buying PS5 games digitally. (Granted, Sony almost disabled purchases on the PS3 store, but came to a good compromise by moving payment processing off of the platform).

It’s only shitty, badly run stores like UPlay and Nintendo’s always-shutting down console-specific stores that make customers lack confidence.

I think GOG disproves this somewhat. A decent number of my coworkers who game buy their favorite games again on GOG to get the offline installers. Trust, but verify.

Well, that’s an anecdote among people working at a tech company right?

Steam distributes 75% of all PC games. So obviously the DRM-free offline installer (which is nice and I appreciate) isn’t something that most people prioritize for their purchase decisions.

Gabe can't live forever. Once Steam changes hands anything goes and if confidence gets harmed there goes a generation of gamers.