Hacker News Reader

How about games that require an account in order to play at all? It's not a new concept and has been around for at least 15 years. Additionally, by modern games relying on matchmaking and lobby systems, almost any multiplayer game over the past 5-10 years is unplayable without an internet connection.

View on HN

I'm not sure I follow.

Is the argument that Steam is worse than Spotify because a subset of games have got built in self destruct, while Spotify only requires ongoing rent to access that 99¢ song?

I think the self destruct is bad, and requiring 3rd party logins for single player games should not be allowed.

The argument is that platforms like Steam encourage developers to implement vendor lock in features. It's something that's more likely to happen with something like software vs standard media like music.

Platforms like Spotify dont need to because its institutionalised. So I'm not sure its a great argument.

The platform itself will remove everything from you unless you keep paying Taylor Swift every month, and the artists you actually listen to probably don't get anything, unless you only listen to top ten charting songs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com