Why this bill makes no sense
The game, which retailed for $69.99 for the standard edition and $99.99 for the All-Star Edition, will be delisted from digital storefronts on October 30 and will have its online servers shut down on December 31, only two years after its initial release.
Games with online functionality would also be required to provide an offline mode before the servers supporting them are shut down.
NBA games have an offline mode, so they are protected by this bill. Even if it was just a quick play “pick team vs team” that would be considered compliance.
Protect this man!
Ritchie Torres is an AIPAC funded piece of shit. Fuck this guy.
sad that it has to be legislated, but thats the world we live in now
The tech industry lobbyists will crush this idea before it ever sees a sincere vote, but at least someone out there is trying. Though the cynic in me still can’t help but feel that this is just an empty gesture in a bid for reelection.
I never understood why games could not work as books. I mean, when you buy a book, you own that single group of pages containing the words that make the story of said work. But you don’t own the work itself. Meaning that you own the unit containing it but, as you are not the owner of the work, you can’t profit from selling copies of it.
With a game, it should be the same, when you buy a game, you own either the disc containing it, or (if digital) the unique keycode identifying your copy. You can sell your own copy because you own it, but it doesn’t mean you own the work itself so you can’t copy it nor claim it as yours.
We really solved it long time ago, yet, for some reason (greed) we can’t use this method on games.
It’s not that games can’t work as books, it’s that books can’t work like games.
Trust me, if book publishers could keep you from actually owning a physical book, from reselling it, from photocopying it, from lending it to a friend, they would. And with ebooks they do.
The fact that games are software gives publishers additional capabilities and control over the product, and they take advantage of that control to limit user control whenever possible. You just can’t do that with a pile of paper bound together, otherwise they would.
This is where legislation can come in though. We need to make it legally clear that when you buy something you really own it. Renting, leasing, licensing, these ideas aren’t bad on their own, but you can’t call that “buying” and the venue offering these services shouldn’t be called a “store”. If it’s called a store, it needs to be actually selling things, otherwise the entire business is disingenuous and deceptive.
You do own the game, for most games sold on GoG. (Not the copyright assignment. The “game”, or “copy of the game”, however you want to refer to it.) If you buy a game as a disc, in a store, you own it until you take it home and find an EULA contract that takes away that ownership. I don’t believe a clickwrap contract has any legitimate effect, but I don’t think the courts would be on my side.
Consider ebooks. Amazon has revoked and deleted ebooks that people paid for. They’ve ironically done it to 1984. And I think even to people living in countries where 1984 is public domain.
It’s not that they can’t treat games like books, it’s that they don’t want to. And they don’t want to treat books like books either; they just don’t have any control over the physical object once it leaves their hands. And before everything became downloads, games used to come on a CD, cartridge or cassette, and you could sell that just like you could sell a book, and they were powerless to prevent it. But with everything being downloads and always online, they have that power, so they use it.
Our legislatures have more important things to do. There is a very simple solution. Don’t buy those games that don’t give a download/ physical disc. Otherwise the software companies will just figure away around the rules.
While it is a good idea, but it will result into a hell of a fight with the software industry in general. Their extortion schemes base on the very idea that you can’t own software at all.
dunno. the only people i’ve met who like Anything-as-a-Service don’t exist. i’ve never met anyone who likes that shit.
You are right, but also fuck them. They didn’t invent the code or the concepts. They paid for other’s works and pretend it is theirs. Software is an amalgamation of so much before it. Pretending you own it when it really is the work of tens of thousands of people is silly in a way.
It shouldn’t be narrowly focused on just video games. Should simply be anything digital.
Babysteps? Maybe if it is about video games, the old people won’t know enough about it and pass it, which would make it easier to expand to any digital software.
Unlikely. We ended up here because of corporations lobbying the government to prevent bills like this from becoming laws and to allow them to set up the system the way they wanted it because it benefits them.
The old people are in their pockets and the most susceptible to their schemes to prevent changes in the status quo because it makes them money.
This is an attempt to sway people to vote for him in an election year.
Scoped in a way to get press and hopefully positive attention before voting starts in a week or so.
Agreed, but if passed it would set a significant precedent that would surely have to flow onto all/other digital media.
I have no idea what this actually means, but…
Based?
I’d like to see this effort include the responsible sunsetting of games.
If publishers no longer wish to host the game, and noinfer wish to collect money for it, they should relinquish the server code and let communities prop up games when the games services are decommissioned.
Server code should come with the game from day 1, like it used to back in the '90s.
Knockout City handled their closure wonderfully releasing a final version that would let players run their own servers. Removed some licensed cosmetics to make it possible.
The Crew 2 after backlash from Crew 1 released an offline mode.
Those two games are great examples of the bare minimum that leaves people happy without needing to support a game indefinitely.
Let it die (F2P) had to shut down its servers, and afterwards released a single player offline version you had to pay for.
It’s certainly better than nothing and at least lets people continue to enjoy the game.
Nintendo also did that with the Animal Crossing mobile game.
There’s f2p games like The Finals where if it shut down I’d be happy if I could still play against bots and roam around the map breaking stuff and shooting stuff in the practice room for aim training.
The Finals is my favorite game and I’d hope they spruce up private matches and leave it with a server to run.
I’d be very happy with that outcome. But do hope the game lives on for many more seasons.
Good idea. Bad execution.
How would you fix it?
If only he wasn’t one of the biggest AIPAC stooges in Washington.
If a bad person supports a good cause, that doesn’t make the cause bad.
I agree, it’s more about pointing out that it doesn’t make the bad person good, especially when they’re pushing the bill at a time where it has no chance of passing.
I think all three statements in this chain are accurate and true. But it does leave me not really knowing how to feel about this.
I guess mostly disappointed, because the most salient point to me is the last one, that this is really unlikely to pass. So that’s a genuine shame.
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With AI decompilation, I imagine cracked copies of GTA VI will be on PC within a week of releasing on PS5 lol
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This is stupid-
You never had ownership of the game, just the physical disc that contains it. First-sale doctrine is clear about this and the perpetual non-exclusive license that allows you to play it.
His law doesn’t change that. It’s not going to allow buyers of a game to have a stake in the IP rights.
This stupid argument of owning physical media has always been a misunderstood argument. Pirate, emulate, and decompile when game companies make enjoying a game miserable.
Trying to start legal fights, that have already been settled, or launching literal political campaigns, like stop killing games, isn’t targeting the core issue of buying a game being easier than pirating it.
First sale doctrine allows you to resell, rent, or giveaway things that you bought without having any claim over the IP. So for products where first sale doctrine applies you can buy it now, and then a few years down the line still use it or sell it to someone else. You can’t do the same with digital games, and that’s the issue at hand, that first sale doctrine is not being follow here, you can’t resell digital games, rent or even give them away.
Yes, you can.
GOG allows you to download the installers for use offline.
If you download the installers you are literally making a copy. Since you still have access to the files on the Gog server. Making copies for personal use is allowed but selling the copies is not because of copyright laws. There is no digital store that facilitates reselling where you can transfer the license of one game to someone else.
That doesn’t give you the right to resell, rent or even giveaway that. Which is what the first sale doctrine allows you to. Not to mention that GoG is one store, which proves it’s not a law since others can do it differently.
