Why your digital games collection isn't yours to own | Hacker News Reader

Why your digital games collection isn't yours to own

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28 pointsbenologist25 comments

Support DRM-free purchases from places like https://www.gog.com or https://www.humblebundle.com (when they're not doing a DRM sale) if this kind of thing bothers you. Exclusives are also something that should probably die. Portability of games shouldn't be a problem in 2017.

Edit: buying from the creator/studio directly is also often another option, but less convenient and reliable.

This isn't just games.

Apple has deleted paid music from my itunes account, despite it still being for sale, and refused to restore it when asked. They said the publisher removed that specific version of the album from the store (the new version has an identical track list) so their hands were tied, and to use the file backups I made of those files.

Microsoft threw away my e-book collection when they shuttered their first ebook store back in the day, with no (legal) ability to carry those books onto a new device, even if I copied the files.

So far the only long term reliable digital goods business I know has been amazon with the kindle, but I'm sure you can find horror stories there as well.

You don't buy this stuff, you rent it indefinitely.

> so [Apples] hands were tied, and to use the file backups I made of those files.

Is it really a digitals stores duty to indefinitely offer re-downloads of material bought? Sounds like you should have taken better care of your own stuff.

When a seller sells you a digital asset that is not encumbered with copy protection, I find it quite fair that they don't see themselves as responsible for also being your backup solution til the end of time.

If they do, however, sell you an encumbered digital asset, which requires access to theirs or their 3rd party server in order to function, then yes, they do owe it to their customers to be available til the end of time.

Did you miss the part where Apple deleted the files?

Joeri said Apple deleted the files from his account, which may or may not include the files on his hard drive.

Apple did not delete files from his hard drive.

Indeed they did not. But, they did break the (unspoken) promise that I could freely keep streaming and redownloading all my iTunes purchases from every machine. You can call it a courtesy service to provide that, and technically that's true, but that courtesy is a huge part of the convenience of iTunes, and definitely convinces people to "buy".

I think you just learned that unspoken promises are worth the paper they're printed on.

That said, the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions clearly state:

SERVICES AND CONTENT USAGE RULES

[...]

All Services:

[...]

- It is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage Content once downloaded. We encourage you to back up your Content regularly.

[...]

REDOWNLOADS

You may be able to redownload previously acquired Content (“Redownload”) to your devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID (“Associated Devices”). You can see Content types available for Redownload in your Home Country at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204632. Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services.

So next time, I suggest you read the T&C before you buy something.

They removed it from his iTunes account, not his local iTunes library.

Since it is a sale, I stand by my position that it is on the buyer to keep purchased files safe, and being able to redownload files from your iTunes account is a curtesy service that Apple offers, but you cannot expect them to guarantee it.

FWIW, I've been using Steam since the release of Half-Life 2, and in my limited personal experience it has been a far better investment than buying software on physical media. Steam has let me migrate software from machine to machine as I upgrade, and makes recovering from corruption or a lost hard drive a simple solution of merely redownloading the files needed. Physical media has not proven durable enough, nor media formats long-lasting enough, for buying hard copies to be a viable strategy in this particular use case. Incidentally the physical-media durability problem has driven me toward almost exclusively using streaming services for music, although the arcane copyright system applied to digital music is a factor here. If it were legal, I'd much rather simply make a few archival copies on various storage devices.

> So far the only long term reliable digital goods business I know has been amazon with the kindle, but I'm sure you can find horror stories there as well.

I'm surprised you haven't heard of this one:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/18/amazon_removes_1984...

I enjoy reading on a Kindle, but I side-load everything from my PC.

Amazon instant sometimes does this too. I stopped buying movies after I received a message that a movie I bought was currently unavailable due to a licensing agreement.

I used to buy books at Fictionwise, because it was the only place that sold certain books I liked in my country, all other stores only sold to some random northern-hemisphere country (seriously, what people that sell digital stuff have against South America and Africa?)

So, Barnes & Noble purchased them, and shut down them :/

I tried to access the books I purchased legally, even downloaded some BN reader for desktop... aaaaand, it told me I could only download my books from a US IP.

BN can go to that place O.O

And since then I never bought e-books again, if a book exists physically and ships to my country (or has publisher in my country) I buy it.

This doesn't get said enough and is why we need better consumer protection laws, like the ones that the EU has implemented or seeks to.

Publishers can't have it both ways. The way gamers are treated has been embarrassingly bad for way too long now. With the sums of money in the videogame economy I'm annoyed this hasn't been solved yet.

Also, we gamers need to stop accepting the pathetic treatment we get. Use your wallets and vote.

The EU isn't a whole lot better on this particular issue at the moment.

But it's basically inevitable, as younger jurists and legislators take power. The idea that digital property is ephemeral is just a quirk of IP law which can be changed with the stroke of a pen. Digital property intuitively is personal property, and they'll only be able to weasel their way around this fact with contract law and "licenses" for so long.

This is why emulators are important. Console makers should be compelled to release documentation of their hardware when they EOL one of their products so the community can make use of it.

I agree. I'm not sure that PS3 games will survive into the future because its unusual architecture makes porting difficult. The most popular games may eventually have custom code that makes them playable, but there is a vast collection of games on the ps3 that won't get that kind of attention. As a side note, the previous generations (ps2, gamecube) all have great emulators.

I wouldn't rule out the PS3 emulator just yet. We should contribute!

https://rpcs3.net https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3

RPCS3 (https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3 | https://rpcs3.net/) has come a long way in the past year or so.

Only around 6.65% are actually playable start to finish, but the fact that over half over half the games (64.02%) on the platform can at least load the title screen is great progress for such a weird architecture.

I would be more worried about having the original Xbox emulated.

> As a side note, the previous generations (ps2, gamecube) all have great emulators.

Sega Saturn some way to go before emulation can be described as great.

http://wiki.yabause.org/index.php5?title=Compatibility_list

Sony in the past has gone through periods of removing purchased games, at least on the PS3. I have not noticed it on the PS4, but on the PS3, I bought a Worms game many years back which later simply got removed from my account (I looked in history and downloads and could never download it again). I assume that's what will happen to all the games. The precedent is already set. What was I going to do? Sue Sony over the removal of a $20 game? They do whatever they want. "Piracy" is the only real solution when legal means are unavailable. You fuck me over, I fuck you over. That's pretty much where we're at with digital goods like this.

I think this is pretty rare, but when it does happen it sticks out. For example: P.T. was pulled by Konami when they decided they hate video games and canceled Silent Hills. You can't download it anymore, even if it was already purchased. I remember people buying PS4s that had it installed.

Although DRM free options exist on PC, Steam is far and away the main marketplace with many games not being released outside of it, not even physical. Consoles of course have only one option on where to buy digital games. That said, I've rarely run into games removed from Steam... I actually can't think of one that was retroactively removed. You can even still buy games (keys) that are no longer sold on Steam and activate them, for example you can find unused copies of Prey for PC and unlock it on Steam even though they no longer sell it on the store.

>You can't download it anymore, even if it was already purchased.

PT was never for sale though so how you purchased it? It was a demo you could freely download for a period of time then it was gone after an ample warning period.

>I actually can't think of one that was retroactively removed.

Google to the rescue: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-remov...

The scripts ( read: ads) on this article crashed my browser. My phones not new by any metric but still; I don't think its unreasonable to expect a page intent on serving text to load without issue.

I think of digital games like rentals so I'll only buy them if they are priced accordingly. That is, at a price point I'd pay for a rental and no more.

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