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Comment by chithanh | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy these arguments. If game developers don't want to sell games that way then don't. Sell subscriptions instead. Like instead of $60 for a game, $60 one-time fee for a two-year subscription, which afterwards renews automatically in 3 months intervals at no cost until further notice. Same applies to all paid in-game content.

That way the developers can continue offering both games and subscriptions where each type makes most sense. And everybody knows what they are signing up for. People who buy a game get a game which they can play indefinitely. People who buy a subscription know the earliest possible end date and everything beyond that is just bonus.

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I don't think this would have any significant impact on the industry.

Publishers would just advertise their games as coming with a 2-year subscription, or whatever. People would have the same expectations as now: the game will be supported for a couple of years, and it will be supported much longer if there's an obvious way that is profitable to the developer.

No publisher would unilaterally want to start advertising games as subscriptions, but if everyone was forced to do it, nothing changes. Perhaps an extra layer of clicking through for the user, like when we mandated all websites must have annoying cookie popups.

Most games won't need it. When every other offline game says "buy" but the games as a service one has to say "rent" for the same price, consumers will notice I think.

I think what people are saying is the opposite would happen. If this initiative makes it into law, nearly every game company will overnight make their games say "Rent" instead of "Buy", so that they can continue with their shitty practice.

And that's good.

People don't generally lie for no reason. Companies are interested in obscuring their licensing practices because they believe it might hurt them to be more transparent.

That might not be true. It might turn out that the user base doesn't see the difference between "Rent" and "Buy". But it's the user base's decision to make, not the companies.

So, even if this kind of law has no other effect other than "we use more accurate and truthful language", then it's still a net positive.

And that is totally fine, as long as people know what they are investing their time and money into.

I know that some years back, getting your mobile phone financed on two-year contracts was a normal thing. But it was a debt trap for consumers. Some EU countries noticed, and now carriers have to declare such contracts a consumer credit, and need to afford the same consumer protection to their customers as banks have for loans (in Netherlands for example registering with the BKR).

So carriers can still do that but they cannot pretend it's not a loan.

> People would have the same expectations as now

If that premise was true, why would misleading advertisement be the norm right now? Why bother?

Changing it to a subscription WOULD change perception. Most people don't understand the current status quo. When they do know, it would create a market pressure for real game ownership.

I dont think this is true. If publishers advertized 2 year license, some people would decide to not buy the license. The exact reason why they insist on calling it "buying".

The publishers that already apply the model can be forced. And some might decide to do another model instead of doing this model because it affects user’s view. This is the whole point.

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