When you buy a painting, a book, or a horseshoe, the creator’s labor ends the second you buy it. The object just sits there, existing on its own. Software doesn’t do that.
Because of the reality of how technology works, code doesn’t just sit in a vacuum forever. Operating systems update, hardware architectures change, server protocols shift, and security certificates expire. If software is left completely alone, it eventually breaks (a concept known in IT as “software rot”).
To keep a game, especially a modern one, functional and playable for a decade or more, engineers have to actively maintain it. They have to patch it for new operating systems, migrate server infrastructure, and update APIs.
So, when someone pays a one-time fee of $60 and demands that their software remain perfectly functional until the end of time, they aren’t just demanding ownership of a static object. They are demanding that a team of engineers continuously update, patch, and maintain the infrastructure for that code indefinitely, without ever being paid for that ongoing labor.
That is what “engineers working for free in perpetuity” means. Pretending that software is a static object like a book ignores the reality that demanding permanent functionality from code requires perpetual, unpaid maintenance from its creators.
LilyVess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
What the hell are you talking about. John Nintendo himself didn’t had to pay anyone to make Mupen64. I assure you that Michael Sony didn’t had to pay to his engineer so Bloodborne could be played outside a PS4.
No one. Absolutely no one is asking that Sony or any other company release patches forever and that I could play Crash Bash in a PS5 or boicot. My PS4 broke years ago, I dumped my Bloodborne copy and play it again on my PC. Sony didn’t had to pay anyone a single cent for that to happen.
I’m really curious of who are you listening that made you think that the issue with killing physical media is “I want support forever”…
TimothyOilypants@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
That is literally the argument. That if a developer or publisher decides to stop publishing a digital title that your license is no longer usable…
LilyVess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Have you heard about GoG? Just to be clear, not being able to access a game in any way after the publisher decides it’s not worth it is indeed the core of all of these.
No one is arguing they have to keep their servers and games running forever. It has never been a part of the conversation.
There’s much more than “you support it forever or don’t support it at all”. GoG allows you to download the game installer and do with it whatever you want. Buying a physical copy means you can play the 1.0.0 Cyberpunk in you PS3 even after the store closes. Even if your PS3 completely breaks, you can emulate it because you have access to the game no matter what happens in the future.
Reducing games access to one singular source that no one can have access is what is happening. There will be not offline installer, no game to emulate or preserve, no mods, no local play, nothing, and literally, the only thing they have to do is nothing.
TimothyOilypants@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
You are shifting the goalposts from the legal reality of consumer ownership to the entirely separate topic of digital preservation. It is true that GoG provides an incredibly consumer-friendly service, but you are still conflating a generous licensing model with actual ownership. When you download an offline installer from GoG, you are still bound by their End User License Agreement. They are simply choosing to distribute their intellectual labor without the enforcement mechanism of DRM. It is a fantastic business model, but it is a distribution choice made by the publisher, not an inherent right held by the consumer.
You also claim that to allow offline preservation, publishers literally only have to do “nothing.” That is completely false. Disentangling a modern game from its backend architecture, stripping out telemetry, removing third-party matchmaking APIs, and compiling a standalone offline installer requires significant, active engineering labor. You are once again demanding that a studio perform uncompensated work just to satisfy your desire for a permanent archive.
Furthermore, the idea that a publisher withdrawing access to a game is some unprecedented cultural crime completely ignores the history of art. For centuries, masterpieces have been purchased and locked away in private collections, corporate vaults, or family estates, completely inaccessible to the public. Often, creators themselves choose to destroy their own work, withdraw it from circulation, or refuse to publish it because they are dissatisfied with it. It is the absolute, fundamental prerogative of the legal owner of a piece of art to decide if, how, and when the public gets to view it.
If a publisher decides a game is no longer financially viable, or if they simply do not want it to exist in the public sphere anymore, they have the absolute moral and legal authority to pull the plug and lock it in the vault. You are paying for a temporary window of access to their intellectual labor. You do not have a moral right to demand they engineer a permanent offline off-ramp just because you are afraid the exhibition might eventually close.