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.