I think renting should be renting, and purchasing should be purchasing. I’m okay with renting, and what that entails (e.g. they might remove the service in the future and I won’t ever own the game). I’m also fine with buying games, and for some games that have a lot of sentimental value or replayability I do want to own them.
What I’m not okay with is the current state of affairs, where they make it seem as if you buy the game and you pay full price, but legally it’s only licensed to you and the license can be withdrawn at any time. It’s all the disadvantages describe with renting, but with the price of buying. So that’s what I had in mind with my comment: I’d be content instead of angry if they offered a rental service with honest and fair terms of service, instead of the bullshit they’re pulling right now.
If there was a proper rental service I would likely rent a lot of games that I wanted to try out. Then I would go to GOG to buy DRM-free versions of the games I want to keep for a long time. Games like Civ5, RimWorld and Cyberpunk 2077. I think I wouldn’t need to rent a game for three years to figure out that I want to buy it, more like a month.
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 11 months ago
To be fair nobody plays just one single game for 3 years. Economically speaking it is more affordable to pay the subscription than to buy it. That said there are no guarantees they won't raise prices. I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually decide to include ads and add limits eventually. There's not even an expectation of control by the users.
But we have seen enough of how streaming libraries change and split. Losing access to your favorite game is an almost inevitable eventuality.
Remmock@kbin.social 11 months ago
Skyrim, Fallout 4, RDR2, Witcher 3, The Sims, Dark Souls, Civilization, Borderlands 1/2, Stardew Valley, Persona…
Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean there aren’t people that come back again and again between games to dust off an old favorite. While I personally never touched Fallout 4 again after beating it, I’ll break out my XBox 360 and give New Vegas a whirl to see what character concept I’ll try this time.
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 11 months ago
You are confusing my argument. You listed me 10+ games. If you paid $2/mo for 3 years and got to own a game for it, that would be enough for a couple of them at most. I'm not saying old games are not worth playing. I'm saying that if you had to pick between buying all the games you like or paying for a subscription, most likely the subscription would be more affordable.
Remmock@kbin.social 11 months ago
Where’s the confusion?
TigrisMorte@kbin.social 11 months ago
Got numerous friends that prove you wrong.
MagicShel@programming.dev 11 months ago
I play single game for years with a bit of other games mixed in. I played Diablo 1, 2 and 3, World of Warcraft (already a sub, of course), Minecraft, and Skyrim for many years each. You could maybe put Team Fortress 2 in there by I didn’t continue going back to that well nearly as long as the others - I hate lootbox shit and I miss the days when skill and strategy was the only difference between players. I would totally play TF2 vanilla, though.
I’m sure I will continue to play Diablo 3 (4 does nothing for me) and Skyrim for years to come. So we do exist, however we are probably an unknown and unserved group since we don’t tend to pour a bunch of money and time into new games. I do have 800 hours into Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m going to regret having that on console instead of Steam, I’m sure. Probably wind up buying that one twice.
Telorand@reddthat.com 11 months ago
You’ll lose access to games by virtue of lack of support. Systems will change, libraries and dependencies will fall out of sync with requirements, and “the games you love” will be forgotten by devs (though not in all cases).
I used to play a really fun game on MacOS (pre-X) called Glider Pro. There was no easy way to play it, since you’d have to emulate a MacOS 9 system. Only recently did the original devs upload the files to GitHub and open the source. Some smart people then forked the repo and made it playable on various systems.
And that’s just one game. Lots more are now lost to time, and yet we’ve all collectively been able to continue gaming.
TwilightVulpine@kbin.social 11 months ago
This sort of argument is just a way to cope with the erosion of customer rights and the overreach of corporations over digital media as if that's some inevitable entropy of the universe type of thing. We still have books that are thousands of years old, but even though we have better technological means to store and reproduce media than ever, arbitrary legal hurdles are leading people to treat cultural loss as an inevitability.
You got your answer in your own response. Emulators are a thing. Virtual Machines are a thing. Proton is a thing. We figured out how to recover games going as far back as the Atari. Unless actively and fiercely obstructed people will figure out how to keep these things available out of sheer passion and goodwill.
A DRM-free installer/executable for a game, when properly backed up, will still be playable most likely indefinitely.
Unfortunately, as the mention of DRM itself indicates, obstructions are plentiful and ever increasing. This is why supporting DRM-free media and open platforms is valuable. Can you imagine what people could do if they were empowered instead of obstructed?
Telorand@reddthat.com 11 months ago
I’m old enough to remember a time before DRM. My point wasn’t that it’s not valuable to fight for consumer rights, but that some software will inevitably be lost in spite of efforts to preserve it.
It’s not an erosion of consumer rights, so much as it’s accepting that time comes for us all; hell, I have countless games I’m never going to revisit, and neither is anyone else. Does it truly matter that I own them, if I know I’m not going to play them again?
To be clear, I’m not proposing this model for everything in life, but where games are concerned, I think there’s a lot of collectors and archivers who think they speak for people like me, and I’m really just along for the ride.