Submitted 3 days ago by simple@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWwyh74MXXY
This was way more confusing than it had to be. TL;DR: You can lend your digital games to friends & family for 14 days, but both consoles need to connect locally to enable this…(?)
Let me sell my digital licenses before we talk about them like they‘re comparable to physical media.
So it’s the overly complicated version of a system that’s on more sane platforms like Steam? Ok.
Exactly ! Steam families are now dead simple, whereas this new oh-so-Nintendo method seems as janky as it gets.
It does have one standout feature that Steam families do not though: ability to play shared games even when offline.
Only recently has steam gotten better at this. I’ve got my account, my kids account, and a 3rd account that owns games we may want to play, so that it doesn’t tie up either of our main accounts or if we want to have a guest use it. (all are shared to each other). Until last year, it was not super easy sharing them all, lots of logins, authorizations, etc.
You can lend games on steam ???
Family sharing I presume. I’m not entirely familiar with the scope of the service myself as I’ve only just set up family sharing with my child. But when I did, they had a huge catalog of games in their own steam account as a result.
Yup! Not all, but most. Some with high levels of cheaters block family sharing, like RUST
Its still missing physical object’s killer app: permanent license transferability.
With physical objects I can buy them from others, give them to friends, etc and that transfer can be permanent.
All of this lend and automatically return is just a mechanism to block permanent license transfer.
I think that is a good thing. There are many reasons to dislike Nintendo, but they had no pressure to do this due to the lack of competition on their platform from other stores and manufacturers. 14 days is more than enough to finish most games or at least give them a try before buying.
I don’t think you can share with friends? Only if you have a Family account and all the Switches are signed into the same Family.
Its a strategic time for this regime to be implemented. With a sequel console on the horizon a lot of households are going to become 2 switch families soon. Anything to make customers more comfortable spending money will speed the uptake.
For PlayStation I liked they way they let each user nominate 1 primary PS4 and 1 primary PS5. They both could play the PS4 library without restriction so the old console was a perfect hand-me-down.
In comparison for Xbox they have maintained that the whole platform is homogeneous with each account only allowed one home console at a time be it One or Series.
This household will be migrating to steamdeck or equivalent. We’ve invested too much into PC games and moving our main desktops to Linux, it only seems right. I’m tired of supporting companies that don’t care about us, only our money, and even then slap you when you’re not looking.
Hooray, new DRM?
Sounds like it’s no more DRM than the limits of a physical cartridge, right?
You have to authenticate online on both ends, and it maxes out at two weeks, so no.
I don’t get why they needed a 14 day limit. Sounds half baked to me. Steam, although with its own limitations, still does a better job at game sharing.
Because if they don’t then you can essentially just give a game away, and that means less sales
DRM poop.
kaitco@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Even though this is an annoying DRM layer, I do like the innovation attempted here.
Back in the day, you’d hand your disc to your friend and then they’d hand it back to you some time later. Digital has given us a lot more freedom in how we game, but the ability to share had been removed. This at least seems to be offering a solution, at least for those who either don’t want to or are unable to just Arr! the games.
All they need is to remove the asinine local connection piece, and make the timeframe longer.
Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 3 days ago
How is this innovation, though?
It’s a specific type of DRM/sharing scheme, but it’s not really innovative.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 3 days ago
tbh i kind of understand the local connection requirement. it really makes it similar to sharing a game with a friend you know in person. without that the floodgates would be open to sharing games with literally anyone online.
smeg@feddit.uk 3 days ago
How would you make it so you can only share games with your family? As in what technical definition of “family” would you use that can’t include your friends?
arudesalad@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
It depends on how it works, 14 days and then the friend has to buy it or renewed every 14 days. If it is the latter and if it eventually goes online (which I think it will with the online subscription) it is a way, not the best way but a way, to stop scammers from building up massive stolen libraries because, unlike piracy, these games would actually be getting stolen from whoever lent it out since they can’t play them. If it is 14 days and then the friend has to buy the game, it’s a stupid limit.
drasglaf@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I think it’s going to be mostly school kids sharing games with their friends, like their parents before them but digitally.