this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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I've not been buying Ubisoft games since the sexual harassment scandal back in 2020, and this only reaffirms my choice not to buy anything from them. It's not just scummy, it's pointlessly scummy.
Admittedly, physical copies of games don't resolve this issue either: legally speaking when you own a physical disk, all you own is the disk itself- not the contents. The only way to actually fix this issue is better consumer protection laws.
Yep. We need a law that says "a person owns any item or service they buy for a one time fee. No 'licensing' them out of ownership" or legalese for the same thing. Only loophole should be if it's outright advertised as a subscription service.
Then another law that guarantees access to schematics and repair parts for reasonable fees. No loopholes. Schematics or die, that's how I roll.
Surely if we get the schematics, we would need a die of some kind as well, right?
Jokes aside, what do you expect is the alternative to licenses? You don't "legally own it" because it's an endlessly duplicatable infinitely durable item. There's literally no way to enforce ownership the same way with actual physical objects outside of keeping track of who owns what (and unsurprisingly, that's what a license is).
You're attacking the wrong thing here, licenses aren't the problem. It's the revocation of them that is.
Those are my thoughts as well. Like it or not, licenses are the way software has been sold since the very beginning of the industry. The problem is that most licenses can be revoked at any time for any reason; and the solution for that is passing a law that prohibits that.
If firms want to be able to revoke a license, they should have to clearly and prominently outline the conditions for that to happen- preferably before you even press the "buy" button.
I'm not completely against licensing, especially software. I'm against companies licensing buyers away from being able to use what they bought.
So if a license states "You own this as long as you don't make and distribute copies to other users. Also some lingo allowing for reasonable backup copies." 100% good in my opinion.
But a license that states "You paid for it but we can take it away for no good reason, such as a few months of inactivity." BS IMO.
There's a solution: get the DRM free version/crack of the game you have buyed.